Spacecraft

Cowboys (Just Good Investigative Journalism)

My brother's wife, who will be giving birth to my 7th nephew sometime in the next couple of days, just sent me this link: My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. Sure, it's a little bit corny, but I like corn.

This Stuff Is Amazing! (Just Good Investigative Journalism)

This outstanding blog has some of the most astounding stories you'll never read in the mainstream press. For example, I must have missed this episode of Grizzly Adams:

Then one day, Grizzly was out picking mushrooms when a tree fell on his leg, pinning him to the ground. A huge boulder rolled onto his other leg, a rusty coyote trap snapped shut on his right hand, and a Great White Shark clamped onto his left.

And the really amazing thing is that it all points back to GWB and the VWRC. Really. The site is called BlameBush!, and you should check it out.

A special thanks to Winston for pointing this one out.

Japan Deploys Solar Sail Film In Space (Design)

Here is the story in Science Daily:

Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science succeeded in deploying a big thin film for solar sail in space for the first time in the world.

ISAS launched a small rocket S-310-34 from Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima, Japan, at 15:15, August 9, 2004 (Japan Standard Time). The launch was the culmination of a historic new technology, the world-first successful full-fledged deployment of big films for solar sail.

Two deployment mechanisms were tested, but the article doesn't say how big the sails were, but the altitudes were low enough (122 km, 169 km) so that these sails aren't going anywhere. They've certainly already burned up in the atmosphere. However, this bit of news is very exciting for solar sail enthusiasts.

One of my graduate students and I have just had a paper on the subject accepted for publication in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy:

M. Kim and C. D. Hall, "Symmetries in the Optimal Control of Solar Sail Spacecraft"

I should also mention that it might be a solar sail that provides the propulsion for the spacecraft that takes Severian to Yesod to negotiate the repair of the Sun in Urth of the New Sun, sequel to the Book of the New Sun. But then again, it might not.

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog (blogging)

Next experiment, will the fork in a light socket trick give me hair like Don King?
Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate—the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is:

as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst

The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate, which may take several days or weeks. To locate the full data set, just search for any sites that contain this GUID.

Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL:
http://rocketjones.mu.nu/archives/040605.html

(2) I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Newsreader Software

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~cdhall/Space/

(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 10/10/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 10:06

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS:

(7) My blog is hosted by: vt.edu

(8) My age is: 46

(9) My gender is: Male

(10) My occupation is: Aerospace Engineering Professor

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: SharpReader

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: MovableType

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 06/16/2003

(14) My web browser is: MS IE, Mozilla

(15) My operating systems are: Windows XP, Linux

Firefly (Science Fiction)

One of the benefits of not having cable is the extra time to spend bicycling, hiking, motorcycling, reading, .... But then there's that darned dvd player, and once in a while we end up in possession of a season or two of some tv series from the past, such as the first three seasons of Deep Space Nine (my favourite of the Star Trek series), the first two seasons of Highlander (campy, but fun, and the individual show commentaries from the producers are hilarious), and most recently, the entire production run of Firefly. Two other excellent sources of info are FireflyWiki and Twiz TV.

I love this show, and I'm really having trouble figuring out why it didn't continue. I know I can probably do some google research and sort it out, but I don't want to know that bad. In any case, there's apparently a movie in the works, to be released in Spring 2005.

In a nutshell, it's about a band of merry renegades, 500 years in the future or so, travelling around the galaxy in a Firefly-class cargo vehicle. In the words of the dumbest (and sometimes funniest) of the characters, Jayne, they "rob from the rich and sell to the poor." It's funny, but it's not comedy like, say, Third Rock from the Sun.

Everyone speaks English, but all the cursing is in some delightful invented language (turns out to be Chinese, apparently). One of my favorite lines is from the Safe episode:

Y'all see the man hanging out of the spaceship with the really big gun? Now I'm not saying you weren't easy to find. It was kinda out of our way, and he didn't want to come in the first place. Man's lookin' to kill some folk. So really it's his will y'all should worry about thwarting.

That was the Captain speaking.

Anyhow, I love it, and just wanted to say so.

Way Off Colour Humour (Just Good Investigative Journalism)

Seriously, if you are offended by really foul language, just don't even think about visiting Bad News Hughes.

What We've Learned from the DNC (Just Good Investigative Journalism)

Winston has been listening to what the DNC speakers have been saying and has prepared a sort of Cliff Notes for the rest of us. Example:

Supporters of President Bush (at least 45% of the country according to polls) are extremists. ("What a difference these few months of extremism have made." - Jimmy Carter).

Priceless. Read entire, and the comments too.

On the weight of software (History)

I'm reading the latest issue of The Bridge, a publication of the National Academy of Engineering, and found this cute little anecdote in an article by Butler Lampson:

There’s a story about some people who were writing the software for an early avionics computer.

One day they were visited by the weight control officer, who was responsible for the total weight of the plane.

“You’re building software?”

“Yes.”

“How much does it weigh?”

“It doesn’t weigh anything.”

“Come on, you can’t fool me. They all say that.”

“No, it really doesn’t weigh anything.”

After half an hour of back and forth, he gave up. But two days later he came back and said, “I’ve got you guys pinned to the wall. I came in last night, and the janitor showed me where you keep your software.”

He opened a closet door, and there were boxes and boxes of punch cards. “You can’t tell me those don’t weigh anything!”

After a short pause, they explained to him, very gently, that the software was in the holes.

UPDATE: Be sure to read Rand Simberg's comment for another good aircraft weight anecdote.

Space Elevators (Science Fiction)

Kathy Hanson has written a space elevator story: In Good Hands, in response to the question Who is Guerrero? Read entire.

Ciao, brief report (Motorcycles)

Home late Sunday night from two weeks in Italy. Brief itinerary: Blacksburg, Edelweiss, Dulles, Newark, Roma, Perugia, Arezzo, Milan (wife and kids to Venice, me to Alps), Splugen Pass, Juf, Silvaplana Switzerland, Passo del Stelvio, Milan (regroup with wife and kids), Pavia, Riomaggiore, Pisa, Rome, Newark, Dulles, Blacksburg.

Rented a Multistrada for the two-day exploration of a small bit of the Alps. Rode it about 700 km, including two high passes (Splugen and Stelvio) and the highest village in Switzerland (Juf). Full report when I have photos. If you've ever heard that the Multistrada seat is the most uncomfortable seat available on the planet, well, you heard right. I think they should introduce another iron butt ride: empty one tank of gas on a multistrada. Ouch! If I had one of my own, I'd open up the seat and see if that's pine or oak inside. My money's on oak, since pine is a soft wood.