Crew of the Starship Enterprise all dead
in Earth and Space Science, Structure of Matter, and Energy Transformations
Space travel kills you: Well, probably not you, but it would kill these two BFFs.
Courtesy JGordonHeyo, Buzzketeers. Any Starketeer Treketeers out there?
Yes? Well check this bit of fun science out: a Professor at Johns Hopkins says that traveling at near-light speeds in a space ship (as folks often do in science fiction) would have the delightful effect of almost instantly killing everyone on board.
Aw, whoops. Did I say "fun"? I meant the opposite of fun.
See, it'd obviously be no good to run into a big chunk of rock while flying around super fast in outer space, but (fortunately) big chunks of rock are really pretty rare way out in space. That's not the problem. The problem is the tiny stuff. The really, really tiny stuff.
Here on Earth, each cubic centimeter of air has about 30 billion billion atoms in it. (That's right—two "billions.") In outer space, however, each cubic centimeter of space might have 2 atoms in it. Two lonely, harmless little hydrogen atoms, drifting around, looking for friends. That low-density of matter is no problem for a low-speed ship—it'd just zoom right through them—but for a ship approaching the speed of light, they could be a huge problem, according to this professor.
Because the ship would be going so fast, the hydrogen atoms would "appear highly compressed, thereby increasing the number of atoms hitting the craft." There's something here about Einstein's special theory of relativity here, but, you know, blah blah blah.That stuff is complicated. I think if it like going running on a buggy night—if you run fast through a cloud of bugs, more of those bugs are going to hit you, and harder. (The moral there being: run with your mouth closed, and run slowly, especially if you're naked.)
So, because so many of the hydrogen atoms are hitting the ship, and because the ship is going so fast, it would be like turning a giant particle accelerator on the ship (except, in this case, the ship is being accelerated into the particles, not the other way around, but the effect is the same). It would be like getting hit with approximately the same amount of energy as if you stepped into the beam of the Large Hadron Collider. Even with a 4-inch-thick aluminum hull, 99% of the hydrogen would blast through the ship as radiation, frying the electronics and killing the crew in seconds. Sad.
You can't wrestle a particle beam, Kirk.
Still, maybe there are some Trekkies and physicists out there who can make us all feel a little better about this? The Johns Hopkins professor clearly knows a ton about radiation, but maybe he's not such an expert on space, or about the physics of Star Trek. I'm certainly not. Don't they warp space on that show? So that they aren't traveling though billions of miles of space (and all that dangerous hydrogen), but are skipping from one spot to another? Something like that? Help me out here. The image of Spock dying of radiation poisoning (again) makes me cry salty tears.
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The monkeys are probably less enthused about space travel: But who can say what monkeys really want?
Courtesy RadioFanInvest in the Abkhazian monkey industry! Because the derelict research monkey houses of this booming breakaway region of a breakaway region are about to take off! Literally!
No, not literally. Probably not at all. But that’s not stopping those monkey farmers from dreaming.
This is just an utterly bizarre article. I don’t think I can make it any funnier.
It’s about an all but abandoned primate research facility in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Back in its heyday, when the communists were really into monkey-related science, the facility was producing “groundbreaking medical research,” and breeding monkeys to send into space. Then, as some of you may have heard about, the USSR went belly up, and things went down hill fast at The Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy.
And then Abkhazia tried to break away from Georgia, and things went further downhill, possibly underground. During the ensuing civil war, “many monkeys were shot.” Others were just let out of their cages to just run around the city. From a prewar population of about 1,000, the facility houses only about 350 apes and monkeys now, not including “at least a few dozen monkeys… believed to be living in the wooded mountains of Abkhazia, descendants of a 1970s experiment where scientists released apes* into the wild.” Ok.
(*If you call me out on monkeys being descended from apes released in the 70s, you’re not my friend, because I’m not friends with people like that. It’s just what the article said.)
But wait! There’s more! Abkhazia recently got a new sugar daddy—the big bear, Mother Russia herself. And with fresh investment, the monkey research facility has some high hopes and big dreams. “Going to Mars?” they say. “Send some of our monkeys instead!”
Granted, the proposed Mars trips would take about a year and a half, and the institute’s best-known space monkey, a rhesus named Yerosha, went, you know, ape during a space trip just thirteen days long. (Yerosha freed a paw somehow, and started hitting buttons and generally messing stuff up. That darn monkey.)
They have a plan to avoid that sort of thing on the Mars mission, however: robots. Yes, as the article puts it, “the project would also include a robot designed to take care of the imprisoned ape.” The robot will feed the monkey and clean up after it. The real challenge, they say, is “to teach the monkey to cooperate with the robot.”
What? That’s the speed bump in the monkey+robot Mars flight plan? They have a point, I guess. Because monkeys are so used to human servants that a robotic butler in space might be a big conceptual jump for them.
Anyway, best of luck to you, Abkhazian monkey farmers.
Zoom, zoom, zoom: Retro rocket style lives on today.
Courtesy xparxyDo you yearn to relive the glory days of space travel, back when the space industry was run by scientists and engineers rather than hindered by politicians and the Military-Industrial Complex? Do you drool at the prospect of riding in one of those oh-so-very-cool retro rococo-style rockets popularly portrayed in the media during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s?
Well, then you better get your Earth-bound behind out to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for the Burning Man Festival starting at the end of this month. This year, the annual counter-culture festival will feature a full-sized cigar-shaped Raygun Gothic Rockethip being constructed right now in a warehouse in Oakland, California.
Three artists, Sean Orlando, David Shulman, and Nathaniel Taylor came up with the idea for the rocket and even got a Burning Man grant to fund the project. Orlando, whose father worked as a contractor at NASA, said he hopes the project will re-convey the wonderment space travel elicited in the industry’s early pre-NASA days.
The vehicle will be out-of-this-world (pun intended) and when completed will stand 40-feet tall with three levels of circular rooms setting upon the 17-foot steel legs. The entire massive steel frame will be covered in a skin of brushed aluminum (polished on site) and held in place by thousands of rivets. A team of more than 60 people is hard at work on the structure, and lest you think it’s just some frivolous art project, well you couldn’t be more… actually you’re probably absolutely right. But just recently Dr. Wade Enright, a leading high voltage researcher from New Zealand joined the team along with Dr. Alan Rorie, a high voltage artist to help develop the Uira Engine, a kinetic, high voltage sculpture serving as the rocket’s power source and engine. Uira means “lightning” in the language of New Zealand's indigenous Maori. This ought to add some excitement and sparks to the rocketship and to the festivities.
The plan is to unveil the spaceship during the festival with great ceremony on a launch pad in the desert. Festival participants will be permitted to climb aboard and make their way up through the three compartments where they’ll interact with all sorts of early-to-mid-twentieth century gadgetry, and navigational components complete with blinking lights. A telescope (for deep space scanning) will be included, and a pilot seat in the cockpit will allow neo-retro (?) astronauts to swivel around to check the instruments, most of which I suspect will have been built by the Acme Corporation. After exploring the vastness of space (both inner and maybe outer), visitors will exit across a bridge to a gantry and back down to terra firma.
If you think this would be something you’d like to see, but can’t make it to the Nevada desert, check out the Raygun Gothic Rocketship site where you can see plans, specs, sketches, photos and videos. There’s even a retro countdown clock so you can follow the spaceship’s progress to blast-off.
SOURCE
Story on cnet.com
Um, that's not Tang that you're drinking
Drinking our waste to our health: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station toasted their first sips of water converted from urine they've expelled during their time in the station.
Courtesy NASAAs we approach the start of the summer cool beverage season, here's an exotic drink you might want to try. Yesterday astronauts on the International Space Station raised their glasses in a special toast to the newest accessory on board their space craft. This device converts their urine, sweat and spit into drinkable water.
And you thought the hardest part of being an astronaut was going to be feeling the G-forces for blast-off and re-entry.
Converting body fluid wastes into water is an essential efficiency for long distance space missions to locations like Mars and beyond. And even with at the space station, the device reduces the amount of water that needs to be transported from Earth by 65 percent.
Six seems to be the operative number with this new contraption. A crew of six on the space station creates enough urine to convert into six gallons of water in six hours. Currently, ISS crews are limited to three people because of limited water supply. Now the station will be able to handle up to six crew members at a time.
The new device directs water from the station's toilet to a special tank where the fluid is boiled, separating the water contents from the urine brine.
Want to learn more? Here are some links about this new space travel technology:
NASA coverage of the new water system
USA Today
Past Buzz coverage on space urine-to-water conversion
As a kid, I had a great time building and firing off those popular Estes model rockets. The acme of my modeling experience was getting a Saturn V, two-stage rocket that looked just like the ones used for the Apollo moon shots. It was so proud of the mini-missile that stood about two feet tall. On Saturday in Maryland, the mother of all model rockets was launched, another Saturn V model, but this one stood 36 fee tall, weighed nearly a ton and soared eight-tenths of a mile into the sky. Cost of the mission: about $30,000. Click on the video below to see its launch. Obviously, they had no trouble keeping the electrodes connected to the rocket engine wires; and the rocket also did not get tangled in powerlines upon descent – the two banes of my young rocket launching career.
Up, up, and away!: No tourists or even astronauts were riding in this first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral back in 1950, but things have changed a lot since then.
Courtesy GRIN, NASAI know Liza hates outer space stories but I think space tourism is still pretty amazing even though we seem to hear more and more about regular folks (i. e. extremely wealthy regular folks - is that an oxymoron?) hitching rides into outer space for a substantial fee. US billionaire, Charles Simonyi, rode up with the crew of a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station in the latest space tourism adventure. Simonyi is also the first "regular" person to pay massive amounts of moola for a ride more than once. You can read about Chuck's second and most recent ego-trip here.
Hey Liza - can I bum a quarter from you? I seem to be short of cash for the bus ride home.
For Sale: 3 NASA Space Shuttles, low mileage, only flown around Earth
NASA is now entertaining offers for its three space shuttles – Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour – that are scheduled to be retired in 2010. The estimated $42 million price tag includes $6 million in transportation costs to fly a shuttle to atop a 747 to the nearest major airport near the purchaser. Click here for more details. One of the three will likely be put on display at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Where and how would you like to see the other two be repurposed?
Lost and not found: Private rocket disappears just minutes after take off
We've had a number of post about private space travel recently. Here's the story of a private rocket shot off over the weekend that's disappeared just a couple minutes after launch. Where did it go? If it was one of those model rockets I shot off when I was a kid, it would be wedged between some tree branches.
You may have read about this here in the Buzz a while back, but the first public viewing for Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo aircraft will Monday. That aircraft will carry a separate craft – SpaceShipTwo – to a high altitude from where it will blast free and carry space tourists on a few laps around the Earth 62 miles up. Here are the full details.
Soaring to space: The dual-hulled WhiteKnightTwo will soar through the atmosphere to an altitude of 50,000 feet where it will then launch SpaceShipTwo, cradled in the middle, off to space. WhiteKnightTwo should be ready for initial testing next month.
Courtesy Virgin GalacticWhile we’ve been getting cranked up here at SMM about this week’s opening of the Star Wars exhibit, where people will be able to get the virtual feel of what it’s like to be in one of the popular sci-fi movies, the folks at Virgin Galactic are frying up some bigger space fish.
Next month in the anticipated date for the roll-out of WhiteKnightTwo, a mother-ship aircraft that will be fly high into the sky to launch smaller crafts into space. The first big application of this technology, space tourism flights, are targeted to start in 2009. You can plunk down a down payment of $20,000 for a $200,000 ticket on a flight by clicking here to get to the Virgin Galactic website.
A shuttle for tourists: This diagram shows how SpaceShipTwo will work once it gets into space and also how it prepares for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Courtesy Virgin GalacticHere’s how it works. After taking off from a conventional airstrip, WhiteKnightTwo will climb to about 50,000 feet carrying the craft SpaceShipTwo in the space between its twin bodies.
SpaceShipTwo then fires its rockets and releases from WhiteKnightTwo roaring into a suborbital path 68 miles above the earth. In space, it can reach a speed of more than three times the speed of sound.
After giving its six passengers a unique view of space scenery and the experience of weightlessness, SpaceShipTwo turns back to Earth. Moving into the atmosphere, it extends its wings and aerodynamically flies back to the airstrip as a conventional plane landing.
Reservations have already been made by 254 people to take part in the flights. Virgin Galactic is shooting at booking 500 to 600 passengers before beginning flights. And the company’s business model shows that with that kind of participation, the endeavor will be profitable.
In the meantime, Virgin Galactic will be doing testing on the WhiteKnightTwo, with 130 to 150 test flights on the docket before commercial operations. Preliminary tests on SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnightOne were done in 2004.
Operations are currently being based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, but an official terminal for the “spaceline” is currently under construction in New Mexico. SpaceShipTwo will be brought out to the public sometime early next year.
Along with carrying passengers in SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic foresees WhiteKnightTwo being able to carry other payloads up toward space, including microsatellites. Also, WhiteKnightTwo could be used to carry huge water tanks for flyovers of forest fires.
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