Monthly Archives: April 2010

Challenger Launches with Spacelab, and a Titan-IV Farewell

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Twenty-five years ago yesterday* — April 29, 1985 — the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51B.


(STS-51B launch. NASA image.)

Astronauts Robert F. Overmyer, Frederick D. Gregory, Don L. Lind, Norman E. Thagard, William E. Thornton, Lodewijk van den Berg and Taylor G. Wang launched the student-built Northern Utah Satellite (NUSAT-1) and spent a week in space with the European Space Agency’s Spacelab-3.

And on April 29, 2005 — 5 years ago yesterday — the last Titan-IV to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station blasted off with a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite aboard. Titan rockets had been launching military and civil payloads for nearly five decades, and this launch left one final Titan-IV in the inventory, which launched from Vandenberg AFB in October 2005.

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*Apologies for the tardy space history entry. As Poppa says, I’m “a day late and a dollar short.”

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Two Space Anniversaries: a First for China, and Hubble Reaches Orbit

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Forty years ago today — April 24, 1970 — China joined the “space club” by launching its first satellite, appropriately named China-1. China was the fifth nation to launch its own satellite.

And 20 years ago — on this date in 1990 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-31 to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.


(STS-31 mission patch. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

The STS-31 crew consisted of astronauts Loren J. Shriver, Charles F. Bolden (the current NASA Administrator), Steven A. Hawley, Bruce McCandless and Kathryn D. Sullivan. The HST had more than its share of problems, given its blurred optics and the need to mount a repair mission, but its launch was still a momentous occasion for space science. It has brought us remarkable images year after year, more than I can count.


(Hubble Space Telescope deployment from STS-31. NASA image.)

It was momentous for yours truly, also: when it landed on April 29th at Edwards AFB, I was once again on duty as part of the AF Flight Test Center shuttle recovery team. It really doesn’t seem like so long ago, yet it seems like another lifetime ….

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First Molniya Satellite — Highly Elliptical Orbit for High Latitude Communications

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Forty-five years ago today — April 23, 1965 — the Soviet Union launched Molniya-1 on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur.

The satellite was placed in a very particular orbit: highly elliptical, with perigee (the lowest altitude) very close to the Earth’s southern hemisphere and apogee (the highest altitude) far above the northern hemisphere. By carefully selecting the angle of inclination (how “tilted” the orbital plane is from the equatorial plane), they produced a situation in which the satellite’s apparent motion over the northern hemisphere was very small, providing extended communications coverage in the polar regions where geosynchronous satellites could not.

The orbit soon became known as a Molniya orbit, after the Molniya satellites that were first inserted there. “Molniya,” itself, means “lightning.”

Here’s a wonderful YouTube video showing how the Molniya orbit works:

— BREAK, BREAK —

And, congratulations to the Air Force’s X-37B team for their successful launch last night. (Head to the Space Warfare Forum if you want to discuss it.) Well done!

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Why are Terrorists' Grievances More Palatable than Conservatives' Opinions?

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(Disclosure, or Caveat: I don’t have hard evidence to back this up, and I presume many of my friends on the left side of the political aisle would deny it. This is supposition on my part, grounded in my own perceptions of news stories, Internet postings, and conversations. I suspect I could find some documentary evidence if pressed to do so.)

My question in this blog post stems from the vehemence with which the Tea Parties have been excoriated by left-leaning elements of the press and the populace. Interesting in the first place is that the groups took their name from a pivotal event in U.S. history, and were quickly branded with a homosexual slur that many on the left still seem not to recognize.* Perhaps it should not be surprising, since those leaning left consider themselves “progressive” and wish only and always to “move on” to something new and different (even if not demonstrably better), that they would disdain a movement that looked back to an example of revolutionary protest by Colonial patriots.


(U.S. Flag image by Elaron, via Flickr, under Creative Commons. Click to enlarge.)

But even more interesting and appalling is that the same people who went to great lengths after September 11 to ask why terrorists would attack us — who characterized the terrorists’ concerns as legitimate and presumably still believe them worthy of serious consideration by the very people they attacked — won’t spare even a moment to consider why their political opponents differ from them. They asked about the terrorists, “Why do they hate us?” Do they ask of those at a Tea Party rally, “Why do they disagree with us?” From what I have seen, they do not ask and would not be interested in the answer. In a life-and-death struggle with radicals who would prefer them (and the rest of us) dead if we refuse to convert, they want to meet around the table and listen to grievances; but in a political debate, they refuse to listen to differences of opinion.

People on the right and the left used to agree on one thing: that they would defend each other’s right to express their opinion, even when they disagreed. No more, it seems.

Pogo was right: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”**

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*First pointed out by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. In effect, their use of vulgar slang in the pejorative sense equates to a slur in both directions, i.e., against the homosexuals as well as Tea Partiers.

**From a 1971 cartoon by Walt Kelly. A play on US Navy Captain Oliver Hazard Perry’s message to Major General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie (War of 1812), “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

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A Space DART That Hit Its Mark Too Hard

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Five years ago today — April 15, 2005 — the “Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology” (DART) spacecraft was launched by a Pegasus-XL rocket from Orbital Sciences Corporation’s L-1011 carrier aircraft flying out of Vandenberg AFB.


(Technicians prepare the DART spacecraft for flight. Orbital Sciences Corporation image from http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news/dart/. Click to enlarge.)

The DART spacecraft was meant to rendezvous with and maneuver around the Multiple Paths, Beyond-Line-of-Sight Communications (MUBLCOM) satellite; however, the mission was not successful.

From the mishap investigation report,

DART performed as planned during the first eight hours through the launch, early orbit, and rendezvous phases of the mission, accomplishing all objectives up to that time, even though ground operations personnel noticed anomalies with the navigation system. During proximity operations, however, the spacecraft began using much more propellant than expected. Approximately 11 hours into what was supposed to be a 24-hour mission, DART detected that its propellant supply was depleted, and it began a series of maneuvers for departure and retirement. Although it was not known at the time, DART had actually collided with MUBLCOM 3 minutes and 49 seconds before initiating retirement.

I don’t know if they characterized it as a “successful failure,” in that they learned something useful from it, but it’s important to try these things, even if some of them fail. As I heard Howard Hendricks say many years ago, “If you’re not falling down, you’re not learning to ski.”

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RavenCon Recap

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(Another version of this recap is on the Feature page of my website.)

Last weekend’s trip to RavenCon went very well. The con was in a more spacious hotel this year, and as usual was superbly organized and the con staff was excellent. It felt good to be immersed in science fiction and fantasy again, even for a short time.

I was pretty busy during the con, as you can see from the list below:

  • Making the Science Fit the Story — This was an enjoyable panel with a surprisingly large audience, very well moderated by John Cmar and featuring the multiple Nebula Award nominee Bud Sparhawk.
  • Pitching Your Work and Writing a Query Letter — This was a mini workshop with Michael Kabongo and Kalayna Price, and it took a slightly different direction from the original intent. The three of us did, however, take the opportunity to drill into the participants what it takes to write a professional cover/query letter.
  • The Pen is Mightier Than The … — I called this panel the “Baen Books World Domination Panel”, since the panel opened with an entire slate of Baen people: authors Julie Cochrane and Steve White, plus me. Later we were joined by Barbara Friend Ish, publisher of Mercury Retrograde Press. I moderated this panel, which explored the selection and treatment of weapons in science fiction.
  • Will there be BBQ’s in Space? — This panel turned out to be much more interesting than we imagined it would. Julie Cochrane, Chuck Gannon, and Hugo Award nominee Lawrence M. Schoen were my fellow panelists, and we discussed cultural celebrations and how writers incorporate them into various types of science fiction stories.
  • What does the future hold for space travel? — For a 10 p.m. science panel, this one was well-attended and we had a lot of fun with it. Laura A. Burns moderated, and Chuck Gannon, John Cmar, and Butch Allen were the other panelists. We covered everything from the current state of affairs at NASA to some far-out propulsion possibilities, and Dr. Yoji Kondo provided some expert commentary from the audience. (Afterward, I talked for awhile with Dr. Kondo about our work at Edwards AFB, and about science fiction luminaries such as Dr. Robert L. Forward and Charles Sheffield.)
  • Blogging, Twittering, ___ings: Are They Productive Time or An Addiction? — I moderated this panel, which had the widest variety of people on it: Nebula Award-winning Baen author Catherine Asaro (sitting in for her keyboard accompanist Donald Wolcott), literary agent Michael Kabongo, and artists Chris Flick and Bryan Prindiville. We had quite a lively discussion, despite the fact that we outnumbered the audience (one of the dangers of a late-day Sunday panel).

In addition, I also attended a few panels, including “Not Your Mommy’s Star Trek, or is it?” and “The Rise of Young Adult Dystopias.” More important and more enjoyable, I enjoyed some long and fruitful discussions with Lawrence M. Schoen, Bud Sparhawk, and Amy Sturgis, and even made some time to work on a short story.

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Satellite Navigation, a Half Century Ago

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Fifty years ago today — April 13, 1960 — the first navigational satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor Able-Star booster.


(Transit satellite. Smithsonian Institute image from http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gps/before.html.)

Called Transit-1B (the 1A spacecraft had been lost in September 1959 when the launch vehicle’s third stage failed), the small spin-stabilized Navy satellite and its later companions proved the feasibility of using satellite signals for geolocation. Transit paved the way for the Global Positioning System we know today.

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Not Space Politics: a Politician in Space

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Twenty-five years ago today — April 12, 1985 — Space Shuttle Discovery, which is in space right now, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51D.


(STS-51D launch. NASA image.)

The Discovery crew consisted of astronauts Karol J. Bobko, Don E. Williams, Margaret Rhea Seddon, S. David Griggs, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, and Charles D. Walker, plus astronaut/Senator E. “Jake” Garn. Senator Garn was the first active member of Congress to fly into space, but he was uniquely qualified to do so, having been a Naval aviator and then a pilot in the Air Force Reserve.

They deployed two satellites, Telesat-1 (also known as Anik-C1) and Syncom-IV (also known as LEASAT-3), though the latter did not spin up properly and its boost motor failed to ignite. It was recovered and repaired on a later shuttle mission.

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Triskaidekalunia — The Launch of Apollo-13

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Forty years ago today — April 11, 1970 — the Apollo-13 mission launched from Cape Canaveral. Astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr., John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., and Fred W. Haise, Jr., were on their way to the Fra Mauro region of the moon.


(Apollo-13 launch. NASA image.)

Everything went well for the first two days, but on April 13th the Apollo-13 Service Module suffered a crippling explosion. The number two oxygen tank ruptured, causing a cascade of failures throughout the spacecraft’s systems — including the loss of all the oxygen from the number one tank as well.


(View of the damaged Service Module, taken by the Apollo-13 crew. NASA image.)

NASA aborted the Moon landing and turned their full attention to getting the astronauts home alive. The crew splashed down successfully on April 17th.

This page has a good explanation of the cause of the accident.

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Satellite Communications Go Commercial

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Forty-five years ago today — April 6, 1965 — the “Early Bird” satellite (also known as Intelsat-1) was launched by a Thor-Delta rocket out of Cape Canaveral.


(Thor-Delta rocket on the launch pad, with Echo-1 satellite, 1960. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

Placed in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean, Early Bird was the first commercial communications satellite. It operated for three and a half years, and was the precursor to the dozens of spacecraft providing global communications today.

For more information, see this short history of communication satellites.

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