Shaking our tree.

- 04 Oct 1957 - SPUTNIK!!!

This little dingbat scared the Hell out of many of us then ...

from citizenship typepad.com

Nothing but a polished metal sphere of 585 mm (23 inches) diameter with a mass of 83.6 kilograms (184 lb) and carrying only a radio transmitter, it definitely got our attention.

THEY got there FIRST! Oh, Man!!!

You see, those were the thrilling days of yesteryear when the Soviet Union was ruled by Nikita "We will bury you" Khrushchev who, just the year before, had sent columns of tanks into Hungary to crush a rebellion there (just his way of stating "THAT is a NO-NO!").

The days of "Duck and cover" drills in public schools (not at all insane; if a nuke hit several miles away instead of on top of you, that could make the difference between surviving versus being shredded by glass blown in by the shock wave if all you did was just stand there and gawk at the explosion. Nukes are powerful, but not infinitely powerful. They can be survived, and have been. See reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for hard evidence. (Although, in an essay on civil defense, Robert A. Heinlein advocated situational awareness (paying attention to what's going on in the world) and summed up surviving the bomb in seven words: "Don't BE there, when it goes off!" ))

That innocent looking thing was placed into orbit by ...

from on6wj-sputnik.blogspot.com

... the R-7 launcher (for a long time referred to as T-3), which evolved from an ICBM whose primary purpose was to transport a thermonuclear bomb from Point A (somewhere in the Soviet Union) to Point B (somewhere in the USA).

The local newspapers ...

San Antonio Light, 05 Oct 1957 - from newspaperarchive.com

... published times of when to see it in the morning or evening, when it would be brightly lit by the sun.

To read or hear about the Soviets (listening to the radio when they were stomping on the rebellion in Hungary was heart-wrenching) while they were on the other side of the world was bad enough, but a bit abstract.

To walk out into your back yard and actually see this bright little silver dot in the sky slowly moving overhead, and realizing there they are;  well, that's a whole 'nother story.

(Originally published  1239 CST,  03 OCT 2012)
-

When Worlds Collide ...

... coming soon to the Apocalypse Channel (aka The Weather Channel) .

You know; that place you go to check out what the weather's gonna do.

Where, before (maybe) getting that info, you have to sit through endless replays of "Storm Stories", "It could happen tomorrow" (or maybe not), and, so help me, "Iceberg Hunters" ...

Aim between the eyes, son.  It might charge if it's only wounded.

(Ok. I know! I Know!!! They're shooting off chunks to be recovered and used  for extra pure bottled water.  But, honestly, could you have resisted? :-)

They have a new series, "Forecasting the End!" and it's to include a piece on rogue planets, probably on the scenario envisioned by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer in their 1933 novel, "When Worlds Collide"...

While not the first to venture into this territory (H. G. Wells short story "The Star" (1897) touched on the effects of a close passage), it's easily the most famous (having been adapted into George Pal's 1951 movie).

In 1964, Fritz Leiber published "The Wanderer", also dealing with such a visitor (but he took an approach more metaphysical than scientific. It's been a looong time since I read it, so I could be wrong, but I believe this wandering planet was guided here, in contrast to the random potshots by the others, in which case it's irrelevant to this post.

You see, what I'm concerned with here is the likelihood of such an event involving planetary or stellar size masses colliding or having near misses.

When I was much younger, with much better distance vision, I could take a rifle and put most of my shots (all, if firing from prone or a bench rest) within a 6" (15 cm) bulls eye at 100 yards (or 100 meters), using iron sights. Many people can do better, but that bulls eye is a mighty small target at that range.

It's hard enough to hit with careful aim. If I was to just causally fire the rifle in the general direction, there is an enormous amount of surrounding space into which the bullet is most likely to go. If that bulls eye had thoughts and feelings, I'm sure it would feel pretty safe.

So, just how threatened should a sugar grain (at maybe 0.5 mm diameter) feel about another sugar grain roaming around about 9 miles (15 km) away?

That is the kind of space we are talking about in space.

Trying to get a handle on just how immense the Universe is ain't easy.

The first good attempt I ever came across was ...

Published in 1957, it has been out of print for ages, and the author is no longer with us, so I hold little hope of it ever coming back into print (though it really deserves to be).

It is available for viewing online, at  http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/ and at Caltech.
 ( http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Boeke/frames.html )

The first has larger pictures, but both are only pale shadows of the original. I hope someone with influence sees this and tries to get this wonderful book back in print.

In 1977, the team of Charles and Ray Eames made a short film ...

... that did a wonderful job of presenting it.

Powers of Ten (1977) is available from sellers at Amazon.com (They give a 1968 date, but I believe that is for the initial prototype of the film that was made in 1977) at  http://www.amazon.com/The-Films-Charles-Ray-Eames/dp/6305943877/

In one book about creating the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey", I read that they originally considered a prologue with interviews of various scientists and having a similar "powers of ten" instruction film.  But, they decided it was better to just get straight into the story instead.

One of my all time favorite movies Contact (1997) ...

... opened with a jaw-dropping sequence, right after the title, looking back at our world while accelerating away through our solar system, through the galaxy and beyond to the ends of creation. If you can watch that without being moved, then I don't know what to do with you except perhaps notify the police that "this guy's DEAD!" :(

From here, I'm gonna take my shot at giving perspective to the universe, using grains of sugar.

First ...

From windows2universe.org

That picture should get you started on that perspective (we'll get to the sugar in a bit).

The Sun is not a large star, nor is it very hot. But it is hot with reference to men, hot enough to strike them down dead if they are careless about tropic noonday ninety-two million miles away from it, hot enough that we who are reared under its rays nevertheless dare not look directly at it.
 ~Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (1958 -- or 1941 if that passage is also in the original shorter story from which the novel was later evolved).

Those dark blotches on the Sun are sunspots, storms on the surface that are dark only by comparison with the rest of the surface by being cooler. Actually, they would be blindingly bright, so you can guess what the rest of that surface is really like. They are also large enough to swallow the entire Earth as you can see by the small dot representing us.

Note also, the Lord of our Solar System, Jupiter. Of the approximately 457 Earth-masses of material making up the planets, moons, asteroids, etc., about 318 make up Jupiter and another 100 or so are in Saturn. Isaac Asimov once noted that, to an impartial observer from out there, "our Solar System would consist of Jupiter plus debris".

Now, on to Paul's Sugar Grain Scale of the Universe ...
(NOTE: In the figures below, while I try to give SI (metric) equivalents), I'm following our practice of using the comma to break up large numbers.  I am not using it as a decimal marker, as many countries do.)

A long time ago, I came upon a factoid that a pound (454 grams) of table sugar contains around 2,260,000 grains.

Now, the specific gravity of sugar ranges from 0.68 (bagged raw sugar) to 1.5862 (sucrose crystal). (From http://www.sugartech.co.za/density/index.php ).

For our purposes, I'm using bagged table sugar (as it's the most likely type you'll have at home) at 0.7 specific gravity, which works out to 43.7 lbs/cubic foot ( 700 kg/cubic meter). Say, 98,762,000 grains per cubic foot ( 3.488 billion grains/cubic meter)

0.5 mm (500 microns) is a ballpark figure for the average diameter of grain of table sugar. Having this represent our Sun gives us a scale of about 2.782 x 10 to the 12th (or 2.782 trillion) to one.

Diameter of Sun - approx 864,327 miles (1,391,000 kilometers)
Diameter of Earth - approx 7,918 miles (12,742 km)
Earth to Sun - approx 92,960,000 miles (149,600,000 km)

Shrink our Sun to a sugar grain, and the Earth becomes a bacterium about 4.8 microns in diameter (literally microscopic), orbiting about 53.8 mm (about 2.1 inches away).

On this scale, a light year works out to 2.11 miles ( 3.4 km).

Distance to Alpha Centauri = 4.367 light years.  The nearest known star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, is about 4.22 light-years away.

So, on this scale, the nearest other sugar grain we might have to worry about a collision with would be about 8.9 miles or 14.32 km away from us. And here, we are speaking of things much larger than planets, making bigger targets.

So, with all due respect to the Global Warming/Climate Change Propaganda Channel (the Weather Channel), of all the things I may lose sleep over, rogue planets just ain't among them.
-

The Eagle Has Landed ...

Patch from randomramblings-absentmindedprofessor.blogspot.com

... at Heaven's Gate, and so has its pilot ...

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)- From guardian.co.uk

Yesterday, Saturday 25 Aug 2012, a genuine American Hero left us.

There's really not much I can say that hasn't already been said far, far better by people who knew him. The closest I ever got to him was when he passed by about 60 feet away in a parade in downtown Houston, shortly after his return to Earth.

I still envy the young man who did what I never had the nerve to do;  jumping over the retaining line, running over to the car Armstrong was in and shaking his hand.

As I recall, no undue fuss was made over the incident, but even if there had been, how on Earth could they ever take away from you the experience of shaking the hand of the first human to set foot on another world?

Of course, that's not even a pale shadow of actually being the man to set foot there, but as only eleven others qualify for that, you must settle for what you can get.

Rest In Peace, Sir.

-

Global Warming - A force so powerful ...

... it stunts black holes

This poster was created by Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That ...

... for his post Quote of the Week: ‘global warming stunts black holes’ , in which he was reminded of this line from Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men ...
   “Should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid!"

If the bottom line of the poster is difficult to read, it says ...
   "Takamitsu Tanaka - The New Scientist - June 9 2012"

Apparently, Takamitsu Tanaka at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and his colleagues developed an explanation ...

... that a prodigious amount of X-rays emitted as the supermassive black holes gulped gas would have heated up the universe. Black holes need cool gas to grow so this would have slowed down the growth of other black holes in smaller protogalaxies, even as the growth of black holes in the most massive protogalaxies continued apace (arxiv.org/abs/1205.6467v1).

"This global warming process could have basically quenched the latecomers," says Tanaka. "The early ones end up being the monsters and they prevent the overgrowth of the rest."

I suspect that Mr. Watts is having a bit of fun at this (admitting that he hadn't even finished his morning coffee - a very dangerous working condition as I have learned many times :-), noting ...

Tanaka probably should have said the “galactic warming process”, and maybe he did, and this could is a misquote by the unnamed author of the article at TNS. Either way, it shows how global warming on the brain tends to create an environment for such ridiculous comparisons to make it to press.

Update 1415 CDT, Sun, 10 JUN 2010 - I put this up a little over thirty minutes ago, and already Mr. Watts has struck out the likelihood of it being a misquote.

A commenter to Mr. Watts post said ...
To be fair, Tanaka might have made the comparison facetiously and New Scientist, being New Scientist, took it seriously.

That too seems reasonable. As I noted above, Mr. Watts could have been having fun and venting at the same time (the two are not mutually exclusive), and probably wishes he'd found justification for using a much more famous line from Jack Nicholson in that movie.

I, on the other hand, have no shame and require no such justification, but will plead that it really does apply to many of the global warming advocates ...

   "You can't handle the truth!"
-

Dawn of the Commercial Space Age (Updated)

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 - Updated below, with more pictures. I love pictures.
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 - Updated at end. The second mission is now underway.

Yesterday (Friday, 25 May 2012) was my 70th birthday and, as an avid believer in our future in space, consider that day's news as the best present imaginable.

A commercial space vehicle has not just taken baby steps into space, but delivered cargo to the International Space Station.

See Dragon Docks and the commercial space era begins, by Jerry Pournelle.

Wordwise, there's nothing I can add to Dr. Pournelle's post, but I'm fond of pictures.

So, I scrounged up a couple ...

SpaceX's Falcon 9 launcher lifts off carrying the Dragon capsule,

early morning 22 May 2012 from Cape Canaveral, Florida,

to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. 

Photo from a.scpr.org

From www.SPACE.com

I truly believe we are on the right path, and on our way.

Update - Friday, 01 Jun 2012 - It's back. Here's some more pictures.
Yesterday (Thursday, 31 May 2012), the Dragon capsule successfully returned to earth.

So, I found these to add to the post:

It was launched Tuesday AM, 22 May 2012.  On Friday, 25 May 2012 ...

Photo from redorbit.com

... here it is closing in the the ISS (International Space Station). Three days to match orbits?  Well, it can be done faster (and has), but when it's just cargo that ain't whining, "Are we there yet?", you're apt to go for a more leisurely and energy-efficient path. Also, some of that time was used for various tests in orbit.

In space ...

From news.nationalgeographic.com

... there ain't no "up" or "down". It's all relative. At the bottom of this photo is part of the ISS. Rising up from it is one of the specialized robotic manipulator arms the Canadians appear to have a lock on. It's used to grab this (or any other) spacecraft and pull it down to the docking hatch.

After docking ...

From gizmag.com

... two of the ISS astronauts went inside to check things out (later followed by others).  The protective masks and goggles are routine when entering any spacecraft that has arrived (I'm guessing because of the combination of zero gravity and possible exposure to vacuum resulting in particulate matter, from cargo and God knows what else, being suspended in the air when it is opened up. That's a pure guess on my part. I've got a lot of things on my plate right now, and haven't had a chance to research that yet.).

I had to do a double check of the diagram of the capsule, as that appeared to be a big damned door, but it really is the docking hatch that you are looking at there, with the capsule interior behind them. We've come a looong way since the Mercury capsule. :-)

On Thursday, 31 May 2012 ...

Photo from mashable,com

... after its nine-day odyssey, Dragon returns, to land in the Pacific about 500 miles west of Baja California.  The photo is supposed to be from a video provided by NASA. I say "supposed" because I'm not at all sure what I'm seeing in the background. But, they could have caught it very high up, using a very long lens - they have some dandies!

From cheapcurts.com

From parabolicarc.com

Recovered, and by now probably on its way to the Port of Los Angeles, from whence it will be sent to a processing plant SpaceX has in McGregor, Texas (between Waco and Ft. Hood), for a final inspection.

Future missions are planned to come down on land, using retro rockets to soften the landing, and (hopefully) will be able to do it with "helicopter-like" precision.

So far, so good.

Addendum - Saturday, 02 Jun 2012 - The Astronomy Picture of the Day site put up a video the day after launch.  It's a Flash video, just under two minutes, and might take awhile to load on a slow connection (like mine).  As there's a delay of five or six seconds between ignition and hearing the sound, the video was shot around a mile from the pad.

See SpaceX's Falcon 9 Launches to the Space Station .

Update, 0115 CDT, Mon, 08 Oct 2012 - The second of these missions is now underway. About six hours ago, it lifted off at Cape Canaveral, Florida at 2035 EDT (1935 CDT), Sunday, 07 Oct 2012 in what was described on NASA TV as a picture perfect launch. It is now in low Earth orbit.

Once again, so far, so good. :-)
-

"It will take a long battle ...

... to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important."

DUH!  You think?!!!

If you've read some of my posts on this (including my very first), you probably already have a clue as to where I stand.

So, I'm going to give you a bit of practice at clicking on links ...

MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2012
Are We About To See The Death Of The Global Warming Scam?
The article in today's Daily Mail

   Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to 
   worry about (and if NASA scientists are right 
   the Thames will be freezing over again)

There's absolutely nothing I can add to this.
 (Although the answer to the question posed by the title is "Probably not".)

He pretty well says it all.
 (Although, in truth, it's never really all said;  any more than "the science is settled!")

Check it out for yourself. Ok?
-

Give this site a visit ...

,,, Astronomy Picture of the Day ... and bookmark it (or set it as one of your "favorites" (or however your particular browser lets you do it)).  Far more rewarding than most websites you'll visit.

Today's (Thu, 08 Sep 2011) entry is a low altitude pass over the site of Apollo 17's landing on the moon on  11 Dec 1972.  See Apollo 17 Site: A Sharper View  and click on the picture for an even larger one.  Rather than steal the pictures for my own use, I'm giving you that link instead. Enjoy.

To Houston residents.  Our downtown city streets appear to have been laid out 16 to the mile, making their center-to-center spacing very close to 100 meters. At the upper right of the picture is a 100 meter bar, which you can visualize as a downtown city block to give you a sense of scale.

I have a special fondness for Apollo 17, as it eventually launched me into an entirely new career trajectory and a complete change in my life, as breathtakingly chronicled in
  Adventure of a Lifetime
followed by
  The Adventure - Continued


Having lost all shame of promoting myself, I'm hoping you will take a look, and not find them too boring.

Thanks. :-)
-

Just 50 years ago today ...

... I celebrated my 19th birthday, on 25 May 1961.

It was a Thursday, and I was an A3C (Airman 3rd Class - E2 grade in 1961 ) in the USAF, stationed in New Haven, Connecticut, at Yale University's Institute of Far Eastern Languages (having just arrived there the previous month).

I don't recall if I treated myself at Sid's Diner; where a lot of the Airmen stationed there ate (because it was close and relatively cheap; as we weren't on a base and had no access to mess halls, in addition to our normal pay (pitiful) we were given a per-dium allowance of $2.58/day -- real money in 1961 -- and they were happy to cash our paychecks. Most of us had tabs there.), or more likely, went over to Tony's Pizza for beer and pizza (where I was first introduced to pizza).

If I went to Tony's, it would have been a quiet celebration, just for me. The minimum drinking age in Connecticut at that time was 21, and while I've sometimes been guilty of appalling stupidity (see The Anvil of Life ), I'd like to think my instincts for self-preservation would have kept me from jeopardizing the license of my favorite watering hole by openly celebrating being two years underage.

So, what was 1961 like?

Well, I got my first airplane ride.

A few years prior, our family left San Antonio and moved in with relatives in rural Arkansas to make a new start.  My feelings towards Arkansas cannot be expressed here unless I put an "Adult Content" warning on my blog.

Occasionally I would walk about a mile down the road to state highway 22 and flag down a Trailways bus for a twenty-mile trip into Fort Smith, to catch a movie or just to see what sights the town had to offer, returning by bus in the evening.

In mid-January of 1961, on one of those trips, I happened to come by a USAF recruiting office and walked right in and signed up.  My parents were not thrilled at the news I delivered when I got home, but I was old enough to enlist on my own, and there was really nothing they could do about it except to give me a ride back to Fort Smith and the recruiting office the next morning.  It would be my ticket out of that damned state.

From there, I was put on a bus, with some others, for the trip to the induction center in Little Rock.  After almost a solid day of exams (physical and otherwise; I don't recall ever dealing with so much paperwork in my life ), they took our group to the airport and sent us by a commercial flight down to San Antonio.

This was January 1961 and the airline (TTA - Trans Texas Airways, sometimes known as "Tree Top Airways" (they later became Texas International Airways, before eventually being absorbed by Continental - think I've digressed enough now?)) was still using the Douglas DC-3.

Trans Texas DC-3  -  Drawing by Bob Engle

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/trans-texas-airways-dc-3-bob-engle.html

(Check out his site; he has some truly amazing work there.)

From Little Rock to San Antonio is a bit under 600 miles as the crow flies, but that's if the crow flies a lot straighter than that flight did.  The flight swung down into Louisiana, and I'll swear it made about as many stops along the way as a bus would, probably not making much better time.  It seemed like every time it got airborne, it was already making its descent towards another field.

It was already late in the evening when we took off from Little Rock, and about 3 or 4 in the morning when we got off in San Antonio, to be bussed to Lackland AFB (where all USAF Basic training was conducted then (and still is, as far as I know).

In "The Anvil of Life" (linked above) I touched a bit on my time there, so I see no call to repeat it here.

So, for other things about 1961...

The # 1 hit record in America was "Runaway", by Del Shannon (If you ever saw the TV series Crime Story (1986-1988), you heard it as the theme music played over the opening titles -- "As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong...")

Other hit singles...
  "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" - Elvis Presley
  "Crazy" - Patsy Cline
  "Hello Mary Lou" - Ricky Nelson
  "I Fall to Pieces" - Patsy Cline
  "Mother-In-Law" - Ernie K-Doe
  "Spanish Harlem" - Ben E. King
  "Stand By Me" - Ben E. King
  "The Comancheros" - Claude King
  "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - The Tokens
  "The Wanderer" - Dion
  "Town Without Pity" - Gene Pitney
  "Apache" - Jørgen Ingmann

Popular LP Albums (remember them) were by...
  Harry Belafonte
  Joan Baez
  The Kingston Trio
  Johnny Cash
  Chet Atkins
  Carlos Montoya
  Bob Newhart (what that guy could do with nothing but a telephone as a prop).

Addendum - It's Wednesday, 08 Jun 2011 and on the TCM channel I'm watching a documentary, produced by Clint Eastwood, entitled "Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way". It's not yet available on DVD, but I sure hope it will be soon. Dave Brubeck should have been among the names I listed above.  His experiments with time signatures (The LP Album "Time Out", featuring "Take Five" & "Blue Rondo à la Turk") were already underway then.

Showing at the movie theaters then, among others...
  "Pocketful of Miracles"
  "Judgment at Nuremburg"
  "The Absent Minded Professor"
  "The Comancheros" (John Wayne, Lee Marvin - worth checking out just for Marvin).
  "The Guns of Navarone"

How about TV shows?

Tons of Westerns...
  "Maverick",
  "Lawman",
  "Gunsmoke",
  "Have Gun, Will Travel",
  "Wagon Train",
  "Rawhide" (with this newcomer named Clint Eastwood),
  "Bonanza",
    many others.

In other genres...
  "Peter Gunn" (the theme music became a hit and put Henry Mancini on the map,
                       although he'd already been around for years. The theme from
                       "Peter Gunn" was almost as iconic as the theme from "Jaws"
                       would become 14 years later.) ,
  "The Twilight Zone",

AND -- for the cherry on top -- "Rocky and Bullwinkle";  the "Simpsons" of its day.  If the Soviets truly wanted to attack us, the best time would have been whenever that show was on, as the cream of our defenders would have all been in the rec rooms ready for the latest round of silliness and rotten puns.  If they only knew...

 Natasha Fatale, Boris Badenov, Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket "Rocky" J. Squirrel

( from  notanothernewenglandsportsblog.blogspot.com )

Ok. How about cars, then?

Absolutely the sexiest car on the planet in 1961, bar-none...

Jaguar E-Type - Photo cropped from image at www.conceptcarz.com

After half a century, I defy anyone to even try to improve on that.

At that time...
   Minimum wage was $1.15/hour.
   Average yearly income was $5315.00 (a bit over $100.00/week).
   Gasoline was around 27 cents/gallon.
   A new Volkswagen Beetle went for somewhere around $1300.00
   Some of the less expensive U.S. cars started at under $2000.00
   As for that Jaguar above, a Wikipedia entry mentioned "The test car cost £2097",
   suggesting a price in the neighborhood of $10000.00 -- very difficult to pin down.
   In some parts of the country, you could rent a house for $50.00/month.

In 1961, the U.S. launched the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba, at the Bay of Pigs.

The Berlin Wall went up later that year.

Vietnam was not that big a deal then, although we already had advisors there.  Laos was the hot spot that had many of us concerned;  a civil war having just erupted then.

On 12 April 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, completing a single orbit and then returning to Earth.

 Yuri-Gagarin and Vostok-1 - from www.newshawker.com

A few weeks later, on 05 May 1961, U.S. Navy Commander Alan B. Shepard became the first American to go into space, but not into orbit; the Redstone rocket he rode (essentially an updated version of the German V2 ) simply didn't have the power for that.  An American orbital mission (John Glenn's) would have to wait for the not-yet-man-rated Atlas rocket to become available.

 Alan Shepard Postage Stamp         -         from www.spacetoday.com

They issued this three weeks ago, on 04 May 2011 (50th anniversary)

To take some of the sting out of always seeming to follow the Soviet's lead into space, on that 19th birthday of mine, 25 May 1961 (although I didn't hear about it until a couple of days later), President John F. Kennedy made a speech to Congress about what we could and should do about our position in space, vis-a-vis the Soviets.

It included this item which would personally affect me eleven years later, making possible Adventure of a Lifetime, which in turn led to The Adventure - Continued, the events in which would eventually lead to a whole new career and a complete change in my life. ...

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

"No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

Democrats were surely a different breed then.
-

The Adventure - Continued

-
In which further attempts at attending launchings in person eventually led to a new career.

(This is a follow on to Adventure of a Lifetime, which should be read first.)

Oh, and special thanks to one of my favorite science and science-fiction writers, to whom I also sent that email notice of that post. He can be as verbose as necessary to get a point across, but with a sniper's precision, he emailed to me a single word, "Indeed", which told me that he actually read as far as the line it most applied to ("We had dreams, then."), and by sending it suggested that my writing may not be beyond redemption. I've not given the name here, as he sent it to me in an email instead of making the comment on my blog, so name-dropping just doesn't seem appropriate. Thank you, Sir, for giving my ego much-needed nourishment. :-)


That old Rambler of mine made it back to Houston after the Apollo 16 trip, but didn't survive the summer. After a certain age, some cars reach the stage on maintenance where the best thing to do is take it to an auto salvage yard and accept what they will give you for its' junk value ($50.00 in that case) and hope they will throw in a ride home (they did).

So, the rest of 1972 was spent without a car (except when I could borrow one from a friend) and otherwise I depended on a bike. Fortunately, most of the time I lived in Houston in apartments that weren't too far from my job. But this meant I wouldn't be driving to Florida for the night launch of Apollo 17, scheduled for the night of 06 Dec 1972.

I was able to borrow a car often enough to experiment some more with night shots of refineries, especially gas flares at some of them.

When Apollo 16 lifted off, there were huge plumes of water vapor (mentioned in the previous post) flaring out both sides for almost a couple of city blocks. White, of course, and very reflective. The exhaust from the rocket was brilliant white and I hoped that it would reflect off of those plumes enough to illuminate the vehicle as it was rising. That's why I was experimenting more with those exposures.

No longer possessing a car, I made arrangements to rent one at Orlando, Florida (I also planned on checking out Disney World after the launch), and took the bus from Houston to there.

Why a bus???

Partly, because I'm cheap.

But this was 1972.

We still had a few nutcases hijacking airplanes to be flown to Cuba. I had no idea of what the viewing conditions for the launch would be like at Havana airport, and had no wish to learn.

So, $59.00 bought a bus ticket from Houston to Orlando.

I'd made plenty of long distant bus trips when I was in the USAF a decade before, and they were usually pretty miserable and tiring affairs. This time, it was an express bus as far as Tallahassee, very comfortable and I thought "WOW. This is so GREAT".

From Tallahassee to Orlando, things reverted back to the "good old days" I remembered so well, changing buses about four times, even going up to Valdosta, Georgia before finally heading south to Orlando, and every bit as enjoyable as my Air Force experiences.

Another difference between bus travel and air travel. Car rental places don't cluster around bus stations. Needed a taxi to even find the place. Collected the car and headed out to Titusville, about 50 miles east.

Tighter schedule this time. Went straight to the space center for the tour again, but this was only ONE day before the launch, so the tour bus did NOT take us near the pad as they had already begun fueling the rocket (see what I said in the previous post).

Afterwards, went to the Titusville beach, cutting things really close, and dove into the first rental lot I saw that was still accepting cars. Absolutely EVERYBODY was here for this one. (And why not?!!! It's been almost 38 years now, and NO ONE has gone back yet. And God only knows when anyone ever will. Or if it will be an American when that happens.)

So, once again I'm set up at the beach, camping out again, just not in my car. No chess game this time; if those kids are back, they could be anywhere. Just a lot of waiting, as it was last time. It's now late at night, on 06 Dec 1972, and the rocket and pad are a gleaming jewel, even from 12 miles away. Managed to get a number of good exposures through the 300mm lens, bracketing my initial estimates a couple of stops either way.

Uh-oh! Clouds have been forming. The lift-off, scheduled for early evening, has been put on hold (countdown stopped) because of some rain and lightning aways off. This would really suck if the whole thing has to be rescheduled for the next launch window (by which time I would have to be on my way back). I cannot even imagine what the astronauts inside must feel.

We've now crept past midnight, into Pearl Harbor Day, and the countdown has resumed. A little over half an hour past midnight Apollo 17 fires up, and my head is bobbing between the viewfinder and looking with naked eye as this magnificent creature rises on a pillar of dazzling white fire that is NOT as bright as day (let's not get ridiculous here) but is bright enough for me read newspaper headlines from that source 12 miles away.

As I'd hoped, that light reflecting off of those water vapor plumes lights up the entire 30-story vehicle beautifully. The worrisome clouds have gone and the rocket can be followed unimaginably far, a brilliant star just going on forever. (Speaking metaphorically, of course; by the time it went to the second stage, it was effectively out of sight to the naked eye.)

Leaving the site, I wondered wistfully if I would ever get a chance to witness something like that again. At that time, I never thought to wonder if I would even live long enough to see another man go to the moon.

After returning the car, I flew back to Houston ($79.00 for Delta from Orlando; only $20.00 more than the bus); I've got my wish and seen it, so who cares if I make an unscheduled visit to Havana? :-)

In 1975, I revisited the Cape and Titusville, to watch the liftoff of the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Not nearly as spectacular; it using the far smaller Saturn 1B launcher instead of the mighty Saturn V.

The career changer mentioned in the first line finally happened as result of the next launch I wanted to witness, and came about in this random way.

I left the Air Force early, but honorably, and had no contact with any of my former buddies there until 1975 (I think) when, in a department store here in Houston, a man stepping off the escalator behind me asked, "Excuse me.  Aren't you Paul *******?".

I was trying to remember if he was an architect client of ours when it hit me that he had addressed me by a last name I hadn't used in nine years (another story, probably never to be revealed). He was one of the bunch I had been with, and was now living just north of Houston and working as an exploration geophysicist for Shell Oil Company.

I got back together with him and his family. That was a bit of a miracle. Have you ever run into someone that you knew from long ago, only to find so much has changed that you no longer have anything in common anymore?

A couple of years later he and his family moved up to central Michigan, where he joined a seismic exploration company there. Another couple of years and he's broken off from them and started his own company (also seismic exploration).

In the meantime, several things have been going on. I'd been an electrical draftsman, evolved into an electrical designer (almost an engineer, but sans license and seal) and had been doing the same thing for almost two decades.

Into our engineering world arrived a micro-computer, in 1981, primarily for use by our secretary as a word-processor (A lot of her work was typing up engineering specifications, usually from existing boiler-plates; this made her job enormously easier.) and an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) program in Basic, that never worked properly.

But, it had a professional grade level of Basic included, and I had found me a new plaything. Soon I was teaching myself programming on it, and making programs to handle some of the calculations required in my work.

Hang on. we're really getting there. I promise.

I had made several trips to Michigan, to visit my friend, and we had talked several times about the possibility of me moving up there to join him. After nearly 20 years of drawing circles and home runs, one gets ready for something new. (Any reader who has done electrical drafting, design and/or engineering knows what I'm speaking of. As for the rest: Nyah, nan nan nan nyah! :-)

In September of 1983, one of the Space Shuttles was scheduled to go up at night. I could afford it, had plenty of vacation time available, and decided, "Let's do it!".

This time, it didn't go so well. When it was time to get rolling, I was asked to not go; our sometimes crazy work schedules had piled up too much (and this wasn't the first time by a long shot. Their recurrences was one of the reasons I had so much vacation time built up; I'd had several vacations aborted this way). So, I didn't go.

Watching the lift-off, on TV at home instead of the Titusville beach, I'd HAD it! I was feeling "G*D D*MM*T! I'm not the only one there!". After the lift-off, I made a long distance call to my friend in Michigan and told him that if he still thought I could do something up there, I was definitely interested.

As I noted above, he had started his own company. He was farming out the data to a data-processing company, was not real impressed with the results, and decided to set up his own data-processing center.

In early 1984, he called back and asked me if I would come up and manage it for him.

And so, because of what amounts to a hissy fit over not being able to go to that night shuttle launch, I was soon on my way to Michigan, a new career, and a whole new future.

(Damn little of my life has ever been carefully planned; most of the time I seem to drift up on whatever shoals the current takes me to and I go on from there. The career change noted above is the closest thing to careful planning, and it resulted from an impulse; the only planning involved was that, when I left the engineering company, at least I knew where I was going and what I would be trying to do. Most of my odyssey has been far more random and capricious. I'm seriously considering a post on the utterly random and unpredictable events that have led me to where I am today.)

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Adventure of a Lifetime

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38 years ago today, on April 16, 1972, the penultimate manned moon mission (Apollo 16) was launched.

In early 1972 (February, I think) I saw an article in the Houston Chronicle noting that the Apollo series of manned moon exploration missions (originally scheduled to go up to number 20) would be cut off at 17 (due to budget cuts and declining interest).

Apollo 17 would lift off on December 6, 1972, and it would go at night!!!

I decided right then that "I've GOT to see that!".

I noticed that Apollo 16 was scheduled for April 16th, two months away. I decided to aim for that one also, in case something happened to prevent Apollo 17.

At that time, I was an electrical draftsman, earning the princely sum of around $5.00 an hour (prices were much cheaper then) and possessed a 1964 Rambler that had over 100,000 miles on it and was on its' last legs. So, number one concern was whether I could even nurse it from Houston to the Cape and back.

I also wanted to get some good photos (now, sadly gone forever; that's another story), so I strained my credit at Sears (that was the only card I had besides a gas card; this was before VISA and MasterCard began flooding the market with unsolicited credit cards), and bought a Ricoh Singlex 35mm camera and a 300mm telephoto lens.

Among the shots I wanted to get would be night shots, not only of 17's launch itself, but also of the vehicles on their pads, lit up at night.

For that, I would need very fast film (the fastest color films at that time being color slide films such as Kodak High-Speed Ektachrome at 160 ASA and GAF 500 at 500 ASA).

Having seen, on TV, what they looked like at night, I roamed the outskirts of Pasadena to get shots of the refineries which were similarly lit in places, taking dozens of carefully documented exposures to see what would work best.

That resulted in GAF being taken out of consideration because it was so grainy as to be almost unusable, and so sensitive to exposure levels that you had to be within 1/2 stop for the result to be any good at all. On the other hand, Kodak's High-Speed Ektachrome delivered usable images even when two full stops away from correct exposure. That's what I went with.

A stop at Household Finance (pre VISA and MasterCard, remember; at least in MY case) provided a modest amount that I hoped would be sufficient (it wasn't, as things turned out).

I had enough vacation time available for this (and also for the December trip) so off I went.

That worn-out Rambler was doing Ok until, when approaching New Orleans, the engine started threatening to cut out and I could hear that pulsing hissing sound that announces a blown cylinder head gasket. By the time I found a place where I would consider stopping, I had made it to Bay St Louis, Mississippi where I pulled into a motel for the night. I would determine, the next morning, if that was the end of the line.

Next day, I got a recommendation from the motel operator for a mechanic who came over and checked it, agreed with my diagnosis, and said he could fix it for $75.00 (1972, remember. At that time, the cheap, crappy, but clean apartment I was living in went for $75.00/month).

This was more than I had figured on, so I phoned my boss and asked him if he would advance me the amount and wire the money to where I was. He did, the repairs were made, and I was on my way again (after being afraid that I would have to give up, abandon the car and the whole trip, and take the bus home).

In the early days of space launches, most onlookers (not among the select that watched from stands at the space center) viewed them from Cocoa Beach. As they progressed from Mercury thru Gemini and then to Apollo, new launch pads were built further north on Merritt Island. Launch Pads 39A and 39B are so far north on that island, the nearest city to watch them from is Titusville.

I reached Titusville on April 14 (two days before launch) and went over to the space center to take the tour. The tour took us to within 1/2 a mile of the rocket, sitting on the launch tower and pad. Something over 30 stories tall is quite a sight that close.

They hadn't begun fueling it yet, otherwise we never would have been anywhere near that close to it. The two pads are a bit over three miles from each other, and also at least that far from the Vehicle Assembly Building and the Mission* Launch Control Building.

There's a reason for that. Fully fueled, the Saturn V launch vehicle contains more than 3000 tons of fuel and oxidizer, packing a lot more energy than the same amount of TNT, but with not quite the shattering effect ("brisance" is the word, I think) of that much explosive. Nevertheless, it can make one hell of a bang if it goes off; hence the separation. The Russians are believed to have had such an incident, taking out a major portion of their launch complex, with quite a few casualties, a few weeks before Apollo 11 lifted off on its' historic mission in July 1969.

I had this insane notion that, after touring the space center, I would head up north to Daytona Beach or even Jacksonville, rest up in a motel, and then come back down on launch day.

BUT, with two days to go, it looked as if half the population of Florida was already crowding U.S Highway 1 alongside Titusville. Figuring that if I stuck to my original plan I wouldn't even get near the place on launch day, I dove into one of the places on the Titusville beach that were renting spaces for cars, knowing I would just have to camp there.

So, there I was on the beach on the Indian River (separating Titusville from Merritt Island), looking at what I came to see from a distance of a bit over twelve miles.

At that distance the curvature of the Earth would have cut off a portion, except for the fact that the launch pad is placed on top of a ramp that rises about four stories and the pad itself probably adds another 10 feet or so, making the whole thing visible.

Hold your thumb and forefinger over each other, a few millimeters (or 1/8th of an inch) apart, at arms length and imagine a skinny white splinter held vertically between them. That's what a Saturn V looks like at that distance to the naked eye. A pair of 7x50 binoculars, or a 300mm telephoto lens, does a decent job of showing it.

Now, nothing much to do except wait. A couple of kids from the car next to me set up a chess game and managed to teach some of it to me. Never got all that good at it; I'm mostly a tactical person, who can react very inventively to new situations, but the key word is "react", meaning I'm dead meat for a good strategist.

Finally, mid-day, April 16, 1972.

Apollo 16 fires up, huge white plumes flaring almost a couple of hundred yards to each side. They are almost pure steam; there is a deluge system that dumps God knows how many tons of water onto the lower pad at the moment of ignition, to prevent the rockets exhaust from scouring it away. The feeling of pure naked power is overwhelming, and we haven't even heard anything yet. It takes a full minute for the sound to reach you, and it's a low-pitched rumble that is felt as well as heard. That rumble continues until it is long out of sight.

Something I will remember until the day I die.

We had dreams, then.

(And, YES. I'm aware that I have not even touched on Apollo 17.)

Addendum - 09 May 2010 - When I originally wrote this, I believed that water deluge system was meant to protect the lower launch pad from the scouring effects of the rocket's exhaust at liftoff.  I've since learned that it is actually a sound suppression system to protect the entire structure from the effects of very intense sound pressure (Up to 235 decibels at liftoff; supposedly lethal at close range, but I've yet to search out more definite info on this.).

Addendum - 07 Dec 2010 - Six days after writing this post, I followed it up with The Adventure - Continued  (about Apollo 17 and beyond). This addenda is just the inclusion of the link.

* = Correction 11 Jan 2011 - That was the Launch Control Building.  Mission Control is at the Johnson Space Center, in Clear Lake, Texas -- now part of Houston.

Addendum - 19 Feb 2011 - This is ten months after I originally wrote this post. Now, suddenly my site meter shows hits from all over the world, with no referring link, as if someone found it moderately interesting and alerted others by email.

If you've read this far, I would love to know what brought you to this post.
A comment or email would be welcome.

Thanks. :-)

Addendum - 23 Feb 2011 - A commenter noted that it was a comment of mine on the Internet Movie Data Base's page on the upcoming (April 22, 2011) Apollo 18  that triggered the explosion of hits on this post.

Cool!

If I'm going to get so many visitors, I hope that among them will be someone who can confirm (or refute) my "supposedly lethal  at close range" comment (about the sound of the liftoff) I made in the addendum about the sound suppression system.

Would  be very curious to know, and to know how close.

Addendum - 29 Jun 2011 - This post is once again getting a lot of hits.  Contrary to my 16 Apr 2011 comment below, the release date for Apollo 18  has been moved up to Friday, 02 Sep 2011.   I guessing that is the source of the traffic.  (See There is a REASON why ... )
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