spaceflight
esiegel | December 30, 2011The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. -Carl Sagan
If the story of our entire Universe's history, from the last stages of inflation and the Big Bang up to the present day, were to be compressed into one calendar year, what would it look like?
As 2011 comes to an end, here's my final present of the year to you.
(As always, click for a more readable, higher-resolution version.)
Happy new year to all; may you all enjoy our shared story and journey while you celebrate. See you in 2012!
esiegel | November 16, 2011"She eyes me like a pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your Heart Shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black" -Nirvana, Heart-Shaped Box
By looking at the right combinations of wavelengths of light, one can literally find almost anything in the depths of space.
Image credit: Daniel Marquardt, of nebula IC 1805.
But back on Earth, we have some surprising natural features that have been captured from above with nothing more than a camera.
Image credit: NASA / STS-129 / Space Shuttle Atlantis, retrieved from…
esiegel | October 10, 2011"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." -Neil Armstrong
It still boggles my mind when I think about it, every time I look up at the brightest object in our night sky.
Image credit: Michael H. Myers.
After four-and-a-half billion years, life from Earth made it off of this planet, launching ourselves out of the Earth's atmosphere and away from the bounds of Earth's gravity.
Image credit: NASA.
After a more-than-200,000 mile…
esiegel | September 6, 2011"We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown." -Arthur Eddington
Since the dawn of mankind, we've left innumerable footsteps across the lands, as we've traveled far and wide across the globe.
Image credit: Greg Prohl.
But (with very rare exceptions) these footsteps don't last. With winds and/or rains abundant all over Earth, among many other phenomena, it's usually just a brief matter of time until all memory of these footsteps are removed from the shifting landscape.
Image credit: Byron Jorjorian.
But what about a world without winds and rains? What about, in fact, a…
esiegel | August 14, 2011"Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky." -Valentina Tereshkova
We all have our heroes. Many of them meet with tragedy, and get eulogized in song. This week, I present to you a wonderful, bluegrass cover by Keller and the Keels of Pink Floyd's classic,
Another Brick In The Wall.But some heroes live on, and continue to share their ever-growing and evolving dreams with us.
Many of you may recognize this hero as Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman ever in space! (Also, she's the answer to #3 on my human…
esiegel | June 1, 2011"The very closest stars would require many years to visit, even traveling at the speed of light, which is impossible according to Einstein's theory of relativity. Today's fastest spaceships would require 200,000 years to travel to Alpha Centauri, our closest bright star. The energy required to send a hundred colonists to another star, as Frank Drake has pointed out, would be enough to meet the energy needs of the entire United States over a human lifetime. And these estimates are regarding nearby stars. When we consider the distances across the entire galaxy, and between galaxies,…
esiegel | April 12, 2011"I could have gone on flying through space forever." -Yuri Gagarin
It was April 12th, 1961, or fifty years ago today, that Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to leave Earth -- the ground, the atmosphere, the stratosphere -- and to soar into outer space.
Image credit: GETTY images.
What was unimaginable just half-a-century ago has become an amazing journey full of accomplishments, setbacks, disasters and unmitigated triumphs.
And to recap some of our greatest achievements, I thought I'd make up a fun little ten-question quiz for you, with answers (and pictures) below! Ready?
1.) What…
esiegel | February 7, 2011"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain
You've all heard of Kepler before, including the exoplanet-finding spacecraft named after the famed 17th Century astronomer. Johannes Kepler is probably most famous for his laws governing the motion of the planets, which cemented the heliocentric model -- and not the geocentric model -- as the best description for the motions of objects in our…
esiegel | January 28, 2011"We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"
-John Gillespie Magee, Jr.; spoken by Ronald Reagan after the Challenger tragedy
Twenty-five years ago today, I remember being a student in my second grade classroom. It was a big day, because they were launching the first schoolteacher into space, Christa McAuliffe, along with a crew of NASA astronauts.
Televisions were wheeled into our classrooms so we could watch the launch live on television.…
esiegel | November 22, 2010"Surely something is wanting in our conception of the universe. We know positive and negative electricity, north and south magnetism, and why not some extra terrestrial matter related to terrestrial matter, as the source is to the sink. ... Worlds may have formed of this stuff, with element and compounds possessing identical properties with out own, indistinguishable from them until they are brought into each other's vicinity. ... Astronomy, the oldest and most juvenile of the sciences, may still have some surprises in store. Many anti-matter be commended to its care! ... Do dreams ever come…
esiegel | September 7, 2010"I saw for the first time the earth's shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word--joy." -Yuri Gagarin
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to do any type of heavy lifting, and the most extreme example of this is lifting something all the way up off of the Earth, out of the atmosphere, and into space!
And once you're up there, at least 300 km above the Earth's surface, the sights you've got are bound to…
esiegel | August 21, 2010"There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen."
-James Lovell, Astronaut: Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8, and Apollo 13
A few weeks ago you had your chance to ask a commercial astronaut anything, and you gave some great responses! We selected the five best questions to ask the first group of commercial astronauts, including my favorite: the question of whether they'd be willing to go on a trip to Mars, even if it were doomed to be one-way.
Well…
esiegel | August 6, 2010"Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world; knowing they're going to light the bottom--and doesn't get a little worried--does not fully understand the situation."
-John Young, after being asked if he was worried about making the first Space Shuttle flight (STS-1).
It may be hard to believe, but the United States has been flying Space Shuttles since 1981: for 29 years. But what does it take to get a shuttle ready for launch?
In real life, the Space Shuttles come down from a mission and get towed around the campus at Kennedy Space Center. Where do you…
esiegel | August 4, 2010Homer: Hello, is this NASA?
Scientist: Yes?
Homer: Good! Listen, I'm sick of your boring space launches. Now I'm just an ordinary, blue-collar slob, but I know what I likes on TV.
Scientist: How did you get this number?
Homer: Shut up! And another thing, how come I can't get no Tang 'round here?
-The Simpsons, Episode Deep Space Homer
Last week, I told you that Starts With A Bang has been put into the lucky position to ask the first group of private/commercial astronauts anything! And the response I got was absolutely wonderful!
I think this is a big deal, because NASA isn't going to be the…
esiegel | July 30, 2010"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." -Galileo
There should be a big vote going on today about the future of spaceflight in America. Obama has outlined his new space policy, and has called for the commercial sector to step up and get involved in spaceflight, particularly in low-orbit, satellite, and space launch technologies.
This is going to be a hard sell to a lot of politicians, of course, who will stand to lose many government jobs as programs like Constellation and the Space Shuttle go away.
But the payoff is potentially huge, as private industry looks very…
esiegel | July 12, 2010Yo ho! It's hot, the sun is not a place where we could live.
But here on earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
We need its light. We need its heat. We need its energy.
Without the sun without a doubt there'd be no you and me. -They Might Be Giants
Ahh, the Sun. Beautiful and blinding to the naked eye, it's still the source of energy that gave rise to all of the life on Earth that we know.
Image credit: GOES satellite, in the X-ray.
The Sun emits energy all over the light spectrum, from long-wavelength radio waves (many meters long) to visible light to X-rays (just a small…
esiegel | July 7, 2010"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful." -Mark Victor Hansen
Last week, the Obama Administration unveiled their new National Space Policy for the United States of America. This is the first national space policy since Bush's policy from 2006.
Do you remember what the main stated goal of the Bush administration was? To "…
esiegel | June 7, 2010"We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way." -Buzz Aldrin
Sometimes, you go away for one weekend and you miss out on some awfully big news. So while I was competing in the USA Beard & Mustache championships (and I -- along with everyone else -- was put to shame by Willi Chevalier), some amazing news came back from our closest astronomical neighbor.
Back when the space race was in…
esiegel | April 26, 2010
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit. -Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking is in the news today, big time. Why? He says that intelligent aliens almost certainly exist, and that we should definitely not try to contact them. In fact, he argues, we should stay as quiet as possible and try to avoid detection. To quote him:
If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we…
esiegel | April 18, 2010Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations...If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won't exist because you'll have already shut it out ... You can hear other people's wisdom, but you've got to re-evaluate the world for yourself.
-Mae Jemison, first African-American woman astronaut
It's always difficult to break down barriers, but those who've been brave enough to try and who've finally broken through deserve to be remembered! One of the barriers that America put into place was that of women being astronauts. Despite the USSR's Valentina Tereshkova's becoming the…