Opening notes: Since this is the inaugural edition, I am including segments together that will normally be staggered, so it's a comprehensive overview of what TIAW will be like. Later diaries may be in greater depth, however, since the number of topics in each will be fewer. And thanks to
FerrisValyn for showing by example how to properly organize a diary.
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« Contents »
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For Flatlanders:
1. Promethean Spark: Ways that manned space can contribute to the liberal/progressive social, economic, educational, and diplomatic agenda. Today: Curbing weaponization.
2. Shiva's Backhand: Debunking anti-space myths, fallacies, and damnfoolery, that understanding may blossom. Today: "Space will be a playground for the rich."
3. The Magic Around You: Technologies created, advanced, or made possible by space. Today: Hurricane prediction.
4. The Road Before You: Space technologies with the potential to change the world. Today: Ultimate recycling, courtesy of rocketry.
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For Us:
5. The Star Chamber: Building the community.
6. Elementary, My Dear Jetson: Tracing the implications of a plausible future space development. Today: Suborbital package delivery.
7. Business of the Future: Potential, often quirky angles on the space market, and their derivatives. Today: Graffiti.
8. Workers of the Solar System Unite: Examining potential jobs in space, and what life may be like for those who do them. Today: Medical doctor.
9. Dramatis Personae: A look at the people who will get us there, those who stand in the way, and those whose support comes at an unfortunate angle. Today: Sen. Richard Shelby.
10. Faster Than a Speeding Fart-bubble: Dredging up viewgraph visions, vaporware, and preposterous claims from the bottom of the barrel. Today: The da Vinci Project.
11. Science Fiction Recommendation & Review: Inspirational material for the faithful. Today: Planetes.
12. Memories of Childhood Wonder: Reflecting on our own experiences as children can help us recreate them for each new generation. Today: A strange planet called Astrogrosephenplex.
13. Awe Fodder: Images that make you a believer.
14. Factoids
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« For Flatlanders »
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Promethean Spark
Curbing Weaponization
While most people think of NASA when space is brought up, there are really three players in the US: NASA, military/intelligence, and now the burgeoning private spaceflight community (aka Newspace). At the moment, the issue of greatest concern to the liberal community in this arena pertains to the second of those, namely the use of space as a potential combat zone. I would therefore like to briefly argue that robust commercialization of space is the best way of keeping militarization in check.
Imagine that shrapnel from an IED explosion in Iraq didn't fall to the ground, but just kept flying in circles for years at the same speed, waiting for some unlucky vehicle to blunder into it. Further imagine that when this happens, the new shrapnel doesn't fall down either, but instead just contributes its own fragments to the hypervelocity tornado, making it wider and denser. Pretty soon the whole area would be completely unusable to either side, and its residents would have to leave for at least several years. This is how space debris works, and it's what would happen in any space war scenario.
The US Pentagon relies on satellites for positioning, communications, and reconnaissance, so potential enemies like China are looking to perfect anti-satellite technology that can destroy those satellites. Of course, this is nothing new for the United States--the Pentagon has been looking at developing space weapons for decades, and Chinese activities will only accelerate their efforts. Unfortunately, whichever gains the upper hand in an engagement, the result for third parties in orbit is the same: A cloud of lethal, hypervelocity debris that could take anywhere from years to decades to leave space, and which could touch off a Kessler Syndrome.
But now imagine there are thousands of people in space at any given time, most of them exceedingly wealthy, and that hundreds of them live there on an extended basis. Imagine that they vote, donate large sums of money to campaigns, and dine with Senators while Earthside. Attacks on Pentagon satellites would not be a matter of property damage or abstract "national security" for them, but a situation far more personally dangerous than London during the blitz. They would realize that debris from the Pentagon's defensive weapons would be just as threatening to them as enemy anti-satellite projectiles, and more than likely they would prefer if the whole thing were kept out of their backyard entirely--for once, a virtuous application of NIMBY.
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Shiva's Backhand
"Space will be a playground for the rich."
Everything is a playground for the rich--that's why most people find becoming rich desirable. However, in this case "conspicuous consumption" may result in a virtuous circle of cost reductions and greater investment, which would increasingly open space to the general public. To have the wealthy pay for the infrastructure of future generations is at the core of progressive economic values, and it makes little sense to be offended when doing so occurs voluntarily.
An analogous process took place with commercial air travel, which was originally the domain of businessmen, government leaders, and celebrities. Until the 1960s, average people crossed the country by bus or train, and got on a boat if they wanted to go overseas--airports were full of men in sharp suits and women in furs and pearls. As for today, one might as well be waiting for a colonoscopy as an airline flight, but the latter sure is cheap.
But commercial space travel will not only lower its own costs: As with air travel, it's likely that a mature space transport industry would provide massive positive externalities, reducing costs in other parts of the economy that cascade even further.
Addendum:
I ran into a pure, unadulterated example of the "playground for the rich" neurosis, and it's so egregious that I hereby award it the Eight-fisted Shiva Pummel of Shame.
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The Magic Around You
Hurricane Prediction
To the ancients, weather was the fury or contentment of the immortal, unfathomable gods. They lived and died, ate or starved, embarked or waited, arrived or disappeared under its fickle dictatorship, and its mystery was absolute. Farmers knew the seasonal patterns of their climate, but the specifics were beyond human understanding. A great storm became known only when it crested the horizon, and you may have found out it was great only in the last fleeting glimpses of your property and/or life.
In the modern era, people began to compile statistics and try to tease out useful patterns, but real predictive capability was elusive. No matter how many weather balloons were released, and the synchronized efforts possible with AM radio, there could never be enough data points over enough time to make practical models. You knew a major storm was on the way only when fishing trawlers or coastal radars radioed the report, without much more detail than the relative speed of the front. Even when the storm made landfall, you wouldn't know most of the facts until you experienced them, and would then have to radio them to surrounding areas--if you could get through. If you could, they might have some time to choose between running or hunkering down, but with little data to inform the decision.
Today, however, you know with reasonable certainty what will happen in the sky three days to a week from now, and can watch casually as a storm coalesces a thousand miles away. Hurricane evacuations, when not FUBAR due to politics, can occur at a nice leisurely pace days in advance, and can be undertaken with relative assurance that it's necessary. The wrath of the gods, made feeble by glorified video cameras--weather satellites--operating in space. What else becomes possible from up there?
Resources:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
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The Road Before You
Ultimate Recycling, Courtesy of Rocketry
There is a revolution taking place in both recycling and power generation, and it is called the plasma converter. Although the technology has been around for decades, it's just now being implemented in a few exploratory waste disposal plants in Europe, Asia, and the United States. In short, a plasma converter is a recycling and power generation machine powered by garbage--any garbage: Metal, plastic, food, paper, wood, cardboard, toxic chemicals, etc. etc. Even the materials of the converter could be broken down if they weren't specially constructed to withstand the temperatures. Literally anything other than highly radioactive waste can be completely processed, and get this: The process releases more than enough heat to both power the next cycle and feed a net energy profit back into the electrical grid.
No, this isn't a perpetual motion machine, just the magic of chemistry at work. A lot of energy is stored in organic chemical bonds, but breaking them doesn't just undo the connection like untying a shoelace--in many circumstances, it's more akin to releasing a spring under tension. Although more energy is released than is put in by the process, that's only possible because the Sun contributed the energy that formed the bonds, and breaking them frees much of it for use in power generation. So, you may ask, how can space improve on this already profound technology?
Well, there are a few catches to current plasma converter systems: (1)Highly radioactive substances are totally off limits, as they would simply explode at presently sustainable temperatures. And (2)the output is divided into a metallic solid called "slag," composed of a homogeneous mixture of inorganic wastes, and gases composed of organics and metal vapors that must be heavily filtered. Only after a thorough filtration process to remove all the mercury, lead, and other toxic substances from the organic gas is it pure and safe enough to use as fuel.
Unfortunately, you can't yet efficiently get back the individual metals in the "slag," so it isn't a very useful recycling technology in that respect. Although there are many important uses for various forms of slag, we still need aluminum, copper, iron, and so on, and can't have them increasingly tied up in extraction-resistant forms. The only individually recovered metals are those filtered out of the gas, which is of course a miniscule amount compared to the feedstocks. In other words, current plasma converters just aren't hot enough: They can blend any but the heaviest metals together into slag, but they can't separate them; and they can turn organics into gas, but they can't break down the gas into its constituent elements.
The reason for this is very simple: No design could make the vessel withstand contact with temperatures that high. In fact, the only way to safely sustain such temperatures is by containing the plasma in a magnetic field, thereby preventing it from ever touching the machinery. However, the containment of plasmas of such high energy has never been achieved at the scale needed for waste disposal, or anything remotely close to it. This is where rocketry comes into play.
VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) is not yet in use, but it is existing technology--a functioning laboratory testbed already exists, and has recently completed a continuous four-hour test run. The system uses powerful magnetic fields to contain, accelerate, and expel plasmas, and involves precision field control to manipulate the exhaust rate. Scaled-up versions could be used on Mars rockets to cut the transit time substantially, and probably even more so with further developments.
Ad Astra Rocket Company, founded by a former astronaut to commercialize the technology, recently announced the end of 2007 as its target for completion of an unmanned 200-kilowatt VASIMR prototype, and late 2010 for launch of an operational vehicle. Agreements with NASA were also recently signed to facilitate those goals, so clearly this technology is making significant strides. What would be needed for a manned system is an engine in the megawatt range, which Ad Astra has said is just a matter of scaling existing technology, and which could make the field capability practical for recycling.
Should such an engine be achieved, the temperatures needed for full molecular decomposition would become feasible, and once implemented would mean that all atomic matter becomes recyclable. Provided a separation mechanism is worked out, you would not have slag, a little bit of metallic gunk in filters, and organic gases, but piles of carbon, piles of iron, tanks of O2, tanks of H2, and so on. Pure elements could then be recombined for virtually any application. There is, in fact, a chance that fusion temperatures could be achieved with the matured technology, and with none of the headaches of a tokamak or other systems requiring massive shielding and frequent replacement. But even without fusion, it would be a near-utopian achievement, all because some geeks wanted to walk on Mars.
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« For Us »
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The Star Chamber
First, thanks again to FerrisValyn for issuing his Call to Action, which is responsible for this diary's creation and hopefully many more to come. I would just like to echo his thoughts, and urge space nuts of liberal persuasion to help spread the word here on DK. This is an enormous hub of the liberal/progressive web community, and a great place to both bring together the faithful and convert the Flatlander heathen.
Secondly, those of us who publish diaries or are about to begin doing so might consider emailing each other in advance with what we intend to write about. We're all creative people, and there are numerous subjects available, but it would suck if two or more people in a community this small spend the effort to research a topic only to post the same facts, links, and maybe similar opinions. Also, we might consider every once in a while doing coordinated themes, where we all write on a different aspect of some topic.
Thirdly, at some point I'll be taking a tour of other other popular liberal sites in search of space enclaves to establish contact with, and I would urge others to do likewise. Those with none, which I suspect will be most if not all of them, will be virgin territory for future conquest and colonization.
Comment and/or email me your thoughts.
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Elementary, My Dear Jetson
Suborbital Package Delivery
This is one of the most immediate "killer apps" of point-to-point suborbital capability, and likely with a much faster growth curve than transportation due to much smaller development and marginal costs. However, if we trace what will be necessary for the industry to reach maturity, it may take a more circuitous path than manned P2P.
First, consider the potential customers: Who needs to have a package delivered in a few hours? The initial price of suborbital package delivery will probably be somewhere in the three-digits per kg, so either the combined price and time-cost of using air freight must exceed that of a launch, or there must be an absolute deadline involved (e.g., organ transplants). In the former case, the most likely customers are industrial firms on opposite sides of the globe from a key supplier, and who need a part fixed or replaced ASAP.
This has important implications for the launch provider: First, since nobody plans to need something ASAP, the infrastructure and rocket itself must be capable of unheard-of operational agility, going from receipt of package to launch in as little time as possible. This could have benefits for, or derive lessons from, the various firms pursuing ORS for the Pentagon. Second, as a result of the need for rapid launch, every package will fly alone on its own rocket until there are enough orders to overlap, meaning that rockets will be quite small in the initial years. Larger packages would have to be delivered in pieces on multiple launches.
Three additional questions present themselves: Given the smallness of the rockets, and the need for extremely rapid turnaround: (1)Should they be liquid, solid, or hybrid? (2)Should they be fully reusable, partly reusable, or expendable? And (3)should they land under power? The answers to these questions have serious implications for which existing firms are equipped to pursue this market, and how well the technology will scale to larger volumes and transportation. E.g., solid is easier for a small rocket, but the drawbacks increase with size. I won't hazard what the answers will be, but it may be that the best approach to the initial market will not be the most scalable, and could lead to some detours and false starts.
As for organ transplants, this is the killer app within the killer app, and it can't be overstated how important a development this capability would be. Although hearts can survive with special care for four to six hours, tissue deterioration begins much sooner and affects the survival chances of the patient. Other organs may be more or less sensitive, but with ultimately the same effect--the pool of donors is geographically limited.
But with the ability to deliver anywhere in two hours, and price competitiveness being irrelevant, the potential donor pool would consist of everyone who dies at a hospital within range of a launch pad. Even though it would be much cheaper to fly an organ from California to New Mexico, the time factor means launch is the preferred choice, and (once demonstrated) that means potentially rapid construction of new launch facilities throughout the United States--possibly with public subsidies.
Having rocket launches closer to cities will slowly convince the insurance industry of their safety, and both reduce expenses for existing facilities and expand potential spaceport locations. It's also likely that such facilities could be quickly modified for human transportation, meaning the scaling of manned suborbital could occur far more rapidly than otherwise, and at a much lower cost. From that point forward, you would likely see in airports the same transformation that occurred with maritime travel, with the slower technology being used largely for bulk cargo, local transport, and luxury cruising.
Crystal ball ruminations: UP Aerospace probably has the best configuration for eventually attempting this market, although several scaling evolutions will be needed. Since Masten and Armadillo both have vehicles intended to scale for human transport, and both have their sights on orbit, I don't believe either will tarry in low space to build a package delivery business.
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Business of the Future
Graffiti
No, I don't mean the cryptic gibberish spray-painted on freeway overpasses, but the motive may be similar. We all want to leave behind some record of our existence--if only a name in a register, carved on a tree, or abbreviated in Krylon on a brick wall. That could be why, on seemingly every Mars lander mission, the Planetary Society sends along a DVD with the names of its members, and most think it's wonderful that a microscopic piece of data representing their name sits on the Red Planet.
However, there is something more significant on Mars, and it had got me thinking when I first saw it--the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Now, JPL scientists would never do anything immature like carve their initials in Martian rocks with $400M space probes...right? :D But suppose it wasn't a $400M space probe, and wasn't being operated by a government agency. Suppose it's just a little dentist's drill attached to an arm on four small wheels, a solar panel, a visible light camera, and the cheapest possible antenna that could reliably transmit the occasional picture and status update.
Now that would be interesting, although getting to, landing on, and communicating with Mars would still be costly. Would any of the yacht club set who spend $30k on a watch or cocktail ring be willing to fork over $20k per character to defile a pristine planet with their odious name? I would say there's a strong chance, and you could throw corporate advertisers into the mix as well. "Coca Cola" = $160k, thereby more than retiring your launch costs, and that's with costs as they presently stand. In fact, you might even offer special rates for larger characters, charging only 80% more per character for letters twice the size.
Then again, maybe Mars is too iffy. Since it will be a while before paying customers are walking on the Moon, it would be no less attractive to have one's name or company logo inscribed on lunar rocks, yet it would be considerably cheaper and likely more profitable. A larger and more capable lander could be sent, perhaps with the ability to produce more complicated designs and fonts, and that might yield larger overall revenue despite lower prices.
Provided the industry succeeds, however, it wouldn't remain mere graffiti for long. Capabilities could expand to special vacuum- and radiation-resistant paintings, creation of in situ tile mosaics, image carvings, and increasingly high-relief sculpture--possibly even life-sized busts. One could imagine miniature Mt. Rushmores, sphinxes, pyramids, Taj Mahals, the wonders of the world reproduced in celestial stone, or works of original art funded by dedicated patrons.
As the human sphere expands, the industry could always stay one step ahead, leaving messages from the past to those who finally reach and eventually colonize those worlds. Of course, no matter how extensive their business becomes, they could never disrupt even a tiny percentage of any surface, so there could be no valid scientific or naturalist objection. Just think: Settlers on Callisto might arrive to find "Re-Elect Paris Hilton" scribbled nearby.
Resources:
Space Frontier Foundation
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Workers of the Solar System Unite
Medical Doctor
Here's an interesting question: A man's foot just got severed when a resonant torque sent a 50kg hatch flying shut on it; the foot and shreds of tissue are flying off in various directions; he's choking on his own screams and flailing wildly, bouncing off the walls at random angles; and you and he both can barely breathe because you're literally drowning in clouds of blood. What do you do?
This is the kind of scenario a space-borne doctor might have to confront, and will need to be trained for. First, how do you do your job when you're choking on and nearly blinded by the patient's blood in your lungs and eyes? Second, how do you get physical control of a patient that's spasming wildly in microgravity? Whatever the answers are, our Good Doctor is going to get a lot more bruised and battered carrying them out than an Earthside sawbones.
Once he or she does all that and stops the blood loss, the patient still has to be transported to the equipment or vice-versa, and an operation be done to close the wound. At every point in the ensuing crisis, both lives are in jeopardy, and quite possibly more: If the patient spasms before being carefully restrained, the doctor could be sent careening head-first into a wall at skull-crushing speed, or the equipment smashed, or a syringe sent flying, or control panels randomly activated or broken. Even with assistants trying to restrain each limb, all they could do is cling for dear life and dampen the movements.
Assuming the patient's condition is finally stabilized, and the doctor has both the expertise and equipment for reattachment surgery, the doctor and/or others would have to swim around the rapidly blackening Chamber of Horrors looking for a foot. Then the operation--in a specially sealed area, the patient's limbs and torso carefully restrained, and both the doctor and patient are wearing oxygen masks to avoid inhaling the resulting fluids. Since there's no gravity for an IV drip, the doctor or an assistant or machine has to continuously squeeze the blood, fluid, and/or anesthesia into the IV. Unfortunately, one of the dangers of being unconscious in microgravity is choking on your own vomit, and if the patient doesn't tolerate the anesthesia well, or their stomach spasms, that could very well be the outcome.
If so, the body has to be stored somewhere, and kept from putrefying; a large part of the station is now covered in dried blood down into the nooks, crannies, and electronics that someone has to clean with swabs and a vacuum; a lot of paperwork must be filled out, insurance and liability inquiries dealt with; a physically and mentally scarred doctor has to go on performing for the surviving occupants, living with the nagging fear that they didn't do something right, and knowing that they may be sent home if their employer finds the slightest error in judgment or execution. An unusual but inevitable day in the life of a space doc.
Resources:
Vanderbilt Center for Space Physiology and Medicine
NASA Space Medicine Page
JAXA Space Medicine Page
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Dramatis Personae
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)
Pork baron, toll-taker, boss man. Dick Shelby stands before the NASA budget process like a diligent highwayman, always enforcing a single dictum: Thou Shalt Give Marshall a Heaping Slop of Thy Gravy, and Never Rescind a Single Cent. So long as this condition is met, you won't find a more receptive audience for the NASA agenda, but violate it and you shall know his displeasure.
If there's nothing for Marshall to contribute to a program, the Administrator had better find something; if another Center's approach might be superior to one at MSFC, the former had better be cancelled; and if the Administrator decides to shut down an office at Marshall, he had better change his mind and apologize to Boss Shelby posthaste.
As long as Marshall is in charge of both the manned and unmanned lander program, and Dick Shelby effectively in charge of NASA, there's little chance that any commercial lander will be chosen regardless of cost or performance. This is how a Republican "supports" space, chopping up a sinking ship for firewood.
Resources:
Space Politics
NASA Watch
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Faster Than a Speeding Fart-bubble
The da Vinci Project
The good people at Armadillo Aerospace have more than proven the ability of an all-volunteer team to produce flight-worthy hardware, and the Romanian firm ARCA has made credible strides with its own balloon-launched concept, so the question remains: WTF went wrong with Brian Feeney's da Vinci Project, and was it ever serious in the first place? Since announcing a firm date of October 2, 2004 for an X-Prize suborbital launch of its Wild Fire vehicle, and even securing a flight permit from the Canadian government, no such flight ever took place. In fact, December of 2004 is the last mention of an engine test I can find, and since then the vehicle has gone through multiple, often unmotivated design changes with virtually no physical progress.
But rather than learning anything, Feeney's ambitions seem to have become even more grandiose in failure, changing dVP's entire flight architecture from a seemingly modest concept to a preposterous Skunk Works wet dream, and every year announcing that flight testing will begin shortly. No word, of course, on standard engineering practices like CDR and so forth--none of the little details that separate spacecraft from Photoshop images.
The new concept, the XF1, is (we are told) "under construction," and will be available for testing by the "middle of 2007." In other words, from announcement (at XPC 2006) to vehicle testing in under a year--quite an accomplishment, even for a competent endeavor. Although the schedule does already seem to be slipping a bit, given that it is the middle of 2007 and nary a word has been heard, surely the status quo is soon to be shattered by this visionary.
Conclusions: Feeney may need a new prescription for his Emo glasses to separate reality from fantasy, and should consider making a business of his computer drawings. In nearly 11 years, they're his company's only output.
Resources:
Space Cynics
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Science Fiction Recommendation & Review
Planetes
Thanks to Dwayne Day over at Space Review for originally reviewing this, which was the first I'd heard of it. Planetes is an anime series based on a manga about the late 21st century, where manned spaceflight is ubiquitous, there are cities (not just bases) on the Moon and Mars (the latter not depicted), and deorbiting large space debris is a full-time profession with a social status akin to garbage collection.
Unlike most SF anime, the plot doesn't revolve around slick, stylish characters, bizarre technologies, or other cyberpunk cliches. Rather, the two main characters, Ai and Hachimaki, are vulnerable people working a job with few prospects (orbital debris removal) and much derision. Although the writing for the first few episodes is embarrassingly childish and, at times, ridiculous, it rapidly matures and begins to reveal the nature of the characters--Ai, ferociously defending her optimism and compassion from erosive experiences; Hachimaki, the semi-loner with a few shallow relationships, desperately clinging to an increasingly unlikely dream. We also get brief glimpses into a few other characters, some more interesting than others, and at least one other who delivers serious poignancy.
But despite the low key of their profession, the environment--a rotating space station tenanted by several large corporations--is not depicted as a dystopian junk yard as one might expect, but as a polished corporate/industrial center inhabited by a realistic array of job titles and departments. Corporate politics, personality conflicts at various levels, balancing work with family, and even the long-term health costs of living in space are represented--often in very affecting scenes.
Villains, insofar as they exist in all but a few episodes, are driven largely by banal motives, commonplace character flaws, or issues totally unrelated to the immediate characters and setting--as is usually the case in reality--rather than being evil, ravenous, or fitting some other archetype. The audience is led to view those who go too far as tragic characters rather subjects of hate, reflecting the overall humanistic tone of the series.
Movements in microgravity are depicted as realistically and fluidly as the animation allows, governed by unimpeded Newtonian mechanics rather than martial arts chop-socky or buoyant swimlike motions. Several episodes take place on the Moon, and depict people loping easily about down the wide corridors of spaceports or commercial promenades. Generally speaking, the physics and technology are quite plausible, and are used matter-of-factly as tools by the characters rather than in a "gee whiz" manner. And as sound effects in space have been an eternal pet peeve of mine, their absence in Planetes was a welcome relief.
Overall, this future is treated not as a destination from the present, but as a stepping stone to its own broader future: The tone is one of vaguely wistful optimism with somber overtones for the inevitable human costs. Even as those costs are still being realized from the settlement of the inner solar system, momentous plans are underway for a mission to Jupiter that soon takes center stage in the plot. But despite all the progress and forward-thinking, the poor countries of Earth have largely been left to rot or occupied by rich ones, and the moral and philosophical implications of that are examined in many episodes.
In addition to the intellectual aspects of the series, there are moments of arresting poignancy that some novices to anime might find shocking from an animated series. One scene in particular, near the end of the series, comes without any dramatic pretense, preamble, or hint of manipulation, yet the viewer cannot avoid being deeply affected. I won't ruin it by going into greater detail than that, but its understatement and complete lack of theatricality results in stunning sincerity. Few live-action, English-language dramas are ever as effective.
I don't know whether the series is available for rent from Netflix or other rental houses, but however you can, I strongly advise watching the episodes in close succession. Also, I would recommend going to the DVD options menu and choosing to watch in Japanese with English subtitles. I've watched in both languages, and I can say without hesitation that a lot of character is lost in voiceovers.
Resources:
Amazon.com
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Memories of Childhood Wonder
A Strange Planet Called Astrogrosephenplex
Nobody becomes a space nut in adulthood. A person may take a passing interest through relationships with space nuts; may become intellectually curious through connections to their natural interests; or may even find it a compelling subject of fiction alongside others; but those who feel an attraction to space in their deepest selves can trace it back to a formative period in their lives, when some spark ignited a star inside them.
In my case, there was no single event that triggered this obsession, but there are many fond memories associated with its discovery, and I would like to share them. Although a long time has passed, and many other subjects have interested me at various times, memories associated with space remain among the clearest and most transcendent. It's as though they are all connected by a single thread, and the detours I've taken in life into other passions were just transient fads. Here then, briefly, are my surprisingly clear recollections of a most unusual world.
Normally elementary school is where a child's imagination first begins to suffocate, but along the way there are times when rote lessons give way to free exploration. I was 7 years old, in 3rd grade, and finding it horrifically boring; the math was easy, the English already trivial, the science little more than memorizing words, and the teacher showed no interest in any of it or her students beyond maintaining order. Then one day, perhaps just as make-work, we had a peculiar assignment: Create your own planet.
Now, I already had a subliminal interest in space, and had watched many educational or science fiction programs on television, but this was the first opportunity I'd ever had to apply my own imagination to the subject. I dove into the task with zealous enthusiasm, using a compass to draw a perfect circle for the globe, carefully rendering each line and curve within, and then painstakingly applying colors.
As I found out after finishing, the other children had put considerably less effort into their planets. Most just drew Earth, with green and blue patches, and called it "my planet" or something similarly original; one drew a basketball; one drew a red and white checkered blob and called it "picnic land"; and the class clown drew a butt covered in brown smudges, which of course went over real well with the teacher. And mine? My planet had swirling oceans of shiny quicksilver (which I thought meant liquid silver), three parallel ring systems at the equator and mid-latitudes, and a purple atmosphere composed of xenon. It was called Astrogrosephenplex--a combination of the prefix "astro" and a random assortment of other cool-sounding syllables.
Of course I had no conception that the parallel rings were physically impossible; or what xenon was other than a cool-sounding gas on the periodic table above the blackboard; or that a world-girdling ocean of shiny, cyclonic liquid silver was preposterous. But nevertheless, I could picture it in my mind, with all of my senses. I could stand on a lone rocky promontory and peer out at the giant whirlpools of metallic fluid, hear their viscous flowing, smell the crispness of clean metal, and see the three ring systems like tiger stripes in the sky. The only memory that escapes me is whether I gave it moons, although I have a vague notion that I did.
And for the whole 10 months of 2nd grade, that is the only specific assignment I remember. Rather than information just passively oozing into the substrata, my brain had lit up in precocious self-awareness and activated faculties that weren't in regular use for years to come. If every lesson had been tied to space, I would have devoured them all with a ravenous appetite, and remembered every minute.
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Awe Fodder
This is Earth from Apollo 12, either at apogee of an elliptical transfer orbit or a short way to the Moon. I've never seen any other image of Earth from this perspective: It's neither huge like in LEO, nor a complete globe like from lunar orbit, and the effect is mesmerizing. A stage casing can be seen falling away. Here's the link to see it at maximum size (which I highly recommend).
Resources:
The Project Apollo Image Gallery
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Factoids
First pornography on the Moon: The backup crew of Apollo 12 inserted photos from Playboy into the lunar EVA checklist as a prank, which the primary crew only discovered while preparing for their first moonwalk. Have a gander.
Resources:
Wikipedia
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Random suggestion of an exhausted mind: Let's get Apple to design spaceships.
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