Category: And Beyond The Infinite

Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter catches Curiosity as it parachutes down to the surface of Mars.

To think that all of this is done with 0.48% of the federal budget. Can you imagine what amazing sights we would see if NASA was given real money to explore the universe?… Read more

A friend and former coworker of mine is a Congressional staffer, and got to catch space shuttle Discovery’s “victory lap” on the back of a 747 en route to Dulles International, where Discovery will be headed for its final destination… a museum.

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Sometimes I’ve got to remind myself that we’re not really experiencing a post-Apollo-Soyuz gap. These are amazing. Watch them all.… Read more

As usual, I’m observing the anniversary of the first manned moon landing with a mixture of fond reverence and not just a little bit of melancholy. With all of the technological strides that have been made since 1969, in some cases building on the technology that got us to the moon, the pinnacle of human technological genius remains something that happened 40 years ago.

The thing is, it wasn’t just technology that got us there; it was a massive effort of combined national will, and I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it since then. In the current climate where everydamnthing is politicized, I’m not sure it’s possible to muster that kind of massive expenditure of willpower in a single direction. I really find myself doubting that I’ll see man (or woman) on the moon in my lifetime. The final lunar landing occurred when I was mere months old. Now I’m thinking my son may be my age before we go back and set up shop to stay. That pisses me off – I want to see a real live moon landing in my lifetime. I really do. It would not only mean that we’ve come closer to perfecting the technology for doing so, but it would mean that, either as a nation or as a world community, we’ve gotten off of our asses and stopped settling for an intractible standstill during which everyone blames everyone else for anything for which they have the slightest distaste.

That would mean more to me than the technological aspects of it. I might even accidentally start to hope again if I’m not careful.

What galls me almost as much as the non-motion, and the notion that America may be in for yet another vast gap in manned spaceflight (like the 6 years between Apollo-Soyuz and the first shuttle mission), is that there’s a persistent and vocal bunch of wild-eyed conspiracy nuts who are adamant that the moon landings just didn’t happen.

NASA has slyly offered up some stuff in the run-up to the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing that, by all rights, should bring that kind of rumor-mongering up short…but we’re talking about a bunch of folks who haven’t let reason stand in the way of an arm-waving, look-at-me-look-at-me! rant in the past four decades. Why should they start thinking now?

If they want to keep insisting that the moon landings were filmed in a soundstage at Area 51 (I am not joking here!), they can keep their delusions to themselves. In the meantime, I’m really, really enjoying the stuff NASA’s cranking out this week which, while it celebrates the occasion, also quietly flips a space-suit-gloved middle finger at the crazies. Here are some links:

1. Apollo Landing Sites as seen by the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – possibly the coolest of the bunch. The “descent” stages of the lunar modules – an inelegant but functional octagonal box which housed the legs, the moon buggies, and of course the rocket that eased the module to the ground rather than letting it crash – remained on the moon, serving as launch pads for the upper half of each module, which carried the astronauts and moon rocks back to safety. The descent stages are still there, clearly visible, casting a shadow due to the sun being at a low angle to the ground.
2. Apollo 11 Radio – a live, down to the minute and second, continuous stream of the radio traffic between Apollo 11 and Mission Control – the sounds of the complete eight-day mission. The good stuff will kick in on Monday afternoon around 2 or 3 o’clock eastern. It’s the complete unedited audio on a 40-year delay. Why would anyone fake eight days worth of audio?



3. Restored video of Armstrong’s first steps – from recently recovered videotapes of the direct transmission; this is likely as good as the picture quality’s going to get, given the age of the original media, but the improvement over what we’ve had all these years is more than a little impressive. You can also watch Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder, Armstrong and Aldrin planting the flag, and Armstrong and Aldrin reading the dedication plaque. If/when there’s a DVD of all of this video restored, I’ll happily put money on the table for it.

I can’t fathom the conspiracy theorists basking in some absurdly convoluted “explanation” that includes Area 51, brainwashing, and secret government operations involving gazillions of people behind the scenes, not one of whom has ever spilled the beans.

There is a simpler explanation: we went. We did it. Because we wanted to, and because it was an important thing to do. We accomplished something abso-fraggin-lutely amazing from sheer determination and willpower and not just a little bit of pride.

Is that actually any less plausible than secret soundstages, black ops and brainwashed astronauts?

Man, it’s gotta be a bitch to constantly cut yourself shaving with Occam’s Razor.

Now let’s cut the chatter and go back there. It’s gotta be possible, because we’ve been there already.… Read more

This news story is just beyond the pale when one considers that it wasn’t really so long ago that an active-roster astronaut getting a divorce was a bit of a scandal. Not exactly the kind of publicity NASA needs, either…yeesh. Keep your orbital docking maneuvers to yourselves!
I’m having a hard time figuring out the newsworthiness of the whole thing to begin with. It’s bizarre enough as it is without bringing any of the players’ occupations into it, but you can bet that this one will stay in the news because of the NASA connection.
In other news, Turner’s deal to pay Boston $2,000,000 is a bargain. Turner and Cartoon Network could’ve deliberately deployed $2 mil of promotion and they wouldn’t have gotten the kind of impact out of it that they did here: even rival news outlets are mentioning the signs and the show they’re from. I don’t think they planned it this way, but you better bet that someone down the road will try to pull something like this off in the future – and will probably fail miserably.… Read more

It’s about 42 minutes to liftoff as I type this; I’d be lying to you and kidding myself if I didn’t fess up to saying a prayer that we’re about to see yet another shuttle mission go off without any life-threatening hitches. Not that the media reports of internal NASA strife over go/no-go votes suddenly have me thinking that this mission is unusually dangerous. Because, y’know, it’s never really safe. And it never has been. It wasn’t safe last year. And it wasn’t safe in 2003. And it wasn’t safe in 1986. Or 1967. And that’s why I have no problem still labeling astronauts as “heroes.” Because they still have the right stuff that it takes to strap themselves into that thing and go up there, even though it’s still not safe.
Don’t get me wrong, the questions are valid about the costs and benefits of the space program, about the safety of spending a quarter of a century flying a small fleet of spacecraft that was designed and signed off on during the Nixon administration, and about why it took so long for the “sudden” realization to set in that we need a new space vehicle. But when it’s this close to liftoff, I like to set those thoughts aside and send my best wishes to those folks who are in the shuttle. You know, my heroes.… Read more