No diamond geysers

More follow up. It turns out that the planet made of diamond (and graphite, never forget the graphite) may in fact not be made of diamond.

“In theory, 55 Cancri e could still have a high carbon to oxygen ratio and be a diamond planet, but the host star does not have such a high ratio,” stated University of Arizona astronomy graduate student Johanna Teske, who led the study. “So in terms of the two building blocks of information used for the initial ‘diamond-planet’ proposal – the measurements of the exoplanet and the measurements of the star – the measurements of the star no longer verify that.”

Ohyeahalmostforgot…

It's just possible, however unlikely, that in the last surviving handheld data crystal which contains the entire contribution to the internet made in the third millennium, this website will be the only uncorrupted portion. So I since I mentioned last year that Voyager 1 and 2 were on their way out of the Solar System I had better mention that Voyager 1 has now left.

While there is a bit of an argument on the semantics of whether Voyager 1 is still inside or outside of our Solar System (it is not farther out than the Oort Cloud — it will take 300 more years reach the Oort cloud and the spacecraft is closer to our Sun than any other star) the plasma environment Voyager 1 now travels through has definitely changed from what comes from our Sun to the plasma that is present in the space between stars.

Interstellar space sounds like someone tuning a theramin.

This is NASA's announcement of Voyager 1's position.

The humans are going to Mars

Wernher von Braun, father of the American space programme (not to mention something, ahem, else) had a feasible scheme for getting a human colony on Mars. Apparently there were redundancies built into his plan to cover problems he knew nothing of.

And finally, like all space visionaries before Mariner 4 in 1965, Von Braun did not know that the Martian atmosphere was only one tenth the density estimated, and that there was not multi-cellular life on the surface, as astronomers were sure they had observed from earth. His graceful long-winged landing boats could not have made a horizontal landing on the surface. But even this was not insurmountable. Von Braun's glider would have had been subsonic at the 47 km altitude of his assumed atmosphere, corresponding to the actual surface pressure of Mars. An alternate landing scenario could have been to jettison the wings just over the surface, deploy a drag chute, and bring the fuselage/ascent stage down to a vertical rocket-powered landing on the surface. Von Braun's design had the margins and flexibility to handle even this worse-case contingency.

There are others promoting the idea,  including Buzz Aldrin.

Not the whole book of Genesis

I am not sure why but NASA's Image of the Day for 26th June 2013 is the famous and beautiful Earthrise photograph taken by the astronauts of Apollo 8, taken on Christmas Eve 1968.

That evening, the astronauts--Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders--held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

Good thing NASA"s copy writer remembered to include the "from".  That could have been rather a long reading.

Life on Mars

Apparently not as easy as it might be.
"Absolutely, the astronauts can live in this environment. It’s not so different from what astronauts might experience on the International Space Station. The real question is if you add up the total contribution to the astronaut’s total dose on a Mars mission can you stay within your career limits as you accumulate those numbers. Over time we will get those numbers."

MUSTARD in space

In 1957 Arthur C. Clarke published a collection of loosely related stories in Tales from the White Hart. From the blurb to a recent edition:
Although written, as the author informs us in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, in such diverse locations as New York, Miami, Columbo and Sydney there is something inherently English about these stories. London's famed Fleet Street district has changed dramatically in the five decades since the collection's first appearance as a Ballantine paperback original… and, of course, many of the regulars of the White Hart (based on the White Horse pub on Fetter Lane) are no longer with us. But the White Hart's most prominent raconteur  Harry Purvis can still be found propping up the bar and regaling us all once again with tales of quirky and often downright eccentric scientists and inventors.
Some sense of the atmosphere of Clarke's stories – and the real life organisations on which they were based – can be got from Poking fun at Britain's Moon Men at Tor.com.

All this came back to me when I read the obituary of Tom Smith, one of the designers of the British Space Shuttle.
The idea of the Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device, or MUSTARD as it was known, arose out of an Air Ministry contract for BAC to study “hypersonic” speed (five times the speed of sound and above). A team was formed under Smith’s leadership at BAC’s Warton airbase, near Preston, Lancashire. … MUSTARD was regarded as a suitable project for joint development by European aerospace companies, with a cost estimated to be around “20 to 30 times cheaper” than that of the expendable rocket launch systems of the time. Unfortunately, as with so many other British inventions, the government of the day decided not to proceed. About three years after MUSTARD was cancelled, the Americans became interested in a reusable aircraft.

Pencils and engagement rings

Nearby Exoplanet Could Be Covered With Diamond
Using information about 55 Cancri e’s size, mass and orbital velocity, as well as the composition of its parent star 55 Cancri (located 40 light years away in the constellation Cancer) a research team led by scientists from Yale University created computer models to determine what the planet is most likely made of. They determined that 55 Cancri e is composed primarily of carbon (as graphite and diamond), iron, silicon carbide, and possibly some silicates. The researchers estimate that at least a third of the planet’s mass — the equivalent of about three Earth masses — could be diamond…“On this planet there would basically be a thin layer below the surface which will have both graphite and diamond,” Madhusudhan told Universe Today in an email.

55 Cancri e's host star is a mere 40.2 light years from Earth.

Back to the future of space exploration

In a dozen juvenile novels (that's novels for young people, not novels written when he was young), Robert Heinlein laid out a manifesto for the exploration and colonisation of the solar system. Arthur C. Clarke supposedly remarked that the Moon landings justified all science fiction to that date. Everyone expected colonies on Mars, generation ships etc. by 1985. But, for various reasons, the exploration of space has been left to unmanned vehicles, while human activity has stopped at the low earth orbit of the International Space Station.

(Speaking of unmanned vehicles, there is some blogger buzz – but no confirmation from NASA – that Voyager 1 has in fact finally left the solar system).

Reading NASA's press releases sometimes it does indeed seem that they just want to discover the effects of weightlessness on little tiny screws:

(Look! A legitimate Simpsons clip on YouTube!)

It may quiet the shades of Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov to learn that NASA is looking into the possibility of building a Gateway to the Moon at L-2 (one of the five Lagrangian points where the gravity of the Earth and the gravity of the Moon cancel each other out). And, as if that is not enough, they are also looking at the possibility of mining in the asteroid belt. All we need now is Delos D. Harriman telling us we have got to be believers.

More cricket pitches!

36-Dish Australian Telescope Array Opens for Business

The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is now standing tall in the outback of Western Australia, and will officially be turned on and open for business on Friday, October 5, 2012 . This large array is made up of 36 identical antennas, each 12 meters in diameter, spread out over 4,000 square meters but working together as a single instrument. ASKAP is designed to survey the whole sky very quickly, and astronomers expect to do studies of the sky that could never have been done before.

Just think. Thirty-six dish based cricket matches going on at once (at 40 secs):

The gentlemen at Parkes never actually used the dish for cricket, since despite its size it is actually a precision instrument.

Dining etiquette in Space

Not a problem that had occurred to me:
Always have a loaner spoon available. In weightlessness, it is easy to lose things. It is not unusual in a group of six for someone’s spoon to have floated off. Having a clean loaner spoon allows for the evening to continue and the conversation to flow. It is rude to give your guest a loaner spoon caked in crud from the last time it was used. The lost spoon is usually found by morning, stuck to a ventilator inlet screen, and your guest will appreciate it being returned.
There's more
You can provide a special treat if you have access to one of the research refrigerators. In space, all your food is either hot or at room temperature. When you live in an isothermal environment, it can be a real treat to serve your guests a bag of cold water.
Don Pettit's Guide to Space Etiquette