That's what I'm talking about!

Just for the record, I'm no smarter than anybody that's smart enough to find and read this blog. I just have an interest (actually more like an agenda) and I'm trying to drive my point home.
What's my agenda? This guy comes pretty close to summing it up:
http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_tradesmen_050330.html
(By the way, regolith is scientist-speak for "dirt" from another planet.)

He's hit the nail on the proverbial head. We need to start thinking about our future, because it has arrived.
We have a date with destiny. This may sound far-out to some of you, even unbelievable, but I believe we need to take control of our entire Solar System and claim it for the human race. Those seven planets we all know and love? They could be easily erased by an asteroid, (just because we don't live on them doesn't mean we could go-on living if one of the other planets wasn't there) claimed by another species of alien,(you think we're alone in the Universe? Then why are you even reading this?) or simply slip back into the realm of Unknown Worlds for us to fear and/or worship. (Mars: So long Red Planet, hello God of War.)
Like it or not, the Earth is small and it's getting smaller. Not everyone is interested in leaving, but some of us are. Some of us are ready to sacrifice the fresh air, trees and oceans of water to spend a few years, heck the rest of our lives, trying to eke out a living from a new world or some space station parked at Lagrange 1 (http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/iss_imagined.html.)
That's what our ancestors did. On this continent, and all others; in the towns and cities and empires that rose and fell and succession, we have fought and died and made our existence here as permanent as possible.
My grandfather came to the United States from Italy not because he heard it was easy. He came because he had a chance, albeit a small one, but a chance nonetheless to live his life as he wished, a free man.
As the world grows smaller we are going to be forced to face some harsh realities about the human species and its place in the Universe. Realities that many of us have been hiding from, afraid we aren't good enough or smart enough to be involved in the Next Great Exodus of Humankind.
This Destiny is not meant for a single human being, however, it is intended for the entire species. So shout it from the rooftops, encourage your children and grandchildren and your neighbors children (wouldn't be nice if they went to the Moon?), and get the word out:
They're looking for a few good Human Beings.

Countless delays...

Sorry for the delay in getting this post together; I was unavoidably delayed due to technical difficulties. In other words: My dial-up connection wouldn't get me where I needed to go.
Problem solved and here is the post.
It is a strange coincidence that this particular post would be delayed. My story itself is one of countless delays and billions and billions of dollars wasted. It is the story of the Space Shuttle.
When I was a boy living in Cocoa Beach, Florida, we made many, many, many trips out to Canaveral National Seashore to watch the first Space Shuttle launches. They were all delayed. Each one usually just seconds away from lift-off. When you're 12 years old there's nothing quite like the disappointment that comes after waiting all day in the broiling hot sun only to be sent away at the last possible moment with no answers and no word when might come back again.
The shuttle has been like a Dream turned Nightmare.
Don't get me wrong. I support any and all efforts to get us into space. Whatever we get is better than nothing at all.
And I suppose I didn't realize just how useless the shuttles are until this past Summer.
That's when burt Rutan pulled the curtain back and revealed the Wizard for what he truly was: a charlatan.
Check out the simplicity of Spaceship One in this online feature by National Geographic:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0504/feature3/index.html

Compared to the shuttle,( http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/shuttlehistory.html)
with it's thousands and thousands of parts, expensive heat-shielding, not to mention its incredible fuel consumption and myriad safety flaws, Spaceship One is a dream come true.
It is made of composite material; a one-piece fuselage with mechanically operated (that means with cables and pedals as opposed to a button, a computer and some electric motors) landing gear and wings. The ship is more of a plane than a rocket. Granted it doesn't carry seven passengers (yet) http://www.virgingalactic.com/ but once Richard Branson gets done with it, who knows what it will do.
The key is not the ship itself, but what it does and how easily it does it.
First, it uses White Knight, a new type of plane designed to lift it about 45,000 feet up and give it a boost. That saves a bunch of fuel it would have used to lift itself off the ground and get some speed.
Second, it comes down like a shuttle-cock. Nice and slow, so there is no need for those expensive heat shielding tiles.
Do know how much that saves? Millions and millions of dollars.
And I'm not even going to get into the environmental savings because it uses nitrogen and rubber instead of caustic, deadly rocket fuel.
I believe in the next few decades, plans for home-built versions of Spaceship One will become available. And pilots will operate White Knights like taxi cabs from your local municipal airport. You'll have a choice of engines, or be able to design and create your own, depending on how high you want to go. Going to the Moon? Then buy an E-engine. Just hitting an orbiting hotel for the weekend? Pick-up a C-engine on your way home.
In fact, the ships themselves will be modified the way hot rods are today. Your grandchild will install the latest sound system and telecommunications system she can get her hands on.
And more importantly, Space will be open to all of us.

Mission: LEO

So, we've spent quite a bit of money putting the thing up there and have seen very little in the way of science conducted. I mean really, if the blame for its uselessness rests soley with the grounding of the shuttle fleet, then the entire ISS plan was flawed from the beginning for not having a secondary system. That's the Golden Rule, isn't it? Have a back-up plan in case the first plan doesn't work?
I ran a Wendy's restaurant for a time. THEY had a contingency plan for every eventuality when it came to serving $1 hamburgers, why wouldn't the same rule apply when we're dealing with billions of dollars in hardware, not to mention human lives?
Anyway, a moot point. It is what it is and I support it wholeheartedly. At least it is a permanent human presence in Space. A grand accomplishment for all the participants.
With that said, check this out:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/exp10_mission_page.html
The link will remain good beyond tonight, but if you have just logged on to check this out, at midnight tonight (03/27/05, eastern standard time), you can watch live feed of the latest spacewalk being conducted by the ISS Expedition 10 crew.
According to www.Space.com :


"The crewmembers of the tenth expedition to the International Space Station are counting down to what is slated to be the final spacewalk of their six-month mission.
ISS Expedition 10 commander Leroy Chiao and flight engineer Salizhan Sharipov are expected to leave the confines of the space station at about 1:25 a.m. EST (0625 GMT) on March 28."

I realize the ISS has failed to live up to the wild imaginations of myself and millions of people just like me, but that doesn't make what they are doing up there any less stunning. And seeing it live is awe-inspiring to say the least.
I remember watching Story Musgrave perform maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope years ago. For me it was no less inspiring on a small, 13 inch television than it would have been in person. The feat was made all the more incredible when, years later, I discovered he had spent 16 years in the Astronaut Corp before making his first flight!
Today, Musgrave is a legend at NASA, and beyond.

Who knows what further grand accomplishments will be made by Chiao and Sharipov? But if you tune in tonight, you just might get to watch it happen, instead of hearing about it later.

p.s.--The link remains a good source of information about ISS; all past stories prepared by reporters for Space.com, and links to others. Check it out.

Sounds of Space

Most people think of Space as a vast sea of nothing. An endless silence filled void.
There is no atmosphere, nothing for sound to stick to once it's created, so it usually just ends.
I've heard it said, there's little interest for people to colonize space because it's so empty and lonely-- and quiet.
But what if it isn't? What if Space is really just a vast ocean, teeming with islands of life, or even some life that "swims" in the vacuum? And what if sound is simply harder to find. Or perhaps open to interpretation.

Check out this site from Prof. Don Gurnett, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa. http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/
He has a collection of space sounds unlike any you have ever heard. Granted some are simply computerized interpretations of sound, and others are Earth-bound noises, they are still sounds derived from Space or space-based objects.
As posted on the site: " We can hear the sounds OF space by using scientific instruments on spacecraft as our 'ears.' Scientific instruments detect and record radio waves, then transmit the recorded information to Earth. Once the transmitted information has been received at Earth, the data are processed for use in scientific studies. This processing also allows data to be converted or translated into sounds."
Whatever. The point is, it's cool! They are the sort of sounds you might hear watching an episode of Star Trek, only these are for real.
I look forward to the day someone will listen to the winds whistle through the trees of an alien world. But today I will settle for something other than silence. Even a few alien beeps, whistles and white noise are better than that.
Thanks Prof. Gurnett!

Free-Source Space Vehicle Design

By far the coolest thing about the Internet is its ability to allow quick exchange of knowledge across vast distances. The ability to transfer this information would be pointless without someone at one end with something worth spreading the word about.
Linux is a prime example. It does a great job and is a way of "sticking it to the Man" simultaneously.
But take a look at what these guys have posted. http://spacetethers.com/
They've designed what they consider an excellent way of getting into Low Earth Orbit and beyond. In fact, they claim they can get something to LEO for roughly $6 a pound. Compared to what it costs today (around $1,000 per pound) that's quite a promise.
Now, there's no guarantee their plan will work. They may not make a single dollar; may never get a single foot off the ground, but no matter. They are trying to make a go of something with little more than a dream and an Internet presence. Not the best foundation, granted.
But just think about the possibilities. Think about what might come of their plan: A daily delivery service to friends and families colonizing the Moon, or living in orbit on a private station.
Even if all they ever do is tout their wares in the ether of the 'Net, it's still something we should all get excited about.
A dream is fantastic. A dream shared among the population of a planet, is something altogether more fantastic.

All systems: Go!

So, just to be on the safe side I checked to see how many other Space Ace's there were out there in Web-land. There were not as many as I suspected, but their quirkiness far exceeded even my warped imagination.
For instance: www.alphalink.com.au/~roglen/spaceace.htm tells the tale of one dedicated fans lifelong obsession with a little leotard-clad space boy out to save the world. It is interesting to note his "professor" was using ion-engines decades before NASA. There's even a little picture of him. Don't ask me what the "V" stands for.

You might expect a site about a space-faring young lad to pop up, but nothing prepared me for www.spaceaceonline.com There is a posted warning on the Site: "This is an ACE Frehley biased (sic) site!! You may become an addict."
Of course the very next words encourage you to "bookmark us now!" so I don't know how worried we should be about that. Besides, I'm sure there's a 12-step program we could join to break our addiction to "a Rock and Roll Legend."

And then I found: www.atarihq.com/coinops/laser/spaceace.html dedicated to that old cartoonish arcade game. Remember? It was the sequel to Dragon's Lair, with the guy who wears the cool space suit and gets turned into a geeky kid...No?...that's Ok, I had forgotten about it too. I must have pumped a gajillion quarters into that thing when I was a kid, just so I could watch a few more precious seconds of the cartoon. Much as I did with Dragon's Lair...so much for my college money.
But alas, that site too had little to do with actual space and more to do with inspiring Generation X'ers (like myself) to run out and try to recapture their youth.

No folks, I am not a Japanese cartoon, an aging Rock God or a sequel to a classic arcade game. I am Space Ace: "Space" is for the beat I cover and "Ace" is for what I am--Ace Reporter.
I figure, if someone can call Ace Frehley a "Rock God" I can call myself an "Ace Reporter."

If you want to know what space is really like, check out these old journal postings from a real Space Ace: International Space Station, Expedition 7 NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu. Apparently Ed found some free time to jot down a few notes for us mere mortals.

{Things have been sketchy lately, as far as ISS is concerned. Shuttle flights delayed, supplies running short, garbage running over and a circuit board that won't get its act together, have only added to the already high-stress conditions the astronauts train for. But there is light on the horizon, in the form of re-sumption of shuttle flights. And it's definitely a positive sign that scientists aboard the ISS posted their first scientific paper last year with more planned. Astronauts and ground-based scientists are still optimistic about possible future scientific contributions from the station. And so am I. After all, Virgin Galactic pilots will need something to show the tourists on their way to the Moon.}

spaceflight1.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters

Poor, dumb and earthbound

With little hope of ever affording the expected price tag of a simple sub-orbital flight to space, I thought I might do the next best thing. Watching everybody else do it and expounding on what takes place, maybe I can put it into perspective; find a way for everyone to know and understand, our world is rapidly changing. A New Age is upon us and we must ready ourselves, our neighbors and our children.
Call me Space Ace. I am the eyes and ears of the People of Earth and I am watching and listening as we make our presence known in the Sol System.
SETI has searched the Heavens for decades now, in hopes of gleaning a whisper from the chatter of the Universe. But soon we will do more than listen, we will shout up into the darkness, sending gig after gig of data streaming into the galaxy in hopes of receiving a call back.
We fire a multitude of rockets and probes, ever deeper into our system, searching and probing, for what? We may soon find out.
There are those who make things happen (the Rich,) those who watch what happens (the Middle Class) and those who wonder what happened (Everybody else.)
The dawning age of space travel promises everything cruise ships were in the beginning of the 20th Century: expensive, uncomfortable and likely unsafe. But since when has that ever stopped us?
I wish it were more reasonably priced. Regardless of the risk I would gladly strap my ass to any rocket fueled up and ready to go, if only to catch one fleeting glimpse of eternity before burning up like a Roman candle.
But since I can't, I'll do this. I'll bring the Heavens down here.
I am Space Ace.