Tag: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Stuff You Don’t Know About The Shuttle

I’ve been to see a few launches at the Space Center. I’ve stood along the banks of the Banana River, right next to that ridiculously large digital clock. The shuttle sits on its pad, a few miles away.

It’s tough to miss KSC. The focal point is the Vehicle Assembly Building, the VAB. It’s one of the largest buildings in the world. There’s room enough to outfit two shuttles at once.

Within the VAB, the shuttle’s exterior is easily reached through a series of catwalks and platforms. Everything has got to be handy. Everything has got to be within arm’s reach.

The shuttle leaves the VAB on the ‘crawler’ and makes it way down a gravel road to the launch pad. The road is gravel because a paved road could never take the weight! The gravel, actually more stones than gravel, acts to cushion and spread the load.

You’ve got to realize they’re shooting off something the size of a pretty big building. Everything is oversized. This is not a subminiature operation.

The shuttle craft itself isn’t that large, but it’s strapped onto its propulsion system, the Roman candles which carries it into space.

You see the shuttle before you hear it. The light, as the rockets start firing is bright, even on a sunny Florida day. The light travels at 186,000 miles per second. The sound moves closer to 500 mph.

I’m not sure how this works, but before I’ve heard the shuttle, I’ve sensed the sound waves were coming at me. Whether it was a distortion of the view, or the movement of the tall grass, there was something that let me track its progress.

The shuttle is loud. More than ‘ear loud’ you feel the loudness as a vibration on your chest. Over on the launch pad, NASA is busy pouring water on the shuttle – massive quantities every second. The vibration of the shuttle, which causes the noise, is so violent that without water to act as a shock absorber, the shuttle would vibrate itself apart.

The flames and smoke are pushing against the ground. You can’t see it unless you’re on the pad, but there are trenches which channel the fire from the engines. If you fly over the launch site, you can see where grass has been singed and then has regrown.

The launch complex is lined with a chain link fence. I don’t think it’s for security as much as a delineation of where people shouldn’t be. Every once in a while, wedged tightly into the openings in the links, are rocks, big rocks thrown by the force of the thrust.

When I’ve been there, as the shuttle lifted, its trajectory took it south along with east. As it climbed, the shuttle rotated so, to us on the ground, it seemed to be upside down.

Somewhere, ten or fifteen seconds into the flight there is a moment where you want to rewind and do it again. There’s only one time to see what’s happening. Don’t blink. Stay rapt in your attention.

A trip to the launch complex after the shuttle has left is eerily strange. Lots of concrete. Lots of plumbing. It looks like an abandoned oil refinery. The area is ripe with the smell of the withes brew of chemicals used in the launch.

There are wire lines and baskets that run to the pad. In case of an emergency, the astronauts are supposed to be able to leave the shuttle, hop in a basket, and slide down the line to safety.

They’ve never been used in an emergency situation and I’d assume they’re dangerous enough not to use too often in practice either.

Later today, hopefully, everything will go as planned.

Trouble With The Shuttle

Earlier this evening, a well connected friend sent me an instant message with bad news from NASA. A window cover on the shuttle had fallen, striking the shuttle’s protective tiles.

At the moment, NASA says they can fix everything in plenty of time to launch tomorrow. Get out the duct tape.

Isn’t this the real problem with the shuttle program in a nutshell? The Columbia tragedy was also an incident they felt they could work through. A piece of frozen foam… lighweight foam… hit the shuttle. “Harmless,” was the conventional NASA wisdom.

But no one really knows. These are all just calculated guesses. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not.

I play in a lot of no limit poker tournaments on line. There’s an analogy here. I can go with the odds and win a dozen showdowns, all-in hands. But, if I lose one – just one – I’m done.

It’s the same with the shuttle. Guess right 99 times, but if you’re wrong on number 100 you’re 100% wrong, not 1%.

Overall, there is little room for error. In some specific cases, it could be argued, there is no room for error.

So, again I get on my soap box to say, “Don’t fly.”

And, again, I’ve looked to see what this mission is accomplishing. Other than servicing the International Space Station, it will be 13 days of not much.

Sure, there will be safety procedures examined and quantified, but that wouldn’t be necessary if we didn’t insist on men in space. In fact, neither would the ISS servicing.

I will be watching tomorrow at 3:51 PM and hoping for a safe journey. I will even attempt to see the shuttle while it passes over Connecticut during some of its orbits&#185. I just won’t be convinced it’s a worthwhile risk or use of our money.

&#185 – In servicing the International Space Station, the shuttle uses an orbit that brings it closer to the poles than in ‘standard’ missions. It will get as high as 51&#176 north and south latitude.

Rendezvous With A Comet

One day and eleven hours from now, the Deep Impact spacecraft with crash into Comet Tempel 1.

That’s just crazy. Stop and think about it for a second.

Here’s a comet, tiny in the general scheme of things, which is moving pretty quickly through space. The impactor, the part of the spacecraft that will hit the comet, will be closing at 22,000 mph (if I’ve done my km/s to mph conversions correctly).

By the time it’s all done, the impactor will have blown a whole somewhere between the size of a house and football field into the comet’s side! Gas and debris should be ejected back into space.

Flyby spacecraft – nearly as large as a Volkswagen Beetle automobile.

Impactor spacecraft – about the same dimensions as a typical living room coffee table.

As it approaches, the impactor will be looking for a spot somewhere between the greatest mass and brightest point, making sure it doesn’t hit the edge of the comet and break off a piece or bounce back into space. All of this will be done autonomously since it’s too far from Earth for us to ‘drive’ the spacecraft in real time.

This crash will be monitored so scientists can try and get a better feel for a comet’s makeup. Comets formed early in the universe’s pre-history, so their makeup should be a clue to what went on then and how we got to where we are today.

The element copper isn’t expected to be found in the comet, so the impactor is made of it. That way, copper can easily be excluded from the scientific revelations that will surely come.

Back when I hosted Inside Space I learned one thing that serves me well for this mission. All extraterrestrial objects are shaped like potatoes. Don’t ask why. I don’t know. But, it’s true!

It’s possible when the impactor hits Comet Tempel that it will flouresce enough for us to see it with the naked eye. More than likely though, we’ll have to depend on NASA and their onboard cameras to get us the video sometime over the next few days.

Luckily, there’s no governmental agency better at multimedia and the Internet than NASA (and I only shudder to think what it costs all of us). There’s a pretty good Deep Impact website with everything you need to know – and then some.

It’s still pretty cool.

Two Interesting Controversies… Well, To Me They Are

I thought I’d write about some interesting things I’ve read over the past few days.

The first seems to be a simmering controversy. It has not yet reached critical mass, but it should as soon as someone in the mainstream press catches on.

Is someone else fudging when it comes to global warming? Last week there were questions about a pro-industry push. This is just the opposite.

It starts with some comments on global warming from a respected scientist representing a respected organization

Kevin Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims that warmer oceans and increased moisture could intensify showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes.

“Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions,” Trenberth said. “These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing.”

All well and good, except this is a conclusion and a report steeped in controversy.

Dr. Chris Landsea is from the National Hurricane Center. He’s the guy who wrote the Hurricane Center’s FAQ. He is not a happy camper.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

Landsea goes on to say global warming will have minimal impact (if any) on tropical systems down the road. In fact, Landsea has resigned from this board in protest of the books being cooked.

Earlier today Matt Drudge was linking to an article which quoted Dr. Trenberth with no opposing viewpoints or perspective I was upset, so I wrote the author of the story.

Hello,

I appreciate you pointing this out. Unfortunately, the article was

published before I was finished with it. It was pulled off our site (but

not before it was picked up in other places), and I have now added some

context.

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050616_hurricane_warm.html

I apologize for this mixup.

Michael Schirber

LiveScience

How much damage has been done? Who can tell. Even bad or retracted research sometimes takes on a life of its own. I’ll wait and see what’s quoted later.

On to the second bit of reading which concerns the space program. It’s not often I see something in the National Review I agree with (in fact it’s not often I see the National Review). Today was the day.

This time it’s an article by John Derbyshire about the space program and its dubious current value. This is something I’ve written about before here in the blog. It’s not a popular thing to say the space program is a total waste… but it is.

I wrote John (whom I’d never heard of before this evening) and he wrote back.

Thank you, Geoff. Excellent comments. I just did a radio spot with Jerry

Doyle — he’s a big shuttle fan & has swallowed all the NASA guff about

microgravity manufacturing & the rest.

I think of the Shuttle program as a sort of Brasilia of the skies — pure

1950s thinking. Who else, today, is riding a vehicle designed by slide

rule?

Best,

John Derbyshire

A Brasilia analogy – wow!

Glad To Be Wrong

A while back when the Discovery Mars rover got stuck in a sand dune I assumed the worst. Hey, it’s gone on much longer than anyone thought. The rover owes us nothing.

Tonight, thought it’s not on the NASA site yet, it seems the rover has worked its way free, spinning its wheels and advancing inches at a time.

Another reason to specify robots for your next space exploration.

Blogger’s note: The NASA site is also showing some pretty cool photos of ‘dust devils‘ on the Martian surface, as photographed by the Spirit rover.

Cool Photos From Mars

Mars Odyssey was launched on 7 April 2001, and reached Mars on 24 October 2001. Mars Global Surveyor left Earth on 7 November 1996, and arrived in Mars orbit on 12 September 1997. Both spacecraft are in an extended mission phase, both have relayed data from the Mars Exploration Rovers, both are continuing to return exciting new results from Mars and both are in somewhat different orbits for safety’s sake.

That makes the photos just in pretty exciting!

They’re the first pictures of a spacecraft orbiting Mars taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars. In April 2005, the MOC aboard Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was used to take pictures of the other two spacecraft currently operating in orbit around Mars: NASA’s Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express.

Our Place In Space

I wrote earlier today about the setback for Rover Opportunity. It is stuck in some sand as it scoots around the surface of Mars. It has now been operating nearly a year beyond its expected Martian lifetime. It owes us nothing at this point.

Those in charge feel confident it will extricate itself. Good luck. I hope they’re right.

Also today, NASA announced they were pushing back the next launch of the space shuttle. What was scheduled for May will now go off during the summer.

The problem relates to ice. Much of the propellant for the shuttle is incredibly cold and any exposed area of its plumbing or tanks will cause ice to form, even on a warm Florida day. If the ice breaks off… Well, you remember what happened on the last shuttle flight.

The shuttle program started in the early 70s. It was a good idea at the time, but 30+ years later, it’s obvious we need to go a new way.

The shuttle is bulky, expensive, labor intensive and extremely dangerous. Close your eyes for a second and think how your car differs from the one you drove in the 1970s. We are flying a 1970s shuttle fleet.

The shuttle program was predicated on many promises, such as advances in pharmaceuticals, metallurgy and the like. In reality, shuttle related progress in those field has been minimal.

Certainly there have been benefits, like communications satellites, integrated circuits and computer chips. Today, it seems like the shuttle is without a real mission. The International Space Station, one of the reasons for continuing shuttle flights, is doing less than the shuttle did!

On the other hand, our two robotic Martian missions have been astounding successes. They have lasted longer than expected&#185. More importantly, they are doing real science on a real mission.

We can take chances… even get stuck in the Martian sand, because no lives are at risk.

We are using robotics more and more to replace humans, especially in dangerous situations. Unmanned drone airplanes fly recon over Iraq (and probably other places our military doesn’t admit to). Even portions of the New York City subway system are scheduled to be operated robotically.

The state-of-the-art in robotics is well beyond anything imagined in the early 70s. Yes, NASA gets some credit for that. But now it’s time to take advantage of that technological edge and move our space program into the 21st Century.

There might be a time in the future when men, again, will be necessary for space exploration. They aren’t now. Another space disaster would be devastating to our nation. Along with the human toll, that bit of national vanity must be considered.

It’s time to ditch the shuttle and start flying smarter.

&#185 – I suspect, based on past experience, that NASA timelines are always conservative, making every success look that more successful.

Why Is NASA Backtracking?

Yesterday I wrote about the announcement that two NASA scientists were ready to publish a paper claiming live may currently exist on Mars. Today, it’s a different story. From MSNBC:

NASA nixes claims of Mars life: NASA on Friday issued an unusual denial of a report that its researchers found strong evidence for life’s existence on present-day Mars.

Earlier this week, sources told the weekly Space News that NASA scientists Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke had submitted a paper to the journal Nature outlining the evidence for biological activity on the Red Planet, based on the signature of methane found in the Martian atmosphere.

However, NASA’s newly issued statement claims that’s not the case:

If this were a ‘real’ news site, I’d never say this. But, since this is nothing more than a venue for my opinions, I’ll say it. This so smells of politics!

Friends, closer to NASA than I am, say they’ve already heard chatter from others that this speculation was quashed from above. Again, in real news this third hand info should never see the light of day… and I’m telling you know I have this on very shaky authority.

Still, based on whatever experience I have, something doesn’t smell right.

Life On Mars

I was sitting at my desk when the Instant Messenger window opened up. It was Dave Brody. He had been our executive producer at SciFi when I hosted Inside Space.

Dave was excited about an announcement that had been made and exclusively reported by space.com, where he now works:

Washington — A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

Here’s the full space.com story if you’re interested. Dave and I have been through similar announcements before; specifically the Allen Hills Meteorite ALH84001&#185.

It is because of Dave that I actually got to hold that meteorite, safely sealed in a controlled environment, through a port in my rubber gloved hands

It would be astounding if life were actually found today, living on Mars. But hold on. To quote George Harrison, “What Is Life?” What these scientists consider life and what you and I probably think of when we hear the word are totally different.

I typed something like that back to Dave, who replied with his best read on what the first extraterrestrial life discovered might be. “Pond scum. Extremeophile&#178 Pond Scum.”

When scientists start talking about extraterrestrial life, they’re not talking about ET! They’re thinking about forms of life that I consider more chemistry that biology.

Still, Dave has a very important point that applies… even to the most rudimentary forms of life. “If it has our DNA, it means “they is us” (as Pogo once said).”

He’s right. I guess, that changes everything.

&#185 – From Wikipedia – A 4500-million-year-old meteorite found in the Allen Hills of Antarctica (ALH84001). Ejection from Mars seems to have taken place about 16 million years ago. Arrival on Earth was about 13000 years ago. Cracks in the rock appear to have filled with carbonate materials between 4000 and 3600 million years ago. Evidence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been identified with the levels increasing away from the surface. Other antarctic meteorites do not contain PAHs. Earthly contamination should presumably be highest at the surface. Several minerals in the crack fill are deposited in phases, specifically, iron deposited as magnetite, that are claimed to be typical of biodepositation on Earth. There are also small ovoid and tubular structures that might possibly be nanobacteria fossils in carbonate material in crack fills (investigators McKay, Gibson, Thomas-Keprta, Zare). Micropaleontologist Schopf, who described several important terrestrial bacterial assemblages, examined ALH84001 and opined that the structures are too small to be Earthly bacteria and don’t look especially like lifeforms to him. The size of the objects is consistent with Earthly “nanobacteria”, but the existence of nanobacteria itself is controversial.

&#178 – Extremeophile seems to be an alternate spelling for extremophile.

An extremophile is an organism, usually unicellular, which thrives in or requires “extreme” conditions. The definition of “extreme” is anthropocentric, of course. To the organism itself its environment is completely normal. Non-extremophilic organisms are called mesophiles.

Live From Titan

Before the cable networks interrupt (probably around 2:45 PM), I thought I’d start the cheering section for the Cassini-Huygens mission and the upcoming pictures from the surface of Titan.

As best I can figure it, we’ve launched a rocket to Saturn… made course corrections along the way, then more enroute, to allow it to fly between Saturn’s rings… then launched a Volkswagen sized space probe, carried on this mothership, to the surface of one of Saturn’s moons.

That just gets us there. On its way down to the surface of Titan, Huygens had to transmit data which was received by Cassini still in its Saturn orbit. There was only one chance for this. Then Cassini swung its antennas around and sent the data to Earth.

At this moment it looks like there’s real data coming back, though no one knows what it shows or if it’s useful… and won’t for another hour and a half. After that we should get photos and atmospheric data from the surface of this other planet’s moon.

It is amazing, even before you realize the Huygens probe had to be packed with sensory equipment that would survive its blast into and journey through space, its separation from Cassini (using pyrotechnics to separate the two) and its plunge through the unknown Titan atmosphere&#185.

I have had plenty to say about NASA , most of it bad, in this blog. This is a real positive… a major accomplisment from an engineering standpopint. I’m looking forward to seeing the pictures.

It is amazing what man can do – what should be impossible… if we want to, put the right people on… and throw money at.

&#185 – The main reason we find Titan so interesting is that it does have an atmosphere. There are some scientists who feel it replicates the Earth’s during what could have been the dawn of life.

Asteroid 2004 MN4 – Who Invited Him?

Forget Hubble and all the other fancy astronomical hardware. Sometimes the most interesting finds come from more pedestrian equipment. Take the case of Asteroid 2004 MN4, discovered in June at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

The find was made by astronomers from the University of Hawaii taking part in an asteroid survey. That they found it was luck. Like most other minor space discoveries, the information was dissemenated and filed away. Then, on December 18, another spotting from Australia. After that dozens of other observations were made.

Now with multiple sightings it was possible to figure out the orbit of this chunk of space rock… a flying mountain if you will. It looked like it could cross the Earth’s orbit and it was assigned a probability, a mathematical chance, it would hit the Earth.

Excuse me? Hit the Earth? No, really. In fact, it was possible to come up with a date: April 13, 2029

That’s the bad news. The good news was the probability was only one chance in 233. NASA said that’s “unusual enough to merit special monitoring by astronomers, but should not be of public concern.”

Then a day or two later, with more observations and number crunching, the probability changed. Now it was one chance in 63. Interesting, but not alarming for an event 25 years in the future&#185.

It’s changed again.

On Christmas Eve a little gift from NASA scientists. Now it’s one chance in 45… a 97.8% chance of missing… or for my fellow pessimists, a 2.2% chance that April 2029 might be a really good time to run up your VISA with no intention of paying it off.

On the Torino scale of 1-10, this little gem has suddenly gone to a 4. It’s the first object to even make it to two!

A close encounter, with 1% or greater chance of a collision capable of causing regional devastation.

We’re talking about an object estimated to have a 1,250 foot diameter weighing 1.5 billion pounds&#187. When it hits the atmosphere it will be traveling at 27,000 miles per hour. That would create an explosion equivalent to 1,400 million tons of TNT!

For comparison, the nuclear bomb “Little Boy,” dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, had a yield of only about 0.013 megatons. The impacts which created the Barringer Meteor Crater or caused the Tunguska event in Siberia are estimated to be in the 10-20 megaton range. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was the equivalent of roughly 200 megatons.

So, we’re talking large, but this is not the magnitude of the event that took out the dinosaurs. It would still be devastating. Certainly it would reshape any land it impacted. A water impact would cause tsunamis of epic proportion.

Again, this is 25 years away and the calculations are likely to change. Still, if this is the first you’re hearing about it, aren’t you surprised there hasn’t been more play in the mainstream press?

The way this works is, someone, somewhere with the power to influence other news budgets (NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc.) will run it and this story will pick up some traction. Until then, you heard it here first.

&#185 – I believe I have already scheduled teeth cleaning for that day.

&#178 – My conversion from 7.5e+10 kg to pounds is shaky at best. I’ll be glad to entertain corrections. No rush – we’ve got a few decades.

Clouds From Mars

I actually showed this on the air today. It is very cool… well, I think it’s cool. It is a photo of the Martian sky.

The picture comes from the Mars Rover Opportunity. As you probably remember, there are two rovers exploring the surface of Mars. There was a lot more publicity earlier on, like with a new toy.

The rovers had a short predicted life. In fact, by now they should have stopped working. They haven’t.

With all the planned projects complete, and the rovers living on borrowed time, NASA drove them to places they wouldn’t have risked earlier. It was possible they’d go down a slope and not be able to get up the other side or otherwise get bogged down. The pressure was off. Why not?

I check back from time-to-time, looking at the photos both rovers sent back. This one really excited me.

In this picture of the Martian sky there are what look like cirrus clouds. In fact that’s what the scientists involved in the project think they are: cirrus clouds made of tiny ice crystals… water ice crystals. The only way they’d get up there was if water evaporated from the Martian surface.

This is yet another hint that water has existed on the surface of Mars. Does it mean Mars once supported life? Probably not. It’s still very neat and worth pondering some more.

There’s one more thing to think about. This ‘discovery’ is being done robotically – safely without risk to people. Space travel is still very dangerous. Robots are expendable. People are not.

Haiti Floods

Every time I read the wire service reports about the deaths in Haiti, the death toll grows. That this disaster has happened, and happened in such a horrific way shouldn’t be a surprise to those who know the island of Hispaniola, it’s weather and the history of the eastern side.

It is no one’s fault that two feet, or more, of rain has fallen between May 18-25 (here’s a satellite estimate from NASA’s TRMM project). No one can be blamed for the mountainous interior of the island which forces runoff to congregate in swift flowing rivers. But decades of irrational land management are surely a contributing factor in this devastation.

I have been to Hispaniola three times. My family and I vacationed at the Club Med in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic in the 90s. In the 70s, I visited Club Med’s “Magic Isle” village on the Haitian side.

I remember leaving the airport in Port au Prince and driving cross country to the club. I had been to places marked with poverty, but never to the extent that I saw there. We crossed rivers, marked with signs warning of malaria. As I remember, I had to medicate with quinine for malaria protection.

The club sat on the coast with a magnificent view of rugged mountains. Though in the tropics, these mountains were barren – totally devoid of trees. After a few days at the club I was told the forests had been slashed and then the wood burned for charcoal. The mountains were left as they were.

Even in California, a contributing factor to mudslides which occur many winters are the removal of plant life during brush fires. But, in California the problem is recognized and often there is remediation. That was not the case in Haiti.

From the Toronto Star:

The mountains on the Haitian side of the devastated area rise to heights of 1,500 metres or more, and the region

Building a Better Space Program

There’s something about me that’s always surprised my co-workers. They know I’m tuned in to the Space Program and, through my work hosting Inside Space on The SciFi Channel, got to see lots of neat hardware and meet some very bright people. They assume that means I’m a fan of what NASA does.

I am not.

NASA is populated with very dedicated people (and has one of the best websites on the net), but the idea of a bureaucracy leading us into the great unknown is wrong in so many ways. By definition, a bureaucracy wants to take the safe, well marked path to the future. That’s how you end up with a vehicle like the Space Shuttle, which costs a fortune and does hardly anything.

To me, the Columbia Disaster was no real surprise. NASA had stretched very old technology thin… dodging enough bullets that they felt bulletproof. The fact that the mission Columbia was on was a ‘nothing’ trip to space with minimal science, makes it all the more tragic.

The International Space Station is another ‘white elephant.’ What has it accomplished? Even our Russian partners take advantage of us by selling seats on their missions to the ISS to get cash. You can feel NASA seething, but they are incapable of complaining, lest they point out the devil’s pact they made to keep the project going.

Enough NASA bashing.

It’s likely that the current real center of space innovation is with the private companies working toward the X-Prize.

The ANSARI X PRIZE is a $10,000,000 prize to jump start the space tourism industry through competition between the most talented entrepreneurs and rocket experts in the world. The $10 Million cash prize will be awarded to the first team that:

* Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)

* Returns safely to Earth

* Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

The ANSARI X PRIZE competition follows in the footsteps of more than 100 aviation incentive prizes offered between 1905 and 1935 which created today’s multi billion dollar air transport industry.

When Lindbergh flew the Atlantic (taking off from the current site of a mall on Long Island), he was competing for a similar award, the the $25,000 Orteig prize. So, there is a precedent for this sort of thing working.

Yesterday, one of the teams working toward the X-Prize made a giant step into space. Carried airborne by a conventional jet, SpaceShipOne separated and then climbed to 40 miles on its own power.

Launch conditions were 46,000 feet and 120 knots. Motor light off occurred 10 seconds after release and the vehicle boosted smoothly to 150,000 feet and Mach 2.5. Subsequent coast to apogee of 211,400 feet. During a portion of the boost, the flight director display was inoperative, however the pilot continued the planned trajectory referencing the external horizon. Reaction control authority was as predicted and the vehicle recovered in feather experiencing 1.9M and 3.5G

It Could Ruin Your Day

It’s been pretty well established that an asteroid or comet, plunging into the area around the Yucatan Peninsula, was the cause of the demise of the dinosaurs. The ash and dust thrown up by this unfathomable event blotted out enough of the Sun’s energy to change our climate. The dinosaurs and much of the rest of Earth’s living creatures couldn’t evolve fast enough to survive.

In the 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s history, that’s not a terribly unusual event. Unfortunately, it was unusual to the dinosaurs and it would be jarring to us. Our time frame is very different than the Earth’s

I mention this because it’s amazing how close we come from time to time… today, for instance.

Monday, NASA scientists working on NEAT (Near Earth Asteroid Tracking) discovered a ‘small’ asteroid, which they named 2004FH. At 60-125 feet in diameter, it is tiny compared to the dinosaur’s nemesis. It’s still pretty darned big.

The 1908 Tunguska explosion, which leveled 750+ square miles of forest in Siberia, came from an asteroid not much larger!

NEAT is actually supposed to look for larger asteroids which might threaten the Earth (not that there’s anything we could do). 2004FH snuck in, despite its size, because of its proximity.

Tonight (March 18th at 5:08 PM EST) this asteroid will pass within 26,500 miles of Earth. Let’s try it another way. Scientists reference distances like this in AU, astronomical units, representing the average distance between Earth and Sun. 2004FH will be only .0003AU away!

If the distance to the Sun was one mile, this asteroid would be 1.5 feet away.

NASA says there’s no cause for alarm. It will pass safely by. Asteroids do all the time, though they’re seldom noticed before hand. This one won’t even be visible in North America.

Here’s how you’ll know if this bad boy really is trouble. If there’s no blog entry tomorrow – 2004FH was a little closer than anticipated..