Strait of Magellan

Give 'em hell, sister.

2012-02-20T22:27:00.000-08:00

Size Matters

2012-02-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

In our celestial navigation classes, I always stress that the inherent flaw of utilizing spherical trigonometry on a body which is not actually a sphere introduces navigation errors many times larger than those introduced by imperfections in our instruments, or rounding errors in our logarithmic tables. This happens to be true, but I had never bothered to actually quantify this until yesterday. One of my coworkers recently sat for his 500 ton Master's license, and one of the questions he was asked was the great-circle circumference of the earth. Presumably the answer the USCG was looking for was 21,600 nautical miles, which is just 360° x 60' of arc. Which would be true, if the earth happened to be a sphere. Which, of course, it isn't.

Along any of earth's meridians, the circumference is about 21,603 nm, which is pretty close to the abstract spherical circumference. Along the equator, however, the earth's circumference is about 21,639 nm. 39 nautical miles is about 45 statute miles, or 72 kilometers. A navigation error of this magnitude is far from trivial.

Fortunately, by the nature of the way celestial navigation is performed, the greatest distance we ever have to worry about is 1/4 of the circumference of the earth, and this in turn limits our possible position error to 1/4 of that distance.

So, here's the very worst case imaginable. You are somewhere on the equator, and you take sights of the stars Mintaka and Polaris at the moment that both of these objects are just touching the horizon. Let's ignore all of the other reasons why this is a really bad idea, and also ignore the very large error in atmospheric refraction which would also occur in this case. We see that the actual geographic position of Polaris is only six tenths of a mile further away than our standard sight reduction would tell us, but Mintaka is nearly ten miles further away. Yes, ten. And even if we shoot Mintaka at the more reasonable altitude of 45°, the error is still in the neighborhood of 5 nautical miles.

By extension, if we are in the tropics, all celestial bodies on the equinoctial will be in error by as much as ten nautical miles, and if we are in temperate latitudes they may still be in error by as much as five nautical miles. From the standpoint of ocean navigation this isn't horrible. But it does give some perspective on the relative importance of precision in celestial navigation, as opposed to accuracy.

To rocks and the red planet: the NASA FY 2013 Budget Estimate

2012-02-13T23:36:00.000-08:00

Here we are, again.

NASA's 2013 budget looks, well, an awful lot like the 2012 budget. But at least now we have some more specifics, and something a bit sexier than the ISS as a centerpiece.

Looking at what is on the docket, to quote John Mellencamp, "it ain't love, but it ain't bad".

In no particular order--

Space X and other commercial operators will begin regular crew and cargo flights to the ISS and other low earth orbit destinations.

The SLS/Orion project will continue, with uncrewed missions beginning in 2017 and crewed missions beginning in 2021. The only destinations mentioned (repeatedly) were near-earth asteroids and Mars. No mention of the moon or the earth-moon L1 or L2 Langrangian orbits. Back in November there had been discussion of building a semipermanent space station at the Earth-Moon L2 orbit, that seems to have been tabled. Lunar landing is apparently completely out of the question, or at least completely out of the budget, so it looks like NASA is opting to bypass the moon entirely. For the asteroid and Mars missions, much emphasis was placed on the integrated roles of humans and robots. The missions of Mars Science Laboratory and the rover Curiosity appear to be especially focused on research and preparation for crewed missions to Mars.

Research satellites for astronomy, atmospherics, space-weather and asteroid tracking continue to be a priority, as does research in advanced aviation technology.

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to be funded, now looking to launch in late 2018. I consider the JWST to be the single most important project NASA has ever been involved in, but Congress does not share my enthusiasm; I'm very glad it made the cut, again.

Given the current austerity of the federal budget a a whole, this is probably the best we could hope for at this point. Here is the 2013 budget estimate in its entirety:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/622655main_FY13_NASA_Budget_Estimates.pdf

One small step for woman...

2012-02-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

NASA is finding that some male astronauts, subsequent to a six month mission on the International Space Station, are suffering debilitating and possibly permanent vision loss due to papilledema.

I am not an opthamologist, I have no idea what papilledema is, or what that means. Here is the link to a pdf from NASA which gives good medical information for those inclined and capable to decipher such.
http://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS/_techrep/TM-2010-216114.pdf

I don't know why it seems to affect only men and not women. I don't especially care. It simply happens to be.

The relevant point is, six months is about the minimum amount of time we could get astronauts to Mars from Earth, using the technology of the SLS rockets and Orion spacecraft. Astronaut Mike Barratt, who is one of the individuals experiencing papilledema, believes that the solution is to wait for better and faster technology to shorten the length of time in space. This is not unreasonable for a crewed mission to Mars, but as we venture further afield to Ceres and the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, barring building the real (atomic pulse) Orion we probably are going to need to exist in space for greater than six months time.

The first step, obviously, is to extend the missions on the ISS to see if other health issues arise with longer stays in space. ISS is close; if somebody starts to exhibit serious health problems it's pretty easy to get them back to earth quickly. This will not be true for Mars.

The second, as Barratt proposed, is to continue R&D on better propulsion systems, such as the ion engines being used by the Dawn spacecraft, and solar sail technology.

Third, continue developing SLS, and continue with the already planned Mars missions. For exploration missions, send crews of only women. For colonization missions, send crews of only women, with a sperm bank. This isn't rocket science.

Even without the papilledema issue, women are arguably better candidates for space flight than men. Simple gender dimorphism has provided women with bodies which are smaller, and consume less food, oxygen and water than their male counterparts. Their body-fat is also better distributed for thermal insulation, and women are less susceptible to trauma-induced shock. And all the worlds we're likely to explore and colonize have significantly less gravity than Earth, so it isn't as likely that upper-body strength would be a major hindrance.

Women are probably just better suited to boldly go, where no man has gone before.

======================================================

Astronaut feels space's toll on his body

(CNN)
It’s not really why he signed up to be an astronaut, but like it or not, Mike Barratt and his eyes have become a science project.

The eye charts he reads, the red drops that turn his eyes yellow and the ultrasounds being performed on him could determine whether he or any other astronaut ever journeys into deep space or sets foot on other worlds.

NASA’s new priority is how to protect astronauts from going blind on the years-long trip to get wherever they are going.

“I absolutely agree that this is our number one priority,” Barratt said.

Why?

Because when Barratt blasted off to the international space station, he needed eyeglasses for distance. When he returned to Earth, his distance vision was fine, but he needed reading glasses. That was more than two years ago. And he’s not getting better.

“We really need to understand this. This is a critical point for understanding how humans adapt to spaceflight,” he said.

In the past few years, about half of the astronauts aboard the international space station have developed an increasing pressure inside their heads, an intracranial pressure that reshapes their optic nerve, causing a significant shift in the eyesight of male astronauts. Doctors call it papilledema.

Female space travelers have not been affected.

Some of the astronauts slowly recover. Others have not.

Space station astronauts typically spend about six months in orbit.

Barratt is one of 10 male astronauts, all older than 45, who have not recovered. Barratt returned from a six-month stint aboard the station in October 2009 and has experienced a profound change in his sight.

He used to be nearsighted. But now, the space veteran says he’s eagle-eyed at long distance but needs glasses for reading. There is no treatment and no answers as to why female space flyers are not affected.

CNN spent part of a day with Barratt, watching as doctors monitored his progress with high-resolution testing as they try to understand how the weightless environment of space is causing half of all space station astronauts to have this vision change. Today, space station astronauts fly with specially designed variable focus glasses to help combat the vision shift.

“The big benefit of these is that they allow us to adjust for significant prescription changes,” said Dr. Robert Gibson, a senior vision consultant, who was brought in to help study the problem.

Doctors have found that Barratt’s retinas have microscopic folds or wrinkles on them, and the back of his eye, the optic nerve, is no longer round but has flattened.

“I think this is showing that there are physiologic aspects of adaption to spaceflight we weren’t seeing before,” said Barratt.

This raises a red flag for all of NASA’s plans for long-duration human space flight. The space station is supposed to be the test bed for how humans would learn to live in space, but it opens profound questions on whether humans will ever venture to Mars or to an asteroid if they are unable to figure out how the outer-space environment is affecting the eyes.

“This has all of our attention,” said Terry Taddeo, the acting chief of space medicine at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“It is a serious problem and one we are going to have to understand more about before we would be able to send somebody into a long-duration mission away from Earth, where they would be away for years,” he said.

Right now, the only data that doctors have are from six-month tours of duty on the space station.

NASA has begun doing extensive preflight and postflight eye exams, including high-resolution MRIs of the eyes. There have been anecdotes from some space shuttle astronauts who also complained about vision change, but it does not appear they had long-lasting effects from the much shorter space flights that typically lasted up to about three weeks.

“What we’re seeing appears to occur within the first couple of months of flight and appears to level off, plateau after about four to five months,” Gibson said.

“If it’s just a matter of giving them a stronger prescription, we can live with that,” he said. “But if there is an elevated intracranial pressure as the cause of this, we have to be concerned about other neurologic effects."

That means there could be other effects on the body that haven’t become apparent.

This is why a three-year mission to Mars is in question.

It would be humans' next great leap, and NASA is spending almost $18 billion over the next five years to develop a heavy lift rocket that would take astronauts to the Red Planet or even to an asteroid. They would travel in a new spacecraft, Orion.

But right now, a trip to Mars is still more science fiction than fact. No one is calling this vision problem a showstopper, yet the program’s price tag begs for a solution to be found fast so NASA won’t be building the world’s largest, fastest rocket to nowhere.

Dr. Bruce Ehni, a neurosurgeon at the VA Medical Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has consulted with NASA and is the only neurosurgeon on their panel.

“If they can’t predict who is at risk ... they put his health in jeopardy. They put, possibly, the mission in jeopardy if he can’t see or do his job effectively,” he said.

But Barratt thinks that any deep space venture to Mars is still 20 years away. He’s hoping that spacecraft will be a whole lot faster than anything the space agency can fly now.

“You fly fast, and you don’t worry,” he said, with a grin.

“I’m still hopeful that in 20 years, we’ll have advanced propulsion capabilities that can get us there in a matter of weeks to a few months. Then, a lot of these problems go away,” he said.

Newt for the Moon!

2012-01-27T23:23:00.000-08:00

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has just promised a large group of Space-Coast Republicans that if he is elected President, by 2020 we will have frequent manned flights to Mars and a permanent colony of 13,000 individuals on the moon, which will become our 51st state!

WOOOT!!!!!!

How could such a visionary possibly not get elected? Can anyone name ONE GOOD REASON why this man cannot be elected president, so that we can get a colony on the moon?

Oh, right. Two-thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-six good reasons.
Or, just four little words.

No. War. For. Monica.

Oh well.

Who needs a stupid old moon base, anyway.

Three Lows

2012-01-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

This, is ridiculous.

Major Solar Storm

2012-01-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

The largest solar storm since 2005 is anticipated to hit earth around 1400UTC (6am pst)tomorrow. Anticipate minor loss of radio and GPS on the sunlight side of the planet, and if the weather holds some really awesome auroras on the night side, possibly continuing into tomorrow evening.

Full details are here:

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Costa Concordia

2012-01-15T21:48:00.000-08:00

I've been away from the computer for a bit, one of the perils of gainful maritime employment. The biggest maritime news this weekend is the grounding of the m/v Costa Concordia off Isola del Giglio.

The investigation is just beginning. I don't know what caused this disaster. And neither does anyone else, other than the master of the vessel and the mate and helmsman who were on watch. That includes the media, and that includes the spokespeople for the company, who seem pretty willing to throw their officers under the proverbial bus.

My best guess is that an over-reliance on electronics and an under-reliance on traditional navigation will ultimately be found to have played a significant role. But that is only a guess. When the various investigations have been completed and their findings published, I'll probably weigh in on that. But not before.

The photograph above and the chart immediately below are as much real information as I have at this point. I will try to find and download navigational charts of the area tomorrow and will post them here if I am successful. Beyond that, at this point, everything else is speculation.

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

May the new year bring peace, happiness, and the end of the current Mayan Long Count.

White Christmas, Seattle style

2011-12-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

No snow, but lots of whitecaps on Puget Sound. This is just south of Alki Point yesterday around noon.

And Merry Christmas, and Happy Hanukkah as well

2011-12-25T00:10:00.000-08:00

By whatever name you celebrate the solstice holiday, have a very happy and safe one!

Happy Yule, y'all!

2011-12-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

Wishing a bright and blessed Yule to all and sundry!

How democracy dies...to the roar of thunderous applause.

2011-12-18T22:16:00.000-08:00

Below is a critique and debunking of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, written by Glen Greenwald for Salon Magazine.

Shame on the House of Representatives. Shame on the United States Senate. Shame on the President of the United States. Shame on us.

Here is the bill in its entirety.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/NDAA-Conference-Report-Detainee-Section.pdf

Greenwald's critique in its entirety, with many hot-links, is here.
http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

========================================

Three Myths About the Detention Bill

salon.com-- Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation’s leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama’s stance as “a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency” and lamenting that “the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all,” as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is “another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie.” In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill’s dangers.

For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine — and debunk — the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes (this is all above and beyond the evidence I assembled in writing about this bill yesterday):

Myth # 1: This bill does not codify indefinite detention

Section 1021 of the NDAA governs, as its title says, “Authority of the Armed Forces to Detain Covered Persons Pursuant to the AUMF.” The first provision — section (a) — explicitly “affirms that the authority of the President” under the AUMF ”includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons.” The next section, (b), defines “covered persons” — i.e., those who can be detained by the U.S. military — as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” With regard to those “covered individuals,” this is the power vested in the President by the next section, (c):

It simply cannot be any clearer within the confines of the English language that this bill codifies the power of indefinite detention. It expressly empowers the President — with regard to anyone accused of the acts in section (b) – to detain them “without trial until the end of the hostilities.” That is the very definition of “indefinite detention,” and the statute could not be clearer that it vests this power. Anyone claiming this bill does not codify indefinite detention should be forced to explain how they can claim that in light of this crystal clear provision.

It is true, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, that both the Bush and Obama administrations have argued that the 2001 AUMF implicitly (i.e., silently) already vests the power of indefinite detention in the President, and post-9/11 deferential courts have largely accepted that view (just as the Bush DOJ argued that the 2001 AUMF implicitly (i.e., silently) allowed them to eavesdrop on Americans without the warrants required by law). That’s why the NDAA can state that nothing is intended to expand the 2001 AUMF while achieving exactly that: because the Executive and judicial interpretation being given to the 20o1 AUMF is already so much broader than its language provides.

But this is the first time this power of indefinite detention is being expressly codified by statute (there’s not a word about detention powers in the 2001 AUMF). Indeed, as the ACLU and HRW both pointed out, it’s the first time such powers are being codified in a statute since the McCarthy era Internal Security Act of 1950, about which I wrote yesterday.

Myth #2: The bill does not expand the scope of the War on Terror as defined by the 2001 AUMF

This myth is very easily dispensed with. The scope of the war as defined by the original 2001 AUMF was, at least relative to this new bill, quite specific and narrow. Here’s the full extent of the power the original AUMF granted:

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Under the clear language of the 2001 AUMF, the President’s authorization to use force was explicitly confined to those who (a) helped perpetrate the 9/11 attack or (b) harbored the perpetrators. That’s it. Now look at how much broader the NDAA is with regard to who can be targeted:

Section (1) is basically a re-statement of the 2001 AUMF. But Section (2) is a brand new addition. It allows the President to target not only those who helped perpetrate the 9/11 attacks or those who harbored them, but also: anyone who “substantially supports” such groups and/or “associated forces.” Those are extremely vague terms subject to wild and obvious levels of abuse (see what Law Professor Jonathan Hafetz told me in an interview last week about the dangers of those terms). This is a substantial statutory escalation of the War on Terror and the President’s powers under it, and it occurs more than ten years after 9/11, with Osama bin Laden dead, and with the U.S. Government boasting that virtually all Al Qaeda leaders have been eliminated and the original organization (the one accused of perpetrating 9/11 attack) rendered inoperable.

It is true that both the Bush and Obama administration have long been arguing that the original AUMF should be broadly “interpreted” so as to authorize force against this much larger scope of individuals, despite the complete absence of such language in that original AUMF. That’s how the Obama administration justifies its ongoing bombing of Yemen and Somalia and its killing of people based on the claim that they support groups that did not even exist at the time of 9/11 – i.e., they argue: these new post-9/11 groups we’re targeting are “associated forces” of Al Qaeda and the individuals we’re killing “substantially support” those groups. But this is the first time that Congress has codified that wildly expanded definition of the Enemy in the War on Terror. And all anyone has to do to see that is compare the old AUMF with the new one in the NDAA.

Myth #3: U.S. citizens are exempted from this new bill

This is simply false, at least when expressed so definitively and without caveats. The bill is purposely muddled on this issue which is what is enabling the falsehood.

There are two separate indefinite military detention provisions in this bill. The first, Section 1021, authorizes indefinite detention for the broad definition of “covered persons” discussed above in the prior point. And that section does provide that “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” So that section contains a disclaimer regarding an intention to expand detention powers for U.S. citizens, but does so only for the powers vested by that specific section. More important, the exclusion appears to extend only to U.S. citizens “captured or arrested in the United States” — meaning that the powers of indefinite detention vested by that section apply to U.S. citizens captured anywhere abroad (there is some grammatical vagueness on this point, but at the very least, there is a viable argument that the detention power in this section applies to U.S. citizens captured abroad).

But the next section, Section 1022, is a different story. That section specifically deals with a smaller category of people than the broad group covered by 1021: namely, anyone whom the President determines is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force” and “participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.” For those persons, section (a) not only authorizes, but requires (absent a Presidential waiver), that they be held “in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.” The section title is “Military Custody for Foreign Al Qaeda Terrorists,” but the definition of who it covers does not exclude U.S. citizens or include any requirement of foreignness.

That section — 1022 — does not contain the broad disclaimer regarding U.S. citizens that 1021 contains. Instead, it simply says that the requirement of military detention does not apply to U.S. citizens, but it does not exclude U.S. citizens from the authority, the option, to hold them in military custody. Here is what it says:

The only provision from which U.S. citizens are exempted here is the “requirement” of military detention. For foreign nationals accused of being members of Al Qaeda, military detention is mandatory; for U.S. citizens, it is optional. This section does not exempt U.S citizens from the presidential power of military detention: only from the requirement of military detention.

The most important point on this issue is the same as underscored in the prior two points: the “compromise” reached by Congress includes language preserving the status quo. That’s because the Obama administration already argues that the original 2001 AUMF authorizes them to act against U.S. citizens (obviously, if they believe they have the power to target U.S. citizens for assassination, then they believe they have the power to detain U.S. citizens as enemy combatants). The proof that this bill does not expressly exempt U.S. citizens or those captured on U.S. soil is that amendments offered by Sen. Feinstein providing expressly for those exemptions were rejected. The “compromise” was to preserve the status quo by including the provision that the bill is not intended to alter it with regard to American citizens, but that’s because proponents of broad detention powers are confident that the status quo already permits such detention.

In sum, there is simply no question that this bill codifies indefinite detention without trial (Myth 1). There is no question that it significantly expands the statutory definitions of the War on Terror and those who can be targeted as part of it (Myth 2). The issue of application to U.S. citizens (Myth 3) is purposely muddled — that’s why Feinstein’s amendments were rejected — and there is consequently no doubt this bill can and will be used by the U.S. Government (under this President or a future one) to bolster its argument that it is empowered to indefinitely detain even U.S. citizens without a trial (NYT Editorial: “The legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial”; Sen. Bernie Sanders: “This bill also contains misguided provisions that in the name of fighting terrorism essentially authorize the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens without charges”).

Even if it were true that this bill changes nothing when compared to how the Executive Branch has been interpreting and exercising the powers of the old AUMF, there are serious dangers and harms from having Congress — with bipartisan sponsors, a Democratic Senate and a GOP House — put its institutional, statutory weight behind powers previously claimed and seized by the President alone. That codification entrenches these powers. As the New York Times Editorial today put it: the bill contains “terrible new measures that will make indefinite detention and military trials a permanent part of American law.”

What’s particularly ironic (and revealing) about all of this is that former White House counsel Greg Craig assured The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer back in February, 2009 that it’s “hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.” Four months later, President Obama proposed exactly such a law — one that The New York Times described as “a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free” — and now he will sign such a scheme into law.

UPDATE: There’s an interview with (Greenwald) in Harper’s today regarding American justice and With Liberty and Justice for Some.

The reason for the season

2011-12-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

Astronomical data for the solstice for folks in Seattle who care about such things:

The moment of solstice happens at 9:30pm pst on Wednesday, December 21st, and sunrise on the 22nd at the Admiral Overlook in Seattle will occur at 07:55:12 pst.

However, the weather for Thursday is looking overcast and rainy, so the solstice sunrise festivities may actually be watching the sky turn from dark gray to lighter gray. That's okay, Seattleites are used to a little cloud cover.

Port of Long Beach teamsters on port Occupations

2011-12-12T21:14:00.000-08:00

Dateline: Los Angeles/Long Beach
An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports

December 12, 2011

We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.

We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.

We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.

Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?

We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.

There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.

We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.

Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.

You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.

Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.

There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.

The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.

It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers.”

But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?

To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.

The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.

We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?

Even the few of us who are hired as legitimate employees are routinely denied our legal rights under this system. Just ask our co-workers who haul clothing brands like Guess?, Under Armour, and Ralph Lauren’s Polo. The carrier they work for in Los Angeles is called Toll Group and is headquartered in Australia. At the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, 26 drivers were axed after wearing Teamster T-shirts to work. They were protesting the lack of access to clean, indoor restrooms with running water. The company hired an anti-union consultant to intimidate the drivers. Down Under, the same company bargains with 12,000 of our counterparts in good faith.

Despite our great hardships, many of us cannot — or refuse to, as some of the most well-intentioned suggest — “just quit.” First, we want to work and do not have a safety net. Many of us are tied to one-sided leases. But more importantly, why should we have to leave? Truck driving is what we do, and we do it well.

We are the skilled, specially-licensed professionals who guarantee that Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart are all stocked with just-in-time delivery for consumers. Take a look at all the stuff in your house. The things you see advertised on TV. Chances are a port truck driver brought that special holiday gift to the store you bought it.

We would rather stick together and transform our industry from within. We deserve to be fairly rewarded and valued. That is why we have united to stage convoys, park our trucks, marched on the boss, and even shut down these ports.

It’s like our hero Dutch Prior, a Shipper’s/SSA Marine driver, told CBS Early Morning this month: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

The more underwater we are, the more our restlessness grows. We are being thoughtful about how best to organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice.

Nowadays greedy corporations are treated as “people” while the politicians they bankroll cast union members who try to improve their workplaces as “thugs.”

But we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12. Our friends in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports created a pledge you can sign to support us here.

We drivers have a saying, “We may not have a union yet, but no one can stop us from acting like one.”

The brothers and sisters of the Teamsters have our backs. They help us make our voices heard. But we need your help too so we can achieve the day where we raise our fists and together declare: “No one could stop us from forming a union.”

Thank you.

In solidarity,

Leonardo Mejia
SSA Marine/Shippers Transport Express
Port of Long Beach
10-year driver

Yemane Berhane
Ports of Seattle & Tacoma
6-year port driver

Xiomara Perez
Toll Group
Port of Los Angeles
8-year driver

Abdul Khan
Port of Oakland
7-year port driver

Ramiro Gotay
Ports of New York & New Jersey
15-year port driver

Selenelion

2011-12-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

If you happen to be in the Pacific Northwest and also happen to have an unobstructed view of the horizon in both directions, tomorrow morning's lunar eclipse is going to afford a unique and implausible simultaneous view of both the rising sun and the setting eclipsed moon. This is called a selenelion and possible due to atmospheric refraction. For example, when you see the sun or the moon just sitting on the horizon, it isn't really there; the entire disk is actually just below the horizon, but we're seeing the image refracted over the curvature of the earth. With a selenelion both the sun and the moon are actually just below the horizon, but being refracted over it.

If you happen to be in Seattle, the bad news is that the Cascade and Olympic mountains will obscure the sun and the moon at the time of the selenelion, if the rain doesn't. The good news is that for the other 364 sunrises of the year, you also have a view of the Cascades and Olympics.

Into the dark

2011-12-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

Two notable press releases from NASA today. The first, which got most of the coverage in the commercial media, is that the Kepler mission has confirmed the presence of a large rocky world within the habitable zone of a star some 600 light-years away. In and of itself, this announcement is actually only mildly interesting. What is more interesting is that in the year Kepler has been operational, it has already discovered 2,326 planet candidates, of which 28 have already been confirmed. Even more interesting is the fact that all of these were discovered in this very small section of the sky:

Statistically, this may bode very well for habitable worlds around stars within 10 light-years of our sun.

The more interesting story out of NASA today is that the two Voyager probes are reaching the outer limits of our sun's influence, and will very soon enter interstellar space. This will be our first direct observation of the Interstellar Medium, and will afford a great deal of insight into the realities of travel to the nearest stars.

Ain't like dusting crops, boy!

2011-11-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

The recent discovery of more small moons orbiting Pluto flags the possibility of a debris field which could seriously endanger the New Horizons probe when it arrives there in 2015. The question is not whether the debris field exists, which it seems to. Rather, the issue is whether the debris field is in the form of a disk (such as Saturn's rings) or a cloud. The best indications right now are for the latter.

=================================

SPACE.com:

Pluto's Moons Could Spell Danger for New Horizons Spacecraft

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto in July 2015, it may find the region more hazardous than anticipated. The discovery of several moons around Pluto — and the potential for more — increase the risks during the probe's flyby.

The main problem is debris. The small moons are under constant bombardment from nearby space rocks called Kuiper Belt objects, but the moons' low gravity prevents them from holding on to chunks of dirt and rock that fly into the air when hit. The debris instead finds itself caught in orbit around Pluto, where it could pose a serious threat to New Horizons.

"The most likely problem we would encounter is to be hit by something that is large enough to instantly destroy the spacecraft," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told SPACE.com.

Though cameras on the New Horizons probe will begin observing the Pluto system several months before its closest approach, they won't be able to detect the fast-flying milligram-size particles that could spell instant death if they collide with the vehicle.

New moons on the rise

Pluto's first known moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978, nearly 50 years after the dwarf planet was found. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered the next two of Pluto's moons in 2005, only two and a half months before New Horizons was launched.

In July of this year, a fourth moon of Pluto was located, and there are hints that two more might exist.

With three of Pluto's four moons having been discovered in the last five years, scientists have a hunch there are likely more still hidden.

Due to these new additions, a group of experts recently convened to analyze the hazards New Horizons might face. After determining the threat was real, they discussed how to avoid it.

A harder look at the challenge could make a significant difference, scientists say. Continuing to study the system with the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as several ground-based telescopes, could help reveal other hidden moons and their orbits well before New Horizons arrives.

Hunting hidden moons

But searching doesn't necessarily mean success.

"If there are moons too small, meaning too faint, then we won't find them," Stern said.

With that in mind, the group also determined the need for a good "safe haven bailout trajectory," or SHBOT — an orbit that New Horizons could shift into that would keep it away from the most likely danger zones.

The best route would zip through Charon's orbit, but on the opposite side of the planet from the moon. The large body constantly clears debris from its path, creating a safe route for New Horizons to pass through.

This strategy works best if the debris remains in a plane, similar to Saturn's rings. If, however, it orbits Pluto in a cloud, the danger is heightened.

If New Horizons encounters dirt and dust from the moons, it could put an abrupt end to the first mission to Pluto.

"There is no wounded here — only dead or alive," Stern said.

Curiosity abounds

2011-11-27T22:10:00.000-08:00

Very nice photo of the launch of the new Mars rover Curiosity. The vehicle is an Atlas V 541.

Naomi Wolf on federal response to Occupy protests

2011-11-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

Excellent but disturbing analysis of US federal government's response to the Occupy protests, by Naomi Wolf. A bit hyperbolic, I hope, but very thought-provoking.

==================================

The Guardian (UK)
Friday 25 November 2011 12.25 EST

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

by Naomi Wolf

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profits is less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Illegal immigration

2011-11-23T18:08:00.000-08:00

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving; and please take a moment to remember the Nauset, Wampanoag, Narraganset, Massachusett, Nipmuck, Pocumtuc, Tunxis, Quinnipiac, Mattabesic, Paugussett, Niantic, Montaukett, Shinnecock, Pequot and Mohegan peoples, who were among the first nations to fall as a result of the European invasions of the Americas.

Going the distance

2011-11-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

Scientific American this month has a very good article on some possibilities for NASA's manned space exploration program, written by two scientists involved in robotic deep-space exploration.

They proposed using a combination of the SLS chemical rockets or Delta IV heavy lift and Hall-effect ion drive spaceships to explore the moon, near-earth asteroids, Mars and Phobos. The argument for exploring near-earth asteroids was as a stepping stone for Mars and Phobos, and they were specifically looking at NEO 2008 EV5.

2008 EV5 follows a slightly oblique orbit very similar to earth's, and oscillates from about 1 AU (the distance from the sun to the earth) and 2 AU, at least in the immediate future. Mars at opposition is only about 0.5 AU from earth. My admittedly limited understanding of Hohmann transfer orbits is that a trip to 2008 EV5 or an earth-Trojan should take longer than a trip to Mars. Given that 2008 EV5 is only about 400 meters across, I must confess that I am at a loss to understand the wisdom of establishing 2008 EV5 as a waypoint to Mars. This is either a failing of my own understanding of how one navigates between two objects in different parts of the same orbit (very likely), or else NASA has other reasons for prioritizing a trip to 2008 EV5. My guess is that both are true; ie, I'm misunderstanding the geometry of a same-orbit Hohmann transfer, and NASA has more need of landing on 2008 EV5 than as a test-run for Phobos. My completely uneducated guess is that either NASA is more freaked out about near-earth asteroids than they let on, or that they want congress to think that they're more freaked out about near-earth asteroids than they let on. I lean toward the latter; perhaps at some point I'll bother to post my very own patented conspiracy theory on the subject. Anyway--

Based on the SciAm article and some of the recent posts here on candidates for outmigration, I created a graphic tonight to illustrate the relative distances of the different candidates being discussed. The planets, asteroids and moons themselves are not drawn even close to scale, but the relative distances between them is mostly right. The only exception to this is the distance between the earth and the moon, which is actually so small on the scale of the drawing that it could not be correctly shown at all. Also, the distances between Jupiter and her moons is completely erroneous, I simply included the Galilean moons to illustrate that the body depicted was in fact Jupiter.

1. The moon, and also the L4 and L5 Lagrangian orbits

2. Near-earth asteroid 2008 EV5, and also the earth-Trojans

3. Mars and Phobos

4. Ceres

5. Jupiter and Europa, Callisto and Ganymede

6. Saturn and Enceladus

It becomes apparent that Enceladus, intriguing though it is, is very, very far away. For a new home for our species, Ceres starts looking better all the time.

Europa back in the game

2011-11-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

NASA announced today the presence of enormous salt-water lakes only several kilometers below the surface ice of Jupiter's moon Europa. From the standpoint of colonization (and also incidentally exobiology), this is vastly preferable to the ocean of salt-water which also exists on Europa, but at some 100 kilometers below the surface ice. This puts Europa back in the running as a plausible candidate for outmigration, and possibly even in the top tier.

With this data, the three best candidates for a permanent and self-sustaining colony are, arguably, Ceres, Europa and Enceladus.

Saturn's moon Enceladus is in some ways the most appealing, but by far the least accessible. At 1.5 BILLION kilometers, it is more than twice the distance to Jupiter/Europa, and six times the distance to Ceres. And it is the smallest of the three candidates. But essentially limitless supplies of water and energy are relatively accessible to anyone living on the surface, and from the standpoint of self-sustainability that's huge.

Europa now meets most of the same criteria, is six times larger than Enceladus (and just a bit smaller than our own moon), and is much closer. The biggest drawback with Europa is still the very high amounts of ionizing radiation from Jupiter that would be experienced on the surface. Burrowing under the ice would provide shielding, but you have to get down there first. It is also possible that we could use another of the Galilean moons such as Callisto as a base-camp while drilling down to to the Europan lakes.

Dwarf planet Ceres is practically in our own backyard, and about twice the size of Enceladus. It too is covered with water ice over a salt-water ocean, but we don't know yet how thick that ice-mantle is. When the Dawn spacecraft arrives there in 2015 we'll know a lot more. Ceres receives ample sunlight for solar power, so even if there were no geothermal energy such as on Europa, or whatever-the-hell is generating 16 gigawatts of energy on Enceladus, it could probably support a substantial colony even if the surface ice had to be melted for water. At this time, I'm inclined to think that Ceres may be our best shot at getting a permanent and self-sustaining colony established quickly, but we'll know a lot more once the Dawn spacecraft starts sending back data.

Many people have speculated that Ceres would be an important stepping-stone for colonization of the outer planets, but she may prove to be a critical destination in her own right.

Veteran's Day 11-11-11

2011-11-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

In remembrance of every soldier, sailor, airman and marine, of every nation and of every conflict, have a very happy and safe Veteran's Day.

Four Billion Dollars...

2011-11-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

...transferred out of major corporate banks and into credit unions this weekend.

video platform video management video solutions video player

Horseshoes and hand-grenades

2011-11-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, around 3:28pm pst, asteroid 2005 YU 55 is going to pass within the moon's orbit of us. A quarter of a mile (400 meters) in diameter, this is the largest asteroid to pass within the moon's orbit that we have ever known about (certainly lots of bigger ones have come even closer, we were just blissfully unaware of them). We have NEO's every single day, but this is one seriously big son of an accretion disk. If it were to actually hit the earth (don't worry, it won't, at least not in our lifetimes) the equivalent kinetic force would be greater than if every single nuclear warhead on every single missile on every single ballistic missile submarine in every single navy -- US, UK, France, Russia, China and India -- were to successfully detonate at the same location at the same time. Really. Which is still miniscule compared the the K/T asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs (which was some 30 times larger), but, still, this is a big effing rock coming by tomorrow.

This will provide astronomers a very close view of a pretty large asteroid that we won't have to leave home to see, which is valuable. Nearly as useful, it serves as a not-so-subtle reminder that we really need to have the capability to intercept and deflect such objects all the time, not just whenever congress decides that it might be fun to budget for such things.

It will be visible from most of North America Tuesday evening, tracking from Aquila through Pegasus in about 10 hours time, but at a maximum visual magnitude of 11.2 it will require at least a 6" reflector telescope to see. Here's the track, from Sky and Telescope magazine:

Below is a very well done graphic from Space.com, with lots more information about this and other large NEOs --

Lesson from Iceland: Let the banks fail

2011-11-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Very interesting analysis from the 2008 Icelandic bank crisis, and Reykjavik's recovery from that amid financial collapse of much of the European Union. Two points stand out in this-- first, prior to the collapse Iceland's government was more or less solvent; second, much of Iceland's success was at least aided by its independence from the Euro. But the principles remain solid, and perhaps it is time to reconsider what it means for an institution to be "too big to fail".

==============================================================

By Haukur Holm | AFP

Three years after Iceland's banks collapsed and the country teetered on the brink, its economy is recovering, proof that governments should let failing lenders go bust and protect taxpayers, analysts say.

The North Atlantic island saw its three biggest banks go belly-up in the October 2008 as its overstretched financial sector collapsed under the weight of the global crisis sparked by the crash of US investment giant Lehman Brothers.

The banks became insolvent within a matter of weeks and Reykjavik was forced to let them fail and seek a $2.25 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

After three years of harsh austerity measures, the country's economy is now showing signs of health despite the current global financial and economic crisis that has Greece verging on default and other eurozone states under pressure.

"The lesson that could be learned from Iceland's way of handling its crisis is that it is important to shield taxpayers and government finances from bearing the cost of a financial crisis to the extent possible," Islandsbanki analyst Jon Bjarki Bentsson told AFP.

"Even if our way of dealing with the crisis was not by choice but due to the inability of the government to support the banks back in 2008 due to their size relative to the economy, this has turned out relatively well for us," Bentsson said.

Iceland's banking sector had assets worth 11 times the country's total gross domestic product (GDP) at their peak.

Nobel Prize-winning US economist Paul Krugman echoed Bentsson.

"Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net," he wrote in a recent commentary in the New York Times.

"Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver," he said.

During a visit to Reykjavik last week, Krugman also said Iceland has the krona to thank for its recovery, warning against the notion that adopting the euro can protect against economic imbalances.

"Iceland's economic rebound shows the advantages of being outside the euro. This notion that by joining the euro you would be safe would come as news to the Spaniards," he said, referring to one of the key eurozone states struggling to put its public finances in order.

Iceland's example cannot be directly compared to the dramatic problems currently seen in Greece or Italy, however.

"The big difference between Greece, Italy, etc at the moment and Iceland back in 2008 is that the latter was a banking crisis caused by the collapse of an oversized banking sector while the former is the result of a sovereign debt crisis that has spilled over into the European banking sector," Bentsson said.

"In Iceland, the government was actually in a sound position debt-wise before the crisis."

Iceland's former prime minister Geir Haarde, in power during the 2008 meltdown and currently facing trial over his handling of the crisis, has insisted his government did the right thing early on by letting the banks fail and making creditors carry the losses.

"We saved the country from going bankrupt," Haarde, 68, told AFP in an interview in July.

"That is evident if you look at our situation now and you compare it to Ireland or not to mention Greece," he said, adding that the two debt-wracked EU countries "made mistakes that we did not make ... We did not guarantee the external debts of the banking system."

Like Ireland and Latvia, also rescued by international bailout packages and now in recovery, Iceland implemented strict austerity measures and is now reaping the fruits of its efforts.

So much so that its central bank on Wednesday raised its key interest rate by a quarter point to 4.75 percent, in sharp contrast to most other developed countries which have slashed their borrowing costs amid the current crises.

It said economic growth in the first half of 2011 was 2.5 percent and was forecast to be just over 3.0 percent for the year as a whole.

David Stefansson, a research analyst at Arion Bank, told AFP Iceland hiked its rates because it "is in a different place in the economic (cycle) than other countries.

"The central bank thinks that other central banks in similar circumstances can afford to keep interest rates low, and even lower them, because expected inflation abroad is in general quite (a bit) lower," he said.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November

2011-11-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

No obvious signs of the Fox News website being hacked, as of 10pm pdt. Curiouser and curiouser.

But in honor of the old Guy we watched the traditional holiday classic "V for Vendetta" on DVD tonight. My mother is Australian of Irish Protestant descent, so Guy Fawkes was part of my upbringing. It seems many Americans never heard of him until that movie came out. The movie popularized the first five lines of the traditional poem, but the version I learned was longer, and went something like this:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
The Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow.
By providence old Guy was catched
With a lantern and a burning match.
Holler boys, Holler girls, let the bells ring,
Holler boys, holler girls, God save the King!

Seven Billion People...

2011-10-31T21:44:00.001-07:00

...and counting.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

Have been offline last few weeks, and will be offline most of next week, so posting this a few hours before the 31st. Have a happy and safe Halloween, and a blessed Samhain to those who celebrate it.

Oh, and yes, this is a real pumpkin.

Fawkes News

2011-10-30T19:34:00.000-07:00

You've probably already heard that the hacker collective Anonymous is promising to hack and shut down the Fox News website on Guy Fawkes Day, in response to what they perceive as unfair and unbalanced coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

I'm not going to address the politics of this, interesting though they are. I'm also not going to address whether I think what Anonymous is planning is "right or wrong"; that is for the history books to decide. If you follow this blog at all, you know that I have very little patience for Fox News, and corporate news media generally. My issue with them is mostly their execrable science reporting. I also don't typically agree with the political bias of Fox News, but I staunchly defend their right to hold and express their political opinions, however erroneous. I also don't agree with a lot of the tactics or motives of Anonymous. So these are my own biases, but the politics of Fox News or Anonymous are not my real interest at the moment.

What I'm more interested in are the tactics behind the announcement Anonymous made. From a purely tactical standpoint it seems very weird to me that Anonymous would go to the great lengths it has to pre-announce the target and date of the attack.

To date, Anonymous has succeeded in about 50% of their attacks, which is respectable. But that indicates that while their hackers are very competent, they're not infallible. So if a massive crippling cyber-attack on the Fox News website were indeed being planned, it would seem to be in the best interests of Anonymous to stack the deck as much in favor of success as possible. A little stealth goes a long way. That the already paranoid Fox will now step-up their already substantial internet security is given.

Also given is that by pre-announcing the date and form of the attack, if Anonymous fails, everyone will know that, and Fox will make hay out of it. Without pre-announcing, the situation for Anonymous would be win-win; if the attack works, they get the credit, and if it doesn't, nobody is the wiser. But they've gone to a fair amount of trouble to ensure that this isn't the case. If Anonymous fails in their attack, they will do so famously, and their political capital goes way down.

Also, by pre-announcing the hack, they've ensured that many more people will visit the Fox News website that day, increasing Fox's advertising revenue. It occurred to me based on this that perhaps Fox WAS "Anonymous", and the whole thing was just a gimmick to get more traffic on the Fox News website. But Fox News doesn't seem to be covering it at all. And if the point of pre-announcing was to intimidate, it doesn't seem to be having much effect.

So, I'm left with only a couple of possibilities. One is that Anonymous is in fact planning a major cyberattack on Fox News for the 5th of November, and are so incredibly confident of their success that they're deliberately taunting the Fox cyber-security people. Which could be the case. The other possibility I can see, which would be rather more clever if it happened to work, is that Anonymous is counting on enough people going to the Fox News website that day to crash their servers. But that would probably require a rather larger ad campaign than what Anonymous has put forward so far.

So, we'll see what we see.

Celestial Navigation 101: Lesson 5, Objects in Motion (Introduction)

2011-10-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

So far, we have looked at celestial objects as if they were more or less motionless in the sky. But with the exception of Polaris, nothing could be farther from the truth. The earth rotates on its own axis, causing the entire sky to appear to spin around it once every day. The earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit once each year, and the other planets also revolve around the sun. The moon revolves around the earth, moving easterly relative to the stars. The stars themselves move relative to the earth and to one another. From our perspective this motion of the stars is minor, but not so minor that we can ignore it for our navigation.

I'll be on the water the next few days; when I'm back in front of a real computer we'll tackle the problem of how to determine the geographic position of a body in motion on a different body in motion.

Justice for All (who can afford it)

2011-10-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

If you're still wondering what the 99% are yelling about, this would be it.

Ex-Meridians for USCG exams

2011-10-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

This post is about celestial navigation, however it is most emphatically NOT part of the "Celestial Navigation 101" series. This topic is beyond the scope of even what we normally teach as "advanced celestial navigation". However, esoteric though it is, it shows up on USCG licensing exams for 1600 ton Mate Oceans and above. So this post is mostly intended for Oceans license candidates in the US Merchant Marine; however, it may have some interest for those working with celestial navigation generally. It happens that at work today I stumbled across a very simple way to solve ex-meridian problems, and so I thought I'd pass that along here.

We have not yet discussed Local Apparent Noon sights in the CelNav 101 series, so let me start with a very brief description of this. Local Apparent Noon, or LAN, is the moment when the sun crosses your longitude line. At that moment it is the highest it is going to be all day. Measure the altitude of the sun with a sextant at that moment, and then, comparing that altitude to the known Declination (latitude) of the sun, you can determine your own latitude. I'm going to explain this in more detail in the CelNav 101 series, but that's the gist of it.

The advantage of LAN is that it is a very easy sight to take with a sextant, and it is very easy to compute. That, however, is its only benefit. The fact that the Line of Position derived from it happens to be a latitude line is irrelevant, because it is as inherently flawed as any other LoP derived from a sextant sight. The real reason we teach LAN at all is that it is a good confidence-builder for fledgling navigators. Once the student masters basic sight-reduction, they never again have a need for LAN, because any celestial object at any time can give them just as much information as the sun can only one time each day.

The technique used to derive latitude from LAN can also, theoretically, be applied to any other celestial body when it crosses your meridian. There's no reason to do so, but it's possible.

These days we confidently rely on twilight sights of stars and planets to confirm our GPS only once each day. However, once upon a time, before the invention of GPS, the "noon sight" was a routine part of the navigator's daily work. If the navigator failed to obtain their noon sight, either due to cloud cover or simply not getting up on deck in time, this was a significant loss of navigational data. So methods were developed to allow the navigator to take a sight a few minutes after the sun had crossed the meridian, and still be able to derive a reasonable latitude from it. This is what is meant by an ex-meridian sight. Centuries ago, when computing a sight reduction required that spherical trigonometric calculations be solved long-hand, ANY celestial line of position which did not require that was an obvious benefit. Since the invention of logarithmic tables (and later calculators and computers) to perform the trig for us, this has not been the case. If a navigator happens to miss their noon sight, they simply take a sight of the sun at whatever time is convenient and reduce that into a line of position which is every bit as useful as an LAN derived latitude. Put another way, no modern navigator worthy of the name would ever use an ex-meridian sight, because a simple sunline is easier and far more accurate.

Except, of course, for USCG license candidates, who are expected to.

There is another CelNav technique on USCG exams which is basically useless and can be done more easily and accurately with another technique which is also required on the same exam. It's called an Amplitude, and is basically a means of computing the azimuth to an object without getting into the spherical trig necessary to compute an azimuth. But with sight-reduction tables or calculators, azimuths are simple, and we have to be able to use them anyway. So the easy way to avoid dealing with amplitudes on a USCG exam is to simply work amplitude questions as azimuth problems.

It turns out that you can do exactly the same thing with ex-meridian sights. Simply compute it as a normal sight-reduction. Because the sights are necessarily either nearly north or nearly south, the intercept can be applied directly to the Assumed Latitude or DR Latitude to derive the latitude of the ex-meridian. That's all.

Here's an actual example from the USCG database. In it they're asking to compute your latitude from the meridian transit of the star Dubhe, in the Big Dipper.

-- On 8 May 1981, in DR position LAT 30°26.0'N, LONG 46°55.1'W, you take an ex-meridian observation of Dubhe. The chronometer time of the sight is 11h 10m 54s, and the chronometer error is 01m 18s slow. The sextant altitude (hs) is 58°35.0'. The index error is 1.5' on the arc, and your height of eye is 44 feet. What is the latitude at meridian transit?

a) 30°12.5'N
b) 30°19.8'N
c) 30°27.6'N
d) 30°35.8'N

30°19.8'N (answer b) is correct. However, if I simply do this as a standard sight reduction (cheating and using a StarPilot calculator, but the result is the same regardless), I get 6.2' Away from 358° T, from my DR latitude of 30° 26.0'N. Since my ex-meridian sight is always going to be essentially north or south of me, I simply subtracted my intercept from my AP (actually DR in this case) and get 30° 19.8'.

In this case it works out to be exactly right, but even worst case it can't possibly be enough off to lead me to pick any of the other answers.

So if you are taking a USCG Oceans Master or Mate exam, you can effectively NOT study the Amplitude or Ex-Meridian methods and still do fine on those questions, so long as you know how to compute a simple sight-reduction. Incidentally, you can also use your sight-reduction method to determine great-circle courses and distances.

At some point soon we'll do a comparison of the two or three leading methods of computing a standard sight-reduction.

Strait of Magellan safely circumnavigates the sun

2011-10-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the water tomorrow (Sunday) and so won't be able to post. But it's 2320 on the 15th now, so I'm actually jumping the gun by 40 minutes or so, in order to get to bed.

That said, Strait of Magellan is one year old today. Believe it or not.

Fortuna Rota

2011-10-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post about outmigration, I suggested that a classic Stanford torus space station design could be landed onto the surface of Enceladus in such a way that it would spin like a top, generating artificial gravity for its inhabitants.

A few of you have requested that I elaborate a bit on this idea, but I really don't have a lot to elaborate with. The research for a Stanford torus in space has been done exhaustively. In order to effectively mimic earth's gravity, a Stanford torus is a 1.8 km diameter ring turning at one revolution per minute. A torus this size could provide sustainable habitat for some 10,000 people.

Enceladus has a surface gravity of 0.011% of earth's, meaning something as small as a human would be essentially weightless, but gyroscope nearly 2 kilometers in diameter would presumably have enough mass to keep it "on the ground". The surface of Enceladus is fairly featureless ice, so creating a more or less frictionless stylus for the torus to pivot on should be manageable.

Enceladus has relatively vast resources of fairly accessible seawater and heat energy, although we don't yet know what the source of that energy is. So, that's my idea about putting a torus colony on Enceladus.

Discuss.

;)

Celestial Navigation 101: Lesson 4, Sextant Sights

2011-10-14T18:42:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the basic introduction to celestial navigation, we now look at how we're going to actually use the sextant to determine the angle of the celestial object above the horizon. I've made a number of illustrations in MS Paint to illustrate what you will see through the sextant telescope. This was fairly simple. I have not, however, created corresponding illustrations of the sextant itself, either as a whole, or illustrating reading the limb or micrometer drum. I did attempt to render such illustrations in Paint, but doing so proved beyond my skill level. Hopefully their absence will not prove a stumbling block.

For this lesson I will assume that we are using a sextant with a traditional split-horizon mirror, but the principles are the same with a whole-horizon mirror also.

When you begin a round of sextant sights, you must first determine the amount of intrinsic error the alignment of the index mirror will instill into your sights. For a good metal sextant you might perform this step once every several days; for a plastic sextant you'll want to do this before and after every set of sights.

Set your sextant index arm to 0° 00.0'. Then look at the horizon. You will see something like this:

Now, adjust the index arm until the two images come together like this:

Now look at your index arm, and micrometer drum if your sextant has one. Unless your sextant is perfectly aligned, you will now read some number larger than 0° 00.0', either "on" the sextant arc between 0° and 90° or 120° or whatever number your sextant goes to, or else "off" the sextant arc beyond zero in the other direction. Which side this Instrument Error is on, you are going to correct your Height Shot (Hs) of the celestial object in the opposite direction. Think of it being like a jacket; if it's on, take it off, and if it's off, put it on. This opposite value of the Instrument Error is called the Instrument Correction, or IC. Write this number down, you'll be using it in all of your calculations later.

Now, move the index arm out toward the middle of the arc, somewhere around 40° is fine. Now looking at the horizon, on the index side of the mirror we see only sky:

Now, the sun has set and civil twilight has ended. We have precomputed that the star Capella bears about 043° True at an altitude of about 52° above the horizon. We dial 52° into the sextant index arm and aim the sextant toward the northeast horizon. And, by the miracles of astronomy and arithmetic, we find in our sextant telescope this:

Which is pretty darned impressive, considering.

You now, using the micrometer drum, bring Capella down until it just barely touches the horizon:

And to ensure that you are holding your sextant exactly vertical, you rock it back and forth so that the image of Capella also rocks back and forth. You want to measure the angle at the exact moment (very exact, remember four seconds of time is one nautical mile) that Capella barely kisses the horizon in lowest portion of the rockering.

That's all there is to taking a star sight with a sextant. Bring the star down to the horizon, mark the time, write the time down in your notebook, read the angle you shot off of the sextant limb and micrometer drum and then write those down next to the time. That's it.

The sun is mostly the same, with two exceptions. First, we have to use filters so that staring at the sun through a telescope doesn't burn out our retinas. In this case, the filter has made the sun appear purple.

Using the micrometer drum, bring the sun down so that the very bottom of the disk of the sun, called the Lower Limb, just touches the horizon. I haven't drawn it, but rock the sun just like you did with Capella. Because the sun is very bright, you will usually get a "ghost" image of the sun on the side of the horizon mirror that is not a mirror. It's perfectly fine to utilize this image.

If the sun is reflecting brightly on the water, you may need to use a filter on the horizon as well. In this example, the filter for the sun is dark purple and the filter for the horizon is light green. This incidentally is fairly common.

In almost every single case, you will use the Lower Limb of the sun whenever you shoot it. However, when you shoot the moon, depending on its phase and position in the sky you will sometimes need to shoot the Lower Limb and at other times you will need to shoot the Upper Limb, like this:

In most cases, the visible disk of planets are so small in a sextant telescope that you can simply treat them as points of light like a star. If the visible disk of a planet is large enough that you can easily discern an upper and lower limb, align the horizon with the center of the planet. Pictured here is Jupiter, with three of the Galilean moons visible:

That is really, really, all there is to it. Oh, except that I forgot to mention that the celestial body you're shooting happens to be moving.

More on that, soon.

Puny Little Ants

2011-10-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

"You let one ant stand up to us, and they all might stand up! Those 'puny little ants' outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line."

News flash, Mr Cain. The puny little ants have figured it out.

Faster than light

2011-10-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Last week CERN announced that they had observed neutrinos to be traveling faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. I seem to recall Fermilabs finding similar (although inconclusive) results a couple years ago.

I realize it may be asking too much of particle physicists to stoop so low as to ask for help from an astronomer. But it turns out that the astronomy community has been aware for quite some time that when a star goes supernova, the neutron stream from that reaches earth some significant amount of time (minutes or hours, not nanoseconds) earlier than the light from the same event does. It has been previously assumed that the neutrinos were somehow being released earlier than the light, which may still be true. But if instead the time lag is due wholly or partly to neutrinos traveling faster than the light, then the further away the supernova is, the greater the timelag should be. That should be a pretty easy lookup for somebody. I may look it up myself this weekend, but I'm at work and my lunch break is rather short.

Here's the CERN press release, for those who have only heard this from Fox News:

OPERA experiment reports anomaly in flight time of neutrinos from CERN to Gran Sasso
Geneva, 23 September 2011. The OPERA1 experiment, which observes a neutrino beam from CERN2 730 km away at Italy’s INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory, will present new results in a seminar at CERN this afternoon at 16:00 CEST. The seminar will be webcast at http://webcast.cern.ch. Journalists wishing to ask questions may do so via twitter using the hash tag #nuquestions, or via the usual CERN press office channels.

The OPERA result is based on the observation of over 15000 neutrino events measured at Gran Sasso, and appears to indicate that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature’s cosmic speed limit. Given the potential far-reaching consequences of such a result, independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established. This is why the OPERA collaboration has decided to open the result to broader scrutiny. The collaboration’s result is available on the preprint server arxiv.org: http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897.

The OPERA measurement is at odds with well-established laws of nature, though science frequently progresses by overthrowing the established paradigms. For this reason, many searches have been made for deviations from Einstein’s theory of relativity, so far not finding any such evidence. The strong constraints arising from these observations makes an interpretation of the OPERA measurement in terms of modification of Einstein’s theory unlikely, and give further strong reason to seek new independent measurements.

“This result comes as a complete surprise,” said OPERA spokesperson, Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern. “After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement. While OPERA researchers will continue their studies, we are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation.”

“When an experiment finds an apparently unbelievable result and can find no artefact of the measurement to account for it, it’s normal procedure to invite broader scrutiny, and this is exactly what the OPERA collaboration is doing, it’s good scientific practice,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics, but we need to be sure that there are no other, more mundane, explanations. That will require independent measurements.”

In order to perform this study, the OPERA Collaboration teamed up with experts in metrology from CERN and other institutions to perform a series of high precision measurements of the distance between the source and the detector, and of the neutrinos’ time of flight. The distance between the origin of the neutrino beam and OPERA was measured with an uncertainty of 20 cm over the 730 km travel path. The neutrinos’ time of flight was determined with an accuracy of less than 10 nanoseconds by using sophisticated instruments including advanced GPS systems and atomic clocks. The time response of all elements of the CNGS beam line and of the OPERA detector has also been measured with great precision.

"We have established synchronization between CERN and Gran Sasso that gives us nanosecond accuracy, and we’ve measured the distance between the two sites to 20 centimetres,” said Dario Autiero, the CNRS researcher who will give this afternoon’s seminar. “Although our measurements have low systematic uncertainty and high statistical accuracy, and we place great confidence in our results, we’re looking forward to comparing them with those from other experiments."

“The potential impact on science is too large to draw immediate conclusions or attempt physics interpretations. My first reaction is that the neutrino is still surprising us with its mysteries.” said Ereditato. “Today’s seminar is intended to invite scrutiny from the broader particle physics community.”

The OPERA experiment was inaugurated in 2006, with the main goal of studying the rare transformation (oscillation) of muon neutrinos into tau neutrinos. One first such event was observed in 2010, proving the unique ability of the experiment in the detection of the elusive signal of tau neutrinos.

Tiger, tiger, burning steadily

2011-10-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

The above is a raw, unprocessed photo from the Cassini flyby of Enceladus on Saturday. No data yet on the actual surface temperatures or energy outputs from the Tiger Stripes, but it is clear from this and other photos from this series that whatever the energy source is, it has not diminished significantly.

Curiouser, and curiouser.

SpaceX Falcon 9 fully reusable rocket system

2011-10-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

$50,000 per launch, with a payload of significantly more than 5,000 kg. That's, oh, let's see, carry the five...$10 per kilogram. Total weight of myself, my clothes and a well-stuffed carry-on probably 100 kg. That's $1000 to get into orbit, before considerations of administrative costs and profit margins. That's comparable to a round-trip commercial flight from Seattle to Tokyo.

There seems to be an over-reliance on the use of retrorockets for landings. This makes sense for landing the capsule itself on worlds other than earth (which seems to be the intent). It seems counterintuitive to me for the first stage booster, when a parachute would presumably require less space than the fuel needed for the retrorockets. But SpaceX has lots of experience already with parachute recovery, so I'm assuming the retrorockets are actually a better solution.

But Elon Musk seems very focused on using this technology for large-scale outmigration to the moon, Mars and beyond.

100 kilograms into space for $1000. If this works, and it very well may, this is a complete game-changer.

SPACE.COM--

The private spaceflight firm SpaceX will try to build the world's first completely reusable rocket and spaceship, a space travel method that could open the gates of Mars for humanity, the company's millionaire CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday (Sept. 29).

A fully reusable rocket would dramatically decrease the cost of lofting cargo and humans to space, making the exploration and colonization of other worlds such as Mars more feasible, Musk said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Musk did not guarantee success, acknowledging the daunting task his SpaceX team has taken on. SpaceX released a video animation of its proposed reusable rocket and space capsule system to illustrate how it would work.

"We will see if this works," Musk said. "And if it does work, it'll be pretty huge."

The hunt for an economic and reusable method for space travel has been a goal of many companies and government agencies from the Space Age's inception.

The only reusable manned spaceships built to date have been NASA's winged space shuttles, which were retired this year. The shuttles used reusable orbiters and solid rocket boosters for 30 years, but the system was not completely reusable.

Each of NASA's 135 shuttle missions also used a disposable 15-story external fuel tank. The tank was jettisoned once a shuttle reached orbit and ultimately burned up during re-entry.

Going to Mars?

Musk has said repeatedly over the years that he founded SpaceX in 2002 with the primary goal of helping humanity establish a lasting presence beyond Earth. Such expansion is necessary to ensure our species' survival, according to Musk, since a catastrophic asteroid strike or other calamity could one day wipe out life on our home planet.

Mars is a prime candidate for human settlement, and Musk has said he hopes SpaceX can send astronauts to the Red Planet within 10 or 20 years.

Colonizing Mars — or any other world — would require ferrying thousands of people and millions of tons of cargo through space. That's just not feasible with today's launch costs, Musk has said.

But a fully reusable rocket could change the equation dramatically. Musk illustrated the point by citing SpaceX's Falcon 9, which costs between $50 million to $60 million per launch in its current configuration.

"But the cost of the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about $200,000," Musk said."So obviously, if we can reuse the rocket, say, a thousand times, then that would make the capital cost of the rocket for launch only about $50,000."

In its video new animation, SpaceX officials detail how their new launch vehicle, which is based on the Falcon 9 rocket, would work.

After separating in orbit, the two stages of the rocket would come back to Earth and land at the launch pad. The stages would not glide back using wings like the space shuttle; rather, they'd descend vertically, eventually settling down on four legs.

They could then be refueled, reintegrated and relaunched.

In the video, the Falcon 9 launches SpaceX's Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. NASA has contracted the company to make cargo flights to the orbiting lab.

Falcon 9 lofted Dragon to Earth orbit for the first time last December, and SpaceX had been planning to launch a demonstration mission docking Dragon to the station in January 2012. SpaceX officials announced late today (Sept. 30) that the firm could be ready to launch the next Dragon test flight by Dec. 19, but that target is still awaiting review by the U.S. Air Force and NASA.

Whenever that demo launches, if all goes well, Dragon's next flight would be an operational cargo mission to the space station, SpaceX officials have said.

Dragon is also designed to be reusable, and SpaceX is modifying it to carry crew as well as supplies. The company hopes NASA eventually uses Dragon to launch its astronauts to low-Earth orbit. The country has lacked this capability since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July and currently depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles to provide this taxi service.

Musk did not say when he hopes the reusable rocket would be operational, or how much its development would cost. But SpaceX is going to give the enterprise its best shot.

"We have a design that on paper — doing the calculations, doing the simulations — it does work," Musk said. "Now we need to make sure those simulations and reality agree because generally, when they don't, reality wins."

Enceladus, Revisited

2011-09-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is a very important day.

Around 1400 UTC tomorrow (0700 PDT) NASAs Cassini spacecraft will do a flyby of the south pole of Enceladus, at an altitude of 99 km (62 miles). This is the first close flyby of Enceladus since early March 2011.

At that time we learned that the Tiger Stripes on the south pole of Enceladus were being heated by an energy source of some 15.8 gigawatts. 1.4 gigawatts is the absolute maximum Enceladus should be able to generate, for a matter of a few short seconds, if all of her potential geothermal and radioactive energy were concentrated into the same place at the same time. Tomorrow we will learn if the Tiger Stripes have cooled, or if they are maintaining this heat output at a consistent (or increasing) rate. All evidence so far indicates that the heat signature is not decreasing.

Tomorrow we'll know for sure. And things may become a lot more interesting.

You can track the Cassini/Solstice mission tomorrow here:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/enceladus20111001/

Persian Excursion

2011-09-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

So, in response to the presence of US naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Iran is now planning to deploy some of their own naval assets off the US east coast. Most of the Iranian fleet is coastal and riverine, and most of the seagoing fleet is US/UK WWII vintage or later Soviet vessels of equivalent technology. Three Alvand class frigates are battle-ready for the 21st century, and presumably Iran will include one or more of these in their expeditionary fleet. Of greater concern militarily are Iran's three ex-Soviet Kilo class submarines, which are still among the finest submersible combat platforms ever built. So, the saber-rattling just got a little more interesting.

(CNN) -- Iran plans to send ships near the Atlantic coast of the United States, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday, quoting a commander.

"The Navy of the Iranian Army will have a powerful presence near the United States borders," read the headline of the story, in Farsi.

"Commander of the Navy of the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran broke the news about the plans for the presence of this force in the Atlantic Ocean and said that the same way that the world arrogant power is present near our marine borders, we, with the help of our sailors who follow the concept of the supreme jurisprudence, shall also establish a powerful presence near the marine borders of the United States," the story said. The reference to the "world arrogant power" was presumably intended to refer to the United States.

IRNA cited the force's website as saying that the announcement was made by Adm. Habibollah Sayari on the 31st anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war.

State-run Press TV said Sayari had announced similar plans in July. In February, two Iranian Navy ships traversed the Suez Canal in the first such voyages by Iranian ships since 1979.

U.S. Defense Department officials had no immediate reaction to Tuesday's announcement. The United States has deployed fleets to the Persian Gulf in the past.

State-run Press TV, citing IRNA, said Tuesday's announcement came as Iran also plans to send its 16th fleet of warships to the Gulf of Aden to protect Iranian vessels and oil tankers from pirates, who have hijacked dozens of ships and exchanged their crews for ransom.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that Tehran's defense doctrine is based only on deterrence, Press TV reported in a story in July about the deployment of submarines to international waters.

LightSquared vs GPS update

2011-09-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

Here's an update on the mess between LightSquared and the Department of Defense and everyone else who relies on GPS technology.

If you aren't aware of the controversy, here's what it boils down to. The Global Positioning System satellites (and other satellite navigation systems such as GLONASS and Galileo) transmit their data using L-Band radio waves, specifically centered at 1575.42 MHz (L1), 1227.60 MHz (L2), 1381.05 MHz (L3), 1176.45 MHz (L5).

LightSquared is a telecommunications company which is attempting to set up a new 4G network, with land-based transmitters using identical or nearly identical frequencies.

Yes, the FCC authorized them to use the frequencies. No, the FCC wasn't thinking real hard when they did that.

Radio Theory 101: a strong signal transmitting from near by will override a weak signal of the same or similar frequency which is transmitting from far away. Which is a polite way of saying that if LightSquared were actually deliberately trying to jam the GPS satellites, they probably couldn't manage a better job of it.

So, one simple solution would have been for the FCC to say "oops", and assign different frequencies to LightSquared. Another simple solution would have been for LightSquared to have taken the moral high ground and asked the FCC for different frequency real-estate. Neither of these things happened.

So the military and the FAA became involved, and explained to congress that LightSquared couldn't utilize the frequencies they'd been allotted by the FCC, because the military and commercial airliners actually relied on GPS to navigate safely. Which might have been the end of the whole conversation, but it turns out that in 2011, not only are corporations now people, but they now take precedence over the military and governmental agencies. It turns out that corporate profitability is much more important than the ability of military vessels and aircraft to carry out their missions, or for airliners to be able to safely navigate in dense cloud cover.

So, this issue is still being debated in congress, with LightSquared and the FCC on one side and the military, FAA and the manufacturers of GPS receivers on the other.

Personally, I am a bit conflicted. On the one hand, I recognize that the safety of hundreds of thousands of airline passengers probably outweighs the needs of people who want to be able to play FarmVille on their cellphones a little faster. On the other hand, I make my living teaching celestial navigation. Since the government turned off (and actually blew up, to ensure that they couldn't be turned on again) the Loran-C radio transmitters, GPS is the primary means of navigation on land, air and sea. Take GPS away, and for an ocean crossing (for example) the only means of navigation left to most people are dead reckoning and celestial. So, no Loran plus no GPS means lots of full classrooms for me, and the money just keeps rolling in.

Yeah, no, not having GPS is still bad. Not having GPS because a telecommunications company doesn't seem to able to play well with others, is really bad. The fact that congress even needs to deliberate on this particular no-brainer is really, really bad. But that's where things stand right now.

The following is an email update from the Coalition to Save Our GPS, a lobbying group working on behalf of the Department of Defense and FAA:

================================================

Two recent hearings focused on LightSquared and its impact on GPS signals. On Thursday, September 15th, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces held a hearing where Air Force General William Shelton testified that, “based on the test results and analysis today, the LightSquared network would effectively jam vital GPS receivers. And to our knowledge thus far, there are no mitigation options that would be effective in eliminating interference to essential GPS services in the United States.’ When questioned about costs, the general responded, ‘We have not estimated cost. However, I think it'd be very safe to say that the cost would be in the b's – billions of dollars.”

On Thursday, September 8th, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on the “Impacts of the LightSquared Network,” where lawmakers and expert witnesses called for further testing of the planned network. Tony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, said: "If GPS is a teaspoon of water, LightSquared is Niagara Falls.”…"Technical experts are split as to whether it is even feasible that we could put a filter in that was both strong enough to knock out the LightSquared signal and still allow us to do our mission.”

Earlier this week, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced that they have taken initial steps to investigate the possibility that political influence may have played a role in the FCC’s decision in the LightSquared waiver. Two letters that the House Science Committee sent to the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and technology Policy can be found here.

We are anticipating Congressional action in the near future on two pieces of legislation that address the GPS interference issue. The first bill, HR 1540, directs the FCC not to proceed on the LightSquared matter until interference to Department of Defense GPS systems is resolved. The second bill, HR 2434, directs the FCC not to proceed on the LightSquared matter until interference to commercial GPS users is resolved. We are hopeful that Congress will take final action on these two bills in the next several weeks.

NTIA and FCC call for more testing:

In a letter to the U.S. Defense and Transportation Departments dated September 9, 2011, Lawrence Strickling, who heads the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, called for further testing of the LightSquared network to conclude by November 30. The letter called primarily for testing of cellular and personal/general navigation devices, noting that additional testing will be required for high-precision receivers once filters are developed to mitigate interference. The letter can be viewed here.

On September 13, 2011, the FCC called for further testing as well to ensure that LightSquared won’t cause harmful interference to GPS. The FCC's public notice can be found here.

LightSquared revises its plans…again:

LightSquared’s latest proposal – its third of the year – includes limiting the on-the-ground power levels its ground stations will transmit. While it appears to be a positive step toward reducing, for some devices, the harmful interference to GPS signals confirmed during testing of LightSquared’s earlier incomplete proposals, it still leaves a huge gap because it does not claim to solve interference to high-precision GPS receivers. Even after three tries, there remain substantial gaps in what LightSquared has offered.

LightSquared’s supposed technical fix for high-precision receivers:

On September 21st, LightSquared, in partnership with Javad GNSS, claimed to have found a solution that will prevent its network from interfering with high-precision GPS devices and that the company will test prototypes during additional tests required by the FCC. LightSquared has, as usual, oversimplified and greatly overstated the significance of the claims of a single vendor to have ‘solved’ the interference issue. There have been many vendor claims that have not proven out in rigorous tests and the demanding tests of marketplace acceptance. Moreover, this is not a one-size-fits-all situation and a few prototypes does not a solution make.

The way forward:

As the Coalition stated in a statement on Tuesday, September 20th, “It’s time for LightSquared to stop its glossy ads, irresponsible rhetoric, revisionist history and finger pointing, and provide genuine, fully-tested solutions to the GPS interference problem. LightSquared has always been prohibited from interfering with GPS, and it should have done its homework on this critical issue before spending its investors’ money. It is not the fault of government GPS users or the GPS industry that LightSquared has failed to offer proposals that actually solve the problem. LightSquared must accept the responsibility to provide technical proposals that do resolve the problem, as well as its financial responsibility to address any interference issues that it cannot resolve by technical proposals.”

NASA press conference on Near-Earth asteroid findings

2011-09-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

Press release below, NASA press conference 10am PDT Thursday. New data from WISE satellite, will be interesting to see what they've found.

==================================================
Sept. 26, 2011

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-206

NASA TO HOST NEWS CONFERENCE ON ASTEROID SEARCH FINDINGS

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT on
Thurs., Sept. 29, to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and
implications for future research. The briefing will take place in the
NASA Headquarters James E. Webb Auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW
in Washington.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in
December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in
space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results
from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE)
that hunted for asteroids.

The panelists are:
-- Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive, NASA Headquarters,
Washington
-- Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Tim Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
-- Lucy McFadden, scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md.

Reporters unable to attend may ask questions from participating NASA
centers or by telephone. To participate by phone, reporters must
contact Dwayne Brown at 202-358-1726 or dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov by 10
a.m. EDT on Sept. 29.

The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information,
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

The briefing also will be streamed live, with a chat available, at:

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

For more information about the mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

Celestial Navigation 101, Interlude: What sextant should I buy?

2011-09-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

The question has come up as to which sextant I would recommend for people working through this course. This question happens to come up in any celnav course at some point, so it happens that I have a "stock" essay answer to the question which I usually give out on the first day of class. What follows is a slightly modified version of that, tailored to a wider audience than just students sitting in a Seattle classroom. If you are not interested in purchasing a sextant at this time but are following along with the Celestial Navigation 101 posts, do please read this, as it contains good general information about sextants which will be helpful later in the program. Because this is largely cut-and-pasted from a pdf, there may be some formatting issues. I'm endeavoring to correct the worst of these as I update the essay for this purpose, but please bear with.

First off, you do not need your own sextant for this course. You will eventually need one with which to practice sextant sights, and of course you'll need one on the water if you intend to incorporate celestial navigation into your ocean navigation routine.

Disclaimer: I do not sell sextants, nor do I have any vested interest in which sextant you purchase. For this reason, I will in some cases recommend one sextant or type of sextant over another without reservation. However, if you already own a sextant, and it does not happen to be one of the ones I recommend for purchase, don't worry; any marine sextant at all will do everything you need to safely navigate across an ocean. I will also discuss purchasing used sextants, which in some cases can be a very good option.

What does a sextant do?

A sextant measures angles. In celestial navigation, a sextant measures angles from the horizon up to an object in the sky, whether it is a star, planet, the sun or the moon. There are instruments which can measure angles more accurately than a sextant, but a sextant is the best tool for measuring angles from the deck of a small boat rocking in big seas.

Metal Sextants

Plastic, by its nature, allows more freedom of movement between the working parts of a sextant, and so creates more error in any given sight. However, with proper sight-averaging techniques (which we should be using with any sextant) a good plastic sextant will yield similar results to a metal sextant. The advantage of a metal sextant is that if we do not use proper sight averaging techniques we will still get a pretty acceptable fix. In other words, a metal sextant allows us to be a bit lazier and still navigate safely.

Metal sextants are made of either brass or aluminum. Aluminum sextants are lighter and less expensive than their brass counterparts. Lighter is generally better. The old argument that heavier sextants are somehow superior because they have “more inertia” is frankly absurd. If you are using proper sight averaging techniques you will be shooting a lot of sights for every fix, and if your arm is getting tired from lifting 10 lbs of brass up to your eye your sights are going to get sloppier.

The other common argument favoring brass over aluminum is that the worm-gears of a brass sextant are inherently more precise than those of an aluminum instrument. This is technically true. However, the difference in accuracy is somewhere in the neighborhood of .05' of arc. This is nominally a difference of about 100 meters, which seems like a lot to us in a post-GPS world. However, in order to make our math easier, celestial navigation is based entirely on the notion that the earth is a perfect sphere, which it is not. So the inherent errors in this assumption alone will generate errors of a quarter mile or more for a dockside fix, and from the deck of a small boat in large seas it is unrealistic to imagine that we will get a fix much more accurate than one nautical mile from our actual position. Which sounds like a fairly large error, but is actually far more accurate than we can possibly steer a boat to compensate for on a voyage from, say, Seattle to Honolulu. So the advantage of a brass sextant in accuracy is as negligible as that of, for example, using a scale calibrated to micrograms to sell apples by the pound.

A better argument in favor of brass sextants is that they are more durable than their aluminum counterparts. This is demonstrably true. A well maintained brass sextant under rigorous daily use will last generations, whereas an aluminum sextant under the same conditions might last only a few decades, due to friction slowly degrading the worm-gear. Realistically, in this day and age when celestial navigation is mostly a redundant back-up for GPS and we are typically only shooting one celestial fix each day, a good aluminum sextant will last your entire seafaring career, but it will not also last through your grandchildren's seafaring careers. An aluminum sextant is a working tool, a brass sextant is an heirloom.

The last (and best) argument in favor of brass sextants is that they simply look better than aluminum sextants. They do. Personally, I love the way a really well-made brass sextant looks and feels. The mechanisms move more smoothly, and they just look and feel “nicer” than an aluminum sextant. Standing on the dock, or in the classroom, there's nothing better to do celestial navigation with than a brass sextant. But I probably wouldn't actually take one to sea with me on a small boat, because if I were to lose a $2000 sextant over the side I would be very, very sad.

Brass Sextants

The best and most easily available new brass sextants are from Cassen and Plath in Germany, and Tamaya in Japan. Typically you must purchase the sextant and the telescope (a 3.5x40 scope is standard, and probably the best all-around scope for most applications) for the sextant separately, and the combined cost will be around $2000. This is actually about half the price the same sextants were being sold for 10 years ago, due largely to the impact aluminum sextants have had on the market.
Tamaya sextants are sold by Captain's Nautical Supply, www.captainsnautical.com, Cassen and Plath sextants are available online from Celestaire, www.celestaire.com
Old US Navy surplus Mark 5s are excellent (if somewhat utilitarian) sextants if you can find them.

Aluminum Sextants

The best aluminum sextant available new is the Astra IIIb, from China. This is the instrument used by the Chinese Navy and Merchant Marine, as well as most of the navies and merchant marines around the world. It is by far the best selling sextant in the world, with good reason. My own preferred sextant is an Astra IIIb. They retail for about $600. Astra sextants are available locally from Starpath School of Navigation, www.starpath.com.

Another good aluminum sextant is the CHO-T sextant (the more correct transliteration from Cyrillic is SNO-T, but nobody seems to want to buy one of these) from Russia, which is a knock-off of the Freiberger sextant from Germany. These instruments can usually be found in good condition used for somewhat less than the price of a new Astra IIIb. Be careful to buy a marine sextant if you get a CHO-T, because they also make astronomical sextants which are otherwise identical but leave the telescope image inverted.

Plastic Sextants

Plastic sextants have a bad rep. This is not entirely undeserved, but some of the bad reputation which plastic sextants have is plainly spurious. One of the most frequent complaints I've heard about plastic sextants is that if you leave them out in the sun, the plastic expands and thus degrades your sight. Yes, plastic left in the sun will expand. However, it will tend to expand evenly, so this should not actually effect your sight. Also, no navigator worthy of the name is going to leave any sextant out in the hot sun, so the point is moot. What is not moot is the fact that plastic worm-gears (or even plastic-on-metal worm-gears) are too malleable for the precision desired of a sextant. Even so, a sextant with a plastic worm-gear is still significantly more accurate than any other means of deriving an angle from a moving boat at sea, such as an astrolabe or kamal, so it is still a worthwhile tool to have on board.

Plastic sextants are available from Davis Instrument Corporation, which is the only company in the United States which manufactures sextants. Davis sells three basic models of plastic sextant. Unlike metal sextants, and utterly counter-intuitively, with Davis sextants what you pay for is inverse to what you get. The “standard” Davis sextant is the Mark 15, which runs about $170 new. It has all of the problems previously noted with plastic worm-gears, but is otherwise a functional sextant. The “deluxe” Davis sextant is the Mark 25, which retails for about $220 new. It has all of the problems associated with the Mark 15, and additionally has a “whole horizon” beam-splitting mirror, which is generally inferior to the traditional split mirror of the Mark 15 (more on mirror differences later). The main selling point of these two sextants is that they look and operate more or less like most metal sextants. Frankly, for the same price you will probably be much better off getting a used metal sextant on eBay, which I would not otherwise ever recommend.

Davis, however, makes one more sextant, which more or less redeems them from the sins of manufacturing the other two. It is called the Mark 3, and it retails for about $50. The Mark 3 is about the very least thing that could ever consider itself to be a functioning marine sextant. It is made out of stamped plastic and held together with model airplane glue, and has only one significant moving part, which is its saving virtue. There is no worm-gear, just a simple pivot point, and instead of a traditional micrometer drum to read minutes of arc it has a very simple vernier scale. The Mark 3 isn't pretty. It doesn't seem to work in the same way as a more traditional sextant (although the basic principles are the same), has no telescope, and instead of a beam-splitter or a traditional split horizon mirror has a simple glass mirror and thin air. In spite of this extreme simplicity (or rather, because of it), if proper sight-averaging techniques are used, the Mark 3 will yield results very comparable to those of an aluminum or brass sextant of $2000 or more. Neither of Davis' more expensive sextants can make this claim. So, for $50 for the sextant, $30 for a Nautical Almanac and $20 for a decent quartz watch, you can be adequately equipped to navigate across an ocean for about $100, roughly the same price as a bottom-shelf handheld GPS or a good hand-bearing compass.

Used Sextants

Given normal maintenance and usage, there really isn't a great deal that will go wrong with a good sextant. A mirror might need to be replaced or resilvered, and also realigned, but that's usually about it. Unless you are very knowledgeable about sextants, do not buy a used one on eBay. The vast majority of sextants sold on eBay or similar venues are ornaments not intended for navigation, even if the ad says otherwise. This is not because the sellers are dishonest, it is because they are not navigators and do not know the difference between a sextant and a wall-hanger.

As far as buying a sextant from a second-hand boating supply place, chances are good that if you stay with a known brand that you will get a decent instrument. My best recommendation, however, is to wait to buy a used sextant until after you have completed this course, and are more knowledgeable about sextants generally.

What type of horizon mirror is best?

There are generally two types of horizon mirrors for sextants. The traditional or “split image” type is a piece of glass which is only silvered on one half of its surface. This allows you to see the reflected image (from the index mirror) of the star in the silvered side, while viewing the horizon through the unsilvered (clear) side.

“Whole horizon” or beam-splitter mirrors are partially silvered across their entirety, and so partially reflect the star and partially display the horizon in the same field of view. In doing so, 50% of the light of the object is lost, and 50% of the light of the horizon is also lost. This is not a problem when both the object and the horizon are very visible, such as shooting the sun on a clear day. However, it makes shooting a dim star with a faint horizon nearly impossible, and shooting a daytime moon or Venus amid any amount of cloud cover utterly impossible. The only virtue of the “whole horizon” mirror is that it makes sun-sights a little bit easier for a rank beginner. After a few minutes of sextant practice, you will have no difficulty using the traditional mirror to obtain a sunline, and so will have no further use for a whole-horizon mirror.

What about bubble-sextants and artificial horizons?

Some military sextants are equipped with a “bubble” attachment for use by submarines on dark nights. An actual, functional bubble attachment is very, very expensive, and of very little utility for any vessel which is always on the surface. The “practice bubble attachment” sold by some companies is basically a carpenter's level, and for actual navigation (or even sextant practice) is essentially worse than useless.

Some companies also sell an “artificial horizon”, which is little more than using a tray of water to reflect the image of an object back onto itself. You can achieve the same thing with a pie-plate or a rain puddle and save yourself the $30 or so that most companies charge. But this isn't the way we shoot sights, so it really isn't even useful for training. You are much better off using even a small body of water and computing for the difference between the near shore and the horizon. However, if you have even three miles of water between you and the opposite shore (such as is true for most of Puget Sound, for example), you have a real horizon, even though you can see land beyond the curvature of the earth.

Okay, so what is my best bet?

Based on all of this, my recommendation is that an Astra IIIb aluminum sextant, with a traditional split mirror, is your best bet for the money.
If that's out of your price range, a Davis Mark 3 is a great value at a very small cost.

Celestial Navigation 101: Lesson 3, the Navigational Triangle

2011-09-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

Here's another topic where you don't have to take notes. You will not actually ever do any of what I'm about to demonstrate. You will have logarithmic tables or calculators to do all of this for you. But, pay attention anyway. This is the cornerstone of all traditional celestial navigation; everything else we do is based on this.

We begin with three known pieces of information.

From the Nautical Almanac or other similar source, we know the latitude and longitude of the geographical position of the celestial body at the moment we observed it. We call the latitude of an object in the sky Declination, or Dec. We call the longitude of an object in the sky Greenwich Hour Angle, or GHA.

We know our own Assumed Position (AP). This may be our dead reckoning position, it might be our GPS position, or, depending on the method we intend to use to reduce the observation to a line of position, it may be something rather more arcane than this. It really doesn't matter, we just need something to use as a baseline to compute and compare the actual observation to.

Our Assumed Position can be broken down into two parts, Assumed Latitude (aLat) and Assumed Longitude (aLon).

So, in essence, we know both the latitude and longitude of both our own assumed position, and the geographic position of the celestial body.

The latitude (declination, really) of the Geographic Position of the body is a distance from the equator. We know that the total distance from the equator to the pole is 90°. So the latitude of the GP of the body, subtracted from 90°, is the distance in degrees from the pole to the GP of the body. This number is called CoDeclination. The same is also true for the latitude of our Assumed Position. This number is called CoLatitude. You don't need to worry about CoDeclination or CoLatitude, the logarithmic tables will take care of them for us. But it's good to understand the principle.

The difference between the longitude (really GHA) of the celestial body and our own Assumed Longitude is an angle centered on the pole. This angle is called the Local Hour Angle (LHA) of the celestial body.

Once we know the length of our CoLatitude, the length of the CoDeclination of the body, and the angle (LHA) between them, we have only to calculate a side-angle-side triangle using the principles of spherical trigonometry to determine the length of the remaining side of the triangle, and the angle between our own longitude and this leg.

Going back to Lesson 1 on Circles of Equal Altitude, we know that 90° minus the height of the celestial object (in degrees above the horizon) equals the distance from ourselves to the Geographic Position of the object. So, conversely, 90° minus the computed distance to the GP equals the height of the celestial object above the horizon.

And going back to Lesson 2 on the Azimuth Intercept Method, the difference between our Computed Height (Hc) and our actual Observed Height (Ho) of the object is the difference in nautical miles between our assumed position and our actual position.

That's it. Everything else we do in this course will be anchored on this principle.
Understand this lesson, and everything else which follows will fall magically into place.

If you don't understand this lesson, don't sweat it. Lots of people don't, and still manage to navigate across oceans safely with just a sextant and a chronometer. The whole purpose of the various tables we're going to use is to eliminate the need to understand this lesson.

What you do need to understand is this. Whatever method you choose to use to reduce your observations to a line of position, you will first need to determine three things:

1) Your own Assumed Latitude

2) The Declination of the celestial body

3) The Local Hour Angle (LHA) between the body and your own assumed Longitude.

Latitude, Declination, Local Hour Angle.

"Lat, Dec, LHA."

Say it over and over again until it becomes a mantra. Really.

That's one of them Very Important Concepts.

NASA unveils new Space Launch System design

2011-09-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a first peek at NASA's new Very Heavy Lift rockets for manned missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroid belt.

Yes, it looks like a Saturn V with space shuttle solid boosters duct-taped to the sides. And in some sense, that's kind of what it is. But NASA was given the mandate of developing a moon and Mars -ready spacecraft, on the cheap, on the quick, and using off-the-shelf parts from the space shuttles, and the Orion/Constellation projects. The solution is an interesting one, and it isn't horrible.

I'll be posting much more about the SLS here as more information becomes available.

====================================

NASA-- The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs. It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage. SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations. The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons. That's more than 154,000 pounds, or 77 tons, roughly the weight of 40 sport utility vehicles. The lift capacity will be evolvable to 130 metric tons -- more than 286,000 pounds, or 143 tons -- enough to lift 75 SUVs. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

This specific architecture was selected, largely because it utilizes an evolvable development approach, which allows NASA to address high-cost development activities early on in the program and take advantage of higher buying power before inflation erodes the available funding of a fixed budget. This architecture also enables NASA to leverage existing capabilities and lower development costs by using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for both the core and upper stages. Additionally, this architecture provides a modular launch vehicle that can be configured for specific mission needs using a variation of common elements. NASA may not need to lift 130 metric tons for each mission and the flexibility of this modular architecture allows the agency to use different core stage, upper stage, and first-stage booster combinations to achieve the most efficient launch vehicle for the desired mission.

Celestial Navigation 101, Interlude: Euclid Wept

2011-09-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

Sit back for a minute and relax. You don't have to take notes for this part, there won't be a test, and it won't directly affect your navigation. What it will do, hopefully, is illustrate the necessity of the steps which will follow in the next and subsequent lessons.

Follow along with this illustration of the globe. It will help.

We have not yet discussed longitude lines, but they are imaginary lines which run north and south around the circumference of the globe, intersecting both poles. Don't worry yet about how they're measured, or from where; that will come later. For now, just understand that they are lines which run along the circumference of the globe, from one pole to the other.

In our illustration there are two lines of longitude shown, at an angle of about 70° apart from each other.

It is clear (I hope) from the illustration that each of the longitude lines intersects the equator at a 90° angle. This happens to be true for all longitude lines.

Also shown is another latitude line north of the equator, which is also intersected by each of the longitude lines at a 90° angle.

All latitude lines are parallel to the equator. Since the equator and the other latitude line are parallel to each other, and the two longitude lines are intersecting both the equator and the other latitude line at the same angle, the two longitude lines are by definition also parallel to each other.

If we draw a triangle with two of the legs extending down our two longitude lines from the north pole down to the equator, and then for our third leg connect these two legs along the equator, we see two interesting things.

The first is that the three angles of the triangle are 90°, 90° and 70°, which, if added together, equal 250°.

The second is that our two longitude lines, which have been demonstrated to be parallel to each other, must necessarily converge and intersect at the north pole.

Very Important Concept: Two parallel lines often intersect, and the sum of the three angles of a triangle must always be greater than 180°.

It is possible that at some point in your education you were told something which was somewhat contrary to this. If you are somewhat surprised to learn that parallel lines intersect, and that the sum of the three angles of a triangle may never equal 180°, you are to be forgiven. Your high school geometry teacher, however, is not. A geometry teacher should know better. It happens that many of them don't.

If you happen to be of an age where you have not yet been exposed to the wonders of Euclidean geometry, never fear; at some point in your schooling, you will be. And on that golden, sunny day, listen politely while your teacher explains that two parallel lines can never intersect, and that the sum of the three angles of a triangle must always equal 180°. Once they are finished, please raise your hand. When you are called upon, please politely explain to your teacher that while their lecture was positively delightful, it turns out that the world is round, like an orange, or a bowling ball.

They love that.

The point of this exercise is to illustrate that solving a triangle on a spherical surface is, frankly, not making mud-pies. In some twenty-plus years of teaching celestial navigation I've had maybe two or three students who were comfortable solving spherical trigonometry with a scientific calculator, and not a single one who could solve it long-hand without a scientific calculator. Don't worry, nobody will expect you to; we have logarithmic tables or programmable calculators to solve the triangles for us. But this is why we need the logarithmic tables in the first place.

We'll see some of these soon. But our next topic will be looking at how we use this triangle to derive our celestial line of position.

Celestial Navigation 101: Lesson 2, Azimuth Intercept Method

2011-09-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

In our last lesson we demonstrated how to derive one's position on a globe, using the distances from the points on the earth directly below three celestial bodies.

However, we do not navigate on globes. We navigate on flat pieces of paper (or computer screens) which represent only the tiniest fraction of the surface of the globe. In all but the rarest of cases, the Geographic Position of the celestial body isn't even on the chart we're navigating on. So how does one go about plotting a circle of equal altitude on a chart, when the point the circle is centered on isn't on the chart, or even on the boat?

The bad news is, you can't. The good news is, you don't have to.

This particular problem, by the way, troubled navigators for decades. Marcq St Hilaire discovered one solution to this problem which we still use today.

St Hilaire's solution was actually a fairly simple one. Previous navigators had sought to be able to determine their location "cold", without any idea of where they were before they derived the location. St Hilaire realized that while this was an interesting thought-problem, it wasn't relevant to the way vessels at sea are actually navigated. In actual navigation, you always have some idea of where the vessel is, by dead reckoning (which will be covered in detail in a later lesson) if by no other means.

If you have an assumed location, even if that assumption is wildly erroneous, then instead of measuring the distance from the Geographical Position of the celestial body, you simply calculate the altitude of the body as it would be from that Assumed Position (AP), and then compare that calculated altitude with the actual altitude which was observed and measured with your sextant.

If your computed altitude of the body is a greater number than the observed altitude, you must be further away from the body by whatever amount the difference is. Remember that 1' of arc is one nautical mile. So, for example, if I compute the altitude of a body to be 46° 22', and then I observe the altitude to be 46° 08', then I have to be 14 nautical miles further away from the body than I thought I was. A mnemonic for this CGA (Coast Guard Academy), which stands for Computed Greater Away. If the Height Computed (Hc) is greater than the Height Observed (Ho) then your Line of Position (LOP) is moved away from the direction of the body, from your Assumed Position. This difference is called the Intercept, and it is from this that we get the name Azimuth Intercept Method. It is our primary method of celestial navigation. Note that the circles of equal altitude are so large that we can simply plot the segment of it which is closest to us as a straight line. Plotted on a chart or plotting sheet, our observation looks like this:

The red dot inside the red square is your Assumed Position on the chart.

The blue arrow is in the direction of the Azimuth (Zn) of the celestial body from your Assumed Position. Azimuth is just an astronomical word meaning "bearing" or "direction". In this case the azimuth is about 045° True, or roughly north-east. This is the direction you were facing when you observed the celestial body with your sextant.

The green line, which is perpendicular to the azimuth line, is however many minutes (nautical miles) distant from your Assumed Position as was the difference between your Height Computed and your Height Observed. In this case, because the computed height was greater than the observed height, it is further away from your assumed position than the celestial body. This green line is your Line of Position. You are actually somewhere along this line, as opposed your assumed position.

If your observed height had been greater than your computed height, it would have looked more like this:

If your Height Observed (Ho) is more than your Height Computed (Hc), your Line of Position must be closer toward the celestial body than your assumed position. Ho More Toward; HoMoTo. I've heard a number of different mnemonics for this, none of which are particularly politically correct.

Plotted on a chart or plotting sheet, this line of position looks something like this:

And you are somewhere on that line of position, rather than at your assumed position.

Now, do this with two more celestial objects, for a total of three lines of position:

Where the three green lines of position cross, labeled in this case with a black dot inside a small black circle, is your fix. This is the position of your vessel at the time you observed the three celestial bodies. If you were actually navigating, you would now update your dead reckoning track to this fix.

This plotted fix frankly looks like a mess. That's just what it is, and that's just what your fixes will look like.

In the next lesson, we will begin to see how the height and azimuth of the celestial body are computed.

Celestial Navigation 101: Lesson 1, Circles of Equal Altitude

2011-09-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

We're going to start with the easiest and most fundamental concepts first, and then build upon these. Throughout these lessons I will occasionally flag something in bold as a Very Important Concept. In some cases these may at first seem trivial, but they represent conceptual pitfalls I have encountered often in the 20+ years I've taught celestial navigation. Bear with; if I'm flagging a concept, however seemingly obvious or mundane, there's probably a point to it.

Okay, let's begin.

Very Important Concept: The stars are very far away.

Imagine that there is a bright object in space which is pretty close by. Perhaps at the distance of the orbits of the GPS satellites. Let's imagine that there is a giant desk lamp floating at the distance of the orbits of the GPS satellites. Seen from space, it looks something like this:

The light from the desk lamp arrives at the earth from different directions in space, depending on where on the earth you are observing the desk lamp from. This difference is called parallax.

However, the stars, and incidentally the sun and most of the planets, are so far away from the earth that the light rays coming from them are parallel to each other, so that wherever you are on earth they are seen to be coming from the same direction in space. Like this:

Note that because the earth is roughly spherical, the angle which the light from the star is seen from earth changes, depending where the observer is on the sphere.
We'll come back to this point in a moment.

Not only is the earth roughly spherical, it is spinning. Because it is spinning, we can define directions and locations on the sphere relative to that spin. Without that spin, we would have no reference for direction. We call the two places where the hub of the spin intersects the surface of the earth the poles, which we then arbitrarily name "north" and "south". The part of the sphere which is farthest away from both the north pole and the south pole, the part which is spinning the fastest, we call the equator.

We call the direction the sphere is spinning toward "east" and the direction the sphere is spinning away from "west". We won't be addressing east and west for a while yet, that's pretty advanced stuff for a later date. But I wanted to get those terms out there.

Because the earth is kind of like a sphere, and because a sphere is basically a three-dimensional circle, we divide the perimeter of the earth into 360 equal units. This is also arbitrary; it could just as easily be a hundred units, or a thousand, or seventy-three. But 360 degrees is the convention we have used since Euclid, so we'll roll with it. So to speak.

The convention we use is to call the equator 0° and the two poles 90°, north and south, respectively. Between these in each direction are 90° of latitude. Each degree of latitude is divided into 60 equal minutes.

Very Important Concept: A minute of latitude, and any other minute of arc on the earth, is equal to one nautical mile.

This, in fact, is what a "nautical mile" is, and why we have such a thing. Just remember "a mile a minute" as a mnemonic. Incidentally, from this point forward in this series, at any point you see the word "mile" by itself, assume that it means a nautical mile. We will have no reason to ever use the other kind in this series.

Okay, so. The earth is spinning, we're on it. Imagine now that you are standing at the north pole, exactly, 90° north, the very hub of the spinning planet. Now, let's further imagine that there is a star EXACTLY over the north pole. We'll call it Polaris. Now, in reality, the real Polaris is NOT exactly over the north pole. It happens to be pretty close, but "pretty close" isn't good enough for this demonstration. That's okay. We're going to pretend that Polaris is at exactly 90° north, just for a little bit.

So, standing at the north pole, which is 90° north, we look at Polaris, which is also 90° north. By definition, Polaris must be directly overhead. Another way to say this is that Polaris is at our zenith; "zenith" is an astronomical term which means "up". Yet another way of stating this is to say that if we were to measure the angular distance in the sky from the horizon to Polaris, it would be 90°, as 90° defines the zenith, or up, or "directly overhead", or however you want to say that.

Very Important Concept: Every star, and also every other celestial body, at any given moment in time has some point on the earth which is directly "below" it.
This point is called the Geographic Position, or GP.

If you now walk one mile south from the north pole (every direction is "south" from the north pole) and again measure the angular distance from the horizon to Polaris, you find that Polaris is now 89° 59' from the horizon. And, your latitude is 89° 59' north of the equator. And, you are now one nautical mile away from the GP of Polaris. You could be anywhere on a circle which is exactly one nautical mile around the GP of Polaris, but you are definitely somewhere on that circle. This is called a Circle of Equal Altitude.

That was also a Very Important Concept.

So, let's continue with the exercise. Continue walking (and swimming and whatever it takes) southward until you get to the equator. Now turn around, and look at Polaris again. Now, Polaris is just touching the horizon. The angular distance between Polaris and the horizon, which is also called the altitude of Polaris, is 0°. And your latitude is also 0°. Another way to say this is that the distance from your zenith down to Polaris is 90°, and the distance from the GP of Polaris to where you are standing is also 90° on the globe. And so you are standing somewhere on a circle of equal altitude 90° away from the GP of Polaris.

Now, imagine walking back north to the place where you live (if you don't happen to live in the northern hemisphere, just play along for a minute). I happen to live in Seattle, so I'm going to use Seattle for this part of the exercise, but by all means try this with your own actual latitude. Seattle is at about 48° north. As you walk northward, Polaris will move higher and higher in the sky, until it is at 48° above the horizon. The altitude of Polaris is 48°, and your latitude is 48° north. The other way to say this is that the distance from your zenith to Polaris is 42° (90°-48°=42°) and the distance between yourself and the GP of Polaris is also 42°. And so you are standing somewhere on a circle of equal altitude 42° away from the GP of Polaris.

From here, it is an easy step to see that the altitude of any celestial object defines a circle of equal altitude around the Geographic Position of that object. The distance from the GP is simply 90° minus the altitude.

In this illustration, you are somewhere on the circle of equal altitude around the GP of the object. But where? That circle could be thousands of miles in circumference. The answer is simple; measure the altitude of two more celestial bodies. Where the three circles of equal altitude intersect is your location on the globe.

In a very real sense, that's all there is to it. In principle, with a globe in-hand, you could go out on deck with your sextant, measure the altitude of three stars, plot the GPs of those stars on the globe, subtract the altitudes you shot from 90° to determine the size of the circle, in degrees, to draw around each of the respective GPs. Where the three circles intersect is your position.

This does work, and in fact was one of the ways early European navigators did such things. However, it can only yield a position accurate to within several hundred miles. Which isn't horrible out in the middle of the ocean; it would at least give you some idea of which course to steer to get back to your own country.

But we can do much, much better.

The rest of this course will focus on how to take these concepts and turn them into a position which is functionally as accurate as one derived from GPS.

Celestial Navigation 101: Introduction

2011-09-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

Strait of Magellan draws a fairly diverse readership from across a pretty broad spectrum of industries and interests. It isn't uncommon to get lively discussions here between career mariners and rocket scientists and astrophysicists, sometimes on the same topic. Which is great, but it occasionally provides a challenge in keeping posts, if not directly relevant to each reader's primary interests, at least comprehensible. It isn't as difficult in cases like space science, where I myself am just an amateur and a hobbyist. If anything, I'm surprised on the rare occasions that I have anything to contribute to the discussion at all. However, in some fields, including celestial navigation, I am more comfortable claiming some modicum of expertise. And some of the readers here are rather more expert than myself in these fields, so I occasionally find myself writing to that niche.

Last night I was working on a fairly lengthy post which fell into that category. It discussed some departures from standard celestial navigation protocols which I thought would at least generate some interesting discussion. However, as I was writing the post, I found myself stopping to explain the rudiments of celnav every other paragraph or so, in order to keep the post somewhat readable to more than two or three celnav geeks who read this blog. This very rapidly derailed the post.

Coincidentally yesterday, I was going back and looking at some earlier celnav posts, and saw a note from Lefwyn asking if I could provide a basic primer on celestial navigation for the non-navigation types.

So, with these two things in mind, I'm beginning a series of very rudimentary discussions of the underlying principles of celestial navigation here. This may lead into similarly rudimentary discussions of actual techniques.

I'm going to be creating some new illustrations in MS Paint to go along with this. They won't be pretty, and the creation of them may slow things down a bit, but I think they'll be helpful in the long run. And as an added bonus, I'll be able to utilize them in my classroom courses.

This series of posts will be tagged "Celestial Navigation 101", so that eventually they will be an easily accessible online resource for anyone interested in such things.

More to come.

Removing AdSense

2011-09-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

Small administrative note. I've removed the AdSense ads from this site. Space may be limitless, but I still don't like to waste it.

Starpath Courses Calendar 2011-2012

2011-09-07T15:59:00.001-07:00

Starpath Courses

2011 General Navigation Series at Windworks Sailing Center

All Starpath classes are Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 1800-2100. Testing time is not built into the schedule.

Radar Navigation Oct 11 – Oct 13 $135
A practical guide to safe, versatile and efficient use of small-craft radar, radar principles and operation, navigation by range and bearing, use of EBL and VRM in navigation and collision avoidance, identifying radar targets and interpreting their motions, and how to apply the Rules of the Road. Also, how to interpret land masses seen of the radar. This course is guaranteed to increase the safety and
efficiency of your radar watch many fold and greatly reduce the anxiety of those encounters with converging radar targets that cannot be seen visually.

Electronic Navigation Oct 18 – Oct 20 $85
Covers the best guidelines to safe and efficient use of GPS both independently and interfaced with electronic charting software as a primary navigation system. Also covers use of electronic depth sounding for bathymetric navigation.

Navigation Rules and Collision Avoidance Oct 25 – Oct 27 $95
Covers all aspects of the Rules of the Road, starting with the basics and ending with all you need to safely navigate in accordance with the Rules and avoid a collision with another vessel. It is for power and sail vessels, large and small, professional and recreational. The Rules are the same for “...every description of water craft used as a means of transportation on the water”. We will discuss collision avoidance with vessels held visually, as well as by radar alone in conditions of reduced visibility. Special emphasis will be placed on the obligations of sailing vessels and small power-driven vessels interacting with each other, and interacting with larger vessels operating in the traffic lanes.

Prerequisite: No prerequisite, but Radar Navigation class is strongly recommended.

Marine Weather Nov 1 – Nov 17 $275
A plain-language, practical course for inland and ocean sailing, guaranteed to make your sailing safer and more efficient. Combine your own observations of wind, sea, clouds and barometer to better interpret the official forecasts obtained from radio, satellite or facsimile as well as make your own forecast if you lose the official sources. Develop practical rules of thumb which contribute to sound
decision making at the dock and underway.

============================================================
Starpath Courses
2012 Celestial Navigation Series at Windworks Sailing Center

Basic Celestial Navigation Jan 3 – Jan 12 $195
Confidently use a marine sextant and chronometer to derive latitude by Local Apparent Noon and Polaris, and precompute, shoot, compute and plot a three-star fix using Pub 249 Vol 1. This is the very barest-bones minimum celestial navigation and ocean dead reckoning needed as an adjunct to GPS to safely navigate an offshore passage.

Intermediate Celestial Navigation Jan 17 – Jan 26 $205
Obtain and plot a celestial line of position of the sun, moon, planets and stars, using a marine sextant, chronometer, Nautical Almanac and Pub 249 volumes 2 and 3. Plot a running fix of the sun, and precompute sights of sun, moon, stars and planets using the 2102D Starfinder. Student will be familiar with routine sight-averaging techniques necessary to utilize a plastic marine sextant. Student will also be introduced to Pub 229, the Kolbe Long-Term Almanac, NAO Tables and celestial
navigation using a scientific calculator. Completion of this class along with Basic Celestial Navigation will prepare the student for most Celestial Navigation exams, including US Sailing.

Prerequisite: Basic Celestial Navigation or equivalent.

Emergency Celestial Navigation Jan 31 – Feb 9 $225
Use the sun, moon, planets and stars to successfully navigate across an ocean without benefit of a chronometer, sextant, almanac or sight-reduction tables. Use the moon to determine Greenwich Mean Time (UTC). Many of the techniques covered will be based on Polynesian celestial navigation principles.

Prerequisite: Basic and Intermediate Celestial Navigation or equivalent.

==========================================================

Starpath Courses

2012 General Navigation Series at Windworks Sailing Center
All Starpath classes are Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 1800-2100. Testing time is not built into the schedule.

Radar Navigation Feb 21 – Feb 23 $135
A practical guide to safe, versatile and efficient use of small-craft radar, radar principles and operation, navigation by range and bearing, use of EBL and VRM in navigation and collision avoidance, identifying radar targets and interpreting their motions, and how to apply the Rules of the Road. Also, how to interpret land masses seen of the radar. This course is guaranteed to increase the safety and efficiency of your radar watch many fold and greatly reduce the anxiety of those encounters with converging radar targets that cannot be seen visually.

Electronic Navigation Feb 28 – Mar 1 $85
Covers the best guidelines to safe and efficient use of GPS both independently and directly interfaced with electronic charting software as a primary navigation system. Also covers use of electronic depth sounding for bathymetric navigation.

Marine Weather Mar 6 – Mar 22 $275
A plain-language, practical course for inland and ocean sailing, guaranteed to make your sailing safer and more efficient. Combine your own observations of wind, sea, clouds and barometer to better interpret the official forecasts obtained from radio, satellite or facsimile as well as make your own forecast if you lose the official sources. Develop practical rules of thumb which contribute to sound decision making at the dock and underway.

For further information and registration contact:

Windworks Sailing Center
7001 Seaview Avenue NW, Suite 110
Seattle, WA 98117, USA
Toll-free 877-223-1993 Tel (206) 784-9386
Fax (206)784-2995
admin@sail1.com

In absentia

2011-09-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been almost a month since my last post. Many apologies for that, but for the past month I've either been on the water, in Canada where my access to the internet is an Android phone with international roaming fees, or, very rarely, sleeping. But my summer schedule at Victoria Clipper is winding down after this Labor Day weekend, so will be ramping back up to speed here.

USCG Licensing class schedule for Fall 2011

2011-08-06T20:18:00.000-07:00

Fall 2011 Schedule for
Zenith Maritime Academy courses
at Windworks Sailing Center

These courses are approved by the USCG for the licensing of US Merchant Mariners. They are linked from the Windworks website as Seattle Merchant Mariner Training.

All Zenith classes run M-F 0900-1700, with a 1-hour lunch break. Half days and 4-hour classes run from 0900 to 1300.

56 hour Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel (“Six Pack”) Sep 6 – Sep 16 $800
24 hour OUPV to Master 100 Ton Upgrade Sep 19 – Sep 23 $375
4 hour Auxiliary Sail Endorsement Sep 26 $75
4 hour Commercial Assistance Towing Sep 28 $75

56 hour Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel (“Six Pack”) Oct 3 – Oct 14 $800

56 hour Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel (“Six Pack”) Nov 7 – Nov 18 $800
4 hour Auxiliary Sail Endorsement Nov 21 $75
4 hour Commercial Assistance Towing Nov 22 $75
56 hour Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessel (“Six Pack”) Nov 28 – Dec 9 $800
24 hour OUPV to M100 Upgrade Dec 12 – Dec 16 $375
32 hour M100 to M200 Upgrade Dec 19 – Dec 23 $375

For registration contact:

Windworks Sailing Center

7001 Seaview Ave NW Suite 110
Seattle WA 98117
206-784-9386, fax 206-784-2995
www.windworkssailing.com
greg@sail1.com.

Waterfalls on Barsoom

2011-08-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

NASA today released photos of what is very likely brine flowing, in not insignificant amounts, down the side of an equatorial crater on Mars.

From the standpoint of human outmigration and colonization, this isn't exactly a game-changer. We've known for a while that there is a large amount of frozen water at or near the surface of Mars. We've also known for a while that Mars has equatorial surface temperatures as high as 27°C (81°F, which here in Seattle is referred to as a heat-wave), albeit only for a few centimeters above the ground. So it would probably be more unusual if these did not result in Mars having occasional surface water. With a surface atmospheric pressure of some 6 millibars (compared to Earth's average of 1013 mb) we wouldn't expect any surface water to last very long, and the fact that the "surface" water detected appears to be actually embedded in sand or dust is pretty much what we should expect. But for human colonists, this water would not be very much easier (and possibly rather more difficult) to extract and utilize than the near-surface ice which is much more abundant.

On the other hand, from the standpoint of exobiology, this is huge. Because it means that we are officially no longer just searching for fossils of Martian life. It is now genuinely reasonable to imagine that we will find life there, at least in microbial form. Not on the Martian surface, where cosmic and solar radiation would almost certainly sterilize anything possessing anything resembling RNA or DNA. But in the sub-martian aquifers which are necessarily feeding these springs, life may well have survived from a time when Mars was far more hospitable to life as it exists on Earth.

In the search for life on Mars, we now have a definitive starting point.

NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. -- Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars.

"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, “and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration."

Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere.

"The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

Some aspects of the observations still puzzle researchers, but flows of liquid brine fit the features' characteristics better than alternate hypotheses. Saltiness lowers the freezing temperature of water. Sites with active flows get warm enough, even in the shallow subsurface, to sustain liquid water that is about as salty as Earth's oceans, while pure water would freeze at the observed temperatures.

"These dark lineations are different from other types of features on Martian slopes," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Richard Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Repeated observations show they extend ever farther downhill with time during the warm season."

The features imaged are only about 0.5 to 5 yards or meters wide, with lengths up to hundreds of yards. The width is much narrower than previously reported gullies on Martian slopes. However, some of those locations display more than 1,000 individual flows. Also, while gullies are abundant on cold, pole-facing slopes, these dark flows are on warmer, equator-facing slopes.

The images show flows lengthen and darken on rocky equator-facing slopes from late spring to early fall. The seasonality, latitude distribution and brightness changes suggest a volatile material is involved, but there is no direct detection of one. The settings are too warm for carbon-dioxide frost and, at some sites, too cold for pure water. This suggests the action of brines, which have lower freezing points. Salt deposits over much of Mars indicate brines were abundant in Mars' past. These recent observations suggest brines still may form near the surface today in limited times and places.

When researchers checked flow-marked slopes with the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), no sign of water appeared. The features may quickly dry on the surface or could be shallow subsurface flows.

"The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are dark for some other reason."

A flow initiated by briny water could rearrange grains or change surface roughness in a way that darkens the appearance. How the features brighten again when temperatures drop is harder to explain.

"It's a mystery now, but I think it's a solvable mystery with further observations and laboratory experiments," McEwen said.

These results are the closest scientists have come to finding evidence of liquid water on the planet's surface today. Frozen water, however has been detected near the surface in many middle to high-latitude regions. Fresh-looking gullies suggest slope movements in geologically recent times, perhaps aided by water. Purported droplets of brine also appeared on struts of the Phoenix Mars Lander. If further study of the recurring dark flows supports evidence of brines, these could be the first known Martian locations with liquid water.

End of a new era, continuation of a couple older ones

2011-07-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

Wow. I go away from my computer for nine short days and they end the whole friggin' space shuttle program on me.

On the same day that the Atlantis landed for the very last time, I saw this on Alki Beach:

That's Blue Heron, carved and captained by Michael (didahalqid) Evans, my wife's Lushootseed teacher (www.blueheroncanoe.com). For the cheechakos, Lushootseed is the Coast Salish dialect which was spoken in the Puget Sound region before it was the Puget Sound region. Here are a couple more pics of the Alki landing of the Native Tribal Canoe Journey 2011:

Then on the same day I saw this:

Yes, that's a gaff-rigged sloop short-lining under sail. Incidentally northbound in the southbound traffic lanes. Sailing, fishing and less than 20 meters; that's what they call a "trifecta". No idea what running lights he'd show at night; based on the rest of his understanding of the Rules of the Road, I'm guessing the answer is something like "they make lights for these?" But awfully cool nonetheless.

Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around asteroid Vesta

2011-07-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

NASA -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn will study the asteroid, named Vesta, for a year before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012. Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions.

"Today, we celebrate an incredible exploration milestone as a spacecraft enters orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt for the first time," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Dawn's study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years. President Obama has directed NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and Dawn is gathering crucial data that will inform that mission."

The spacecraft relayed information to confirm it entered Vesta's orbit, but the precise time this milestone occurred is unknown at this time. The time of Dawn's capture depended on Vesta's mass and gravity, which only has been estimated until now. The asteroid's mass determines the strength of its gravitational pull. If Vesta is more massive, its gravity is stronger, meaning it pulled Dawn into orbit sooner. If the asteroid is less massive, its gravity is weaker and it would have taken the spacecraft longer to achieve orbit. With Dawn now in orbit, the science team can take more accurate measurements of Vesta's gravity and gather more accurate timeline information.

Dawn, which launched in September 2007, is on track to become the first spacecraft to orbit two solar system destinations beyond Earth. The mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for the overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission's team. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Survivor's Guilt

2011-07-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Seattle forecast for today: A 50 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 68. Calm wind becoming south southwest around 5 mph.

Occasionally it's good to live in a place where nobody bothers to install air conditioning in buildings.

For the folks living in places affected by the heat wave, try to stay cool, and remember that on all of the really nice spring, summer and fall days that you have Seattle still looks like this.

STS-135 Liftoff

2011-07-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Nicely done.

Interesting that the NASA photo folks chose not to crop the water tower out of the pic after the lightning strike yesterday. It's appreciated, I'd hoped to find a photo with it to post here; it turned out to be the first still NASA published.

Atlantis Final Countdown

2011-07-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

STS-135 launch tomorrow at 8:26PDT, special coverage and live webcast at www.nasa.gov!

Music of the Spheres

2011-07-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

Rhea, Enceladus and Dione, in orbit around Saturn. NASA photo from Cassini spacecraft.

Rocket's Red Glare

2011-07-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

Have a happy and safe 4th!

One dead, several missing after boat capsizes off Baja California

2011-07-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

#1: It is the company's responsibility to know how many passengers and crew are on board. It isn't rocket science.

#2: Stabilizers make the ride more comfortable for the passengers in moderate seas. They do not make the ride safer in genuinely heavy seas, and in fact may make the boat significantly less safe.

#3: EPIRBs are cool. And cheap. It's 2011. Passengers swimming and then walking to the nearest town and calling the Mexican Navy on a freaking payphone really should not have been the first indication that a passenger vessel had capsized.

=========================================
(CNN) -- U.S. and Mexican authorities were scouring the seas Monday for at least five people -- and possibly as many as eight -- missing more than a day after a tourist boat carrying more than 40 people capsized off the east coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

The lone confirmed fatality was American, said Baja California Gov. Jose Guadulpe Osuna Millan, who said five people were missing.

But Dora Winkler, a spokeswoman for the captain of the Port of San Felipe, said seven people were missing.

The U.S. Coast Guard, meanwhile, cited unnamed Mexican authorities saying eight people were still missing Monday afternoon.

There were also conflicting numbers on how many people were on the boat when it sank. Mexican authorities counted 43 passengers and crew, while the Coast Guard put the number at 44.

All 16 crew members of the Erik survived; another who had been on the list of crew members apparently failed to embark, the governor said, citing passengers' accounts.

The Coast Guard sent a helicopter Monday to assist the Mexican navy in the search, said Petty Officer 2nd Class Henry Dunphy, a spokesman for the Coast Guard in San Diego, citing the Mexican navy.

In a subsequent news release, the Coast Guard said its helicopter had covered more than 42 miles of water by Monday afternoon, flying at an altitude of 300 feet.

The Erik sank in the Sea of Cortez, near Isla San Luis, Mexico, east of Baja, at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, the Coast Guard said.

"They ran into some bad weather, capsized, the boat sank," Dunphy said. Several people swam to shore, walked to the nearest town and alerted the Mexican navy to what had happened, he added.

But the Mexican navy said it was alerted by the cook of the boat, who was rescued by fishermen along with two passengers. He told officials that 27 tourists had been aboard the Erik when it sank approximately 60 nautical miles south of San Felipe, the navy said in a news release.

All the rescued people were in good health and were taken to their hotels, with the exception of one person with diabetes who remained under observation, the navy said.

"We have been working with Mexican navy authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard in the search and rescue," Baja Sportfishing Inc. said in an e-mail. "Right now our main concern is making sure that everyone is accounted for."

The Erik was a 115-foot fishing boat with a 24-foot beam, according to the company's website. "Built in Holland, she was equipped with stabilizers to handle the turbulent North Sea," it said.

Later Monday, the website added, "Due to events occurring at this moment, all further trips are canceled."

Soviet Space Shuttle

2011-07-03T00:37:00.000-07:00

With much of the media focusing on the final voyage of the Atlantis, I'd like to take a moment to remember that the Soviet Union had their own space shuttle program. It was called Buran, and for all that it looked like a replica of the US space shuttles, it was actually a very different animal.

The Buran had no main engines; what looks like the shuttle fuel tank is actually a liquid chemical rocket, with more external liquid chemical rockets. The absence of main engines on the shuttle itself opened up much more cargo space, and the much larger engines could take Buran all the way to the moon, rather than just low Earth orbit. And, its flights could either be manned or fully automated.

The only orbiter ever actually built was destroyed when its hangar collapsed in 2002, due to lack of maintenance.

NASA Reboot

2011-07-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

So, watch the video. And then read Charlie Bolden's speech to the National Press Club yesterday, on the eve of the final space shuttle launch (PDF linked below, you can also see the speech on the NASA website).

What's new?

On the face of it, nothing we didn't know already. Maintain the ISS, turn over low-earth orbit ferry service to the private sector, manned missions to the moon and beyond earth's gravity to Mars and an unspecified asteroid. Quickly, and on a shoestring budget, using a soon-to-be-announced Space Launch System which I suspect is going to look a helluva lot like Constellation. Not mentioned, but the James Webb Space Telescope is still on track to replace Hubble.

Not exactly revelatory.

What is new, and especially evident in Bolden's speech, is an attitude and, dare I say it, a fire, in Bolden's demeanor and even in the video. We haven't seen this for a while, either from NASA as a whole or from Bolden himself. It's good to see. Bolden spoke of "challenges" but never once used the word "budget", which after his past several speeches was refreshing.

It's really good to see NASA picking up the ball and running with it.

Also, it looks like Huntsville will take the lead on the SLS, congrats to all the good folk at Marshall! It's time you guys got some good news.

Welcome back, NASA. We've missed you.

Here's Bolden's speech:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/566100main_11%200701%20Final%20Bolden%20NPC%20.pdf

Missed again

2011-06-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

NASA--
Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD passed only 12,300 kilometers (7,600 miles) above the Earth's surface on Monday June 27 at about 1:00 PM EDT. The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team observing from Socorro, New Mexico.

The diagram shows the trajectory of 2011 MD projected onto the Earth's orbital plane over a four-day interval. This small asteroid, only 5-20 meters in diameter, is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun. The incoming trajectory leg passed several thousand kilometers outside the geosynchronous ring of satellites and the outgoing leg passed well inside the ring.

Happy Solstice!

2011-06-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

And happy Litha, to those who celebrate it!

Dawn's Early Light

2011-06-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is beginning to send back low-resolution photos of the asteroid Vesta. This is presently for navigational purposes, to help better steer Dawn toward its rendezvous with the asteroid. Once it gets close enough to start sending higher resolution images, I'll be posting about it here.

Almost as important as Dawn's mission is Dawn's means of accomplishing its mission. Dawn is not a traditional chemical rocket, but rather a prototype of an ion engine, which is about ten times more efficient. This is likely the next important step in propulsion systems for travel within our solar system.

Yesterday NASA announced new mission concept studies of solar electric propulsion, which is basically a solar-powered ion drive. Good on NASA; in this time of massive budgetary constraint, it's good to see them moving forward on this.

==============================
NASA Issues Announcement For Solar Electric Propulsion Studies

CLEVELAND -- NASA issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) seeking proposals for mission concept studies of a solar electric propulsion system demonstration to test and validate key capabilities and technologies for future exploration missions.

Multiple studies have shown the advantages of using solar electric propulsion to efficiently transport heavy payloads from low Earth orbit to higher orbits. This concept enables the delivery of payloads to low Earth orbit via conventional chemical rockets. The use of solar electric propulsion could then spiral payloads out to higher energy orbits, including Lagrange point one, a potential assembly point in space between Earth and the moon. This approach could facilitate missions to near Earth asteroids and other destinations in deep space.

Science missions could use solar electric propulsion to reach distant regions of the solar system, and commercial missions could use solar electric propulsion tugs to place, service, resupply, reposition and salvage space assets. NASA's strategic roadmaps for exploration, science and advanced technology all consider solar electric propulsion a vital and necessary future capability.

NASA is examining potential mission concepts for a high-power solar electric propulsion system demonstration. Flying a demonstration mission on a representative trajectory through the Van Allen radiation belts and operating in actual space environments could reveal unknown systems-level and operational issues. Mission data will lower the technical and cost risk associated with future solar electric propulsion spacecraft. The flight demonstration mission would test and validate key capabilities and technologies required for future exploration elements such as a 300 kilowatt solar electric transfer vehicle.

This Solar Electric Propulsion Demonstration Mission Concept Studies announcement is open to all non-government United States institutions, academia, industry and nonprofit organizations. NASA anticipates making multiple firm-fixed-priced awards with a total value up to $2 million. The deadline for submitting proposals is July 18.

Deep thoughts from a shallow mind

2011-06-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

The Inside Passage runs northwest from the Northwest to Southeast, and southeast from Southeast to the Northwest.

I only flag this for the benefit of my navigation students, who often have great difficulty with the fact that the "Western Rivers" are all in the east.

I think I really need sleep.

Send your name to Mars!

2011-06-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

Only a few hours left! Very cool.

http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/

Rocks and Buggys

2011-06-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

The best direct evidence we have to date of extraterrestrial life is in the form of microscopic inclusions in a small number of carbonaceous meteorites, which have the appearance of being fossilized prokaryotes. By far the best known of these is ALH 84001, the martian meteorite found in Allan Hills Antarctica in 1984.

Earlier this year NASAjavascript:void(0)/Huntsville scientist Richard Hoover announced that a number of non-martian meteorites also contain possible fossil prokaryotes. Below is both his abstract and a link to the entire paper in Journal of Cosmology.

Okay. So, I happen to like JoC. It's one of the many links from this blog, and I really like their philosophy of ensuring that all of the papers they publish are available to anyone free of charge. Most similar outlets only publish the abstracts free of charge. So, good on them for this. And good on them for maintaining some semblance of a peer-review process.

The bad news with JoC is that they have a very openly anti-scientific agenda, which tends to lead to the occasional publication of some really, really shoddy research. Regarding Hoover's work, they state that "Hoover's paper is further evidence that life is pervasive in this galaxy and exists on astral bodies other than Earth. The alternative view is life exists only on Earth, and originated on Earth, as described in the Jewish and Christian Bible and which is the official position at NASA. We believe the choice is simple: Religion vs Science. The Journal of Cosmology is devoted to promoting science."

This philosophy steers many of the papers published in JoC. Up to and including denying the Big Bang, not on the basis of any solid evidence but rather on the basis that it looks a little bit like Genesis and that Georges Lemaître happened to be a Catholic priest. Really. Presumably gene theory is also not "science" as JoC imagines that, because Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian monk.

JoC is in no way unique in this. Capital "S" Science, like capital "A" Atheism, is simply another fundamentalist religion, with its own canon world-views and orthodoxies and hence necessary heresies. It has adopted the old fundamentalist Christian mantra of "don't open your mind, your brains might leak out"; I consider "Science" to be one of the greatest threats to rational critical thought, and legitimate science, in our culture today.

Just because the Bible says something doesn't mean that it's categorically true. Just because the Bible says something also doesn't mean that it's categorically untrue. It's just a freaking book.

I'm not sure why Richard Hoover, a respected NASA scientist, did not publish his research through NASA, and instead published through the Journal of Cosmology. It doesn't exactly help his credibility. For the record, I think he's mostly right, and that NASA would have published his work, so I can only assume that his decision not to was political rather than scientific.

In any event, here is his paper. The entire thing is linked at the bottom.

==========================================================

Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites:
Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus

Richard B. Hoover,
Space Science Office, Mail Code 62, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35812
Abstract

Environmental (ESEM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) investigations of the internal surfaces of the CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites have yielded images of large complex filaments. The filaments have been observed to be embedded in freshly fractured internal surfaces of the stones. They exhibit features (e.g., the size and size ranges of the internal cells and their location and arrangement within sheaths) that are diagnostic of known genera and species of trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as the filamentous sulfur bacteria. ESEM and FESEM studies of living and fossil cyanobacteria show similar features in uniseriate and multiseriate, branched or unbranched, isodiametric or tapered, polarized or unpolarized filaments with trichomes encased within thin or thick external sheaths. Filaments found in the CI1 meteorites have also been detected that exhibit structures consistent with the specialized cells and structures used by cyanobacteria for reproduction (baeocytes, akinetes and hormogonia), nitrogen fixation (basal, intercalary or apical heterocysts) and attachment or motility (fimbriae). Energy dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) studies indicate that the meteorite filaments are typically carbon rich sheaths infilled with magnesium sulfate and other minerals characteristic of the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. The size, structure, detailed morphological characteristics and chemical compositions of the meteorite filaments are not consistent with known species of minerals. The nitrogen content of the meteorite filaments are almost always below the detection limit of the EDS detector. EDS analysis of terrestrial minerals and biological materials (e.g., fibrous epsomite, filamentous cyanobacteria; mummy and mammoth hair/tissues, and fossils of cyanobacteria, trilobites, insects in amber) indicate that nitrogen remains detectable in biological materials for thousands of years but is undetectable in the ancient fossils. These studies have led to the conclusion that the filaments found in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites are indigenous fossils rather than modern terrestrial biological contaminants that entered the meteorites after arrival on Earth. The δ13C and D/H content of amino acids and other organics found in these stones are shown to be consistent with the interpretation that comets represent the parent bodies of the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. The implications of the detection of fossils of cyanobacteria in the CI1 meteorites to the possibility of life on comets, Europa and Enceladus are discussed. Keywords: Origins of life, CI1 meteorites, Orgueil, Alais Ivuna, microfossils, cyanobacteria, comets, Europa, Enceladus

http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

ISS and Endeavor

2011-06-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

European Space Agency--
This image of the International Space Station with the docked Europe's ATV Johannes Kepler and Space Shuttle Endeavour was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on 24 May 2011. The pictures are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the ISS from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Onboard the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev, ESA's Paolo Nespoli and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Coleman and Nespoli were both flight engineers. The three landed in Kazakhstan later that day, completing 159 days in space.

Credits: ESA/NASA

Full Resolution:
http://www.esa.int/images/557282main_iss027e036673_1600_1600-1200.jpg

June Too Soon

2011-06-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

Not anymore.

Commander Mark

2011-06-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

A very cool thing happened last night.

The Irish band U2 played in Seattle. Not altogether unusual, Seattle gets good bands all the time. But the band did something kind of unusual, which they had apparently been planning long before it would have had quite the significance that it did. One of their "guests" was a live feed from the International Space Station, intended to raise awareness of NASA's ongoing mission and the importance of our continued presence in space. This has been an ongoing part of U2's tour this year. That would have been cool enough.

But the astronaut who spoke to the crowd last night was Commander Mark Kelly, husband of congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

Kelly finished his piece with "Tell my wife I love her very much...she knows". I can't imagine that there was a dry eye in Qwest Field. I hope David Bowie was listening.

I was five years old when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins became the first humans to voyage to another world. When I was five years old, astronauts were my heroes.

They still are. I just have a deeper understanding now of what heroism is.

Genesis

2011-06-02T22:03:00.000-07:00

The question of how life originally arose on earth is of particular significance both to those searching for extraterrestrial life and to those searching for habitable worlds which are devoid of life.

Mythology withstanding, there are four likely possibilities of how life first arose on earth.

The first is anomalous abiogenesis, meaning that life arose from non-life in a single instance, and that all life on earth descended from that unique prototypical life form.

The second is non-anomalous abiogenesis, meaning that when the conditions are correct life tends to occur spontaneously and ubiquitously. In this case, the two existing domains of prokaryotes (bacteria and archae) were of completely different abiogenetic origin, and presumably other independent forms of prokaryotic life existed at one time but were out-competed early in earth's prehistory.

The third and fourth are anomalous and non-anomalous panspermia. This is the idea that prokaryotic life arrived on earth from space, likely ensconced in meteorites. There is a substantial amount of material support for this theory, which this series will explore in some detail. Panspermia does not answer the the question of how life originated in the first place, but for our purposes that concern is frankly secondary.

It is also of course possible that terrestrial life arose both on earth and from space. But determining which contemporary organisms are native and which are descended from aliens may not be knowable until we have unequivocally extraterrestrial organisms to compare them to.

The essence of this question is simply this: how rare or ubiquitous is life in our solar system and beyond? And if life beyond our atmosphere is not rare, how exotic or mundane is that life? We are now, possibly, starting to have some answers to these questions. These answers, and their implications, will be the subject of the next several posts.

===================

Regarding the next week or so of posting, I will be out of the state and away from any real computer for much of the next week. Will post as much as possible via Android phone; many apologies in advance for the typos. There will be many.

Ready about

2011-06-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

So, here's where things stand with the discussion of Orion, DARPA's "100 year starship".

We currently have the technology to build a ship which could reach Alpha Centauri in 88 years.

In the context of this series on outmigration, our primary purpose in doing so is to migrate some small portion of the human gene pool off-world, to enhance the possibility of our continued survival as a species. This seems to be one of DARPA's purposes as well.

In order for Alpha Centauri to actually warrant traveling to it, we would need to know beforehand that a world exists in that system which is significantly more hospitable than Mars or other locations in our solar system, but devoid of life.

We will likely have the ability to determine this with some confidence in the coming decade. The existence or non-existence of an earth-sized world with a significant amount of liquid water on its surface will probably be known within the next few years, assuming that the Exo-Earth Imager telescope is completed.

If no such world is found, then the search would shift to Barnard's Star. If Barnard's Star proved similarly devoid of habitable worlds, Orion will almost certainly not be built. At least, not the interstellar version of Orion. There would simply be no point.

Assuming that a suitable world is found, determining the existence of life will prove more challenging, but high concentrations of atmospheric oxygen or methane on a temperate world would be a pretty good first clue. If we should find conclusive evidence of life on such a world, that would immediately shift the focus away from colonization toward very cautious exploration. Because a war of the worlds, even unintentional and even on a microbial scale, is likely to end badly for everyone involved.

If our hypothetical "goldilocks world" should prove mostly habitable but uninhabited, the first priority of the new colonists will be terraforming it from "mostly habitable" to truly earth-like. By definition, any world worthy of traveling four lightyears to terraform should be pretty quick and simple to terraform. A need for much more than simple oxygenation of the atmosphere (by photosynthetic or chemical means) would tip the balance back in favor of Mars or Europa for permanent colonization. But we cannot begin to estimate what steps would be necessary for terraformation until we have a pretty good understanding of the world as it currently exists. And until we know those steps, and what resources we can hope to find on that world to help accomplish those steps, we have no way of determining how much of the cargo space of the Orion vessel would be committed to carrying either materiel for terraformation, or equipment for surviving on a non-terraformed world.

This brings us to something of an impasse. We have the technology and resources to build the working parts of Orion. But we do not yet have the knowledge to determine what to carry in it, and for a one-way sojourn to the nearest stars, we cannot leave that to guesswork. Until the Exo-Earth Imager is operational, and we have real data about the planetary systems of Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star, we cannot proceed much further on this tack.

The good news is, if all goes well we may have the answers we need much sooner than we would realistically begin building Orion.

In the mean time, we have left an enormous question unanswered which is critical for human colonization not only of the stars, but of the other worlds within our own solar system. Our quest for a habitable-but-uninhabited world raises the question of how in fact life arises on a world, and how common this process actually is. So I want to take this discussion on a different tack for a bit, and look at how life arose on earth, and how likely it is that life has arisen elsewhere. For the next several posts I'm going to look at abiogenesis, panspermia, and exobiology generally.

Helm's a lee.

NASA to Launch New Science Mission to Asteroid in 2016

2011-05-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

NASA-- NASA will launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016 and use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system's formation and how life began. The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth.

After traveling four years, OSIRIS-REx will approach the primitive, near Earth asteroid designated 1999 RQ36 in 2020. Once within three miles of the asteroid, the spacecraft will begin six months of comprehensive surface mapping. The science team then will pick a location from where the spacecraft's arm will take a sample. The spacecraft gradually will move closer to the site, and the arm will extend to collect more than two ounces of material for return to Earth in 2023. The mission, excluding the launch vehicle, is expected to cost approximately $800 million.

The sample will be stored in a capsule that will land at Utah's Test and Training Range in 2023. The capsule's design will be similar to that used by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which returned the world's first comet particles from comet Wild 2 in 2006. The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The material will be removed and delivered to a dedicated research facility following stringent planetary protection protocol. Precise analysis will be performed that cannot be duplicated by spacecraft-based instruments.

RQ36 is approximately 1,900 feet in diameter or roughly the size of five football fields. The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating some of life's ingredients can be created in space. Scientists want to see if they also are present on RQ36.

"This asteroid is a time capsule from the birth of our solar system and ushers in a new era of planetary exploration," said Jim Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "The knowledge from the mission also will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids."

The mission will accurately measure the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The effect is a small push caused by the sun on an asteroid, as it absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat. The small push adds up over time, but it is uneven due to an asteroid's shape, wobble, surface composition and rotation. For scientists to predict an Earth-approaching asteroid's path, they must understand how the effect will change its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will help refine RQ36's orbit to ascertain its trajectory and devise future strategies to mitigate possible Earth impacts from celestial objects.

The entire article is here:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/osiris-rex.html

Heavy Lifting

2011-05-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

I've been looking at NASA's proposal for a heavy-lift manned spacecraft for missions to the moon and Mars. Here is the pdf for those interested in such, my (completely underinformed) assessment follows.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/510449main_SLS_MPCV_90-day_Report.pdf

Okay, so. The gist of it is basically that Congress has given NASA a mandate and a $7-billion budget to create a space program capable of routinely carrying a crew and 70-100 ton payload to the moon and Mars (and if necessary the International Space Station, although this is a very secondary function), to be operational by 2016. It is not clear how many actual rockets Congress is envisioning, or if they are reusable or expendable, etc.

First off, for perspective, a single B-2 bomber costs about $1-billion, and adjusted for inflation a single Saturn V Apollo rocket would also cost about $1-billion.

Congress and the Obama administration gave NASA the green light to cannibalize as much of the space shuttle hardware and existing Constellation/Ares V hardware as possible. In many cases this is the same hardware; Constellation/Ares V was basically rebuilding Apollo out of spare space shuttle parts.

Respectfully to those far more knowledgeable than myself, building a moon or Mars vehicle out of spare parts from Low Earth Orbital vehicles seems like a fairly inefficient way to design a rocket.

I happen to own a 50cc 3hp scooter, which I enjoy a great deal on those rare occasions when it actually runs. It gets me around Seattle residential streets at about 30mph, and can do that at about 70mpg. If I wanted to build a 300hp truck to haul shipping containers from Seattle to New York, one way I could do that would be to use 100 scooter engines on a single cam shaft. And if all I had to build a truck with was old scooter parts, that's how I'd build a truck.

This is kind of what the Soviets did with N1, which was their answer to the Saturn V. They built four of them, and all four of them failed catastrophically. Which is kind of what you would expect from a truck built out of old scooter parts.

But then the Soviets built Proton, which was originally designed as an ICBM but was actually far too large for that task. After a bumpy start to the program, Proton proved (and continues to prove) to be one of the most successful heavy lift rockets ever built.

The American equivalents were and are the Atlas and Delta programs, with the Atlas V HLV and Delta IV Heavy being the current best heavy-lift rockets the US possesses, other than the remaining Atlantis space shuttle. Proton, Delta and Atlas have the advantage, like the Apollo rockets, of actually being designed from the ground up for long distance heavy lift.

It seems that Charlie Bolden is pushing to use the congressional mandate to create heavy-lift on-the-cheap as a means to restart the Constellation program under a different name. One salient point he makes in his report is that NASA had already looked at some 2000 different heavy-lift designs prior to Congress becoming involved in the discussion. With the implication that Constellation actually was the best and least expensive solution for heavy-lift, and if that's what Congress wants they need to get out of the way and actually fund it. Which is not entirely unreasonable, and a reasonable Congress might even be inclined to accommodate that. But the Congress we have right now, which does not want to fund disaster relief in Missouri and elsewhere because they have become so psychotically obsessed with the budget, isn't one which is going to hear that argument.

I happen to agree with Congress that learning from the Soviet "big dumb booster" concept is valuable, and can help NASA rethink its process of developing heavy-lift long distance space craft. But in doing so one needs to have a realistic understanding of what the Soviet program actually was able to accomplish, and how different the successful Soviet programs actually were from the US programs. Vostok, which epitomizes the BDB concept, was excellent but never intended for more than Low Earth Orbit. N1 was the biggest of the dumb boosters, but it didn't work. Proton worked splendidly, but could as well have been a US design.

What Bolden is basically saying is that to build a heavy-lift surfaced launched vehicle to reach the moon and Mars we need another Apollo, with Apollo funding. There is no time or money built into the congressional mandate for new R&D, so everything has to be accomplished with off-the-shelf parts. The Constellation/Orion MPCV capsule is already completed, so it's a no-brainer to use that. If we're insisting on leaving for Mars or the moon from earth's surface (as opposed to building and launching from the ISS) then duct-taping as many PBAN solid rocket boosters as needed to the outside of the main engines makes sense. The only remaining question is whether to use space shuttle main engines, Delta IV main engines or Atlas V main engines.

Either way, what you end up with is Constellation. By any other name.

Which, if it had simply been allowed to continue, over-budget and behind schedule as it was, still would have been completed earlier and cheaper than it will now, with all of this start/stop/start mess.

Because, at the end of the day, NASA has a much better understanding of what it takes to build a rocket than Congress does. Because being a politician isn't exactly rocket science.

Bad Judgment Day

2011-05-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

Shockingly, it turns out that Harold Camping is a false prophet. Still.

But, no worries. Only 19 months left of the current Mayan Long Count, and then we can play this stupid charade all over again!

One good thing has come of this day. A whole new generation of music listeners have been exposed to Blondie.

Apocalypse Now

2011-05-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

As I write this, it is a little less than one hour before 6pm in New Zealand, which will be the first major population center to experience the Rapture. The Rapture has already been happening in Kiritimati and the other Line Islands for about an hour now, no reports yet of a massive earthquake, angelic trumpets, airborne horsemen or 2000 year old rabbis. But then, the news out of Kiritimati always comes slowly, and the British nuked Kiritimati so many times the folk there may just be inured to it. But we're expecting live streaming footage of the festivities from Aukland news agency NZTV starting in just a little more than an hour, so stay tuned!

LATE BREAKING NEWS:

Undisclosed sources say that the archangel Gabriel has been replaced by the great Dizzy Gillespie!

Flowers for Algernon

2011-05-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

6 men on the current space shuttle Endeavor crew.
5 men and 1 woman on the International Space Station Expedition 27 crew.

This is the best NASA could do to preserve and repopulate our species after the imminent Rapture tomorrow? What ever was Charlie Bolden thinking?

How will they know when it's 6:00pm up there? Is Universal Time really "universal"?

Will the ISS be in any danger from the faithful rocketing up to heaven?

So many questions.

So little time.

CDC protocols for Zombie Apocalypse

2011-05-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the Rapture this weekend!

No, really, they did. Because people are entertained by zombies, and it happens that most of the protocols for zombie apocalypse preparedness would serve you pretty well in a hurricane, earthquake or other natural disaster. Awesomeness.

The link is here:

http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/

Tagging

2011-05-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

At the request of several of my readers I'm beginning the process of tagging different categories of posts here. It was originally my intention to NOT do this, because part of the point of the blog was to expose people from different fields to other interrelated fields. But it is helpful to be able to find other related posts. One reader related the difficulty she had finding my space exploration posts while "wading through page after page of Seattle weather reports". Which is a fair critique.

So, I'm working on it. Some categories are easy, like "Navigation" and "Weather". The ongoing series on human outmigration to other worlds is "Outmigration", and I've given "Project Orion" its own tag because I'm shamelessly wanting to attract more Project Orion folk to this blog. More categories are to come.

One category I've created is called "Best of Blog". I'm tagging this post with that label just so you can easily find which posts are tagged there from here, because I have not yet figured out how to make a hotlink to the tags. I'd really appreciate feedback on my selection of posts in that category, and hope to modify the list based on that feedback.

SS Dix found off Alki Point

2011-05-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE (AP) — Divers believe they have found the steamer Dix, which for more than 100 years has rested at the bottom of Puget Sound off Alki Point.

The Mosquito Fleet ferry collided with an Alaska freighter and sank in 500 feet of water in November 1906, killing as many as 45 people, "their bodies, in all probability, being imprisoned within the cabins of the steamer, 100 fathoms below the surface of the Sound," according to a Seattle Daily Times report the next day.

There are no plans to bring up the wreckage, or to explore the interior. Finding it was enough for diver Laura James, who had been searching for two decades.

"This was the wreck I wanted to find in Puget Sound as long as I've been diving," she said.

-------------------
The full story is here:
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Ferry-that-sank-in-1906-found-in-Puget-Sound-1385026.php#ixzz1MmNAZFxc

Mount Saint Helens, 31 years ago today

2011-05-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't live in the Pacific Northwest when Mt St Helens erupted. My wife did. She was camping with her family at Dry Falls when the eruption happened. They heard the initial explosion, and assumed it was ordnance testing at the Yakima Firing Range. Later that afternoon they were driving back toward Seattle when the ash-fall started. Civil Defense broadcasts on the car radio were giving instructions but not information as to the cause of the ash-fall; being 1980 and the height of the Cold War, she reasonably wondered if what they were experiencing was radioactive fallout from a nuclear attack on the Puget Sound region.

Later, my wife's father, an editor for the Seattle Times, was one of the two first people inside the caldera after the blast.

I on the other hand was living in North Carolina, and all we experienced were really amazing sunsets.

After I moved from the Carolinas to Seattle (courtesy of the US Navy) I went to St Helens, a decade after the eruption. I was most struck by the millions of fallen trees, spreading for miles around the volcano. And the fact that, at that time, still nothing was growing in the ground which had been scorched by the blast.

Life is slowly returning to the slopes of St Helens, but it will be centuries before the young cedars, firs and hemlocks reach the maturity of the forests which once blanketed the mountainside.

Wreck of SS Dix found!

2011-05-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

The steamer Dix has been located by diver Laura James. The Dix was lost in a collision with the SS Jeanie off of Duwamish Head Seattle in 1903. Will post more when I'm in front of a real computer tonight.

Endeavor

2011-05-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

EoM.

Three self-contained methods for celestial navigation

2011-05-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

In keeping with our budget-rate celestial navigation discussion, here are three different publications, each $30 or less, which are self-contained methods of deriving a three-body celestial fix, and the pros and cons of each.

Nautical Almanac with NAO Tables

Price: $30

Objects useable: Sun, moon, planets, stars

Duration: 1 year

Ease of use: Almanac moderately easy, NAO tables moderately easy with good workform. Included instructions barely usable.

Pros: Can use essentially every body visible in sky. Designed for marine navigation.

Cons: Requires 2102d Starfinder or equivalent for sight planning. NAO tables make necessary sacrifice of simplicity for significantly smaller size, by turning each navigational triangle into two right triangles. Elegant solution, but not very transparent for user.

Kolbe Long Term Almanac

Price: $30

Objects useable: Sun and stars

Duration: 50 years

Ease of use: Usable with good workforms. Sight reduction method is same NAO/Davies tables used in Nautical Almanac.

Pros: Physically smallest of all three methods. Can be used for as long as an individual would likely need to use it.

Cons: Requires 2102d Starfinder or equivalent for sight planning. Most difficult of the three methods discussed here.

Pub 249 vol 1

Price: $20

Objects useable: Stars only.

Duration: 10 years

Ease of use: Extremely easy to use. Sight reduction integral to method and not an additional step.

Pros: Utter simplicity and allows easy precomputation of sights, yet yields a good three-body fix.

Cons: Does not allow you to use brightest objects in sky (sun, moon, Venus and Jupiter). Designed for air navigation, so some information needs to be copied and pasted into book from Nautical Almanac or other source, such as Dip, Altitude Correction and times of twilight. Weird use of precession and nutation rather than simply correcting GHA of Aries for each year, there is some advantage to using GHA Aries from Nautical Almanac as well, but this is not strictly necessary.

I'm going to use 249 volume 1 for my test because it is cheapest and easiest. But if I were going across an ocean and was limited to only one publication for celestial navigation I would use the Nautical Almanac, because I prefer to be able to use the moon and planets when they're available.

Shuttle Endeavor RSS Rollback Completed, Fueling to Begin Sunday Night

2011-05-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

NASA-- The opening of the rotating service structure (RSS) that protected Endeavour on Launch Pad 39A and provided access to the shuttle's systems began its retraction Sunday at 11:44 a.m. EDT and completed at 12:24 p.m. This major milestone paves the way to loading the giant external fuel tank with about 500,000 gallons of propellant.

The STS-134 crew members are sleeping and are scheduled to be awakened at about midnight to gear up for launch. The weather forecast for Endeavour's 8:56 a.m. liftoff to the International Space Station calls for a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions.

Launch Countdown Highlights (All Times Eastern)

11:30 p.m. NASA TV: External Tank Fueling Coverage Begins
11:36 p.m. Countdown resumes at the T-6 hour mark
Midnight Crew wakeup
12:21 a.m. Liquid Hydrogen Low Level Cutoff sensors go "wet"
12:30 a.m. Crew breakfast
12:36 a.m. Liquid Hydrogen "fast fill" begins
1 a.m. Crew final medical exams
1:51 a.m. LH2 "topping" begins
2:36 a.m. Countdown enters a 2 1/2 hour hold at the T-3 hour mark
3:30 a.m. Launch Coverage Begins on NASA TV and the Launch Blog
4:31 a.m. Astronauts receive a weather briefing from the Ascent Team
4:41 a.m. Astronauts suit up for launch
5:06 a.m. Countdown resumes at the T-3 hour mark
5:11 a.m. Crew departs for Launch Pad 39A
5:41 p.m. The astronauts begin to board Endeavour
6:56 a.m. Endeavour's hatch is closed and latched for launch
7:46 a.m. Countdown enters a 10-minute built-in hold at the T-20 minute mark
7:56 a.m. Countdown resumes at the T-20 minute mark
8:07 a.m. Countdown enters a ~40-minute built-in hold at the T-9 minute mark - MMT conducts final poll "Go-No Go" for launch
8:52 a.m. Countdown resumes at the T-9 minute mark
8:56:26 a.m. Launch of Endeavour on the STS-134 Mission
9:04:49 a.m. Main Engine Cut-Off (MECO)
~ 10 a.m. NASA TV: Post launch news conference

Sailing

2011-05-14T12:31:00.001-07:00

On the water next few days, will post as I can. At least the weather is better, at the moment. If you happen to be near downtown Seattle, tugboat races starting soon! Also stitch-and-glue boatbuilding contest at pier 66!

Update: Crowley's tug Hunter won, yet again. Waked the hell out of us while we were boarding passengers, again. Go team Crowley!

Only ten more shopping days 'til the Pocky Clips!

2011-05-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

The Bible guarantees it!

God hates rich people, so please donate all of your money to me, c/o Strait of Magellan Blog, effective midnight 23 May 2011. Gracias.

Martha, I think it's aliens.

2011-05-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you living in the Salish Sea area, the bizarre looking thing coming down the Strait of Juan de Fuca is the offshore X-band radar platform SBX, coming down from its normal station in Alaska for repairs at Todd Shipyard. It will be rounding Point Wilson and heading into Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound around 1400pdt today, and will be arriving in Seattle early this evening.

Once it arrives at Todd there will be a 100 meter security zone around it; how that will affect vessels fueling at Ranier Petroleum remains to be seen.

You can track the platform here if you're interested, it's being escorted by the Lindsey Foss:
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

TED Talk on Project Orion

2011-05-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

George Dyson on TED Talks, interesting new/old footage from original project.

http://www.ted.com/talks/george_dyson_on_project_orion.html

Project Orion series update

2011-05-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly a month since my last post on Project Orion (DARPA's proposed "hundred year starship"), so I want to do a quick recap and an explanation of where the series is going.

So, to recap:

We started with the premise that the ultimate survival of the human species requires that humans establish permanent settlements beyond earth's atmosphere.

We explored different possible locations for human settlement within the solar system. Some or all of these will certainly be colonized, but none of them are especially habitable by humans and other terrestrial life.

We explored the nearest star systems, and determined that the Alpha Centauri system is by far the best candidate for having an earth-sized planet with liquid water on the surface.

We explored existing propulsion systems for reaching Alpha Centauri, and found that only one currently existing method could reach Alpha Centauri within a single human lifetime. That method is nuclear pulse propulsion, which is a polite way of saying lighting off a bunch of atomic bombs behind a space craft and blasting it into the next solar system. Intact.

We learned that the US government has had the plans and technology to build a vessel of this type since 1957. Really. It was called Project Orion. It was then canceled due to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. The Cold War is over, and now DARPA and NASA are looking at it again. But I'm not sure that governmental agencies or corporations have the attention span for a project of this magnitude. This may be something that interested individuals need to start collaborating on independently of governments.

The next parts of the series will explore what life would be like, both on Orion for 88 years and also beginning settlement and terraformation of an earthlike world in the Alpha Centauri system.

I've had some requests to eventually turn this series into a book. I will probably at least consolidate it into an ebook and make that available here. In the mean time, I'm going to go back through the series and tag the posts as "Project Orion" and "Outmigration" to make then easier to find.

Ad astra!

Cheap plastic sextants

2011-05-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Plastic sextants have a bad rep. This is not entirely undeserved, but some of the bad reputation which plastic sextants have is plainly spurious. One of the most frequent complaints I've heard about plastic sextants is that if you leave them out in the sun, the plastic expands and thus degrades your sight. Yes, plastic left in the sun will expand. However, it will tend to expand evenly, so this should not actually effect your sight. Also, no navigator worthy of the name is going to leave any sextant out in the hot sun, so the point is moot. What is not moot is the fact that plastic worm-gears (or even plastic-on-metal worm-gears) are too malleable for the precision desired of a sextant. The good news is, the cheapest plastic sextants don't have worm-gears. If you happen to own a plastic sextant which does have worm gears such as a Davis Mark 15 or 25, it is still possible to get a useful line of position with it, it just takes a lot more work. David Burch's excellent How to Use Plastic Sextants gives superb instructions for how to use these instruments, and if you'll pardon a bit of shameless self-promotion, if you purchase any plastic sextant from Starpath they'll throw in the book for free.

The Davis Mark 3, on the other hand, retails for $50 and is about the very least thing that could ever consider itself to be a functioning marine sextant. It is made out of stamped plastic and held together with model airplane glue, and has only one significant moving part, which is its saving virtue. There is no worm-gear, just a simple pivot point, and instead of a traditional micrometer drum to read minutes of arc it has a very simple vernier scale. The Mark 3 isn't pretty. It doesn't seem to work in the same way as a more traditional sextant (although the basic principles are the same), has no telescope, and instead of a beam-splitter or a traditional split horizon mirror has a simple glass mirror and thin air. In spite of this extreme simplicity (or rather, because of it), if proper sight-averaging techniques are used, the Mark 3 will yield results very comparable to those of an aluminum or brass sextant of $1000 or more. Neither of Davis' more expensive sextants can make this claim. The Mark 3 was originally developed for the US Navy as a lifeboat sextant, but given that the competition for any sextant now is a $100 GPS receiver, the Mark 3 has to be considered a serious first choice of a sextant for routine ocean navigation.

I had intended to include the Ebbco sextant (pictured above) in this discussion as well, but while it is of similar construction to the Mark 3 it does have a traditional micrometer drum, which implies plastic worm gears and springs. My recollection of this instrument is that it performed comparably to the Mark 3, but I don't happen to have one easily available so I'll belay comment on it until I do.

For the dockside and on-the-water tests of the mechanical watch I'll be using a Davis Mark 3 sextant, and I've decided to use the seven-star method of sight reduction using Pub 249 vol 1 since it is the simplest and least expensive means of deriving a 3-body fix anywhere in the world.

Also for the tests I will be using standard Universal Plotting Sheets, and a standard set of dividers and parallel rulers. I am not however including these in the cost of the method, because these would (or should!) be a part of any boat's navigation equipment for an ocean crossing.

Libya refugee boat sank off Tripoli, witnesses say

2011-05-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

NEWS.COM.AU -- Refugees from Libya who arrived in Italy today said they saw another boat laden with fellow refugees capsize just off Libyan shores and "many bodies" were in the water, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

"They were in front of us, not far from the shore, when the overcrowded boat capsized," one refugee was quoted as saying of the incident on Friday after landing in Lampedusa, an Italian island where thousands of refugees have been arriving.

"It was terrible. There were a lot of corpses," said the refugee, whose name was not quoted in the report.

ANSA said "dozens of dozens of migrants are believed dead", while others managed to swim to the shore.

Italian newspapers earlier reported that a boat carrying 600 refugees sank near Tripoli, citing a Catholic bishop in Libya and an ANSA report.

A Somali refugee also in Lampedusa whose son was on the boat received a call from relatives telling her that he was one of the victims, ANSA reported.

Italian officials said they had no information about the incident.

Bishop Giovanni Martinelli was quoted by Corriere della Sera daily as saying that he had met some of the boat's Somali passengers before their departure and had received news of the incident from a nun.

"They said they had finally found a boat to go to Italy... They were all happy and smiling, there were a lot of children among them too. But their boat sank. Their dream sank," Bishop Martinelli was quoted as saying.

"The cemetery of the Mediterranean is continuing to fill up with dead bodies," Corriere della Sera commented.

Some 150 refugees fleeing Libya are believed to have died last month after their boat capsized in stormy weather in the middle of the Mediterranean, with Italian coast guards managing to pluck 53 survivors from the sea.

Italian coast guards earlier today rescued all 528 passengers from a boat that ran aground as it was approaching the port of Lampedusa in the night, forcing panicked refugees to jump into the sea.

More celestial nav on-the-cheap

2011-05-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

I've been assuming the use of the current year's Nautical Almanac, which retails for $30. However, the seven-star method of Pub 249 volume 1 is also a self-contained system which can be used anywhere, and it happens to retail for about $20, eliminates sight-reduction tables entirely and also affords very simple precomputation of your sights without a starfinder. And it is fair to say that the NAO sight reduction tables in the Nautical Almanac are a step above simple celestial techniques.

Personally, I would want to be able to use the bright objects in the sky, specifically the sun, moon and planets, so I would choose the NA. But one could certainly live without these, and 249 vol 1 is actually much easier to use, and good for ten years. So for our purposes, I'm going to knock another $10 off our total cost.

By the way, my ultimate intention with all of this is that once I'm comfortable with the methodology of using very inexpensive tools for celestial navigation, I'm going to actually test it from a small boat somewhere in the Salish Sea, and see how accurate the position I derive is from this. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll have enough data to establish a trend with the watch, and then I'll let it generate out for another 20 days beyond that.

May the Fourth be with you

2011-05-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

Happy Star Wars Day!!