When Space Becomes a Home for all of Us

It's hard not to watch the launch of British astronaut Tim Peake into space without a complete sense of awe, and without feeling that everything else after it is completely mundane.

The splendidly retro and reliable technology of the Soyuz spacecraft and launch vehicle - both rooted in the 1960s, check out the way the rocket looks like it has flares on - successfully did their job on taking our plucky astronaut up to the International Space Station.

But what struck me while watching the launch, was the fact that space is still a place for the test pilot and the ultra clever scientist, the strong and the smart. The much admired Commander Mike Hadfield, the Marlboro Man looking guitar strummer of a previous mission, said as much during the BBC's launch coverage.

But for us to expand out from our overcrowded, polluted home, Space can't remain the preserve of the elites with big brains, or big wallets to pay for a trip on Virgin Galactic, forever. Sooner or later, we will need it to be a home for everyone.

Space will need shelf stackers, warehouse runners, toilet cleaners and plumbers to build a society up there. Cosmonaut Commander Bigballzikov won't want to waste his time tending the Martian base flowerbeds, he'll be wanting the municipal gardener to do it for him.  Captain Goldstein won't want to take out the garbage, and Doctor Fortescue-Blyth will blanch at idea of emptying the zero gravity toilet. There will be a need for bus drivers, teachers, speeder bike traffic wardens and folk to run the corner shop.

It won't be me of course, too old even now, as are indeed most people who are already born on this planet. But someday the adverts of Blade Runner, enticing the masses of Earth to the off world colonies, will be a reality. One day, there will be opportunities to be astronauts for all of us.

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 15.12.15

The Cyclopean Eye of the Soviet LK Lunar Lander

Regular readers of long standing may be aware of my love of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.

Within that I'm a great admirer of the Soviet space programme of the cold war era. Yes, I know it came from an awful system, but it was worked on by good men such as Alexei Leonov , the cosmonaut-artist slated to be the first man on the moon by the Soviets.

That there was a Soviet Lunar programme was not well known until the 90s and the collapse of the Soviet Union following the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not long after that that I watched enthralled as the first television documentary about it entered the hangar where the proposed Russian lunar module, the LK Lander, had been in storage since the programme was cancelled.

It epitomises something else I always liked about the Soviet space programme - the 50s sci-fi "valve-punk" design of their spacecraft, and the low-tech feel of everything. That is not to denigrate their equipment in any way; the Soyuz spacecraft is still taking people to the International Space Station 50 years after it first flew and has long outlasted the Space Shuttle.

The LK Lander illustrates this beautifully. Compare it with the more advanced, but less characterful, NASA Lunar Module.

Image from the Science Museum

It looks like it ought to house an HG Wells Martian invader.

Of course, it never flew to the moon in the end. It would have been very risky for its single cosmonaut to operate, and the Apollo 11 landing more or less destroyed its raison d'etre. Then the enormous explosion of its proposed N1 Launcher in one of the largest artificial non nuclear blasts ever, confined it to its hanger for the rest of time.

Until now. The Science Museum has it on display, in their Cosmonauts exhibition I'd dearly like to see. If any of my readers go, let me know what it is like!

Si

Alas Comet ISON, I never knew you

You may well have read my blogs talking about my observations of Comet Lovejoy, but there was always an underlying hint in my writing, I think,  that I was hoping for something bigger and better elsewhere...

My attempts to view ISON were always thwarted. Clear skies at the wrong time, clear skies when I was asleep, a bad horizon from my urban location. I woke up at 5am one day to try and observe it, then probably fell asleep again. A few more days and ISON was much too close to the sun to observe from any Earth based observatories. It was up to the battery of solar observation satellites out in space to try and keep us in the picture.

And it was looking really good, for a just a painfully short time. After some earlier reports suggesting that ISON was already starting to disintegrate, the comet passed through a rough patch, and then brightened rapidly. By the time of perihelion, the comet had reached an estimated magnitude of about 0, and was showing a beautiful pair of tails - a dust tail, and the straighter, narrower ion tail.

ISON just before perihelion 28.11.13, image from NASA SOHO satellite.

ISON then whipped out of view behind the sun for a short time, and observers held their breath. By the time it reached its closest point to the sun, at less than a million miles, ISON was being heated to 4000K and was travelling at 800,000 mph - 0.11% of the speed of light.

ISON was travelling so fast, it was undergoing relativistic effects. Time was running slower for the comet!

Clearly subject to such temperatures and forces, it was never a given that the comet's one mile or so nucleus would survive. Initially, it seemed that nothing had survived, but then this SOHO picture gave hope.

Had Comet ISON (at 11 o'clock) survived?

Something had clearly made it around perihelion, but what?

Hopes were high that some, or perhaps even all, of ISON's nucleus had survived, but then sadly, it became apparent that the image captured above was just a remnant of gas and dust from the comet's tail, with no solid nucleus present. Over the next two days, it gradually smeared out, and disappeared to nothing.

It may be that the comet springs one last surprise on us; the debris around its orbit may give us a new meteor shower when the earth crosses ISON's orbital path early next year. But this is unknown at present.

Comet ISON may be dead, and I may be sad to never have seen it. But the study of this comet, and the interest it generated, was unprecedented, and that is Comet ISON's legacy.

Now get your binoculars out, and look for Comet Lovejoy!

Copyright Cream Crackered Nature 02.12.2013