Backpacking Trip 2010

Day 1
This was the second most difficult climb I've ever taken. I was way more tired than Alex, maybe due to my previous day's minor illness, maybe due to not being acclimated to the altitude. The lower bridge over the Lostine River was out, but there was a long that we reluctantly managed to cross. We camped in the lower Lostine meadow. Best view out the tent door ever. I was so tired that I fell asleep with one eye open. Alex said it was super creepy. The Clif bar I ate before nap time may be the tastiest thing I've ever eaten. Sorry Mom. We accidentally put too much spicy Cajun flavoring in the lentils for dinner; we thought it was barbecue flavor. I suffered through it, but Alex ate mostly trail mix. We had trouble lighting the stove and used way too many matches. Also, I discovered that I did my math wrong and brought way too much propane. There are amazing amounts of mosquitoes.

Day 2
We discovered that the stove can be on when the flame is almost invisible, so we probably wasted a bunch of matches the previous day. We got more matches from two groups coming down the mountain, and gave one of them a propane tank in return. This time, Alex had a way harder time of the hike than I did. However, we eventually made it to Mirror Lake. We decided we probably needed to scale back our super ambitious plans and rest at the lake for a day. Alex wants to stay in the lake basin for the duration, but I decided to try to convince him to at least make it to Glacier Lake. Alex made a tasty dish that I like to call Tuntils - lentils with tuna. It totally made up for the previous night's iffy meal. The mosquitoes weren't as big as in Minnesota, but they were at least as plentiful. We totally didn't bring enough bug spray.

Day 3
I convinced Alex to take a day hike up Glacier Pass to see if Glacier Lake was a possibility. After crossing two iffy ice sheets, we came to a third that we didn't want to cross even without packs, so we decided the high passes were right out. We would have to stay in the lakes basin after all. We didn't even get high enough to get cell signal. Still, it wasn't a waste, because we got some great silly and serious photography. Got back and after scrutinizing the map, I decided trying to find Unit Lake would be a fun alternate plan. Neither of us have been there, and there is no marked path to it, but it isn't far from a major path on two sides so it would be difficult to get lost considering the three compasses we brought. Mountain House made Alex fart. We couldn't stop laughing. We're so juvenile, it's awesome. Alex went out to do some moonlight photography and I tagged along. When we returned, Alex saw some sort of canine we couldn't identify in the dark. The sky was black with mosquitoes.

Day 4
Mirror Lake finally decided to live up to its name in the morning. We got hiking earlier than we had yet (about 11) and made it quick to Horseshoe Lake. We took the Lee Lake path which was a good decision because there were some great views. After setting up camp, I hiked down to where the path passes Unit Lake. I'm fairly certain I found the way down to it, but it was heavy with vegetation. Alex and I weren't sure we wanted to trudge through that with packs, so we decided to stay a day at Horseshoe lake instead. Alex took more moonlight photography and then we slept way in. I'm pretty sure a swarm of mosquitoes formed into one big supermosquito and chased me for a while.

Day 5
We decided to stay off our feet because the next two days would be rough climbs. I took a little walk around the side of the lake and we read a lot. After a while, I went and jumped in the lake while Alex took pictures. It was awesome and extremely refreshing. A bit too refreshing. Soon after that, ominous clouds started to roll in and we heard distant thunder. We got our stuff together and crossed a log onto an island near our campsite. We spent the thunderstorm on that island, complete with lightning, rain, and hail. No good picture opportunities, but I got some videos of lightning. When evening came, the sky graced us with one of the most brilliantly colored sunsets I had ever seen. Alex took tons of pictures and I took some more amateurish ones. The mosquitoes gained sentience and spelled the word 'blood' in the dust.

Day 6
We packed up camp and left at the earliest yet. We took our shortest hike of the trip and got to Douglas Lake at 11:30. While Alex scouted for campsites, I watched a bald eagle fly over the lake. We camped on a bluff overlooking the lake. We were kinda bored, so I put on some Muse while the phone charged. It was good. Another small thunderstorm passed overhead, and we just relaxed in the tent this time. Then as we ate Mountain House, the fattest chipmunk I've ever seen came asking for a bite. We didn't oblige. I tried to coax him out later with some nuts, but he wasn't interested. Fat and picky. We did some sunset and night photography and then went to bed. In the tent, I could see thousands of tiny mosquitoes trying to poke through the tent material to get at us.

Day 7
We stayed in the tent half the morning to avoid the rain. When it stopped, we went out and saw blue sky ahead, so we ate, packed up, and left quickly. When we arrived at Moccasin Lake, new clouds were moving in. We had timed our hike perfectly. After setting up camp, I went up to Mirror Lake to search for the cap to the water filter I had left behind a few days before. I had no luck, and in fact got caught in the rain preceding the next thunderstorm. The rain and thunder stopped when I returned, and the rest of the afternoon was uneventful. We read a lot. When we were getting out the last of the Mountain House meals, I discovered that I had accidentally bought one in family size, so we ate like kings. The sunset rivaled Horseshoe and we got lots more pictures of the fiery sky behind Eagle Cap. In a coordinated strike, the mosquitoes all attacked me at once and I had to jump into the lake to escape them.

Day 8
The morning was fairly uneventful; we got up, ate, got packed, and left like usual. When we passed Mirror Lake, Alex checked for and found the missing piece of the filter. I was totally looking in the wrong place. It's good that we got off when we did, because not an hour after we arrived at the upper Lostine valley, a new storm started. This one was the worst of the entire trip. We had to cower in our tent, hold it up when the wind threatened to blow it over, and then we got our hands stung by the hail through the tent material. Then after it stopped and cleared up, a few hours later another storm hit! This one, fortunately, wasn't as bad. That evening we set up our only campfire of the trip, but ironically, we didn't cook for the only time of the trip, instead sticking to trail mix and bars. Alex took some pictures of the river and the campfire, and as the moon rose we went to bed. Instead of water, the Lostine River flowed with mosquitoes.

Day 9
Alex had decided early on that he wanted to get off the mountain a day early to coordinate with some friends about what to do next. It's a good thing we planned for that, because as we were packing up on our last morning, two of the straps on Alex's pack broke! He managed to rig them up enough to make it down the trail, but since this was our longest hike of the trip (about 6 miles), he had it kind of rough. By the time we made it down to the log over the Lostine, my legs were so shaky from hiking that I couldn't cross it. Alex made it across the log while I tried to balance over rocks across the river. I made it most of the way across before slipping in up to my knees. It took two days for my boots to dry out. The four housemen of the Mosquito Apocalypse chased us all the way down the trail. When we got back to our cars, we promptly found showers before demolishing a large Carnivore pizza at Ember's Brewhouse in Joseph. I highly recommend it.

Trip to Space

Progress: 6.47%  Flight Time: 0:09:42

Solar Array

Progress: 6.47%  Power: 65W

Near-Space Photography Attempts 1 and 2

Yes, you read that right. I'm experimenting with high-altitude amateur photography. I would have posted about it before, but I wasn't sure this was actually going to happen until last week. Here's the story:

Around a year ago, I read an article on the BBC News website (which I highly recommend) that described a way to make a spacecraft with close to the same capabilities of Sputnik using household items. I was fascinated by the concept of building an actual spacecraft by digging up junk around the house, and I briefly considered doing it. However, I'm fairly results-oriented, and because I didn't have a way of launching the resulting spacecraft, I wasn't really interested in putting the work into building it. Besides, I was arms-deep at the time building my second eight-foot light bucket, which I'll talk about in another post.

Then four months ago, I was contacted by a high-schooler named Megan who had found my name on an astronomical website. She wanted help building a simulated satellite as a science project. This satellite would take pictures and transmit them to the ground during flight. I was initially skeptical due to the fact that launching even a small device would take far more rocketry than I (and indeed most people) had the expertise or budget to handle. When she told me she wanted to use a weather balloon to lift it to the upper atmosphere, I thought that this might just be possible.

Around the same time, I read about a group of MIT students called 1337Arts who had successfully done something similar; they lifted a camera attached to a weather balloon 18 miles high, took pictures, then retrieved them when the craft landed. They did it on a budget of $150 and appropriately called it Project Icarus. That's when I knew this would be possible. And as a bonus, they mentioned on their website that FAA regulations state that you can launch a free-floating balloon without any kind of clearance so long as it is under four pounds (along with some other minor restrictions).

However, our task was a little more difficult than Project Icarus. We wanted not only to take pictures, but to transmit them to the ground during the flight. Project Icarus transmitted GPS data using a cell phone to track their craft's location, but I couldn't find a way to get a cell phone to transmit pictures along with the GPS data with limited bandwidth and the kind of control we needed. The solution we came up with was to get a lightweight laptop computer, attach a webcam, a GPS receiver, and a wireless internet adapter to it, and launch the whole works into the atmosphere. As a result, we may be the first amateurs to attempt to launch a laptop computer into the upper atmosphere. I haven't been able to find another example, but if you know of one, please post it in the comments.

The laptop chosen was an Acer netbook with Windows Vista. Using Vista wasn't an ideal setup, but the laptop came with it and Megan was using it for schoolwork. I didn't want to cause her problems by installing XP or Linux, so I decided just to work with what was already there. It weighed less than two pounds and had enough battery life and hard drive space to last the entire flight. We used a weather balloon and parachute purchased from a scientific supply website, and we took 1337Arts' idea of using a styrofoam cooler and hand-warmer packs to keep the components warm during the flight. We used a Sprint Wireless Broadband adapter so that we could transmit pictures and GPS data to cell towers, and we used basic sub-$30 USB GPS receiver and webcam models. We also used a modified BeepX rocket retrieval beeper to make retrieval easier once it landed.

The report is due Wednesday, and we just started setting it all up last week, so it was sort of a frantic weekend. I have a Xubuntu server at home running my security cameras, and I had set it up so that I could access the camera images from my phone. We decided that it would be an ideal way to store the laptop's images and GPS data as well, since it would allow us to access everything from my phone as we were chasing the balloon without dealing with the cost and hassles of a third-party service. So I set up my server to handle the task on Friday, then on Saturday, Megan and her mother brought the laptop to my house so that I could set up its software.

I used completely free software for the project, making this an inexpensive way to perform the experiment. I installed GPS TrackMaker to record the GPS data from the USB device to a file that was updated every 30 seconds, and I set up Yawcam (which I think Megan had installed) to save images every ten seconds for later transmission to the ground. I decided to go with cwRsync to load the data onto the server using an SSH connection. cwRsync is a piece of software that synchronizes a local folder with one on a remote server. I then set up a Windows scheduled task to run cwRsync every five minutes. The advantage of using this setup for data transmission was that if the balloon left Sprint's coverage area, the computer would start from scratch every five minutes to attempt to send new data to the ground, so there was much less chance of a permanent failure due to a temporarily lost signal. Also, cwRsync allowed the computer to send only new files every five minutes instead of sending all of them every time, so it cut down significantly on bandwidth requirements.

The software took about four hours to setup properly, though with the information I now have (most of which I presented above), it would only take me an hour to set it up if and when I attempt it again. When the software setup was complete, the three of us drove out to the countryside to test poor and lost signal conditions. There were a couple of minor glitches, but for the most part, it worked beautifully. We were almost ready for the real thing.

That evening, Megan and her mother assembled the craft, and then they picked me up at 6:00 the next morning. We checked the University of Wyoming's balloon trajectory forecast site, and decided to launch from a coastal town about two hours away from us, which the site predicted would cause the balloon to land within 30 miles of our homes. When we got there, it took a couple of hours for final assembly of the craft and to work out the last few bugs in the software, but we were finally ready to go. Here is what happened:



That's right, complete failure. We actually ran out of helium when filling the balloon, even though we were told that we would only need about a quarter of what was in the tank. We discovered later on that this was because the people who had helped us calculate how much helium we would need had misplaced the decimal point. We were wold we needed to use about 250 pounds of tanked pressure when we actually needed closer to 2500. There was only 1000 pounds in the tank. To make it worse, the town we were in didn't appear to have any helium suppliers. So we had to deflate the balloon and go home with the empty tank. Then an accident occurred on the 2-lane highway between towns only 20 minutes from home, and it completely blocked all traffic, so we had to drive most of the way back to the coast to take the other highway. That added over an hour to our trip. And on top it all off, it was pouring rain the entire time. Still, our spirits were surprisingly high when we got back and we decided to try it again.

It was 1 PM by the time we were ready to give it a second shot. We didn't have enough daylight left to go back to the coast and still have a chance of retrieval before nightfall, so we decided to throw caution to the wind and launch right from the parking lot of the party supply place where we were getting our helium. We calculated that this would put the balloon in the mountains in very rough terrain, but there wasn't anything in the craft that we weren't willing to lose, and we wouldn't have time to try again another day, so that really was our best option. Here's what happened this time:



Forgive me for getting a little giddy in that video. See how much bigger the balloon is this time? Yeah, that helped. The scary part for Megan and her mom is there goes their brand-new laptop and if we can't find it (or it gets destroyed upon landing), they're out a whole computer. The scary part for me was that if there were any more software glitches, there was no way to fix them, no way to get any further data, and we would probably lose the whole craft. Everything hung on some sketchy assembled-at-the-last-minute free software. Yeah. Ouch.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. the data transmitted through the entire flight, and we got continual updates of images and GPS data every five minutes. However, we did have another glitch. It turns out that the balloon had a leak, and when it reached 766 feet, it hung there for a minute and then sank back to the ground. However, it did manage to travel about 30 miles (north instead of our predicted east) and it got so high that we couldn't see it anymore. As a bonus, as if to say "This was a really great try and you deserve a nice break", the balloon landed within a couple hundred feet of a major road near the next town over. But as if to say, "Wait wait, I'm going to throw one last challenge your way" it landed in a giant patch of blackberry brambles next to a big open field. It took us a half hour to fish it out:



We finally got it out after I hacked at the brambles for 10 minutes with a pocket knife, but not before the balloon popped on the brambles, preventing us from patching the leak and trying a third time. Still, it was a crazy fun project, and despite the fact that we only got about 2% of our desired height, we got some incredible pictures. Remember, all of these were transmitted to the ground from a laptop floating hundreds of feet in the air:







Not bad for less than $500 worth of parts and only two days to assemble them.

And if you think this is the end, you are sadly mistaken. Early on, my brother and I decided we wanted to try this too. He is a photographer, and he thinks he can get better pictures than the ones taken by 1337Arts. Our setup will be much closer to Project Icarus than Megan's was due to the fact that my brother wants to send up a professional camera, and we won't be able to transmit the images. However, if it goes well, I want to send up a spare laptop on a third venture and try Megan's experiment again. I would like Megan and her mom to come with us and help us out with these projects; it's only fair that after their hard work, they have their hands in some successful high-altitude photography. We have half of our parts already, and we are planning our first launch for spring.

Look out, 1337Arts, here we come.

Trip to Space

Progress: 6.47%  Flight Time: 0:09:42

Solar Array

Progress: 6.47%  Power: 65W

Dog

My dog sleeps in my room with me. Every morning, she steps over to my bed and puts her head on the edge waiting for me to get up.

So every morning, I open my eyes and see this:


Daddy? Are you awake yet? Daddy? Daddy? Are you awake yet? How about now? Daddy? Now are you awake? Daddy? Daddy? Are you awake now? How about now? Daddy? Are you awake yet? Daddy? Daddy? Are you awake yet? How about now? Daddy? Now are you awake? Daddy? Daddy? Are you awake now? How about now? Daddy?

Trip to Space

Progress: 6.47%  Flight Time: 0:09:42

Solar Array

Progress: 6.47%  Power: 65W

What's Wrong With Modern Physics: Quasars

Be warned: this and upcoming posts contain much geeky science content.

There is one constant that has occurred throughout scientific history. Every theoretical breakthrough that has been made in the past few millennia has been met with skepticism and derision throughout the established scientific community. The earth is round? Preposterous! The earth spinning around the sun? Sacrilegious! The moon has craters? Insane! Yet these theories have all been confirmed, and each one of them has irrevocably altered the scientific paradigm and fundamentally changed how we think of the world.

What about current accepted scientific theory? Following history's pattern, it must all be wrong too, right?

Actually, that's right.

I'm not going to make any scientific breakthroughs here. I'm not nearly smart enough for that. What I am going to do in the next few posts is point out a few of the more obvious anomalies in our current understanding of cosmology and quantum mechanics that fundamentally call into question our understanding of how the universe works.

Note that these are all observations made by scientists smarter than me. These observations, at best, are considered to require a slight rethinking of our understanding of science, and at worst are being ignored altogether. But they all fly in the face of modern science. What we know is wrong, there will be a breakthrough soon that will confirm that what we know is wrong, and here is why:

The Problem With Quasars
This is my favorite tidbit of information commonly overlooked by the scientific community. Quasars, as you will read in most textbooks, are incredibly powerful objects found in the most distant reaches of the universe. When the universe began, the story goes, a lot of the matter coalesced into huge proto-galaxies with incredibly active, powerful black holes at their cores which shed an almost indescribably massive amount of energy. These are observed as quasars. Eventually, as the black holes sucked up much of the matter surrounding them, these quasars were reduced to the calmer galaxies that we see in the nearby universe.

However, there is one teeny, tiny problem with this story.

It is a little-known fact that most quasars, as observed, appear to be directly behind or in the vicinity of nearby foreground galaxies. Some quasars even seem to be associated with the spiral arms of these nearby galaxies.

Then, in 2006, a nail was hammered into the coffin of the scientific community's accepted explanation for quasars. Astronomers found a galaxy (NGC 7319) where a background quasar appears within its central bulge. The problem with this is that the center of the galaxy is so dense that there's no chance in the world that these astronomers should be able to observe a "background" quasar. Look, there's even a picture:


That arrow points to an object that has all the properties of your run-of-the-mill quasar, where it couldn't possibly exist according to the standard model.

There is other evidence as well, such as the fact that many quasars (APM 8279+5255, for example) have extremely high concentrations of iron. These concentrations couldn't possibly exist in the early universe under the Big Bang theory because there hadn't been enough of the right kind of supernovae to form that much iron. Also, many of the quasars have jets on either side that, at the distances suggested by the redshifts, would appear to be moving faster than the speed of light. Scientists have attempted to explain this away by saying that the jets are actually traveling toward us at relativistic speeds causing the appearance of faster-than-light motion, but it is hard to believe that there are two jets on opposite sides of these objects, both moving toward us. A nearby explanation for quasars would make those jets unremarkable. Furthermore, there is evidence of disturbed gasses in the "foreground" galaxies nearby to quasars, including the one discovered in 2006, that has not been explained by the standard model.

The Commonly-Accepted Assumptions
So if quasars are really nearby phenomena, where did modern science get it wrong? To find that out, we must examine how the standard model identifies an object as a quasar: What makes quasars special is their observed redshift. Let me explain.

Light passing through a gaseous element, for example the hydrogen of the outer layers of a star, will be partially absorbed by the hydrogen. In specific, certain colors of light will be absorbed. So when you put the resulting light through a prism (remember high school science?) a predictable pattern of gaps (called absorption lines) will appear in the rainbow due to the hydrogen having absorbed the light. According to the standard model, when an object is moving away very fast, those gaps will be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, creating the "redshift". See this image as an example:


This is supposedly the same effect that causes the horn of a passing train to lower its tone. When the train is moving very fast away, the tone is shifted downward.

However, this only explains that quasars are moving away from us very fast. Why would this mean they are very far away? This is due to the commonly accepted expansion model of the universe. It has been observed that recognizable objects (spiral galaxies, for example) that appear smaller in the night sky have greater redshifts. It is assumed, then, that since more distant objects have greater redshifts and therefore tend to be moving away faster, the universe is expanding. Since quasars have extremely high redshifts, they must be very very far away, right?

I would suggest that most of the evidence of nearby quasars is incontrovertible enough to imply serious problems with the standard model, and most of the evidence that they are far away is based on assumptions piled on top of assumptions. These assumptions, however, are what have been accepted in the scientific community, and that quasar discovered in 2006 is generally considered an observational fluke; a curiosity at best. Some have suggested that there is a convenient "hole" in the gasses of the galaxy that lets the light from the quasar pass through, but that's a bit too convenient for my liking.

The Lyman-Alpha Problem
There is, however, one observation that seems to heavily favor the distant-quasar theory, and it is the reason that is most often given as evidence against nearby-quasar theories: the Lyman-alpha forests.

Remember the absorption lines described above? Lyman-alpha refers to one of the most well-defined and recognizable absorption lines in the hydrogen absorption spectrum. When light passes through a cloud containing hydrogen, this line is always apparent. Since hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, the Lyman-alpha line is most commonly used to determine redshifts. Furthermore, since light from distant objects in the universe passes through hundreds of clouds of gas and dust before reaching us, each one of those clouds leaves a Lyman-alpha line on the object's spectrum. These groupings of lines are collectively called a Lyman-alpha forest. The problem to nearby-quasar theories is this: the Lyman-alpha forests of quasars are as big and as dense as those of distant galaxies, suggesting that they are, indeed, distant objects.

I have seen conflicting data on the Lyman-alpha density of high- versus low-redshift quasars, so I'm going to ignore those potentially important arguments here. I will instead point out as a rebuttal that it seems to be shaky ground to use Lyman-alpha redshifts as evidence against a theory which casts into doubt the usefulness of redshifts as a measure of distance. If quasars are nearby objects and redshifts therefore do not accurately measure their distance, can't a quasar's Lyman-alpha forest simply be a feature caused by the structure of the quasar itself? For example, layers of hydrogen-rich clouds around the quasar that bear some of the the effect that causes the quasar's high redshift could easily explain the forests.

Conclusion
So let us assume that I am right, and that quasars are nearby objects. What does this mean for the standard model?

The most obvious consequence is that all current theory on galaxy formation needs to be rewritten. Since current theory starts off ancient galaxies as quasars, that must not at all be how they form.

However, there is a much bigger consequence. If we assume that A) quasars are nearby objects, and B) quasar redshifts are caused by objects moving away, then we would have to conclude that all quasars are moving away from us as soon as they form. This is inconceivably unlikely, so there is only one other conclusion that we can draw: Redshifts can be caused by something other than an object traveling away from us.

In fact, there is one other known mechanism that can cause redshifts. Light escaping an intense gravity well, such as that of a black hole, will appear redshifted. However, according to the standard model, a nearby quasar with enough mass to cause the observed redshifts would itself collapse into a black hole. That leaves us with one of two possibilities.

Either redshifts can be caused by some mechanism we don't know about, or our models of the collapse of massive celestial objects are flawed.

If I am right, and if this statement is eventually accepted, it will have dramatic repercussions for all of modern cosmology. If our understanding of redshifts is broken, we will have to rethink the positions of everything in the universe, and whether the universe is indeed expanding as we currently believe. Who knows? The concept of Dark Energy could conceivably be killed by quasars. However, if our understanding of the collapse of massive objects is broken, we will have to rethink the evolution of stars and the formation of a wide variety of phenomena from white dwarfs to black holes. Even the Big Bang theory may need to be reworked.

It all makes my head spin.

Next post: I will take apart the significance of the Planck Length.

Trip to Space

Progress: 6.47%  Flight Time: 0:09:42

Solar Array

Progress: 6.47%  Power: 65W

Cheesy Star Trek Eposides

Guess what I've been watching?


Yeah, I made that. Click on it for full effect.

Trip to Space

Progress: 4.58%  Flight Time: 0:06:52

Solar Array

Progress: 3.28%  Power: 49W

XCOR Tests Lynx Rocket

ROCKETS! Yeah!

No, seriously, ROCKETS!

XCOR is testing theirs! They have announced that they have completed construction on the rocket engine that will take XCOR's Lynx craft to the brink of space. The rocket is currently undergoing its testing at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where several space tourism companies have worked to develop their technology. No word on when the testing will be complete and construction of the craft will continue, but they were helpful enough to provide a picture.

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

Falcon 9 Goes Vertical!

In another milestone for Spacex's Falcon 9 heavy lift spacecraft, the first model has been lifted vertically at Cape Canaveral.

This is quite a sight. And why? Well, It is a craft like this, launched from this location, that is likely to lift the Sundancer space hotel prototype from Bigelow Aerospace into orbit.

There are a few other launches to go before that happens, though, and this one will launch soon. A flight window has not yet been given, but it will likely be within the next few weeks.

And here's a picture! Credit SpaceX.
And no, this image has not been edited in any way. It just happens to be particularly awesome.

Progress: 3.93%  Flight Time: 0:05:54

Catch-Up: Armadillo Teams Up with the Rocket Racing League

While I've run across references to the Rocket Racing League several times through following space travel news, I haven't mentioned them because I hadn't found anything that connected them in a significant manner to the space tourism industry. That has now changed.

The Rocket Racing League, owned by Rocket Racing, Inc., started primarily as an entertainment company. They support the development of rocket-powered aerial vehicles, which then race against each other. The stated ambition of the league is to one day race spacecraft against each other. The development toward this goal has in recent years contributed to advances in the spaceflight industry, and it has been speculated that the group is a good candidate to get involved in the space tourism industry.

And now it's official. In late October, a joint venture was announced between Rocket Racing Inc., Armadillo Aerospace, and the government of New Mexico to develop a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) spacecraft with the capability of sending two tourists into space at or below the price of $100,000 each. These spacecraft would take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, and would allow tourists to float freely with a 360-degree view of their surroundings.

If this spacecraft actually gets built and used as stated, I may switch my personal ambitions from Virgin Galactic's offering to this one. Besides SpaceShipTwo, this is the only proposed space tourism craft that would allow people to float freely, and this one would have a much better view. And at half the price, that little purple bar at the bottom of my posts would get much bigger.

The spacecraft would basically be a modified and scaled-up version of that which Armadillo has slowly been planning for years. Here's a picture!

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05

Catch-Up: 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge

Last year's Lunar Lander Challenge was apparently quite the event! For those of you who aren't familiar with the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, it's an annual event put on by the X-Prize Foundation challenging companies to create a viable lunar lander type vehicle that can perform certain tasks. This alone has little to do with space tourism. However, every year, one of the most viable entrants is Armadillo Aerospace, a small company dedicated to the advancement of technologies that could be of use in space tourism.

This was the third year of the challenge. In 2006 and 2007, there were no winners, because nobody was able to complete the required tasks. Specifically, there are two challenges. The level 1 challenge, for $350,000 requires a vehicle to lift off, travel laterally to a specified location, land, lift off again, make a return trip, and land, all within a specified amount of time. The level 2 challenge, for $1,000,000, requires additional tasks.

Well, the results are in, and this year, Armadillo Aerospace won the level 1 challenge! They also made an unsuccessful attempt at the level 2 challenge, but indicated they would try again this year. Congratulations to them and to Widget, their funny little armadillo mascot.

Hey, and I found this awesome picture of Armadillo's vehicle during the level 1 challenge:

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05

Falcon 9 Assembly Nearing Completion

I wasn't sure this website would make it this far, but this is my hundredth post. Hooray! That is, if you don't count posts I've deleted because I mistakenly published them and posts that I've started writing but that haven't been... um... posted yet. But I don't count those, so why should you?

So for my hundredth post, I've decided to take a break from all this catch-up nonsense (keep sucking on that porcupine, NBC) and report on some exciting news that is happening right now.

The progress to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has steadily proceeded, and after its earlier successful test firing, it is now being assembled for its first launch at Cape Canaveral.

The first stage flight tank arrived at the cape on December 18th, and was lifted off the truck on December 21st. Since then, assembly of the rocket has gone extremely well by all accounts. If no problems crop up, assembly will be complete as soon as today.

Even more exciting for SpaceX, NASA has officially selected them to provide cargo transfer service to the International Space Station using the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and SpaceX's Dragon-class spacecraft. Really, though, this comes as no surprise, since you don't demolish a launch pad unless you have a good reason.

Oh, here's some cool assembly pictures, credit SpaceX. Notice how small those traffic cones are compared to the nine Merlin engines at the bottom of the rocket, and how those in turn are dwarfed by the rocket itself.

Progress: 4.03%  Flight Time: 0:06:05

SpaceX Announces DragonLab

SpaceX came out with a pretty big announcement today; they announced the development of a vehicle intended for cargo transfer and experimentation: the DragonLab.

The DragonLab is an intermediate step toward their proposed Dragon spacecraft. The Dragon spacecraft will be VOTE a manned vehicle launched aboard the Falcon 9 rocket, the first of which is under construction. If it is successful, it will likely be used to transfer crew to the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle is retired.

The DragonLab will be an unmanned cargo vehicle that will be able to supply the International Space Station (through NASA's COTS program) and it VOTE will be capable of independent pressurized and unpressurized experimentation. The DragonLab will use much of the VOTE same technology and structure as the manned Dragon spacecraft, so it will also provide a way to test various systems in advance of the manned version.

This of course, has little or nothing to do with space tourism. I'm writing about it for three reasons:

1. Because SpaceX will likely be indirectly VOTE involved in space tourism through the anticipated launch of the Sundancer space hotel prototype aboard one of its Falcon 9 rockets.

2. Because SpaceX's dragon logo is really really cool (see below).

3. As an excuse to VOTE write a really VOTE annoying VOTE post VOTE on VOTE Election VOTE Day.

Enjoy!

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VOTE

A T-Rex Flying a Fighter Jet

I usually hate those images that people make to annoyingly post in online forums to say something about that particular thread, with a couple of exceptions. This is one of them:


So I was looking at that, and the only thing I could think of at that moment that would be more awesome than a T-Rex flying a fighter jet is a T-Rex flying a modified fighter jet that's strapped to a space shuttle solid rocket booster/external tank assembly while the earth explodes. Dinos win.

I then decided that I need to draw that; it was one of the most awesome thoughts I've ever had. If anyone out there has any drawing abilities, see if you can outdo me. It won't be hard.

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Galactic Suite Announces Maglev Space Flights

Okay, here's a thing...

A company that I had never heard of (and therefore haven't had on my list of space tourism companies) came out an announced today that they will be providing orbital space tourism in the year 2012. Furthermore, they say that 38 people have already signed up!

Galactic Suite was founded last year in Europe. I could not find a ton of information on them, suggesting that I'm not the only one who has never heard of them, but they seem to be interested in drawing from various new technologies and putting them together in ways that will allow for orbital space tourism.

They're based in Barcelona, Spain, and they plan on sending people to "a tropical island" (there are pictures of the island, but I could not find its name) for several weeks of astronaut training before launching them using a combination of magnetic lifting and conventional rockets. This spacecraft will dock with one of several orbital space "spas" (the first of which they intend to have in orbit in late 2012), which each have several modular compartments. These compartments will have various uses, but one side of each of them will be almost entirely transparent. The amenities in this space spa will include a room where tourists can "swim" amongst large bubbles of water.

The most unique concept in this proposed design is the maglev launch solution. Magnets will lift the spacecraft past the speed of sound, then the spacecraft will detach and fire its more conventional rockets. It's an interesting proposal. I'm skeptical as to whether this company can pull it off, but we'll see.

Their logo, however, looks like it was drawn in crayon by a third-grader.

Oh, and here's a picture of the bubble thing (credit Galactic Suite). Enjoy!

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Giant Flying Poop Attacks Sweden!

You heard me. I know this is completely off-topic, but I couldn't resist. A giant inflatable pile of dog poop (created as a piece of artwork called "Complex Shit") escaped from the grounds of a Swedish museum.

The massive conglomeration of turds, unsatisfied with its existence as an oddity displayed for gawking onlookers, wrestled free of the bonds that held it to the Swedish grass. But alas! A system was in place designed to deflate the air-filled poo should it ever break free. Undeterred, the fecal escapee overcame this small obstacle and started flying away with the breeze. But freedom was not enough! In its anger, the crappy museum piece tore through a power line and smashed a greenhouse window before finally coming to a horrid, putrid rest.

Okay, I'm done now.

Well, except for this picture:

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SpaceX Failure Aftermath

More news has come out about the failure of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket that I talked about a few days ago.

First of all, the exact cause of the failure has been pinned down (and pretty quickly, I might add). The first stage went off without a hitch. However, after the rocket ceased igniting, there was residual pressure left in its cooling channels that continued to give the rocket a small amount of thrust. SpaceX was aware that this would happen. However, it lasted longer than was predicted; long enough to still be occurring during stage separation. Stage separation itself went off without a hitch; the two stages disconnected from each other perfectly. However, because of the residual thrust in the first stage's rocket, the two stages did not physically separate and this caused the failure.

This is actually a fairly minor problem (note: minor problems in space = spectacular destruction). It didn't occur with the last flight because they were still using the old Merlin 1A engine, and this problem is unique to the Merlin 1C engine. And furthermore, it wasn't discovered in advance because the pressure at which the rocket was tested was almost the same as the residual pressure in the cooling channels. The problem will be fixed with a simple timing adjustment on the stage separation for next launch. Speaking of the next launch, SpaceX announced that this could happen as soon as next month. I certainly hope they give us a bit more advance notification than last time; I'd really like to watch this one.

And how can SpaceX keep operating despite three failures, the loss of three satellites, and no successful launches? Well, SpaceX also announced that they have received $20 million in investments from a technology venture capital firm named Founder's Fund. And a good thing too; they'd be really hurting hurting otherwise.

I'll end this post with an awesome picture of Launch 3 (credit SpaceX), along with some amusing words from Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO.

"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."

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Another Barack Obama Complaint

Okay, I started writing this post just after the final congressional votes on the latest FISA bill, but I decided to hold off on finishing it, because I was just too pissed to think objectively about it.

Now it has been a couple of weeks, and I can say with certainty that I am objectively pissed.

And it's not only because Obama went back on his word that he wouldn't vote to give the telecom companies retroactive immunity (which, by the way, is constitutionally questionable), but because it was unquestionably the wrong thing to do.

For a bit of background: after 9/11, the Bush administration asked (without a warrant) for phone records from the major telecommunications companies. Only one company (Qwest) refused to do so. In fact, there were reports that the government was also recording much of the internet traffic that went through AT&T. My conclusion: when my cell phone contract with AT&T runs out, I'm looking into switching to Qwest.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance ACT (FISA) is what regulates this sort of government activity, and for the record, it is just about the least strict law that has ever existed. For example, you can wiretap a phone call, wait 72 hours, then request a warrant from the FISA court after the fact. This court consists of several presidentially-appointed judges whose identities are secret. They then approve or deny the warrants, but details about the warrants themselves are secret, and there is no oversight. The standard of approval of these warrants is fairly loose; if there is some hint that a sliver of information concerning national security might be gained by the wiretap, the warrant is approved. The only information about the FISA court that is made public is when a warrant is approved or denied (though again, not what the warrant was all about). Of the tens of thousands of warrants that have been requested since the court was created in the '70s, only three have been denied. Not exactly your model of strict standards. And (though I'm not sure how this is possible) the "Patriot" Act loosened these standards even more.

To clarify that last statement, I never mention the "Patriot" Act without using either air quotes or real quotes.

So the years pass, the information about the government's requests comes out, and no less than 25 lawsuits are filed against the telecommunications companies. So what does the Bush Administration do? They insist that a bill be passed granting those companies retroactive immunity for national security reasons. Why go through a super secret court with no oversight that denies less than 0.01% of its requests when you can cover it up and then go back later and provide immunity to get yourself off the hook?

And, well, what did the democratic Congress do? They gave it to him. Now I don't believe they would have done that unless at least some of Congress's democratic leaders had been in on it from the beginning, and are trying to save their own butts. However, Obama had no excuse. He claimed that it was part of a compromise with the Republicans, but their concessions were very limited and consisted of (in part) mandates to provide oversight that they were already legally obligated to provide and hadn't. The bill would have passed without his vote. Polls showed that the majority of the population was against the bill. The only possible reason I can think of that Obama would vote for this is as a signal to the telecom corporations (and perhaps others) that he is willing to give in to their demands when he is President, and they need not be afraid of his populist message. Whether or not that is the case, I don't like it. The bill was wrong, and it was unconstitutional.

What makes it unconstitutional?

Section Nine, Paragraph Three of the United States constitution states that "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." This directly follows the passage mandating Habeus Corpus, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. It seems Section Nine has been taking a beating as of late.

"Ex post facto" is latin for "after the fact". An ex post facto law is a law that changes the legal consequences of actions taken in the past, such as the legal consequences of the telecom companies providing records to the government. So there is hope. If one of those lawsuits I mentioned goes to the Supreme Court, there is a strong likelihood that they would overturn this part of the latest FISA bill. But I would rather that it had not been allowed to get that far.


Oh, and I shit you not: as I was in the middle of writing this post, I got a call from the Obama campaign requesting money. I had contributed small amounts to them twice last year. I don't make a habit of contributing to political campaigns, but I made an exception with Obama. I'm proud to say that today, I rejected them flat out and told them why. This is called voting with your wallet, and I am ecstatic that it worked out so well in this case.

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WhiteKnightTwo Unveiled!

I've been in the back woods of the middle of nowhere having a blast for the past week, but I couldn't have picked a better day to return. The day has come, and Virgin Galactic's first WhiteKnightTwo aircraft has been unveiled!

Together at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, Sir Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Galactic) and Burt Rutan (Designer of SpaceShipOne, among other distinctions) pulled back the hanger doors obscuring the most advanced carbon-composite aircraft ever created. The craft is named Eve, after Richard Branson's mother (though one cannot deny its symbolic connotations). The major hurdles and advances that this craft represents include the longest single carbon fiber aviation component ever created (the 140 ft wing spar).

When it is in full operations, Eve will assist in the launch of SpaceShipTwo up to four times a day by carrying it up to 50,000 feet, and it will also be capable of transporting the spacecraft across the country if needed. Furthermore, other potential uses of the WhiteKnightTwo design have been mentioned, including firefighting and satellite launch applications.

People present at the unveiling (which included Buzz Aldrin and over 100 future Virgin Galactic space tourists) also got to see the first SpaceShipTwo, though heavily shrouded and currently under construction.

Oh, and here's the relevant super awesome picture:

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Politics.... Bleh.

This is the kind of politics I despise. But then I got to looking at it, and started wondering what it was trying to say. Maybe, "If Republicans had been in power, this never would have happened." Wait a moment... whoops.



Okay, maybe that was a bit unfair. But then, so is the billboard. So there you have it.

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Potential First Picture of SpaceShipTwo

Well, it seems that FlightGlobal managed to take a picture of a structure that may be a piece of the first SpaceShipTwo, currently under construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

The structure in question is a piece of a nose section. This appears, at first glance, to be a piece of a WhiteKnightTwo aircraft (which has two similarly-structured nose sections), but key differences suggest that this may actually be the first-seen piece of the VSS Enterprise, the first SpaceShipTwo.

For one thing, the picture shows a nose section as one complete, seamless piece, whereas the officially-released WhiteKnightTwo construction pictures show that its fuselage, including the nose section, is made of two distinct pieces.

Also, there is a prominent structure close to the bottom of the imaged nose section that is not present in WhiteKnightTwo's structure.

Oh, and I guess you'll want to see the picture. Credit FlightGlobal.

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Various Pieces of SpaceX News

Well, SpaceX came out with a couple of press releases in the past few days, one of which is indirectly related to space tourism, so I thought I'd summarize them here.

The first item is that NASA has awarded a launch services contract to SpaceX. This contract calls for SpaceX to provide launch services to NASA for four years with its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets. The quantity and dates of these launches has yet to be determined, but we will undoubtedly see SpaceX's launch schedule change due to this development.

The second (and to me, more exciting) development is that SpaceX has successfully completed its first five-engine test of the Falcon 9 rocket. The test was performed in a cross formation, much like the Saturn V rockets. This is the last step in the test schedule before the testing of the full compliment of 9 engines. The first Falcon 9 rocket will be delivered to Cape Canaveral toward the end of this year, and it will be responsible for launching heavy satellites, the manned Dragon capsule currently in development, and a payload for Bigelow Aerospace in a couple of years that is thought to be its Sundancer space hotel prototype.

Oh, and here's a picture of cool fiery rockets! Credit SpaceX.

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