Not quite yet it seems.

Posted by: Ted at 11:36 AM | category: Space Program
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Michael Mealing of RocketForge blogged from the Space Access '04 conference, held in Phoenix, Arizona (Helen, tell 'em I said to remove their head comma ass). Among the many interesting things announced - like a second commercial launch license granted to a private company - was this little bit that really caught my imagination.

John Powell of JP Aerospace is giving an update on what JP Aerospace has been up to and is finally talking about their total vision for balloon based aerospace. It's basically three 'vehicles'. A 'launcher' that gets you to 100K feet, a 'station' that is huge that permanently sits at 100K feet, and an orbital (yes, orbital!) balloon that is almost 6000 feet long and can attain orbit using lift from the upper atmosphere. Its an amazing amount of work that is generating short term ROI now.

He's also got pictures from the JP Aerospace handout to see just what these guys are doing. The link leads to a page of photos from the conference, scroll down about halfway to see them (look for the blue book with "ATO - Airship to Orbit" on the cover).

I assume the return on investment (ROI) is the licensing fees for some cutting-edge balloon technology they've developed. This is so cool! Balloons to orbit!!!

Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites aren't the only ones getting close to making space a commercially viable business, they're just the best known to the average person.

Posted by: Ted at 06:35 AM | category: Space Program
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1 Wow, that rocks!

Posted by: Spacemonkey at April 26, 2004 12:34 PM (DN55C)

2 Thanks, Ted. I'll tell them a man with a rocket has my back

Posted by: Helen at April 26, 2004 05:04 PM (EoCN5)

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Geekdom lately has been filled with news of Burt Rutan and others chasing the X-Prize. Sending people into space is well and good, but in the same way that like U-Haul rents big trucks and little trucks, access to space will require various payload capabilities, many of them unmanned.

The Middlesex Advanced Rocketry Society has been working for over five years to create a commercially viable rocket that can lift smaller payloads into orbit. I've followed their progress for much of that time and their work continues to impress.

Regarding their most recent successful test flight:

It is believed that the 25,400ft altitude achieved by Deimos Odyssey now stands as the highest altitude achieved by any rocket powered by a British developed amateur rocket motor and may be the highest altitude ever achieved by any European built hybrid rocket.

Posted by: Ted at 05:47 AM | category: Space Program
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It's been rather eventful lately if you've an eye towards the heavens.

Using a technique predicted by Albert Einstein, astronomers have detected a planet orbiting a star 17,000 light years away. Think about that for a moment. Now I'm sure some Trekkie will stomp me like a Tribble onstage at Riverdance correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember rightly, in the Star Trek universe Warp 1 was the speed of light, Warp 2 was twice that, Warp 3 four times light speed and Warp 4 was eight times faster than light.

I also recall that early Federation starships were pretty much maxed out at Warp 4, and I think the Enterprise cruised right around Warp 4 too. Which means that I should never ever be allowed to do math in public when the Enterprise was brand spanking new, it's contemporaries would need 2,125 years to reach that planet at max speed.

Talk about perspective, eh?

Back to the real science:

The discovery marks the first time that the technique, known as gravitational microlensing, has been used to identify a planet moving around a star beyond Earth's solar system.

The technique takes advantage of a phenomenon that Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity and confirmed using the Sun. The gravity of stars or planets can focus light, brightening stars or planets that lie farther away.

Einstein has been front page lately, at least in the Science & Technology section of the paper. Professor Hall presents a nice set of links to information about the Gravity Probe B. This project has been in the works since the 60's, and you'd think that after all that time, someone would've come up with a catchy name. Nothing boring about the mission though, this is cutting-edge cool science.

Gravity Probe B is the relativity gyroscope experiment being developed by NASA and Stanford University to test two extraordinary, unverified predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

The experiment will check, very precisely, tiny changes in the direction of spin of four gyroscopes contained in an Earth satellite orbiting at 400-mile altitude directly over the poles. So free are the gyroscopes from disturbance that they will provide an almost perfect space-time reference system. They will measure how space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and, more profoundly, how the Earth's rotation drags space-time around with it. These effects, though small for the Earth, have far-reaching implications for the nature of matter and the structure of the Universe.

Meanwhile, closer to home:

An Atlas 2 rocket carrying a Japanese communications satellite made a picture-perfect nighttime launch from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, lighting the Atlantic seaboard in central Florida like a shimmering torch.

Pure poetry.

The 8:45 p.m. EDT liftoff followed a perfect countdown and extended the string of successful launches by Lockheed Martin's Atlas to 71, dating back to 1993.

Which is all the more impressive when you recall the rocket accidents and failures suffered in the last few years by China, Japan, Russia, Brazil and the US.

And just 'cause 'tis the season, over at Rocketforge they report on the latest Aldridge Commision Meeting. Here's an interesting little snippet:

The highlight of today's meeting was one of the UAW guys saying that one of the requirements is that sustainability needs bi-partisan support. In the Q&A Bob Walker turns that around and asks the UAW guy if that means that since the UAW has endorsed Kerry, that the UAW will use that clout to get Kerry to stop dissing Bush's space plan? His answer: if he wants our votes he will.

I had a whole lot to say about this, but it's friday, it's beautiful outside and I'm stuck here at work, so the heck with it. Summed up: I don't buy it. Space is just another political chip to both candidates and the players on either side. For the forseeable future, progress in space will be made in spite of, not because of an American President.

There's a nifty new quote over on the right column too. Look for the Tagline label.

Update: Changed the original tribble joke to something I think is funnier.

Posted by: Ted at 06:29 AM | category: Space Program
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1 It's tribble-stompin' time!

Warp factor was a cube of the speed of light: WF1=C, WF2=8C, WF3=27C, WF4=6C, and so on.

Live long and prosper.

Posted by: Victor at April 16, 2004 06:35 PM (16A49)

2 Thanks Victor.

Posted by: Ted at April 16, 2004 08:21 PM (ZjSa7)

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At some point in time Earth will get smacked again by a chunk of rock wandering through the solar system. That's a given, and it actually happens several times a year. But probability says with near-certainty that a big'un will intersect with Mother Earth. There are some projects gearing up to look out there, but as early warning systems they are far from comprehensive.

And what if we actually do see something ahead of time? Just what would we do? Face it, Bruce Willis isn't getting any younger.

Fortunately, we've got some very intelligent people thinking ahead and more importantly, doing something about it.

Posted by: Ted at 09:39 AM | category: Space Program
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Beautiful pictures of yesterday's test of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Thanks to RocketForge for the pointer.

Update: Transterrestrial Musings has more on the story too, with links.

Posted by: Ted at 11:55 AM | category: Space Program
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It's about time.

Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites make the big step first. I've talked about them before (search on "x-prize" - on the right), because their Space Ship One is typical Rutan: innovative, original and functional.

I expect there will be several more companies hitting this milestone this year.

Posted by: Ted at 10:16 PM | category: Space Program
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Entire article and pretty pictures here.

On January 5, 2003, Titan - Saturn's largest moon and the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere - crossed in front of the Crab Nebula, a bright, extended X-ray source. Titan's transit enabled Chandra to image the one-arcsecond-diameter X-ray shadow cast by the moon (inset). This tiny shadow corresponds to the size of a dime as viewed from about two and a half miles.

This may have been the first transit of the Crab Nebula by Titan since the nebula was formed by a supernova that was observed to occur in the year 1054. The next similar conjunction will take place in the year 2267, so this was truly a once in a millennium event.

Posted by: Ted at 07:13 AM | category: Space Program
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CNN has this nice article on the X-Prize.

When the competition was announced just eight years ago, many were skeptical that any privately financed team could meet the requirements to collect the prize: Build a spacecraft capable of taking three passengers 62.5 miles (101 kilometers) above the planet, then make a second successful suborbital trip within two weeks.

"It's going to happen in 2004. Someone will win it," said Gregg Maryniak, director of the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation, a group created to spark development of reusable spacecraft that can take average citizens into space.

Rocketman Blog has followed progress closely, and has conducted a series of fascinating interviews with X-prize candidates. In fact, he's gotten a job with one of the companies as a result of his blog!

So if you're interested in the commercialization of space (and you should be, it's the next boom to happen), then head on over to RocketmanBlog and read up on some of the pioneers taking those first baby-steps.

Posted by: Ted at 04:25 PM | category: Space Program
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When NASA's Spirit rover was crippled computer-wise in January, there were a lot of potential reasons for the problem. NASA has finally figured it out, and think they may have also discovered what befell the Beagle 2 probe too.

Posted by: Ted at 04:35 PM | category: Space Program
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Scientists have issued a weather forecast for the oily oceans of Titan, Saturn's major moon and a target for a space probe landing next year.

Read all about it here.

Here's a link for more on the Cassini mission and the Huygens probe.

Thanks to Across the Atlantic for the pointer.

Posted by: Ted at 10:54 AM | category: Space Program
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