15 minutes and we are done!

Hi everyone

Well, Sir Issac Newton proved himself in spades tonight. After an exquisitely orchestrated gravity assist and solar sailing 8 Billion km journey to go a mere 100 Million km, a small engine on the Messenger Spacecraft fired for 15 minutes and successfully placed man's first robot in orbit around Mercury. For the next year, at the very least, Messenger will explore the nearest planet to the sun and try to understand this rather strange, very dense and very temperature diverse world.

Another interesting thing about this. While the WGG had American Idol recording on our PVR, I switched over to the media server that I have connected to the TV and used the Web to access the streaming video feed from the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University which had a live show coming from Mission Control for Messenger. Way cool. We live in a very different world and the even cooler thing is that if I wanted, I could have watched it on my iPad or smart phone, in the latter case, I would have been able to do so while sitting on a streetcar or in the park. Totally connected to something that is happening in real time but 100 Million km away.

Welcome to the 21st century. Hope you enjoy the ride...

Paul

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Hi everyone,

A somewhat frivolous title to this blog, quoted from the first season of Monty Python. Unfortunately, it sprung to the mind of the WGG in response to a true tragedy. Over our lifetimes both Barbara and I have had the joyous opportunity to visit Japan and we have both fallen in love with the Japanese people, their culture and, of course, their food.

I also love Japanese technology and their thorough approach to design and planning. Until this week that is.

Putting aside the tragedy of the earthquake, as difficult as that is, and the loss of life, as impossible as that is to do, I think we need to understand the nuclear problem they have and its ramifications for the deployment of similar systems elsewhere.

Let me preface my next comments with an acknowledgement of my strong bias in favour of nuclear electric power generation. In my day an engineering degree was a pretty close approximation of a physics degree and, while not in the business, I would say I have a better view than the layperson of how this technology works and its relative strengths and weaknesses. Further I am also an opponent of giving money to people who want to kill me or of using low efficiency, high pollution technologies for power generation.

So the situation with the generation sites in Japan. What happened? Well, the core of a nuclear reactor generally contains some rods of either processed Uranium or Plutonium of which that atoms shed particles called neutrons and interact with other atoms in the core which generates more neutrons. This is called a chain reaction and it makes a lot of heat and radiation. The heat is used to bring water to the boil and make steam to drive turbines which in turn makes electricity.

What happened in Japan was that when the earthquake hit, by design, the power was cut to the pumps which drive water through the core. Immediately diesel generators kicked in, as was designed for, to keep the pumps going and not let the core overheat. Then, the unexpected happened - nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition - and the Tsunami hit and drowned out the diesel generators. They planned for the quake but not the Tsunami, even though the two go together. The essence of disaster recovery planning is saying "What if it hits the fan and smells really bad?" and that was not what happened here.

So, what does this imply for the nuclear power industry? Well, we can't burn petroleum forever and if the man made causes of climate change are actually irrefutably established, coal isn't good. So, wind? Maybe but the energy density generated is relatively low and it is not particularly reliable. Solar - great but it is enormously difficult to store the energy for when the sun goes down? Tons of other options but first among them is nuclear and the more we invest in it and plan for the real appearance of the Spanish Inquisition, the better we will be at dealing with the avoiding exactly this kind of problem. If we get over our fear we can deal with cost, safety and waste management problems. Kudos the to Japanese for getting it so close to right - unfortunately "close" doesn't quite cut it under some circumstantes. The Spanish Inquisition is like that...

Bit of a piss poor time to talk about this but, we need that technology.

Paul

A blog about the space program...

Hi everyone,

With the Space Shuttle Discovery orbiting the earth, attached to the ISS and this being the last flight of the Discovery, I thought I would say a few words about the space program - a favorite subject of mine.

I will come to Discovery and the manned program anon but first let me tell you about the robot spacecraft that I maintain a sharp interest in and why.

1. Messenger - the MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft. After several flybys of Earth and Venus, the John Hopkins University Advanced Physics Laboratory Messenger Spacecraft has completed three flybys of Mercury and is now poised to go into orbit around he planet on March 18th. This is a very difficult thing to do and no spacecraft has ever orbited Mercury before. It is a matter of being slow enough when you get there to get into orbit - falling in toward the sun causes you to speed up so you shed that orbital momentum using the flybys to slow you down. Now Messenger is aligned to do just that. Mercury, while relatively close to us is less known that the other terrestrial planets and there are a number of very interesting aspects to Messengers mission. I will dedicate a blog to Messenger when it enters orbit. The Messenger website is http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
2. The Dawn Spacecraft, run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is an Ion Propulsion robot which will, should its mission be successful, will be the first to orbit two other objects in the solar system. Well, not quite true, the Apollo spacecraft orbited both the earth and the moon but this is orbiting two Asteroids. Vesta and Ceres - two very different objects, the former very rocky, the second very icy and among the largest of the asteroids. In fact, Ceres, is the largest and is considered to be a dwarf planet like Pluto. Ion Propulsion is really cool. The way most spacecraft work is that they use a bunch of fuel to get into just the right orbit, then coast to their destination and the use a little bit of fuel to slow down and orbit. Alternatively they just fly by and take a lot of pictures in a short time. Dawn is different. It is always using its fuel which is electrically converted to Ions (Atoms with an unequal electrical balance), these are expelled from the engines but because they are so light, the opposite reaction of the spacecraft away from them is very small. The actual thrust is equivalent to that of the weight of a piece of paper on your hand but it is constant and adds up. Ion engines are very efficient and get more out of their propellant than conventional rockets. I will write about Dawn when it arrives at Vesta in July, the site is: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
3. Next up is New Horizons, also run by John Hopkins. This one is not going to arrive at its destination until July 2015- it is on its way to Pluto and will fly by the planet in just a couple of days. I will also write about this one later but try to imagine a 12 year cruise just to get to where you are going. This is such a long journey that the spacecraft is actually shut off for most of the journey and only really operates 3 months a year. The site is: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

As I said, expect followup blogs on each of these but, you know, with the shuttle mission winding down it is easy to believe there is not a lot going on in space - the truth is quite different. Robots work well up there and we learn huge volumes from them.

Back at you on the Shuttle and Manned programs in a couple of days.

Paul