Category Archives: Astronomy and Aerospace

Comet Holmes

3 Replies

If your sky is dark enough, it’s worth stepping outside in the next couple weeks to look for Comet Holmes in the constellation Perseus. The comet is somewhat west of Mirfak, the alpha star in Perseus.  Download some kind of reasonable star chart or better yet, dig up some of that money you have buried in the back yard and spring for a copy of Sky and Telescope at the super market- It’s not gonna kill ya. As for Th’ Gaussling, I’m fond of the Norton Star Atlas.

According to the charts, if you make a line between Mirfak and the lambda star, the comet is nearly in the middle of that line as of this date. It’s hard to miss.  It is a fuzzy circular blob lacking a visible tail. It has a striking surface brightness that sets it apart.  Binoculars are a must for the full effect, though is a naked eye object.

For you green horns who are new to constellation work, before you go outside, actually look at your charts.  Find Perseus (between the Pleiades and Cassiopeia) and then find some easy reference stars to make your own pointer stars that will form a line that extends to the approximate location of the object of interest. If you can get two lines that cross at the region of interest, so much the better.  I used the gamma and delta stars in the “W” of Cassiopeia as pointer stars to find Mirfak.

For late linkers to this post, you’re probably out of luck. Check the date.

LunaBank. Off-shore banking on the moon.

2 Replies

If you knew Th’ Gaussling very well, you would be quite surprised at his increasing skepticism with our approach to manned spaceflight.  I am an aerospace enthusiast. The most thrilling and terrifying moments of my life have occured at 7000 ft MSL with a Cessna strapped to my ass.  It is distressing to go public (well, under my pseudonym) with criticism of our manned space flight effort.

My first question is, what are we getting out of the ISS?  We’re racking up a lot of flight hours and the aerospace contractors are doing good business. The purpose of the ISS seems to be “Learning How to Build an ISS” if you watch NASA TV.  Where are the dividends to society? I’m sure they are there. Where is the tech transfer?

I know that research is being done on the ISS. But, how productive is it?  How close are we technically to going to Mars? The assessment of criteria for a Mars mission is supposed to be one of the work products of the ISS. Has anyone articulated how the big picture is looking? 

Apparently, a trip to Mars will involve a lot of gardening.

Hmmm. I can just hear it-

“Hey Bob! Where d’ya s’pose them sonsabitches at Kennedy put that g*ddamned shovel? ”

“Simmer down, Annie. For the third time, it’s behind the weed-eater next to the inertial navigation unit. Shee-yit!”

Given the commercial interests in building manned-flight rated hardware, are we really being honest with ourselves on the question of man-vs-robot? In other words, could we spend less and learn more from robotic space hardware?

Friends connected to NASA tell me that monies that were once available for activities not directly related to manned spaceflight are drying up. NASA is preparing for a return trip to the moon. We’re going to the moon again, but without any fanfare or sense of purpose. The public is largely disengaged and uncompelled. The public is disengaged because no one has heard the purpose articulated.

A country that has interest in an ongoing moon station will have to come up with more than just stunt or prestige value.  Huge inputs of national treasure will be committed to the enterprise.  Commercial interests should be folded in to produce goods and services in order to recover costs in some fashion.  The return of material products from the moon will have a very large transportation cost per kilogram.

The production of intellectual property, information, broadcasting services, or remote sensing will likely be the most attractive commercial products. Actually, the moon would be a good place for a Bank. Imagine a Swiss-style bank with safe deposit boxes located on the moon.  How much more secure a location for small treasures and damning evidence could there be? 

Similar ideas have been put into practice, starting with pirate radio of all things.  The Principality of Sealand was started as a micro-nation on a retired gun platform off the east coast of England. The plan initially was to have a remote location for pirate radio broadcasts.  Today, Sealand is the location of a secure data sanctuary called Havenco. The idea of a remote, encrypted data sanctuary was the theme of the book Cryptonomicon.

Naturally, other nations have voiced disapproval of the data sanctuary concept, citing potential for money laundering and other criminal activity. Havenco may find itself cutoff from the telecommunication network that keeps it alive.

The moon would be a great site for off-shore banking activity. Nobody owns the moon. It is outside the boundaries of all the jurisdictions on earth.  Funds could be electronically transferred to a remotely operated bank on the moon.  Hell, you could leave the doors unlocked and forget the vault.  At minimum, all you need to do is land a computer, a dish for data transfer, and some solar panels for power.  Once a year a service visit can be made by LunaBank people to service the equipment and swap deposit boxes. 

Aphorism #114. If you want to make money, you have to serve the people or institutions who have the money.

Eventually, though, there may well be jurisdictions on the moon. One day, the moon will be partitioned, so the last thing a LunaBanker wants is to suddenly be a part of the Soviet Union Russia or China on the moon. Or nearly any nationality, for that matter. The Swiss may be preferable, owing to their favorable history with this kind of business.

This scheme is very simplistic.  It will require more thought than that presented here and the criminal potential will have to be prevented. The question of what minimally constitutes a “Bank” and its relation to nationality naturally arises in this discussion. No doubt, there is more to it than my simple scribblings. But the point of this essay is that we as a spacefaring society need to start discussing this kind of activity and not just leave it to a cloister of specialists.

Electrons on Mars

2 Replies

A representative of the Mars Society was interviewed on NPR the other day- Founder Dr. Robert Zubrin- in relation to a conference at UCLA. Zubrin was expounding on the exciting future for mankind on the red planet.

It is the usual space exploration cheerleading stuff that must be done to sustain interest. Visit their website and you’ll see that the Mars Society has been sponsoring some simulated Mars missions in order to accumulate experience and credibility to be at the forefront of an actual mission. They even have an impressive list of scientific advisors.

After hearing some of the ambitious plans to colonize and industrialize Mars, it seems clear that the most important resource colonists on Mars will need is a ready supply of electrons.

Exploiting Martian raw materials will be an energy intensive activity. There will be all kinds of electrical devices to power. Don’t forget backup components, tools, and a collection of spare parts. Maybe a whole module should be dedicated to nuts, bolts, screws, toilet plungers, and duct tape. An orange Home Depot supply craft should follow every mission to Mars. 

Since fuels and oxidizers for combustion will be in short supply, there will be no hydrocarbon powered … anything.  There will be no diesel burning Caterpillars to move dirt.  No calcining lime to make concrete. Prospecting for minerals will consume precious energy as will beneficiation of the ore. The refinement of minerals to afford materials of construction will be deeply energy dependent both in terms of building a processing plant and production itself. 

Once metal ore is found, it must be taken from a deposit, concentrated, and eventually reduced to the metallic form. This is the other requirement for electrons on Mars. Eventually, metal ions must be supplied with electrons from some more abundant supply.  Electrorefining may do the deed from an electrode.  The other obvious source is from electropositive metals or from elemental carbon.

Calcium or magnesium are used to reduce a number of other metals already. Coke has been used in iron refining for a long time. But how would a metal refining operation on Mars obtain these electropositive materials? Hauling calcium or coke from earth? Not likely.

Raw materials for metals refining on arid, alien planets will be a real challenge. Electrons for reduction will almost certainly come from electric power generation. Carbonaceous materials will be in too short of a supply.  Hydrogen will have to be won by electrolytic cracking of precious water.  Consumption of this hydrogen will have to be thought through very carefully, given the previous investment in electrical power to prepare it.

To a very large extent, the colonization of Mars will be an electrically powered adventure. Working electrons on Mars will be the most highly prized resource. Mars Base sounds like a nuclear destination to me.

Lunar Eclipse

2 Replies

For those of us on the wrong side of the earth for todays lunar eclipse, NASA’s JPL offers the next best thing. A solar system simulator.  You’ll have to monkey with the settings. I’d recommend using the extra brightness if you view the earth from the moon for a Terran eclipse. The view from the moon is visually more interesting, I think. This simulator is a very useful tool for exploring the solar system. Enjoy!

Tom, founder and drive system engineer, at the LTO 18″ telescope. [Photo from starkids.org]

One of the coolest things I have ever witnessed happened during a lunar eclipse a few years ago. We had the observatory open during the event with the 18″ Cassegrain pointed at the moons limb. As you watched a star along the edge of the moon, you could see the moon moving against the background of stars, eventually occulting the star in the period of a few minutes. Of course, you don’t have to wait for an eclipse to do this, but there it was that night, the celestial clockwork in motion before your eyes.

[Thanks to Les for the JPL link!]

Solar Perplexus- Is the Sun Electrically Neutral?

Leave a reply

I wonder to what extent a star can accumulate an electrical charge?  Nuclear transformations conserve charge, so electrical neutrality should be preserved in nuclear chemistry. But what about CME’s– Coronal Mass Ejections or other energetic bursts of plasma from the sun?  Are such mass ejections electrically neutral? Do the processes that accelerate solar protons provide a mechanism that includes an equivalent number of electrons? Are electrons swept along with the proton burst like lepton groupies?

If the sun is 1.4E6 km in diameter, then it is about 4.7 light seconds in diameter, using the vacuum velocity of light in the estimation (this may not be the velocity to use). It seems that an electrical imbalance could occur on one side of the sun and be “unnoticed” by the rest of the star for a fairly long period of time.

The magnetic processes that eject mass from the sun perform work on the solar plasma by accelerating some of it from the sun into space.  My question is this, is it possible that charge separation can occur as well. If mass-flows are directed (or partitioned) according to charge and occur by confinement or acceleration in pinched magnetic fields (like in a cyclotron or a Tokamak), then it seems plausible that ejected particles streams could be charge imbalanced on a local scale. On a broad enough scale, the charge would be balanced, of course. 

Here are the questions that follow:  How much charge imbalance could a star accumulate and how would it get back into equilibrium?

Comments?  Pure Bullshit? Partial Bullshit?

When can we keep our shoes on?

3 Replies

Check out Atomic Rocket for a tribute to Heinlein and Clarke and a repository of graphics and themes of space opera. Really a fantastic resource for science fiction writers.

Bruce Schneier interviews TSA Administrator Kip Hawley. Sounds like we’ll be taking our shoes off for quite a while. 

Filipino prisoners do the Algorithm March. The Algorithm March at the airport.

Houston – hic!- We have a – urrrpp – Problem!

1 Reply

Good lord.  What a bad year for NASA. First astronaut Lisa Nowak goes non-linear in a fit of lunacy that even National Lampoon would claim is over the top. Now there is talk of sabotage and drunken astronauts. 

Intrepid, hard drinking stick and rudder aviators have long been part of the lore of flight. Remember the Happy Bottom Riding Club? The image of the astronauts as a preening, squeeky clean corps of orbiting sunday school teachers is the result of years of pathetic NASA propaganda. It is an absurd fiction and it needs to stop.

There is no doubt that astronauts as a group are disinclined to do anything that would negatively affect their flight status and the likelihood an inebriated astronaut would adversely affect a mission is between slim and none.  The buzz over Paris Hilton has run its course and the news business is looking for more titillation to maintain the national slack-jaw coefficient.

NASA should spend its resources trying to find more compelling reasons to maintain manned spaceflight rather than ginning up SOP‘s for greater oversight of astronaut blood alcohol levels. 

B-24 Liberator in the Morning Sky

6 Replies

This morning while on a pleasant bike ride through the countryside I chanced to hear a familiar rumbling noise.  Not seeing anything immediately, I stopped to look at a pony and a mule that had gotten loose from a pasture.  Moments later, over the cottonwood trees there appeared a B-24 Liberator flying overhead not more than 1000 ft above ground.  This is something you don’t see every day. 

Turns out that the owners of this aircraft were flying out of a local airport over the holiday selling $400 rides in this lumbering relic of another age.  Hell, if I could justify it to my wife, I’d have taken a ride too.

Manson Impact Structure

2 Replies

Visited the town of Manson, Iowa, today.  This is a farm community nestled in the flat, corn-carpeted central Iowa countryside. Manson is situated over an extraordinary geological formation that is completely invisible from the surface.  Also called the “Manson Anomaly”, this location is the site of a meteor impact ca 74 million years ago. The Manson site was originally thought to be the source of the K-T boundary, but now it is recognized to have been formed ca 9 million years prior to the K-T event. Approximately 130 distinct impact craters have been identified.

The formation contains many of the classic features attributed to an impact crater and it has been studied at length.  Fortunately, the library in Manson has a collection of literature on the formation as well as a collection of core samples from about 10 bore locations. 

The impactor is thought to be a stoney meteor approximately 2 km in diameter.  According to the Iowa Geologic Survey, the crater structure is 37 km in diameter and sits under 20 to 70 m of glacial till.  It is believed that the terrain was covered by seawater at the time of impact and that the crater was filled with water fairly soon after the impact. 

What is interesting for this writer is that the Manson Crater is directly under the place I lived as a child.  Who knew that under the plain, flat, farmland were the remains of a large-scale calamity.  Things are never as they seem.  That’s what I really dig about science.