If Only Russia's "Threat" To Ban American Astronauts Was a Promise

With the space shuttle fleet retired from service, the United States currently pays Russia more than $65 million apiece to fly American astronauts to the International Space Station, according to THIS Telegraph article.

How much did the first "space tourists" flown to the International Space Station (ISS) pay for the same flight by the Russians, I wondered? The first, Dennis Tito, payed a reported $20 million in 2001. Gregory Olsen also paid $20 million in 2005. The last, a Canadian circus magnate, paid $35 million for his 2009 flight to the ISS.

Is it any wonder, then, that Russia indefinitely suspended these private space tourist flights for millionaires in 2010, at the same time the space shuttle fleet was decommissioned.  At the time, Russia characterized the suspension as being bandwidth and safety-related, according to THIS Reuters article. But as it turns out, it was really all about money. Predictably.

The crew of the most recent mission to the ISS, including one American, arrived home safely just hours ago, coincidentally.  What did we get for our $65 million? The highlight of their "eventful and historic" mission, according to THIS Fox News article, was that one of the three became the first ever Japanese man to command the ISS. Oh, and they oversaw the arrival of a cargo capsule that re-supplied the ISS.  Oh, and they also participated in an "unprecedented" two hour TV event titled "Live From Space" that was broadcast live on the National Geographic Channel. Wow.

In light of all of the above, I laughed when I read this morning of Russia's new 'threat' today to stop ferrying American astronauts to the ISS in light of the crisis in Ukraine, and embargo that they said would begin in (pinky to mouth): 10 years.

Everything We Know Is Wrong, Copernicus?

An upcoming documentary film titled The Principle is generating controversy because it's apparently reaching back to the 1500s and advocating geoncentrism: the belief that the sun (and the rest of the universe) revolves around the Earth. 

In the trailer for the film below, the former star of Star Trek:Voyager  TV show is heard at the beginning stating, "Everything we think we know about our universe is wrong."

According to THIS Time magazine article, on Facebook yesterday the actress denied being a geocentrist. " I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that."

American Flags On The Moon Are Still Standing

New photos taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have answered a long-standing question: the American flags planted on the Moon by Apollo astronauts in the late 1960s and early 1970s are indeed still standing.  All, that is, except the one placed by the Apollo 11 team, who were the first men to ever walk on the Moon back in 1969.  You can read more at Space.com HERE.

Astronaut Sally Ride's Death: Unreported Details

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she was part of the crew of the Space Shuttle 'Challenger' in 1983.  She died yesterday in California after a battle with pancreatic cancer at the young age of 61. You can watch her 2 minute obituary from the NBC Nightly News last night HERE.

Two notable aspects go unreported in this story, however.

Despite being married at the time of her groundbreaking 1983 Space Shuttle mission, she divorced her husband in 1987.  From 1985 until her death, her female partner was childhood friend Dr. Tam E. O'Shaughnessy, also making Ride arguably the first lesbian in space.

I remember Sally Ride's mission to space being widely celebrated at the time as a groundbreaking victory for women.  But in fact she was not the first woman in space. Much less trumpeted during the Cold War was that the first woman in space was actually a Soviet cosmonaut named Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, who piloted the Vostok 6 into space in 1963, twenty years before Sally Ride.  Tereshkova is still alive and is now 75 years old.

Outer Space Smells "Meaty-Metallic"

"When astronauts return from space walks and remove their helmets, they are welcomed back with a peculiar smell. An odor that is distinct and weird: something, astronauts have described it, like 'seared steak.' And also: 'hot metal.' And also: 'welding fumes.' Our extraterrestrial explorers are remarkably consistent in describing Space Scent in meaty-metallic terms... According to one researcher, the aroma astronauts inhale as they move their mass from space to station is the result of 'high-energy vibrations in particles brought back inside which mix with the air.' "You can read more in The Atlantic HERE.

Anniversary of 1st Moon Landing (Or Yesterday?)

"'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,' said Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, on July 21, 1969."

But as it turns out there's a minor technical issue about the exact date, apparently. "NASA's official time is kept in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), but Americans remember the moment as occurring on the night of July 20, 1969 because of the time change," according to THIS New York Daily News story.

NASA Working On Menu For 2030 Mars Mission

I've been fascinated, if only occasionally inspired, by manned space exploration for my entire life. But even I'd probably be having an existential and career crisis if I found myself working full-time today as part of NASA's Advanced Food Technology Project to develop the menu for its hoped-for manned mission to Mars in the 2030s.

You can read more in The Christian Science Monitor HERE, including a photo (and embedded video) of Lockheed Martin Sr. Research Scientist Maya Cooper taste testing 'space pizza.' This article contains some interesting revelations, including:

• "astronauts make up a panel that tastes the food and gives it a final OK on Earth before it blasts off"
• "Already, Cooper's team of three has come up with about 100 recipes, all vegetarian because the astronauts will not have dairy or meat products available. It isn't possible to preserve those products long enough to take to Mars."
• "Cooper says it's possible NASA will choose to have one astronaut solely dedicated to preparing the food." (Another potential existential and career crisis in the making.)
•  "At the moment, Michele Perchonok, advanced food technology project scientist at NASA, said about $1 million on average is spent annually on researching and building the Mars menu. NASA's overall budget in 2012 is more than $17 billion."

Panoramic View of Mars

If you want to see a high definition, panoramic view of Mars, you can watch THIS 23 second segment from the NBC Nightly News last night.

Cape Canaveral or Cape Kennedy?

When I was a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, NASA regularly received a lot of media attention because the Space Shuttle program was just beginning.  And in those years I often wondered why I heard the NASA launch facility in Florida referred to as "Cape Canaveral" sometimes, and at other times as "Cape Kennedy."

Well, today I learned why for the first time. On this date in 1963, in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed 'Cape Kennedy' in his honor. But then in 1973, the name was changed back by a vote of the residents.

If A Satellite Hits Your House, Who Pays?

Apparently NASA's obsolete UARS satellite has now fallen to Earth over the Pacific Ocean.  But the headline of this related article caught my eye anyway. "If A Satellite Falls On Your Home, Who Pays?"

It turns out, to my astonishment, that there is an unambiguous answer to this question, and that it is a well-settled question of international law. NASA would have to pay if the falling UARS had hit your home.

"Liability for damage caused by objects falling from space is regulated by the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, according to NASA public affairs officer Beth Dickey. When the U.S. signed the pact, it agreed to be 'absolutely liable to pay compensation for damage caused by its space object on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft in flight.'"

Falling Satellite And Adverbs

By now you've probably already heard that a 20-year old (obsolete) weather satellite is expected to fall back to Earth sometime tomorrow. Since it's apparently "bus-sized" and weighs 6.5 tons, the prospect that large chunks of  the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (or UARS) will survive re-entry, damaging people and property as it falls, has generated an increasing amount of press coverage in recent days.

It struck me that all the news articles invariably lead with quotes from 'experts' and/or 'officials' assuring us that the debris will fall harmlessly.  But, just as inevitably, those assurances are hedged with these equivocal adverbs.  Like THIS article in the Los Angeles Times today, which begins by stating that the UARS, "is due to land Friday, most likely harmlessly, officials say."  And then, if you read further into the body of these articles, they all explain that no one really knows where the debris will land, and that these assurances that no one will be harmed are based almost exclusively on generic statistical calculations about the percentage of the surface of the Earth that is populated and how small the debris field will be. "But there is plenty the trackers don't know about the satellite's reentry — namely, where those pieces will fall — and that's what has some people spooked. 'There is no modeling that predicts where it will hit the surface of the Earth,' Duncan said."

On a related note,  this article also explains in passing that any object weighing more than 1,000 lbs. before re-entry may be large enough to generate a debris field on Earth. I'd always sort of wondered if this had ever been quantified.  Now I know.

Flags Still On The Moon?

I thought that THIS 4-minute segment on the CBS Evening News tonight was interesting.  It examines whether any of the six American flags planted on the Moon by various Apollo missions still survive there intact. 

The fate of the first two surprised me.

The End of the Space Age

I thought that THIS article in The Economist today, titled, "The end of the Space Age," was very interesting because it didn't just focus on the prohibitive cost going forward.  Written in anticipation of the last launch of the space shuttle next week, it reads in part:

"But the shuttle is now over. The ISS [International Space Station] is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in 2020. Once that happens, the game will be up. There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone—at least in the traditional spacefaring powers, America and Russia... The space cadets’ other hope, China, might pick up the baton... But the date for doing so seems elastic... Moreover, even if China succeeds in matching America’s distant triumph, it still faces the question, 'what next?'... With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is of diminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surface bar Mercury has been landed on."

Fake Moon Rock Bust In A Denny's

Did you see the news last week about the woman who was busted in California after an undercover investigator with NASA's Office of Inspector General agreed to purchase a purported Moon rock specimen from her for $1.7 million?

There were several aspects of THIS STORY that I found notable.  One is that NASA apparently has undercover agents.  A second is that, if you're trying to sell someone a fake Moon rock for $1.7 million, the scam would probably be more credible if you arrange to meet somewhere a little more upscale than a Denny's.  A third intriguing aspect of this story was the history of other "Moon rock busts" by NASA over the last 30 years included at the end of the article.  I was particularly intrigued by the 2002 heist of a 600 lb. office safe containing lunar samples by four students working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Wernher Von Braun Died On This Date

Wehrner von Braun, the German-American rocket scientist who became the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century, died from pancreatic cancer on this date in 1977, at the surprisingly young age of 65. A lifelong advocate of manned space exploration, von Braun is best remembered in the United States for his critical role in the development of the Saturn V rockets that propelled the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969.  Somewhat less well known is that as a young man in Hitler's Germany he joined the Nazi party in 1937.  Von Braun never denied this, but explained that at the time he was the technical director of an Army Rocket Center at Peenemunde (despite being just 25 years old), and felt he would lose his position and have to abandon his childhood dream of building rockets if he failed to join. At the time, that rocket center was relatively inconsequential.  But by the end of World War II Hitler looked to Peenemunde to develop miracle weapons, like the V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized Britain, in a futile attempt to turn the tide of the war. 


At the end of the War von Braun and many of his team were spirited away to the United States to build America's fledging rocket program, which at the time was years behind that of the Germans.  These German scientists ultimately formed the core of the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, their Nazi pasts conveniently whitewashed.  After the Moon landing in 1969, von Braun, now a national hero, was moved to Washington, D.C. to become NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator For Planning. But he quit after just two years, frustrated by budget cuts. He died five years later.


In 1955, long before the Apollo program was envisioned, von Braun collaborated with Walt Disney to produce a series of films on space exploration.  Below is a fascinating 6 minute clip from one of these films in which von Braun, then just 43 years old and in the United States for less than a decade, presents at length his conceptual plans for a manned spaceship.  As you watch it, you'll be startled by how closely it presages not the Apollo lunar lander, but the Space Shuttle. 

Final Flight Of Space Shuttle "Atlantis"

The Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off yesterday on its final flight. There are only two more Space Shuttle flights scheduled after this one, apparently, both slated for later this year, after which the entire Shuttle fleet will be retired permanently. ABC News has an interesting article today that you can read HERE about the economic devastation this will cause to the "Space Coast," the area of Florida surrounding the Kennedy Space Center.  In addition to people who have worked for decades directly for NASA on the Shuttle program, like any large factory shutdown anywhere this will also have a devastating radiating impact on surrounding small businesses like bars, restaurants and hotels.  The article also quotes a few tearful NASA employees who seem to be more bitter than wistful. One notes that the shuttle Atlantis was originally designed to fly 100 missions, but flew only 32.


That quote spurred me to look into the Shuttle program a little more deeply this morning. I was surprised to learn that only six space shuttles were ever built.  The first, Enterprise, was designed for test flights only and not for orbital flight, and so is not space-worthy.  Of the remaining five, two were destroyed in tragic accidents: Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003). That has left only three shuttles in the fleet: Discovery, Atlantis, and the third, Endeavor, which was built from spare parts after the Challenger disaster.  The Shuttle program, originally green-lit by President Nixon, has been estimated to have cost a total of $170 billion (inflation adjusted) through early 2008, yielding a cost per flight (up to that time) approaching $1.5 billion.  That cost put the bitter tears of these quoted NASA employees in some perspective for me.


In the end the Space Shuttle fleet will have flown only 134 missions (including two more later this year) since it began in 1981, an average of about four and a half a year.

Skylab

The United States' first manned space station, Skylab-1, was launched on this date back in 1973. I mostly remember Skylab because of its uncontrolled, premature fall back to Earth in July 1979, however. This was a big media event at the time, sort of an international joke that was tinged with just a little "russian roulette" style concern.  Where would it land? Manhattan?  An elementary school?  My house? In the end, the debris fell in Western Australia, and no one was hurt or killed by it. What many have forgotten is how problem-plagued it all was from the beginning.  Skylab was badly damaged during its initial launch in 1973, losing one of its main solar panels and a micrometeriod shield. 


If left un-repaired, this damage would have melted the plastic interior insulation, causing Skylab to fill with poison gas and become uninhabitable. So the first manned mission to Skylab, which departed two weeks later, went specifically to repair this damage.  (Reminiscent of the Hubble space telescope's problems in the early 1990s, huh?) Only two other teams ever went to Skylab, each departing later in 1973, despite the fact that Skylab was intended to remain in orbit for 8 years.  NASA's original plan was to have the Space Shuttle rendezvous with it again in 1979 and push it to a higher orbit.  But when the Space Shuttle's initial launch was itself delayed from 1979 to 1981, this plan was scrapped.  And then Skylab crashed to Earth two years early in 1979, anyway.


If you're still interested, you can watch a 1 minute video of the interior of Skylab that has been posted on You Tube by clicking HERE.

1st Man In Space 49 Years Ago Today

On this date in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, orbiting the Earth once before returning safely. He became a worldwide celebrity as a result, touring Italy, Germany, Britain, and Japan before settling in as the deputy director of the Star City cosmonaut training base.  


Afraid they might lose a national hero and a propaganda tool, the Soviets banned him from further space flights.  As a result, he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. He tragically died just a few years later (along with his instructor) in 1968, however, when the MiG they were flying crashed for unknown reasons still debated today. Gagarin had just turned 34 years old.  Embedded below is a 3 minute clip of his historic space mission, starting with his pre-flight procession to the Vostok 1, and continuing through his flight and safe landing, all incongruously (but not unpleasantly) set to dance music.

The Last Citizen Of The USSR

On this date in 1992, Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth after having spent a record breaking 311 consecutive days in space aboard the Mir space station in 1991 and 1992.  On his return he was dubbed, "the last citizen of the USSR" because the Soviet Union had crumbled beneath him while he sat aboard the Mir for all of that time. 


I remember being fascinated by that, and wondering what he must have been thinking, essentially marooned on a space station high above, entirely reliant on government technicians and scientists back down on Earth, watching helplessly as the entire Soviet system imploded, leaving confusion, lawlessness and human misery amid the rubble.


And you know what, I couldn't find any place where he commented on that.  Though as an epilogue, a few years later in 1994 he was the first Russian to fly aboard the Space Shuttle.  If you're interested, I found a photo of him online from 2006 that you can view HERE.  I was surprised by his movie star looks (especially for a 48 year old man), but was less surprised by the pony tail and goatee on the fan sitting next to him.

Robert McCall, NASA "Space Artist" Has Died

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I was captivated by the conceptual paintings that NASA would release from time-to-time illustrating what their newest space craft and space suits might look like during upcoming missions.  (That's an example above.) Robert McCall was one of NASA's preeminent artists. According to an obituary published in The New York Times today (that you can read HERE), he died on February 26th at the age of 90.  Among many interesting facts in this obit, Mr. McCall apparently also did the painting of the circular space station that was used as the movie poster for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.