Retro Thing

The Final Touchdown

This morning's landing of Atlantis, the last shuttle, caused me to get a bit misty-eyed. It also felt a bit like saying goodbye to the family's rusty old Chevrolet Impala station wagon. She served us faithfully, but it's time to move on.

The Space Transportation System was envisioned as an affordable, reusable launch vehicle for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) operation. NASA estimated that the shuttle would cost about $41 billion dollars (2011 dollars, adjusted for inflation) to design, and an additional $54 million dollars per flight. It didn't quite work out that way. By the time the exhaust plumes had settled, $196 billion had been invested in the STS program -- more than $1.45 billion per launch.

I listened to several brief news clips throughout the day as a flock of confused reporters lamented the loss of the shuttle and the end of America's manned space program. It was emotional, moving and entirely unnecessary because the American space industry is entering a new golden age. It promises to be a hell of a lot cheaper, safer and more interesting than the ghastly tedium of the shuttle's LEO resupply trips.

While it's true that NASA's expensive and risky Constellation heavy lifter program has been shelved, a squadron of eager young space technology companies are beginning to attract attention around the world. Young whippersnappers such as Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) are bringing the mindset of low-cost software startup companies to the space industry, with impressive early results.

In 2006, NASA awarded SpaceX a $278 million contract to develop the Falcon 9 rocket. Several successful years later, the relationship was extended with the announcement of a $1.6 billion agreement to provide 12 supply missions to the ISS.

If SpaceX can pull things off on budget and on schedule, it'll work out to a total cost of $1.878 billion -- about $157 million per launch. Of course, the Falcon 9 can only lift about 40% of the shuttle's payload into low earth orbit and a few years more extremely hard work will be required before SpaceX's Dragon capsule is cleared to transport a live crew. 

Even with its current limitations, the cost of resupplying the ISS using the SpaceX launch system is about 1/4 that of the shuttle. The company is already working on the Falcon Heavy launch system, which will offer over four times the Falcon 9's LEO payload capability.

Perhaps more important: The Falcon Heavy will be capable of hefting a sizeable cargo into a geostationary transfer orbit or translunar trajectory, should that be deemed politically desirable. The first launch should take place under three years from now -- a mere blink of an eye by the timelines of the commercial space industry.

SpaceX isn't the only startup eager to usher in an era of more affordable and adaptable space travel. Companies such as Orbital Sciences, Bigelow Aerospace, Blue Origin (funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) and even old-guard heavyweights such as Boeing & Lockheed Martin (United Launch Alliance) are battling for their slice of the pie.

I can hardly wait to see what lies ahead. One thing's for sure --  the American space program is only just reaching the launchpad. To infinity and beyond!

SpaceX - Space Exploration Technologies

Auction: Nintendo Game Boy Flown In Space

It should come as no surprise that my 8-year-old is an avid collector of vintage Nintendo handhelds. His latest acquisition is an original Game Boy and a handful of games from a used game store. The Kid thought it was an absolute bargain for $15, but he's always on the lookout for interesting additions to his collection.

I dare not show him this one, which is expected to fetch $1500-$2000 at auction.

Lot No. 250 in Bonhams' upcoming Space History Sale is a spacefaring Game Boy that flew on Soyuz TM-17 in 1993. It logged 196 days in space in the possession of cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov. The lot includes the Game Boy unit, (highly appropriate) Tetris game pack and the Tetris game booklet. The unit and booklet are marked with faint Mir postmarks and accompanied by a handwritten provenance note from Serebrov that reads, "Like all cosmonauts, I love sport. My particular favorites are football and swimming. During flight, in rare minutes of leisure, I enjoyed playing Game Boy."

For his sanity's sake, I hope Tetris wasn't the only game Serebrov took on the journey.

Lot No. 250: NINTENDO GAME BOY FLOWN IN SPACE [via a comment by Mikiex on this post]

First Orbit: 50 Years Of Manned Spaceflight

April 12th, 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbit of earth. He was only 27 years old, and his epic journey lasted a mere 108 minutes.

To mark the occasion, British filmmaker Chris Riley worked with Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli to shoot a film from the ISS. They determined that the ISS takes roughly the same orbit as Gagarin's flight every week or so. However, when one takes the time of day into account, it matches only once every six weeks.

The result is a 108 minute film that unfolds in real time. It traces Yuri's flight as accurately as possible, including a 40 minute stretch of near darkness over the Pacific. NASA provided some additional footage, including a moonrise -- something that Gagarin didn't have the opportunity to witness on his own journey.

As he recounted afterwards, ""I could have gone on flying through space forever." He never got the chance to experience weightlessness again, perishing in an aircraft accident at the age of 37.

The film will be available for free viewing on YouTube, starting on April 12th.

Yuri Gagarin's First Orbit - A Free Film

A Slightly Used 1961 Soviet Space Capsule, Anyone?

On March 23, 1961, twenty days before Yuri Gagarin electrified the world by orbiting the earth in his Vostok 3KA-3 capsule (later renamed Vostok-1), the Soviets queitly sent Vostok 3KA-2 into space. It contained a life-sized mannequin dubbed Ivan Ivanovich along with a dog named Zvezdochka. They returned safely after a single orbit, setting the stage for Gagarin's earthshattering ride.

It goes up for auction at Sotheby's in New York on April 12th, 2011 -- the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight -- with an estimated sale price of between $2 and $10m. That's quite an increase from a previous appearance at Sotheby's in 1996, when the guide price was between $800,000 and $1m.

As Sotheby's recounts, "The flight lasted 115 minutes. Vostok 3KA-2 completed one orbit around the Earth and returned safely to a snow-bound Russia. The landing site was near to the city of Izhevsk, but almost impossible to reach because of deep snow. Thirty paratroopers had been sent to guard the weather-bound site, where the ground lay under almost five feet of snow. The rescue party of engineers required a ski plane, and in an ultimate irony, a peasant's horse-drawn sleigh to reach the landing site. An eyewitness records finding the capsule, 'Half scorched, slightly bent over the ground, it seemed an enormous animal driven too hard, lying in a narrow snow-covered gully, the snow melting around the charred and still hot body of the unit.'

The life-like 'Ivan Ivanovich,' ejected on descent, had fallen close by. In one of the more amusing episodes of space history, the local peasants were convinced that the inflexible paratroopers who had been instructed not to touch Ivan were cruelly preventing the rescue of a downed flier. Restless and angry, the peasants relented only when one of their elders was allowed to approach and touch the waxy rubber face of the mannequin."

Sotheby's to auction 1961 Soviet space capsule [Dvice via Reuters]

Spacelog: Early NASA Mission Transcripts

Spacelog has updated NASA's transcripts of several early manned space missions to make them accessible and searchable on the web. The NASA documents have been around a while in Adobe Acrobat format, but this gives them a different feel.

Spacelog currently features the infamous Apollo 13 mission and John Glenn's historic trip into space aboard Mercury 6. NASA recently started uploading the complete mission audio recordings for all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions to archive.org, so there's lots of source material to expand the Spacelog site.

Mercury 6 Transcript

Apollo 13 Transcript

A Pen to Fight the Moon?

If a Bic or Papermate is too low-brow for you, consider writing your angry letters to eBay monolithic corporations with a fountain pen made with alloys containing honest-to-goodness moon dust and melted-down fragments from an Apollo spacecraft.

The Romain Jerome MoonFighter comes with snazzy space fighter styling, thanks to its winged "docking station." As the somewhat stilted press release explains:

The curved, streamlined barrel of the MoonFighter is studded with 48 hand-fixed rivets and extends an irresistible invitation to savour the pleasure of writing. Conveying a blend of aesthetic perfection and historical inspiration, MoonFighter features a forward-jutting profile with toothed plates like the ventilation apertures on an aircraft fuselage. The pen is topped by a cap equipped with three small blades, engraved with the initials RJ and tipped with a titanium point endowing the MoonFighter with an airy feel and user-friendliness that make light of gravity.

It's unclear exactly how much moondust and Apollo metal is in each pen. Also, there's no price listed. I imagine it will be higher than the moon. (Rimshot!) Perhaps the fine folks at Romain Jerome can use the proceeds to hire a Photoshop expert to help them with the clipping of their product shots.

NASA Celebrates An Uncertain Birthday

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was formed on this day in 1958, tasked with managing the USA's fledgling civilian space program as well as advanced aeronautics and aerospace research. Over the course of 52 years, the agency has led the Apollo lunar missions, the development of Skylab, the Space Shuttle program and contributed a sizeable share of the International Space Station.

The cost of space exploration is astronomical -- NASA's budget was $17.6 billion in 2009. After cutbacks throughout the 1990s, the agency began to focus heavily on robotic exploration of the solar system rather than pricey and technically challenging manned missions. While some disagree with this shift, others argue that robotics have advanced to the point where semi-autonomous machines such as the Spirit and Opportunity Mars landers can perform important scientific research at a fraction of the cost of sending humans to other planets.

Nevertheless, NASA is at a crossroads. The aging Space Shuttle fleet is being withdrawn from service, with no immediate replacement following President Obama's cancellation of the Constellation program, which was to be the next generation of American manned space vehicles. For the time being, the United States is reliant on Russia to launch astronauts into low earth orbit. It's a scary point in the history of space exploration, especially with ballooning budget deficits and high unemployment back on earth.

It's an emotional time for many space enthusiasts of my generation. I perched on my mother's lap during Armstrong and Aldrin's stroll on the lunar surface and watched the maiden launch of Columbia in the school gym. I grieved through the Challenger and Columbia accidents and followed the missions and misadventures of various Mars landers with fascination. And now I sit writing these words, fearing that the best is behind us and that we might never get a chance to explore the last frontier, even though NASA and the NSF recently discovered the first potentially habitable exoplanet.

Which Sci Fi Gadget Would You Take Into Space?

Brian writes, "I recently had an opportunity to film a "tweet up" with NASA astronaut and U.S. Army Colonel Timothy "T.J." Creamer. During his talk, Colonel Creamer took a moment to answer the question, "What is the one science fictional item you wish you could really have in space with you."

In his answer, he revealed that he's a huge, old school science fiction fan, and used the opportunity to briefly discuss sf, Star Trek, and the way in which sf has influenced space exploration, science, and engineers. Oh, and he also answers the question."

Video: Astronaut Discusses Science Fiction

You Are Here

I suddenly feel very small.

NASA Unveils Free E-Book Series

NASA recently debuted the first in a planned series of free e-books. "X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Flight," by Dennis R. Jenkins is available now in a variety of e-reader formats (the Scott Crossfield Foundation offers a nicely formatted pdf version [direct link] for those wishing to read on computer).

From NASA: "The X-15 was the ultimate 'X' vehicle. Built in the 1950s, she became the fastest and highest-flying winged aircraft of its time. During 199 flights from 1959 through 1968, she collected data about hypersonic flight that was invaluable to aeronautics and to developers of the space shuttle. This book describes the genesis of the program, the design and construction of the aircraft, years of research flights and the experiments that flew aboard them."

A second title, Mark D. Bowles' Apollo of Aeronautics: NASA's Aircraft Energy Efficiency Program, 1973-1987, is slated for release soon.

NASA Aeronautics E-Books

Listening In On The Apollo 11 Astronauts... From Home

Back in July 1969, amateur radio buff Larry Baysinger managed the impossible by listening in on transmissions from the Apollo 11 astronauts during their historic lunar landing. 

The Louisville Courier-Journal reported, "Thanks to some homemade electronic equipment, including a rebuilt 20-year-old radio receiver from an Army tank and an antenna made of spare pieces of aluminum, nylon cord and chicken wire, a small band of Louisvillians was able to 'eavesdrop' Sunday night on the American astonauts' conversation directly from the moon.

The odds and ends of equipment recorded only 35 minutes of conversation between astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the lunar surface and their orbiting companion Michael Collins. But the signals were received directly from the moon, over a quarter of a million miles away, not through Houston Space Center."

Brilliant stuff. I wish we could recapture the excitement of the space race instead of squandering trillions of dollars irradiating vast swathes of desert with depleted uranium.

Read: Lunar Eavesdropping in Louisville, Kentucky [via Make]

The Loneliest Space Shuttle

I was looking through some photos of Baikonur Cosmodrome the other day when I came across this shot from 2003. A gigantic ISS-bound Soyuz TMA-3 dominates the foreground, while a forlorn Buran shuttle mock-up sits forgotten in a field, lamenting the time when it was the future of the Soviet manned space program.

Technik Museum Speyer rescued a similar shuttle in 2008 and installed it as a permanent exhibit.

Baikonur Cosmodrome [The Big Picture]

Cosmonauts paid less than McDonald's employees

The breakup of the Soviet Union had many unintended consequences. The fabled Russian space program has been one of the most high profile victims of the nation's shift to capitalism. Simon Saradzhyan at Space.com recently wrote, "A career as a cosmonaut—once the dream job of a lifetime for millions in this country—is increasingly less attractive because it is no longer the ticket to international fame or a fortune. As a result, the pool of qualified candidates for positions in Russia’s cosmonaut corps is shrinking."

There are currently 37 Cosmonauts on active duty in Russia and each is paid less than 20,448 Rubles (US $775) per month, plus flight bonuses. The Cosmonaut program is still popular with military pilots because it offers a higher salary, but many others opt for more lucrative careers in the private sector.

There is one benefit of the reduced competition to become a Cosmonaut. In the past, qualified Cosmonauts sometimes retired without ever flying in Space. The reduced size of the modern space program means that there's a much greater likelihood that participants will get to travel to the ISS, although the current wait time is 10 to 15 years. And you have to admit that riding a rocket into orbit beats flipping even the best of burgers.

Cosmonaut Careers: Russian Interest in Homegrown Spaceflyers Flags

Related:
Buran: The first Russian shuttle to reach space
The Scent of Moondust

Look What's Waiting At Kennedy Space Center

"For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a new space vehicle stands ready in the Vehicle Assembly Building." (via twitpic)

Ares I is the crew launch vehicle for NASA's Constellation Program. The first suborbital flight test is slated for late 2009. Her sister ship, the Ares V cargo launch vehicle, is scheduled to enter service in 2018 and should be capable of lofting 188 tonnes into low earth orbit. That's a lot of Tang.

NASA's New Spacecraft: Ares and Orion

NASA's Lunar Orbiter Photographs Apollo Landing Sites

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched in June. Its primary mission: to create a high resolution map of the lunar surface from a distance of approximately 50 km.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, investigators at Goddard Space Flight Center have released the first images of Apollo lunar landing sites captured by the orbiter. NASA is quick to point out that these images were captured before the LRO reached its final mapping orbit; future images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

The timing couldn't be better. According to survey results published recently in the Telegraph, a quarter of Britons believe the Apollo 11 mission moon landings in 1969 were an elaborate hoax, and almost half thought the Apollo missions were a waste of money. I doubt these new images will do anything to discourage the conspiracy theorists -- nothing will ever provide sufficient "proof" for the tinfoil hat brigade.

However, perhaps NASA's renewed focus on lunar exploration will encourage a new generation of young researchers and push all of us to look beyond the inconsequential blue marble we call home. And if that fails, I'm sure there's gobs of money to be made strip-mining it.

The first Apollo landing site photos [NASA]