Author: Pat Chiles

An expatriate Southerner in the Midwest, writing about writing and whatever dadgum else interests him. Author of the science fiction thrillers FROZEN ORBIT, FRONTIER, and ESCAPE ORBIT, published by Baen Books.
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More Spacey Goodness

Blue Origin, the Other Private Space Company Founded By An Internet Bazillionaire™, made news today as well:

NASA Commercial Crew Partner Blue Origin Completes Rocket Engine Thrust Chamber Test

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner Blue Origin has successfully fired the thrust chamber assembly for its new 100,000 pound thrust BE-3 liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen rocket engine. As part of Blue’s Reusable Booster System (RBS), the engines are designed eventually to launch the biconic-shaped Space Vehicle the company is developing.

Successfully testing the thrust chamber for a 100,000 lbf rocket engine is not small potatoes.

Blue Origin didn’t get anything from the latest round of CCDev funding, but I’m not sure they were all that interested either. Jeff Bezos seems content to keep things going all on his own, and I have to admit to a bit of fanboy enthusiasm for these guys. Being an indie author, the opportunities he created through Amazon will always hold a special place in my heart for obvious reasons.

 

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What’s SpaceX Up To?

Dragon landing on Mars. Credit: SpaceX

As if manned space capsules and reusable boosters weren’t enough…but what is “MCT”? Some tantalizing bits from Flight Global:

Musk said the new rocket, which he calls MCT, will be “several times” as powerful as the 1 Merlin series, and won’t use Merlin’s RP-1 fuel. Beyond adding that it will have “a very big core size”, he declined to elaborate, promising more details in “between one and three years”.

Musk declined to say what ‘MCT’ stands for, and declined to answer further questions on the project.

During an April interview, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell discussed a project with similar characteristics, describing engines with “more than 1.5 million pounds” of thrust.

That would be equivalent to the behemoth F-1. With multiple engines arranged in a booster core 21 meters in diameter, that’s a bigger vehicle than the Saturn V.

Now for the really important part:

Shotwell said a possible payload range of the new rocket is 150-200t to low Earth orbit (LEO). A vehicle of that size would easily eclipse NASA‘s proposed Space Launch System, which will eventually be capable of launching 130t to LEO, making SpaceX’s potential vehicle the most capable ever built by a wide margin.

Note the low side of that estimate is 150 metric tons to LEO, compared to the Saturn’s throw weight of a shade less than 130mt. I’m excluding SLS because it will probably never evolve beyond vaporware.

Ho-lee crap. So, connecting the dots, SpaceX is developing a heavy booster that will be bigger and more capable than a Saturn V. Given their track record so far, I’ve no reason to doubt their success. Mr. Musk has hinted at this in the past, noting that Falcon 9-Heavy would not be the end of the line for them. Considering his oft-stated long term goals, I’ll risk future embarrassment and take a guess at what “MCT” might stand for:

Mars Crew Transport.

You heard it here first.

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Party Crasher

A “Once in a Civilization” comet will be paying us a visit next New Year’s Eve. From Scientific American:

Why is this comet expected to be so unique? Two reasons:

Astronomers predict that the comet will pass just 1.16 million miles from the Sun as it swings around its perihelion, or closest approach. (This may seem like a lot, but remember—the Sun is big. If we were to scale the Sun down to the size of Earth, the comet would pass well within the orbits of dozens of satellites.) The close approach will melt enormous amounts of the comet’s ice, releasing dust and gas and forming what should be a magnificent tail.

After it loops around the Sun and forms this tail, the comet should then pass relatively close to Earth—not near enough to cause any worry, but close enough to put on a great show. Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere will get the best view as the comet blooms in the weeks approaching Christmas 2013. The comet could grow as bright as the full moon.

Comets can be somewhat unpredictable (remember the last appearance of Comet Halley?) but this one looks like it probably won’t disappoint. The “once in a civilization” moniker makes me a little squeamish, though people with a much better understanding of orbital mechanics than I have insist there’s no way this thing will hit us.

But being so big, and so close, passing right over Earth next New Year’s Eve will be quite a show. Brighter than the full moon and maybe even visible in daylight.

If you’d like to make yourself feel a little better about probabilities and all, here’s NASA’s orbit visualizer.

 

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Watch That First Step

Just found this YouTube live feed of Felix Baumgardner’s space jump. I’ll keep it up here for as long as people are interested.

Looks like they’re letting the capsule go as far as the balloon will take it, right now approaching 125,000′.

Pop some popcorn and enjoy the show:

UPDATE: Holy crap, he did it!

UPDATED UPDATE: MSNBC reporting an even bigger success than anyone could’ve hoped for:

Relatively speaking, of course.

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Her Majesty’s Silent Service

How the attack sub HMS Conqueror pulled off one of the most audacious heists of the Cold War. Thirty years later, the story of Operation Barmaid can finally be told.

“The British believed they were selected because they had more skilled submariners, and exercises do seem to bear this out. British submariners tend not to play by the book to the extent that the Americans do.

“The more cynical view has it that if a British sub was caught the diplomatic fall-out would be less severe than if an American one was involved. No one wanted to provoke a superpower confrontation.”

Cutting a towed-array cable and making it look like an accidental loss was no easy task. Before Conqueror was fitted with the television-guided pincers, her sister ship HMS Churchill had tried to steam through an array to sever it from the towing ship. She was damaged and depth-charged for her pains.

Submariners as a group did some pretty hairy stuff during the Cold War, but this took an iron will and brass giblets. For more stories like this, I highly recommend a book called Blind Man’s Bluff.

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The Daily Awesome

Check out this stunning image gallery:

Above: an enhanced view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which was apparently on the Federation’s short list for testing the Genesis Device. Think I’m kidding?

See? Opposite angle. Trust me, I’m an amateur astronomer.

Except for the above, these are from a new book called Planetfall, a collection of meticulously enhanced images from NASA probes. Some are composites from multiple images, others stand alone as testament to the ingenious beauty of the solar system God has blessed us to live in.

As for the book itself, it’s proof that not everything translates well into an e-reader. This deserves the big ol’ coffee-table treatment and a prominent place on my Christmas list.

One more jaw-dropper, and then you’ll just have to go check out the rest for yourself:

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Read Before You Sign

In other words, the first rule of military life is “never volunteer for anything.” This guy either didn’t get the memo, or didn’t care:

The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz

You read that right. Here’s a taste:

The Polish resistance had been hearing horrific first- or second-hand accounts about the conditions inside Auschwitz. These early accounts came primarily from released prisoners, but also from casual observers like railway employees and residents of the nearby village of Oswiecim. The resistance decided they needed someone on the inside.

It is into this environment that Witold Pilecki, a 39-year old veteran of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 who fought against the initial Nazi invasion and a member of the Polish resistance, volunteered himself in 1940. Pilecki’s mission was to allow himself to be arrested and, once inside Auschwitz, to collect intelligence for the Polish resistance in the country and the government-in-exile in London, and to organize a resistance from inside the camp.

“I think he knew, he realized what he was getting himself into,” said Jacek Pawlowicz, a historian at Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. “But even so, he was not prepared for the things he was actually able to witness.”

During the next three years, Pilecki was involved in one of the most dangerous intelligence-gathering and resistance operations of the war. He authored three reports about life inside the camp for the Polish resistance. During his incarceration, Pilecki witnessed from the inside Auschwitz’s transformation from a detention facility for political prisoners and Soviet soldiers into one of the Nazis’ deadliest killing machines.

An unbelievable story from a period of history that is unfortunately not that hard to imagine. There is still much evil in this world.

By all means, read the whole thing.

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Leaving Home

35 years after its launch, has Voyager 1 finally left the solar system? It’s not as clear-cut as you might think: cross Pluto’s orbit, the Kuiper Belt (where I guess Pluto technically belongs), and even the Oort Cloud (from where comets come), and you’re still not there.

Barriers still have to be crossed, essentially signals that its leaving the Sun’s bubble of charged particles. The problem is that we don’t know precisely where they are, but there are some telltale signs:

Two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space have changed faster than at any other time in the last seven years, according to new data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft.

For the last seven years, Voyager 1 has been exploring the outer layer of the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. In one day, on July 28, data from Voyager 1’s cosmic ray instrument showed the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our solar system jumped by five percent. During the last half of that same day, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our solar system dropped by half. However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels.

A third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction. Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space.

No word on if it’s encountered Klingons yet. Not that they’d tell us anyway…

The Klingon Empire meets Voyager. “Today is a good day to die.”
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