Matt's Sci/Tech Blog

MicrospaceNews: Jim Benson, R.I.P.

2008-10-12T13:54:00.003-06:00

Jim Benson, founder of the "new space" firm SpaceDev and a tireless promoter of space commercialization and innovative space technologies, has died due to a brain tumor at 63. Space Dev worked on small satellites, hybrid propulsion, and numerous other concepts and technologies advancing "small space" and commercial space. He founded the nonprofit Space Development Institute and served on the board of the California Space Authority.

COMMENT: I knew Jim since the 90s. He was always thinking, always helpful, and endlessly optimistic. Jim was part dreamer, part entrepreneur, and all "space nut." We will all miss him.

Ad Astra, my friend.

New Worm Species evolve to eat poisonous metals

2008-10-09T18:53:00.002-06:00

Worms in the UK have evolved rapidly into new species capable of using an abundant food supply - poisonous heavy metals. Abandoned mine sites in England and Wales have spawned earthworms which ingest soil with lethal levels of metals like copper and lead - and even arsenic - and excrete them in a less dangerous form. Mark Hodson of the University of Reading says, "These worms seem to be able to tolerate incredibly high concentrations of heavy metals, and the metals seem to be driving their evolution." British researchers are investigating whether the worms (identified as new species but yet to be formally names) could be introduced to polluted land, such as old industrial sites, to help make it fit for other forms of life.

New UAV follows an ancient design

2008-10-09T18:30:00.002-06:00

American researchers are working on a new type of UAV, called the Pterodone, that will look pretty startling. Taking their cue from a Cretaceous pterosaur named Tapejara wellnhoferi, the team is focused on a highly flexible, wing-warping design that will look weird, but will offer greater efficiency and near-silent flight.

Threatened Extinctions: the news isn't good

2008-10-09T18:19:00.002-06:00

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) publishes an annual assessment of species under threat, called the Red List.
This year, the IUCN examined 44,838 species. Of these, 16,928 are in trouble. Despite some bright spots, such as an improvement in the African elephant's numbers, the number of endangered species has reached a new high. It has reached a new high every time the report has been issued. It's not always clear which species are worse off than a year ago and which ones make the list "merely" because we have better information about them. Almost a quarter of the world's mammals are subjects of concern, according to this inventory.
COMMENT: It's all (or mostly) about habitat. Even direct threats, like the African bushmeat trade, would be lessened if there was more habitat for animals to retreat and hide in, further from human encroachment. There are no easy answers, especially in desperately poor nations, but most of the questions, in my view, have always pointed to the need for a global effort to increase the protected habitat set aside for plants and animals. That does not rule out regulated hunting or other limited human uses of some protected areas, but it means conservation has to be the top concern in managing habitat of threatened species.

THANKS TO Kris Winkler for this item.

MicrospaceNews: Report on SpaceX's Falcon I Flight 4

2008-10-08T08:23:00.002-06:00

SInce the world's first private launch to orbit has implications for everything from microsatellites to space commerce, I thought it appropriate to reprint here, in part, Elon Musk's press release on the recent flight.

"FLIGHT 4 LAUNCH UPDATE

A week spent reviewing data has confirmed that the flight went really well, including the coast and restart. The mood here at SpaceX is just ecstatic! This is the culmination of six years of hard work by a very talented team. It is also a great relief for me, who led the overall design of the rocket (not a role I expected to have when starting the company). I felt a little sheepish receiving the AIAA award for the most outstanding contribution to the field of space transportation two weeks before this flight.

Orbit was achieved with the first burn terminating at 330.5 km altitude and 8.99 degree inclination. The goal for initial insertion was a 330 km altitude and a 9.0 degree inclination, so this was right on target! Accuracy far exceeded our expectations, particularly given that this was the first time Falcon 1 reached orbit.

The primary purpose of the second burn was to test the restart capability and then burn as long as possible. The upper stage coasted for 43.5 minutes and then burned for 6.8 seconds, which is 4 seconds longer than needed to circularize. Most of the burn was actually done sideways to avoid creating a highly elliptical orbit, hence a change in inclination to 9.3 degrees. The final orbit, confirmed by US Space Command, was 621 km by 643 km.

As an added bonus, we picked up several minutes of video and data from the upper stage when it passed over Kwajalein one orbit later, which showed the stage to be in good condition.

While Falcon 1 was the world’s first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit, I would like to acknowledge and express appreciation for the role of DARPA, the Air Force and the ORS Office of the Department of Defense. They played an important role as early “beta” customers of Falcon 1. There are many individuals in those organizations, as well as in NASA, NRL, FAA, USAKA/RTS, other departments of the US government and the private sector to whom we owe gratitude for their support and advice. You didn’t have to help, but you did, often at risk of career and credibility, so you have my deepest thanks.

The next flight of Falcon 1 is tentatively scheduled for March next year and will carry a Malaysian primary satellite, as well as US government secondary satellites, to near equatorial orbit. Flight 6 will probably be a Defense Department satellite in the summer and Flight 7 a commercial satellite mission in the fall. In 2010, I expect the launch cadence for Falcon 1 to step up to a mission every two to three months."

Anyone for a flying sub?

2008-10-06T22:03:00.003-06:00

OK, most readers are too young to get that reference to the long- and deservedly-buried TV program "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." But the folks at DARPA have never been afraid to think out on the edges of technology. The agency does, in fact, want to find out if a single craft that can operate on the surface, underwater, and in the air is possible.
COMMENT: This is one of those things that makes us techno-geeks say, "Go for it. If it works, it will be REALLY cool." Not to mention very useful to the Special Ops gang.

Sputnik 1 turns 51

2008-10-05T13:55:00.002-06:00

October 4, 1957... the Space Age began.

Erika Lishock and I had the honor, thanks to Roger Launius and others at NASA, of chronicling the steps to that milestone in our book The First Space Race (Texas A&M University, 2004). The late Dr. James Van Allen was kind enough to contribute the Forward, which we believe is the last thing he wrote for publication.

Rather than revisit the technical events, I wanted to comment on a couple of ideas that have arisen since the event: that the U.S. "let" the Soviets launch first, and that the first U.S. program, Project Vanguard, was chosen because it was less military than the competing project (which very likely would have beaten Sputnik to orbit) offered by Wernher von Braun and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.

The argument that President Eisenhower welcomed or allowed a first Soviet launch is not correct. If it were true, Ike would not have called DoD's (and the nation's) point man on the satellite programs, Donald Quarles, on the carpet and demanded an explanation. Ike's chief of staff wrote that the President was pretty hot about it. Quarles pointed out how the Russians had "unintentionally done us a good turn" related to space law, and Ike saw the logic but was no less incensed that we'd handed the Russians a propaganda coup. No one in the government, then or ever, confirmed any sort of slowdown - only a debatable decision by the Stewart Committee, which opted for the more complex Vanguard, with its promise of better scientific return, over the Army proposal which became Explorer.
(It is true that only a minority of the Committee members had actual
rocket expertise, and most likely accepted the Navy's claim it could do a satellite program nearly as quickly as the Army.)

Nor is it true that a top-level decision had been made to direct the choice to the "more civilian" Vanguard. If it had, Quarles would not have listened to a plea from von Braun and his commander and reconvened the committee for another round of presentations and a second vote.

Sometimes, believe it or not, the Government's official version turns out to be exactly what happened.

Matt Bille
author, The First Space Race: Launching the First Earth Satellites
(Texas A&M, 2004)

Bigfoot turns 50

2008-10-05T13:15:00.004-06:00

OK, so Bigfoot-type reports did not just begin 50 years ago - they go back a century or more before that. But this is the 50th birthday of Bigfoot as a media phenomenon.

On October 5, 1958, the Humboldt (CA) Times ran a photograph of a road construction worker named Jerry Crew holding the cast of a huge footprint. Crew had found prints like it on two occasions at the site his company was working in Bluff Creek, CA. For the first time in print, the term "Bigfoot" was used. A phenomenon was born.

So where did that print come from? The family of a man named Ray Wallace, after Wallace died in 2002, claimed that Wallace had "invented Bigfoot" by making the original tracks, and they showed the press the wooden feet Wallace had supposedly used to make said tracks.
The problem? Oddly, none of the "Bigfoot Hoax Solved" articles that flooded out mentioned that, if you put Wallace's fake foot next to a surviving cast of the Crew track, they don't match. They're not even close. Only the cryptozoologists pointed this out, and no one paid much attention. (See the comparison photos at the title link.)

That doesn't mean Wallace had no role. It's possible he had carved earlier, now-lost feet which did match the Crew cast. But whether the tracks in the woods were made by Wallace, another hoaxer, or an unknown primate, their appearance in the Times set off a modern American mystery that still attracts the curious, the determined, the skeptical, and the exploitative.

COMMENT: There are two possible situations behind this whole business.

Option One is that a huge upright ape, of which we have no fossil record, is hiding out in the still-wild corners of North America, and doing such a good job of it that no specimen has ever been killed, accidentally or deliberately. (Claims of specimens found or taken but lost have no more weight than any other sighting report.)

Option Two is that hundreds of people have mistaken something mundane for a huge upright ape and that a startling number of hoaxers all over the continent have left fake prints, encouraged rumors, and told false tales to the press (and, in some cases, to legal authorities.

Neither of these alternatives seems credible, but one has to be true. I lean toward the second, but I sincerely hope for the first.

The Ig Nobels are out!

2008-10-04T10:07:00.004-06:00

The annual Ig Nobel prizes honor "research" that "can not or should not be repeated." (Actually, they also include some real research with applications if the project is weird enough.)
One project honored this year showed armadillos can displace artifacts in archaeological dig sites.
Two studies of Coca-Cola were honored. One showed it was an effective spermicide (ick), the other showed it wasn't. That's nothing unusual in the surreal world explored by the Annals of Improbable Research, which hands out the Ig Nobels. A doctor at Duke discovered placebos presented as expensive medicines worked better than "ordinary" placebos. And a British psychologist found that potato chips which make a better "crunch" sound are rated by consumers as tasting better. You the chip makers will want to put that one to work.
Science marches on!

Steve Fossett: Mystery Solved

2008-10-02T21:12:00.001-06:00

Fossett's plane has been found, along with what appears to be his body. There is no more to say, except we know now for certain the world has lost someone who never quit pushing at the boundaries of our existence.
WIshing you eternal blue skies, Steve.

New Life in the Lab

2008-10-02T06:20:00.003-06:00

This article brings us up to date on what's going on in synthetic biology, the field of creating/building/modifying living organisms to serve particular functions. Proponents argue a lot of the world's big problems can be solved by microbes performing functions like targeting cancer cells in the body or converting waste to fuel. Others point out the field raises a lot of questions about patent law, the consequences of accidental releases, etc. A poll shows that only about 1/3 of U.S. adults have heard of this work, and about 2 percent have read enough to understand it.
COMMENT: While the field does offer a lot of promise, it's not like the Large Hadron Collider fuss, where the measurable risk was very close to zero. The release or evolution of synthetic critters (and microbes can evolve pretty darn fast) does demand some safeguards and ethical standards, and a broadly accepted "code of conduct" for synthetic biology has yet to be put in place.

New bird-dinosaur link: breathing method

2008-10-01T18:44:00.003-06:00

The lungs of birds don't expand the way mammalian lungs do: they are air pumps, forcing air in and out of a series of air sacs anchored in small holes in the vertebrae, hips, and pelvis. This saves weight compared to having the large muscles and other structures involved in expanding the lungs. Now similar openings have been found in the bones of Aerosteon riocoloradensis, a large (9m long) dinosaur specimen from Argentina. The dinosaur was not a bird, but it breathed like one. Similar indications of air sacs have been found in the vertebrae of sauropods, but this discovery is the first in a carnivore and the first to include indications in the clavicles. It's one more link in the chain connecting birds to their ancestors, the dinosaurs.

A Clue to Steve Fossett?

2008-10-01T18:36:00.002-06:00

Long after authorities gave up the search for pilot/adventurer Steve Fossett, and seven months after a judge declared him legally dead, the search is underway again. The catalyst: Three forms of ID, all with Fossett's name, found with $1,005 in cash tangled in a bush in eastern California. The hiker, Preston Morrow, found no sign of a plane, but government agencies and Fossett's pilot friends are gearing up to sweep the rugged area once more.

MicrospaceNews: More on the Chinese nanosatellite

2008-10-01T05:35:00.002-06:00

Here is the Chinese satllite released in orbit for some slightly murky surveillence/comunications function.

Go to
http://satcom.website.orange.co.uk/ and Click the "Empty" button far right of menu bar

Snow falling on Mars

2008-09-30T13:37:00.002-06:00

The Mars Phoenix Lander has detected snow falling in the atmosphere above it. The precipitation melts before it hits the ground, but that may not be true everywhere on the planet.
Scientists are keeping the MPL very busy these days, trying to cram in as much sampling, assaying, and other work as possible before the short days coming in November and the long polar night in December rob the craft's solar panels and freeze the instruments in an ordeal the lander is not expected to survive.

SPACE-X IS IN ORBIT

2008-09-28T19:13:00.004-06:00

Wow, my first-ever all-caps headline.
Falcon 1, Flight 4, is in orbit. A 165-kg instrumented dummy payload was placed in orbit by the two-stage booster. A relieved CEO Elon Musk reported, "Fourth time's a charm." Three previous flights had fallen short.
COMMENT: Congratulations to Elon, Gwynne, and the rest of the Space-X crew. We don't know yet where this will go, but the so-far-small company has big plans for NASA contracts, larger boosters like the Falcon 9, and human spaceflight with its Dragon craft. Here's a wish for continued success.

Chinese astronaut completes EVA

2008-09-27T15:12:00.002-06:00

Congratulations to Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigan. On what was only his nation's third human space flight, he became the first Chinese to "walk in space." He was outside the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft for 18 minutes, during which he released a nanosatellite and waved a small Chinese flag to a national audience watching in his homeland.

Attack of the Giant Goose

2008-09-27T15:00:00.004-06:00

Picture a seabird, a bit like a long-winged, short-necked goose. Now picture it with wings five meters across. Now picture it with teeth.
A fossil skull recently found on the the Isle of Sheppey off the English coast tells us that, 50 million years ago, this winged wonder did patrol the coastal seas from above. The bird, placed in the extinct genus Dasornis, had what one paleontologist called, "sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak." These "pseudo-teeth" are believed to have re-evolved after the birds as a whole lost their teeth through natural selection. This feature may have made it easier for birds like Dasonis emuinus to grip fish they skimmed from the ocean.

COMMENT: Every answer from prehistory raises a new question. If these "teeth" were good for gripping fish, why didn't modern seabirds (those who live on fish, anyway) retain them? If they were not much of an advantage, why did they emerge at all?

"We open doors,,,which lead to more doors." - Agent Scully on the purpose of the X-Files

Scientific reference:Gerald Mayr, “A skull of the giant bony-toothed bird Dasornis (Aves: Pelagornithidae) from the Lower Eocene of the Isle of Sheppey,” Palaeontology, Vol. 51, Part 5, 2008, pp. 1107–1116.

Shenzhou 7 in orbit

2008-09-25T18:50:00.002-06:00

The Shenzhou 7 spacecraft, carrying a crew of three, is safely in orbit, according to Chinese authorities. THe mission will last at least four days and it to include the first spacewalk by a Chinese. The spacewalk, or EVA, may come as early as Friday. Russia, in a gesture no doubt meant to include a little dig at the United States, has made much of how its experts helped the Chinese prepare for this milestone. The Chinese, as one might expect, have not been mentioning it. In a humorous aside, the official news agency Xinhua published a conversations with the astronauts in orbit - before they had even blasted off.
A former Chinese space official, Zhang Qingwei, said, "We intend to send astronauts to the moon and ultimately to build a lunar outpost." That's very ambitious, and expensive, but who knows? The recent Olympics showcased China's determination to do huge projects that make a splash on the world scene.

Was this the "sea serpent?"

2008-09-25T18:37:00.003-06:00

Dr. Darren Naish, in his invaluable blog Tetrapod Zoology, today discussed an item I'd been quite unaware of. In 1751, a London physician, Dr. James Parsons, published an article ("A dissertation upon the Class of the Phocae Marinae," Philosophical Transactions 47, 109-122) naming a new species - a long-necked seal. Parsons said that he had the type specimen of this animal, a juvenile about 2.3m long. He published an illustration showing a long-necked specimen along with two ordinary seals (not very accurately drawn) as comparisons.
What was this alleged specimen, and what happened to it? A long-necked seal is a familiar topic in cryptozoology, often put forth as an answer to "sea serpent" sightings. Did Parsons actually have his hands on something very important? No one knows, and we may never know.

My MonsterQuest debut

2008-09-24T20:05:00.002-06:00

Not bad. History Channel (or just History, as they now style themselves) has just run the "Giant Bear Attack" episode of MonsterQuest. It had the expected breathless reports and descriptions of bear attacks, but they kept the science in there. We were all a bit disappointed that MacFarlane's bear from 1864 was proclaimed "definitely just a brown bear" by a modern expert, and the detour into a New Jersey town overrun with black bears seemed unnecessary, but overall, a good job. They took out more of my interviews than they left in (normal practice, of course, with TV), but I thought most of my good points made it in.

It's MonsterQuest time!

2008-09-22T08:43:00.002-06:00

Wednesday, September 24, at 9PM EST, History channel's MonsterQuest will air the following program:

MonsterQuest : Giant Bear Attack
Airs on Wednesday September 24 09:00 PM

Are big bears are getting more assertive and aggressive? In prehistoric times, giant bears weighed up to a ton and stalked early man. Listen as witnesses describe horrific bear attacks and take a look at unusual bear remains. The team journeys from Alaska to New Jersey to learn about bear activity and if hybridization or the next step in bear evolution could produce another crop of giant bears?

I was interviewed for this program and had a chance to talk about bear evolution, rumors and reports of mystery bears, and the place bears hold in the human imagination. I have not had a sneak peek and am not sure how much of my commentary will be in the final program, but I will be watching to find out!

I hope you join me.

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has a thread set up with an article on one of the other participants:
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/mq-bear-spoiler/

See you Wednesday!

MicrospaceNews: Webinar from Stanford SSDL

2008-09-21T14:41:00.002-06:00

Bob Twiggs of Stanford's Space and Systems Development Laboratory sent me an invite to sign up for a Webinar course. AA247, "Innovation for Aerospace and Space Exploration," looks like an interesting experience. I probably will not be able to schedule it, but I wanted to pass on the opportunity to learn from the creators of the CubeSat and other innovative space technology.
Thank, Bob

Contact:
Class Instructor- Prof. Bob Twiggs
Bob.Twiggs@Stanford.edu
Tel. 408-230-4728
Class Assistant- Eddie Truong-Cao - ctetc007@stanford.edu

Rocket companies in a snit

2008-09-21T14:22:00.002-06:00

United Space Alliance (USA) and ATK have been in a legal snit lately, loudly accusing each other of a range of misbehavior including contract violations, employee-poaching, and, for all I know, illegal parking. Now it's taken a serious turn: USA (prime contractor at Kennedy Space Center) last week told employees to stop working on supporting the Ares-1 rocket program (prime contractor: ATK) effective September 22. A one-week truce called by the two companies on September 19 postponed the work stoppage threstened for the 22nd but does not leave much time to work out their differences. The losers in any continued brawl: NASA and the Constellation program. I wonder what Mike Griffin is taking for headaches these days...