The Other NASM II

But first off:

1) Who are these people who are able to answer their phones and do text messaging and emailing on the Metro?  Every time I check, I have no reception.  Must just be my crappy phone. 

2) It was so warm today (62F/17C) that I took off my jacket.  After the winter-long heating has removed all the moisture out of the fabric of the house, suddenly on the first mild and humid day you smell the carpets and the curtains until you get acclimatized to it. But not for long, a front is blowing in tonight and there will be a wintry mix by Sunday.

3) I gave a homeless man a quarter today.

4) Landlady's younger brother (who is an actor or something and was in last week's episode of Law & Order) is staying here this weekend.  You know who he looks like?  Billy Bob Thornton.  Maybe tomorrow I should ask him how many people have said that...

5) I bought turkey bacon yesterday and fried it up this morning.  It is AWESOME!  I may never go back to pork bacon, ever again!

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Now, where was I with this second NASM series?

Oh yes, Enterprise.

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Tadaaaaaaa...

Original development mock-up of the Space Shuttle.  In deference to eager Trekkies who demanded it, NASA named the model the Enterprise.  It was tested in wind tunnels for aerodynamic integrity and even dropped from a piggyback to glide back to earth with a test pilot aboard.  But it is made of some composite material.

This looks like it just floated out of the payload bay.

See those little men beside it?  That is how big this is.






Rocket booster ring...?

ANDROID.  It was developed in the 1960s to perform functions that would be repetitive and harmful to a human subject, such as testing space suits.



(Let me know if you can't read the label.)  

Remember when laptops looked like this?

Note the Velcro tabs for sticking pens and useful objects onto the computer.  There are Velcro patches all over the place, on every surface, all over NASA equipment.  

I quipped that after astronauts retire they probably don't ever want to see another piece of Velcro.  Either that, or they use it for everything and drive their spouses round the bend.

(Again, let me know if you can't read the label.)  

Although this looks like a relic from the 1970s, the plate (which in this view is obscured by the label) states it was manufactured in 1989.



Space diapers - these ones have Sally Ride's name tag on the back.  Developed for female crewmembers to wear during launch or EVAs.  Men used to wear urine collection hoses and bags.  Now both male and female astronauts prefer the commercially available disposable diapers.  (Which is why the former astronaut driving from Texas to Florida in diapers without stopping was not unusual in the space flight community, although her reason for doing so was wrong.)

Apparently (according to Chris, who used to be a tour guide at Space Center Houston) Apollo astronauts liked peeing and releasing it into space because they enjoyed seeing their "tinkle twinkle".  The yellow briefs probably belonged to Alan Bean.

Important part of the Apollo survival rucksack.  I suppose in case the capsule on reentry seriously overshot the rescue crews or if prevailing conditions delayed rescue.  Every eventuality has to be prepared for when it comes to space exploration.

Contains: Flashlight, compass, mirror, four fishing hooks, needles, knife blade.  Made of grey-painted steel with brass fittings.

A Mobile Quarantine Facility.  Probably from back when NASA thought alien microbes (as in, unknown, not little green man germs) would return with the astronauts.  It is a modified Airstream and there are six lovely plush olive green velour seats inside.

There will be a third installment of this series.  Teaser word:  Concorde.

Listen to the planets

There is a great interactive solar system at Spacesounds.com where you can listen to the "music of the spheres".

You can also hear flight recordings from space missions here, including Apollo 13.
(I watched it again for the nth time on Sunday - anyone else see it? - and appreciate it even more, hence this post.)

Thanks to their years of intensive military and mission training, the astronauts would have remained extremely calm. Lovell's famed "Houston, we have a problem" sounds surprisingly matter-of-fact, compared to the panic portrayed in the movie. (If you can hang on until 14 minutes in, out of a total of 38.) Throughout the crisis, from troubleshooting to resolution, you may perceive that the crew have snapped into a familiar military operation mode.

Those were the days of heroes...

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And now to the point of this post:

Join me on a tour of our universe...!

You will hear radio and gamma waves and elecromagnetic pulses converted into frequencies audible to humans.


Turn up the volume and listen to Jupiter (and enjoy the video):

Personally, I can't get enough of it.



Now turn the volume down a bit (tis scary) and listen to Saturn - with lots of info:

More here:
NASA's SSE Galileo site


And here is the sound of our Earth:

Planetary Multi-Pack: Here are a Uranian moon (Miranda), a Jovian moon (Io), Neptune, Uranus, our melodic Earth, and a very eerie Saturn:

You've got to love the universe even more now, for you have heard it.

Ad astra per aspera

Internet is currently down at the house and unfixable. Wi fi from next door is intermittent and weak. So I am relying on my good old phone as modem again. Yay Orange. I just really wanted to blog! Let me know if you prefer the larger text...

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I read this book a couple of weeks ago:



It is powerfully and tightly written, impossible to put down, and haunting once you've finished. The detailed descriptions of dog fights between MiGs and Sabres in the skies above Korea are totally thrilling. More than that, though, Ascent is about the men who dedicated their lives to the Soviet space programme, never destined to become heroes like Yuri Gagarin. The ultimate sacrifice necessitated total anonymity, expurgation from the files, even. But no one can erase a man from his comrades' minds, can they?

Mostly, it is about flying ace Yefgenii Yeremin and his devastating struggle to break the bonds of earth to fly amongst the stars. He would walk on the Dark Side of the moon, but no one would ever know, not even his colleagues....

You have to read it to find out why.

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I rarely remember my dreams anymore, but last night I finally captured one. I was part of a large team of astronauts gathered in a large facility. Some of us were coming, some of us were going. We were on non-stop relay missions in one-man capsules, to do what I do not know. I had just returned, put on my pyjamas and was off to join the others (also in PJs) in a lounge area to keep an eye on the status of those still on missions. As I went, I passed one of my friends (who in real life did used to work at Space Center Houston, next door to his father at NASA's Johnson Space Center!).

One dream I will never forget I had in my teens. I was in the space shuttle on the perilous re-entry into earth's atmosphere. I can still remember the vivid orange glow outside the cockpit windows...




Sadly, this image was captured during re-entry seconds before Columbia broke up over Texas in 2003. Crew likened the glow to a "blast furnace".
(Courtesy of NASA/Spaceflightnow.com)