Science Fiction and the Frontier

Science Fiction in the United States has a very close relationship with the idea of the American West, the frontier. It is so ingrained into our cultural DNA, that presidents often associate the exploration of the heavens with the freedom and romance that the settlement of the American West afforded our country. Both Bush Presidents had some interesting words to say about the subject at various points in their terms in office:

"We'll build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the Moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own. . . . We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: human beings are headed into the cosmos", President George W. Bush, speech at NASA headquarters, 14 January 2004.

And,

"Our goal: To place Americans on Mars and to do it within the working lifetimes of scientists and engineers who will be recruited for the effort today. And just as Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to open the continent, our commitment to the Moon/Mars initiative will open the Universe. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, and offers a lifetime of opportunity", President George Bush, 2 February 1990.

At a recent conference at NASA Headquarters in April, this very subject was brought up:

It's very easy to see the influence that the West has on science fiction: the first Star Trek show was pitched to CBS as a 'Wagon Train to the Stars, while the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, certainly has its influences as well, while other films from the last 1970s and early 1980s are more explicitly influenced by western movie tropes: Westworld, written and directed by Michael Crichton, depicts a futuristic western amusement park, while Outland, directed by Peter Hyams, is heavily influenced by the western film 'High Noon', as a Federal Marshal goes up against company men in a mining colony on Io. Moving forward, the television show Firefly, created by Joss Whedon, compares the expansion of humanity into space with that of the expansion into North America. There's others, to be sure, with a new addition this week, Cowboys and Aliens. At the same time, the growing field of Steampunk (Cherie Priest's Boneshaker and Deadnought come immediately to mind), is likewise filled with images of the American West.

The West represents a romantic character vision of the United States. It was a time of intense growth, formative change, and really the last point where it's perceived that people could literally shape the country. At the same time, it's associated with the freedom for a person to make something of themselves, either by pulling up their roots and heading out to restart their lives in the wilderness, or to build an empire, as many of the industrial barons did throughout that time.

While people at the conference disagreed with the association - they likened it to not the west exploration, but to polar exploration - they did note that it's a valuable association to bring to bear, noting that the space program has often been justified with comparisons to the American West. It was the United State's mission (for better or for worse) to expand then, while space offers unlimited potential for (if highly expensive) growth for the future.

But more than that, the romance of the Wild West offers something to science fiction that I've really only seen in stories that have come out of the United States (granted, I'm not well read on non-US SF/F), which is the ability to tap into this idea that we are at our greatest when we're fresh, when we're exploring and discovering new lands, people and adventures, rather than sitting idly, stagnating as life becomes more and more complicated. In the current political and cultural problems that the US is currently facing, it's easy to see why stories, and particularly, science fiction, can succeed so well: it's relatable, and escapist at the same time.

As was talked about at the NASA History Conference, the differences in reality aren't really there: to travel from the East Coast to the West coast in the 1800s, one was reasonably certain of fairly low costs (in the hundreds of dollars), not to mention the potential for a livelihood, food and supplies, and the companionship of everyone else who had the same idea. Polar Exploration, on the other hand, holds no such assurances: the conditions are harsh, unlivable, with few prospects to live on, and a far higher cost.

Space travel falls far more closely with the latter style than the former, and as such, it's not marketed to the American public as such: it doesn't fit with our views of how things should be. And that's okay: the American west has its innumerable stories, a broad canvas from which to be influenced by. It's dramatic, tragic, and beautiful: a good place for stories.

Space Exploration and the American Character

Historian Dr. Michael Robinson, of the University of Hartford, opened his talk with a William Falkner quote that helped frame the 1961-1981 Key Moments in Human Spaceflight conference in Washington DC, held on April 26th through April 27th: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” The first talks of the day dealt extensively with the narrative and drive behind space travel and exploration, painting it as much of a major cultural element within the United States as it was one of scientific discovery and military necessity. In a way, we went to space because it was something that we’ve always done as Americans.

The Past

Dr. Robinson started with a short story of a great endeavor that captured the imagination of the public, one that brought in a lot of rivalry between nations on a global scale, advanced our scientific knowledge, and where high tech equipment helped bring valiant explorers to the extremes. Several disasters followed, and the government pulled back its support, yielding part of the field to private companies. If asked, most people would describe the space race of the twentieth century, and while they would be right, what Robinson talked about was the race for the North Pole. In 1909, American explorer Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole, becoming the first known man to do so. While there are reasons to doubt or support Peary’s travels, Robinson makes some interesting points in comparing the North Pole to that of the space expeditions.

Robinson described a culture of exploration that’s existed in the United States since its inception, but took pains to make a distinction between the frontier motif that has permeated science fiction, and the realities that we’ve come to expect from going into orbit. Television shows have undoubtedly aided in the excitement for space research and exploration, but they’ve incorporated elements that have great significance for American audiences: Star Trek, for example, had been described as a ‘Wagon train to the stars’, while Firefly has likewise been described as a ‘Western in space’, to say nothing of films like Outland, Star Wars, and numerous other examples. In his 2004 address that helped outline America’s space ambitions, President George W. Bush noted that “the desire to explore and understand is part of our character”. Other presidents have said similar things, and it’s clear that there’s a certain vibe that it catches with the American voter.

It makes sense, considering the United State’s history over the past centuries: Americans are all newcomers, and as Robinson said, the west was a place to settle. The arctic, and space, really aren’t, and distinctions should be made between everything. Historically, both space and the arctic have much smaller footprints of human interactions. It’s a difficult area to reach, and once people are there, it’s an incredibly hostile environment that discourages casual visits.

The American West, on the other hand, is very different for the purposes of imagery for space travel. During the great migration during the 1800s, it was relatively cheap for a family to travel out to vast untapped territory: around $500. Additionally, once people reached the west, they found a place that readily supported human life, providing land, food, and raw materials. The American west was transformed by mass migration, helping to vastly expand the U.S. economy during that time, while leading to a massive expansion of the federal government and to the Civil War. Space, on the other hand, isn’t so forgiving, and like the arctic, doesn’t yield the benefits that the west provided.

The explorations into the arctic gives us a sense of where space can go and how expectations from the public and the scientific community can come into line with one another. The polar explorations absolutely captured the imagination of the public: art exhibits toured the country, while one of the first science fiction novels, Frankenstein, was partially set in the North. However, what we can learn from the arctic is fairly simple: we abandon the idea of development in the short to mid future. Like the arctic, space is an extreme for human life, and the best lessons that we can glean for space will come from the past experiences that we’ve had from other such extremes: exploration in areas where people don’t usually go. This isn’t to say that people shouldn’t, or can’t go to the ends of the Earth and beyond, but to prepare accordingly, in all elements.

The arctic provides a useful model in what our expectations should be for space, and provide some historical context for why we go into space. We shouldn’t discount the idea that the west and the country’s history of exploration and settlement as a factor in going into space.

The Space Age

James Spiller, of SUNY Brockport, followed up with talk about the frontier analogy in space travel, noting that the imagery conformed to people’s expectations, and that notable figures in the field, such as Werner von Braun, liked the comparison because it helped to promote people’s interest in space. The west connected and resonated with the public, which has a history and mythos of exploration. This goes deep in our metaphorical, cultural veins, linking the ideas of US exceptionalism and individualism that came from the colonization of the American continent. The explorations to the west, the arctic and eventually to space, came about because it appealed to out character: it was part of our identity.

The launch of Sputnik in 1957 undermined much of what Americans believed, not just on a technical scale, but seemed to confirm that a country with vastly different values could do what we weren’t, with everything that was going for us, able to do. In the aftermath of the launch, President Eisenhower moved slowly on an American response, to great dismay of the public. It was a shock to the entire country, one that helped to prompt fast action and pushing up the urgency for a red-blooded American to go into space. How could the individual, exceptional Americans fall behind the socialists, whose values run completely counter to our own? There had already been numerous examples of individuals who had conquered machines and territories, such as Charles Lindberg and Robert Peary and the Mercury astronauts followed. Indeed, for all of the reasons for why the West feels important to Americans, the space program exemplifies certain traits in the people we selected to represent us in space.

Spiller noted that the frontier of the west seems to have vanished: the culture towards the end of the 1960s and early 1970s fractured society and the idea of American exceptionalism: the Civil Rights movement discredited parts of it, all the while the United States seems to have lost its lead in the global economy as other countries have overtaken it. As a result, the message of space changed, looking not out, but in. President Ronald Reagan worked to revisit the message, as did President H.W. Bush. There have been further changes since the first space missions: a new global threat that actively seeks to curtail modernism, terrorism, has preoccupied out attention, and pushed our priorities elsewhere.

Going Forward

The last speaker was former NASA Historian Steven Dick, who looked at the relationship between Exploration, Discovery and Science within human spaceflight, pointing out distinctions between the three: Exploration implies searching, while Discovery implies finding something, while science leads to explanation. The distinctions are important because they are fundamental to the rhetoric, he explained, and that the last program to really accomplish all three was the Apollo program.

Going into the future, NASA appears to be at a crossroads, and its actions now will help to define where it goes from here on out. The original budget that put men on the moon was unsustainable, but only just, and that as a result, NASA at the age of fifty is still constrained by actions taken when it was only twelve. The space shuttle is part of a program that was not a robust agent of exploration, discovery or science. He pointed out that where programs like Apollo and the Hubble Space telescope have their dramatic top ten moments, the Space shuttle really doesn’t, because it’s a truck: it’s designed with indeterminate, multiple functions, ranging from a science platform to a delivery vehicle for satellites. This isn’t to discredit the advances made because of the shuttle, but when compared to other programs, it doesn’t quite compare. The space station, on the other hand, was well worth the money, but people don’t respond as well to pure science as they do exploration. Apollo demonstrated that science alone isn’t enough to sustain public interest.

As he said it, “exploration without science is lame, discovery without science is blind, and exploration without discovery or science is unfulfilled.” Going forward, any endeavors beyond our planet should encapsulate all three elements to capture the public’s imagination, and make the efforts to go beyond orbit worthwhile for all. However, manned spaceflight can accomplish so much more than robotic probes and satellites, especially for fulfilling the frontier motif that helps to define our interest in going into space: it seems hard to embody the traits that have helped inspire people to go further when it’s someone, or something, else doing the exploring.

Space, the final frontier, is an apt way to look at how manned spaceflight programs are looked at, and it certainly captures the imagination of people from around the world. While some of the direct imagry is misplaced, it's not a bad thing for people to capture, but it does help to remember the bigger, and more realistic picture when it comes to what the goals and expectations are for space. NASA, going forward will have to take some of these lessons to heart, reexamining its core mission and the goals that its working to put forward. Nobody in the room doubted that the money and the advances that have come forward as a result of space travel were worth the cost and risks involved, but they want it to continue forward far into the future. To do otherwise would mean giving up a significant part of who we are, because the traits that that have come to define our exploration beyond the horizon, to the North and high above us are elements that are worth celebrating: the drive to discover, to explore and to explain are all essential for the future.

The Start of Something Fantastic: SpaceX Orbits the Earth

Yesterday, at 10:43 in the morning, a Falcon 9 rocket carried a Dragon capsule into a low earth orbit, where it circled the Earth twice before splashing down on target 500 miles off the coast of Southern California. This marked the first time that a private commercial firm has accomplished such a task, joining only a handful of countries (The United States, Russia, China, India, Japan and the European Space Agency) by going into the skies above. By doing so, it has marked the start of a new age in space travel, one that is independent of governmental agencies. Even more astonishing, this comes from a company that was founded a mere eight years ago.

The rise of SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) comes during a time of stagnation in space exploration. The last manned mission to the moon occurred in 1972 with Apollo 17, with Skylab crashing down to Earth in 1979 while Russia's Mir Space Station followed in 2001. The American space shuttle was first launched in 1981, heralding in its own age of scientific exploration by launching satellites, conducting repair and resupply missions and generally serving as an orbital laboratory for scientific project, and sees its own mission end early next year with two final flights. Finally, the International Space Station, a testament to international cooperation and scientific endeavor, was launched in 1998, and is scheduled for completion next year. In spite of the numerous accomplishments that NASA and other space agencies have achieved over the last three decades, their efforts have gone unrewarded by the general public and political elements, who see the efforts as a waste of money and time on behalf of the people.

Space and operations in orbit are something that will continue in the near future, and the introduction of a commercial firm is something that will help to supplement the people in orbit. Commercial firms also have the ability to break the monopoly that governments are able to hold on space operations by opening up access to Earth's orbit for not only people, but additional platforms in the skies for businesses and travel.

That future is still something that is far off, and will require an immense amount of preparation, coordination and regulation in order to become fully viable, safe and profitable for interested parties. There is a growing problem with objects in Earth's orbit, which caused collisions and dangerous conditions for astronauts and hardware, while the expense for trips into orbit is high. (SpaceX charges upwards of $43.5 million for up to 3,000 kg) Space is still something outside of the general public, and like any big, complicated, dangerous activity, it'll take a while for the prices to go down to a more affordable level, and for an entire industry to take form to support it.

An independent, forward-thinking and rational commercial future for space allows for a great deal of independence. Companies won’t be constrained by political whims and budget shortfalls, but by economic pressure to succeed amongst a pack of competitors. There will be a regulatory body to keep the conduct of these companies in check (and when you’re talking about the risks of spaceflight, this is something that will be needed), and companies will be able to expand and explore new possibilities and ventures much faster than a governmental body, and the advances that they find and create can translate into new opportunities for those of us on the ground.

As the United States grapples with economic problems, Space should be the next frontier and direction for U.S. business interests to move forward to. Long-term efforts into space bring about the possibilities of incredible exploration, scientific discovery, mineral wealth and virtually unlimited space for growth and real estate. The United States maintains a massive advantage over other countries, and would do well to foster the development of a space industry within the United States to help better its own economy (think of the requirements for skilled labor and jobs that such a line of work requires) and to bring humanity further into the stars.

The futures that have long been seen in science fiction novels, television shows and movies are still a long way off, but the steps taken by SpaceX, and the other private firms that are sure to follow over the next couple of decades make me hopeful for the futures that we might have in orbit and beyond. Maybe, just maybe, within my lifetime, I'll be able to look down on the Earth and smile.

"Don't fuck up, Shepard...": Freedom 7 Blasts Off

On May 5th, 1961, Alan Shepard Jr.  sat on the top of one of Werner Von Braun's Redstone missiles, Freedom 7. The path to that point had been a long one for the astronaut and for NASA. Initially scheduled for late 1960, technical problems with the rocket had pushed the launch back, first to March, then to May. During the course of the delays, the country was shocked when the Soviet Union launched their own rocket, carrying Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, becoming the first man to leave the Earth’s atmosphere to orbit the Earth. Shepard's flight 49 years ago today marked the point when the United States caught up in the space race by bringing a man to space and back again safely.

Shepard's launch into space did not match the same achievements that Gagarin did with his mission onboard Vostok 1 just a couple of weeks earlier: Shepard's flight lasted a mere 15 minutes, travelling just over 300 miles down range, performing a suborbital flight. The United States would not reach that achievement until Friendship 7, several launches later, with John Glenn's flight, where he orbited the Earth three times. While it took the United States a little while longer to catch up to the Soviet Union, Shepherd's launch demonstrated that the hardware that the United States had in place could launch a person into space, although a more powerful Atlas rocket was used to actually reach orbit.

The race to orbit was, in large part, a highly visible element - and reminder - of the Cold War arms race that saw the Soviet Union and United States face off against one another. From as early as the Second World War, scientists and military theorists saw that a ballistic missile would be a powerful, almost unstoppable weapon. Both sides captured German military scientists at the fall of Nazi Germany, and put them to work to create their own missiles. The Soviet Union had a more pressing need, and due to their own difficulties to miniaturize the components in nuclear bombs, built missiles and rockets that were more powerful than their American counterparts. This in turn allowed them to reach space much more quickly than the United States, something that a number of people found troubling.

Shepard’s Redstone rocket was the creation of Werner Von Braun, and Freedom 7's launch vehicle had been extensively modified to accommodate a human passenger. The first stage of a Jupiter-C rocket was added on to allow for extra power to get the rocket out of the atmosphere. As Shepard sat on the top of the rocket, waiting to be launched into space, he recalled that he was sitting on top of a vehicle made by the lowest bidder. The delays in the actual launch of the rocket also demonstrated the complexity and scale of the problems associated with bringing someone into space. Shepard is probably best known for telling Mission Control: "I've been in here more than three hours. I'm a hell of a lot cooler than you guys. Why don't you just fix your little problem and light this candle?" after another hold on the countdown. After the problem was corrected, Shepherd was launched into space.

The launch into space demonstrated two things for the country: that the Soviet Union did not hold a monopoly on space travel. The United States was still behind, but catching up, fast. Secondly, the launch demonstrated that the underlying missile that NASA adapted for space travel worked, and that it could carry a payload a good distance. It was still limited in range, but the milestone showed that once again, the U.S. was on the right track towards putting together a viable Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Repurposed or not, the launch was a good demonstration that the arms race was still ongoing. Additionally, the space program was providing a huge boost in moral for the country: astronauts were national heroes, and their efforts were seen as the pinnacle of American military, political and technological progress.

Shepard’s flight is also the genesis for all American spaceflight efforts. While Yuri Gagarin was the first into space, the successes of Freedom 7 showed that the long efforts of the United States and NASA were sound, and that the technology and training of the program was something that could be continued into the future. The next flight, Liberty Bell 7, piloted by astronaut Gus Grissom, was also a success (although the crew capsule itself was lost shortly after splashdown), and eventually, American space efforts could continue. Shortly after Shepard’s flight, President John F. Kennedy spoke, before a joint session of Congress, stating that the United States should commit to a goal of reaching the Moon before 1970. The United States would reach that goal in July of 1969, and again in November of the same year. While the successes of the Apollo program are widely known, they owe a large part of their successes to Alan Shepard’s first flight into space.

Obama's Space Plan: Astronauts to Asteroids

Yesterday afternoon, President Obama spoke at the Kennedy Space Center, addressing the critics of his Administration's plans for the future of NASA, indicating that there will be quite a lot to expect from the space administration in the coming years and decades.

Amongst the leading concerns, even some voiced by noted astronauts Neil Armstrong (Apollo 11), Gene Cernan (Apollo 10/17) and Jim Lovell (Apollo 8/13), charging the Obama administration with formulating a plan that would restrict NASA in the near future, and potentially allowing the U.S. to slip behind other nations in space supremacy. Much of the controversy has been around the massive Constellation program and its cancellation. With it went the first elements of a future moon program that would have utilized the new Ares 1 rocket and the Orion capsule.

President Obama noted at the speech that he was 100% behind the program, noting that the achievements that the Administration have provided much inspiration for the entire nation, noting that a space program was an essential element of the American character. The speech was mainly centered around what was to come: a six billion dollar increase in NASA's budget over the next six years, which would be used to fund new programs, research and development for new means to reach space.

A major element of the speech was noting the issues with the Constellation program as a whole, and that the changes put into place would be more effective, faster and cheaper. The Constellation program was already behind schedule and over budget, according to an independent study, something that NASA itself really didn't want. However, the President noted that a couple of elements from the program would be salvaged: the Orion capsule, to become an escape vehicle for the International Space Station, and alluded that a new, heavy-lift rocket would be developed by 2015, using older models - most likely, coming out of the Ares rocket design.

This mention of a new, heavy-lift rocket is a critical component of the President's speech, because it signals a very different style of spaceflight in the future. A heavy-lift rocket will allow astronauts to travel away from a low earth orbit, for the first time since Apollo 17 (1975). Plans to land astronauts on an asteroid, and eventually, by the mid-2030s, to Mars, with a series of ever-increasing challenges to reach that goal, much like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions were geared towards reaching the Moon.

Additionally, private industry will be a major component of this plan, with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket getting named in the beginning of the speech. The President made a vital point in the middle of his speech, noting that Private industry has always been a major part of NASA's plans, and that that relationship would continue. Personally, I find this to be an exciting proposition, with a number of companies starting up and well on their way towards reaching space. SpaceX is a company that I've personally followed for a couple of years now, and I'm very excited to see what they come up with next. Bringing in private industry makes sense to me, because it helps to shift some of the costs away from taxpayers, and it would seem that the President hopes that a major industry that will attract industry and highly skilled workers will spring up in the Florida region. To that end, they've promised $40 million towards an area redevelopment plan to further this along.

This seems to fit with a larger element of the Administration's plans, especially bringing more people to college and by extension, creating a highly knowledgeable and skilled workforce. The main issue there is that this work force needs a place to exist after college, and it would be a positive thing for the country to grow and maintain a major industry that is geared towards space exploration.

There were some issues with President Obama's speech. His address did not cover what the short term ramifications of creating a new program would be, and with the Space Shuttle program ending this year, it is likely that NASA will be left no choice but to travel to space with the Russians, at least until a replacement can be found. SpaceX is working towards this goal, but that is something that is a little ways out at this point. To his credit, Obama noted that the decision to cancel the Space Shuttle program did not come from his administration, but from the Bush administration, who rightly saw that the Shuttle was an aging piece of technology that would need to be replaced.

Furthermore, the President noted that he was not interested in returning to the Moon, setting his sights on the Red Planet instead. I can't see a Martian mission being put into place without further exploration of the moon happening: The U.S. has been away from the Moon for 35 years at this point, and additional training and practice. Considering the distances involved for a Mars landing mission, it would make sense to perfect technology and crews close to home, where problems can be solved far more easily, and in the event that something goes wrong, solutions are far more achievable.

One thing is for sure, this plan, to me, sounds very ambitious, exciting and most of all, provides a rough point for NASA to work towards in the next twenty years: Mars. While the speech did not resonate with me as Kennedy's speech in 1961 did, I hope that we will see much of the same results, and that the change in plans will pay off for the United States. What is most exciting is that there is a plan beyond simply going to space as a sort of placeholder, as the Shuttle program seems to really be. The first age of space was marked with a goal and time: land on the moon by the end of the decade, and is something that should have been followed upon with a larger project that would have taken the lessons learned from Apollo and applied them to new ventures in space. In short, Obama's plan is long overdue, something that should have been put into place twenty years ago, and that should have yielded results by this point.

Yuri Gagarin and the Space Race

"Dear friends, known and unknown to me, my dear compatriots and all people of the world! Within minutes from now, a mighty Soviet rocket will boost my ship into the vastness of outer space. What I want to tell you is this. My whole life is now before me as a single breathtaking moment. I feel I can muster up my strength for successfully carrying out what is expected of me."

Forty Nine years ago today, Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin lifted off as part of the Vostok 1 mission onboard the Ласточка (Lastochka - Swallow), becoming the first human being to leave the Earth, completing a single, 108 minute orbit before successfully touching down in the Soviet Union. As the U.S.S.R. had done with Sputnik-1 two years earlier, Gagarin ensured that the Soviet Union had taken the lead in the forming space race, with the United States just behind.

In the early days of the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union had begun to clash in highly public displays of technology, with roots going back to the beginnings of the Cold War. At the end of the Second World War, the two countries were on a collision course with opposing ideologies. As Germany collapsed, Nazi scientists were grabbed by both sides to determine how to best gain a new weapons technology that the German military had begun to work on and implement: missiles. For the Soviet Union, this was an essential development. The country was ravaged by war, with millions dead, and a massive conventional military to clothe, feed and train, while the United States, untouched, possessed the technology to directly strike targets within Russian borders. Missile technology would further the Soviet's reach and allow them to threaten US allies at first, then the mainland.

As the weapons race continued with both the United States and Soviet Union creating and testing Nuclear warheads, a smaller race began between the nations to build bigger rockets, which could in turn bring around a better and faster missile that could strike anywhere on the planet. As part of this race, the Soviet Union successfully launched its first satellite, Sputnik-1, throwing the United States into a panic, perceiving the instrument as a direct threat to the country's security, despite gestures from President Eisenhower, that satellite technology was not the key indicator of a country's technical superiority. Despite his attempts, it would be months before the United States could successfully follow the Russians into orbit.

The key to the Soviet's success was simple: they had started earlier, but because they had trouble miniaturizing parts for their own nuclear bombs, larger and more powerful rockets had to be built to carry their payload into orbit and back. Thus, the addition of a human passenger by 1961 was a technical possibility. Gagarin's flight occurred just days before US Astronaut, Alan Shepherd Jr. took off on board Freedom 7 on May 5th. The successes with the Vostok mission signaled an escalation of the space race between the two countries: over the next decade, their respective space agencies would work tirelessly to outdo the other, with spacewalks, number of orbits, people in space and eventually, the first to the moon. While the United States eventually won the space race by reaching the moon in 1969, the early Soviet victories underscored the differences in attitudes towards defensive doctrines in both countries. The United States was reluctant to shift its air force to a deterrent based system, while the Soviet Union essentially had no choice. As a result, they were able to gain a short lead in the race to orbit, as both countries experienced a space industry that was pushed along by military and political developments.

Gagarin never flew in space again. He was grounded by Soviet leadership, who used him as a public relations tool to bolster moral in the country. In 1968, he died in a plane crash while on a routine training mission. His legacy, however, is one of great importance: the first human to leave the planet, something equal, if not greater in importance to Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.

God Speed, John Glenn

On February 20th, 1962, John Glenn Jr., atop an Atlas rocket, became the third American to leave the Earth’s surface, on his way to fulfill the core objective of the Mercury Project: orbit the Earth and return safely. His flight was met with joy from the people United States, who idolized the seven Mercury astronauts, as this mission would allow the United States to finally catch up to the Soviet Union, who had not only beaten America to space with Sputnik, but they also put the first man into orbit just a month before the American's first astronaut, Alan Shepard Jr.

The first two Mercury missions were undertaken by American astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, demonstrating that the United States could not only send men into space successfully, but that they could repeat the experiment. However, where the United States had been overtaken by Soviet Union Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was orbital flight, something that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hoped to catch up with during the Friendship 7 Mission.

The mission came at a crossroads with the development of the space race, and at particularly chilly relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Much of NASA’s pitch to Congress depended upon a Soviet lead in the race to orbit, something that the US would meet up with when it came to the Friendship 7 mission, and diplomacy at the time was intertwined with international arms agreements and cooperation with US allies. (Walter McDougall, …And the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, 365.) At this point in time, the United States and the Soviet Union were still at the early stages of the Space Race, where both countries had strategic interests in space, namely with the use of spy satellites. As the race progressed, objections to most arguments were dropped. (McDougall, 348). Within this context, it’s hardly a surprise at the reaction to the success of Friendship 7, but also the drive that the Mercury Seven astronauts displayed during their training. There was an acute awareness that the space program was an element of the nation’s security, something that acted as a more visible deterrent for both countries, as an indicator of technological sophistication. (Francis French and Colin Burgess, Into that Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965, 138).

The Friendship 7 mission itself was delayed from its original December 20th, 1961 date, due to technical and weather related issues. There were numerous launch attempts, all resulting in a count-down halt, until February 20th, where there were only minor technical delays and a break in the weather, allowing for a launch. (French, 140). At 9:47 in the morning, the rocket roared to life, and Glenn was on his way to orbit.

This marked the first time that an Atlas Rocket was used to launch a human in the space program. The two prior Mercury flights were powered by Von Braun’s Redstone Rocket (William Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, 326), which allowed Shepherd and Grissom into space, but only on ballistic trajectories. The Atlas Rocket, which was also used to launch nuclear missiles, was powerful enough to bring Glenn to an orbital altitude. The Atlas, first proposed in 1946, was now the survivor of an intense inter-rivalry fight between the United States Army, Navy and Air Force. (Neil Sheehan, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon, 222-223)

Glenn’s flight started off better than expected, with a perfect launch, but once the spacecraft reached orbit, a warning light indicated that the heat shield had come loose on Friendship 7, which could mean that the spacecraft and astronaut would burn up in orbit upon re-entry. Mission control ordered Glenn to conduct several tests designed to confirm the nature of the problem, but at that time, he wasn’t told of the issue, but knew that at that point, something was wrong. Glenn was able to conduct three orbits of the Earth, and as the spacecraft reached the point of reentry, Mission Control instructed the astronaut to leave the retropack in place, to keep the heat shield in place should it be loose. After a hair raising trip back to Earth, Friendship 7 landed near the USS Noa. Technical follow-ups with the spacecraft revealed later on that the heat shield had in fact remained in place, and was never loose in the first place: a faulty microchip had malfunctioned, giving off a signal that the spacecraft was in trouble. (French, 146)

The success of the mission helped to fulfill a couple of functions with the US’s image in space. The first aspect was concerned with catching up with the Soviet Union’s achievements in space. With the flight of Friendship 7, the United States had caught up with the Soviet Union in terms of space technology, matching Yuri Gagarin’s flight just 10 months earlier. But the successful flight helped to demonstrate the capabilities of the Atlas rocket once again. While the rocket had been used in a fairly public demonstration with an orbit of the Earth in 1958, Glenn’s use of the rocket to reach orbit was something that was looked upon by millions from around the world. After the mission, Glenn and Friendship 7 went around the world in what was called the 4th orbit, no doubt as a calculated public relations tour that helped to underscore the technological abilities of the United States. (Burrows, 342)

Glenn’s flight was a success for the space program, achieving the goals of the Mercury program: send a human to space and orbit the Earth. The mission demonstrated that the United States could replicate their earlier successes on preexisting hardware, and also demonstrate that the Soviet Union did not necessarily have the final say on spaceflight. But, it also showed that there were issues in command between the crew of the spacecraft and Mission control, issues that would occur later: who would be in charge of the spacecraft in the event of an emergency? In this instance, Mission Control was able to work out possible solutions to the perceived issue on Glenn’s flight, but future missions would strain the ties. Despite that, the Friendship 7 mission was widely celebrated for its contributions to the advances in American spaceflight, allowing the United States to catch up to the Russians and eventually, overtake them in the race to the Moon.

The Future of American Space

A friend of mine from work forwarded me an editorial from conservative writer Charles Krauthammer that went up a couple of days ago. It's an article that is both misinformed and contradictory between a number of different points, attacking the Obama administration by likening the recent cancellation of the Constellation program to shutting the United States out of space for good. Nothing could be further from the truth in this when it comes to the future of the American Space industry.

It is noted that Russia will hold a monopoly on spaceflight for the first couple of years following the shutdown of the space shuttle. True, but as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial by Peter Diamandis (one of the founders of the X-Prize) notes, this will come to significantly lower costs for the US, as the operational cost will be borne by the Russians, as the United States sends up hardware and personnel. Considering that the US currently spends billions on going to space with the shuttle, it's a good move for a democratic administration trying to cut spending. Cooperation with the former Soviet Union makes sense, especially as we're not enemies with the nation anymore, but competitors, as we both have mutually accessible goals with the International Space Station. Indeed, space technology, while in the hands of the Americans, has long been a way of surpassing diplomatic closed doors: the Apollo 11 astronauts toured Russia, while the Apollo/Soyuz test project helped to bring the two countries closer together over time.

In the meantime, getting to space is not too expensive for private industries: it's been done before, and a number of other companies are well on their way. Last year, SpaceX became the first company to launch and deploy a satellite into space, and over the past year, has been testing their own equipment on launches - one of the recent shuttle launches contained a new navigational unit, designed for SpaceX's proprietary technology, as well as other instruments so that their own ships would be able to locate and lock onto the International Space Station. NASA has already awarded a contract to this company, starting in 2010, to run through 2012, for launch capabilities, most likely to get supplies and materials up into orbit with their Falcon 9 rocket. A manned spacecraft, the Dragon, is to be used with the Falcon 9, and will no doubt be playing a large role in the near future. In this regard, Krauthammer is misinformed as to the capabilities of the US Space Industry.

This is one of the more puzzling elements of the space industry, especially when it comes to the political table. Numerous presidents, from Kennedy to Regan to Nixon to Bush have all played the space card, often suggesting lofty goals for what the United States can achieve. In a way, the ability to reach space is a marker for the progress of the technology and science, and the United States has proven, and continued to prove its resilience and dedication to these goals. However, in how these goals are carried out is telling, especially when one considers the background motivations behind why these men have suggested that we go to space. President Kennedy, in his famous Rice Stadium speech on May 25th, 1961, came just after the April failure of an invasion of Cuba. Faced with a desire to help scrub the administration's image clean, Kennedy focused on some of his campaign priorities, including the space gap issue, and announced that the United States would go to the moon - a move that wasn't supported by everyone in his administration, and even the President himself had his doubts about it. The recent Constellation program was announced by President George W. Bush during a period of sagging rating from a war that was going sour, suggesting that there was much of the same rational going on behind the scenes. Space is an inspirational goal, and none of the presidents really deserve any criticism for their intentions, but they do for their own personal lack of support. Constellation was most likely doable, but at enormous cost that just doesn't make sense in the current economic climate.

Indeed, when it comes to conservative support, the condemnation of the cancellation of Constellation runs contrary to both parties internal philosophies: conservatives, who seek to reduce the federal budget, taxes and overall governmental footprint, are eager to continue this expensive and limited program, while it is the liberals, who advocate larger government spending and influence who are asking for the program to be cut away. Space has a very strange influence on governmental politics, because of the moral and popular boost that only going to the moon can reveal. In this instance, cancelling one program for another one that has the potential to better cement America's hold on space seems like the better option, especially if the incentives for private business enterprises are there as well, another puzzling aspect of Krauthammer's argument, which likewise runs counter to typical conservative thinking: there is something that American ingenuity and hard work can't accomplish? I honestly find this incredibly difficult to believe, and think that an American space industry will help bring the US to orbit and keep us there, long-term.

Diamondis's article points out some very good reasons to go to space: asteroids contain a wealth of minerals and metals that can be used here at home, as well as on the Moon. The space program has long been argued as being a great public relations program, but one without practical gain. A space program and industry that pays for itself is the only way forward for anyone to remain in space, and the United States needs to continue that momentum by building up an industry and a space program that can work with it in the future. Other countries are still reasonably far behind, but while there is no reason to allow them to catch up, the United States needs to be intelligent about its decisions in how it remains in the lead.

Finally, the argument that Mars is too far away makes sense to a limited extent, but if going into space is only for limited goals, then what is the point of the United States remaining in orbit if there is little payback for our efforts? The Space Shuttle was a remarkable achievement in its time, and there will be others in the future: humanity will make its way to Mars, if anything because it is in our nature to do so: we are a curious people, and will always be looking ahead to the next challenge to overcome, and the next place where we can stick our feet.

The Constellation Program & The Future of Spaceflight

Over the weekend, it was widely reported that the Obama Administration has proposed cancelling NASA's next big project, The Constellation Program, which was designed to return humanity to the Moon, but instead, increased NASA's budget by $6 Billion. The official explanation was that Constellation would largely be a repeat of the Apollo program by returning Americans to the moon, and was rejected by an independent review panel. While there has been a considerable amount of press regarding this, it is most likely better for the US space program as a whole.

I was happy to see President Bush announce the Constellation Program, but in the couple of years since its announcement, it's become increasingly clear that this was a project that wasn't going to work in the long run. In the history of space exploration, numerous presidents have used the space program as a way to launch legacies and to bolster public support for their administration, most notably with the Kennedy Administration, as well as the Nixon Administration. Undoubtedly, this was a goal of the second Bush Administration, which faced flagging support as the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars were getting worse. This sort of support from an administration isn't unwarranted, or really unwelcome, but given the absolute complexity of something such as Apollo or Constellation, there needs to be broad public support and administrative support for the program. This worked extremely well during the 1960s, as politicians were able to use the advances of the Soviet Union as a way to link both spaceflight and military technologies together. If the Russians were able to reach the moon first, they would be perceived as being technologically superior. In a world of unorganized terror and irregular warfare, this threat doesn't exist. While it's clear that Iran and North Korea has experimented with IRBM and ICBM technology, there isn't a race to see who's better. Thus, public and political pressure for a successful moon landing project isn't behind a push to go to the moon, which will hurt the project in numerous ways, such as budget cuts.

Beyond that, however, is the entire purpose of a moon landing program. The Mercury and Gemini programs were both designed with much different criteria in mind: Could humans go to space, and could humans live in space? The successes of both and the subsequent Apollo program indicated yes, making them an unparalleled success. When it came to Apollo, the end goals are more limited: Could humans land on the moon? While Apollo proved that this was true, it was far more limited, with no aftermath plan put into place, and with fewer tangible results that could come out of it. Once humanity reached the moon, public support slowed, and the last three Apollo missions were cancelled, despite the hardware and training that had gone into them. A repeat of Apollo wouldn't prove anything new, other than advancing some of the known technologies. Until a good reason is found to return to the lunar service, it shouldn't be subjected to the constraints of taxpayer whims and political points, and this is what would have happened with Constellation. A return to the moon would be a tremendous boon to the United States, but it would be a superficial one, without real substance.

While this shuts out a lunar moon program on the part of NASA, this does open the doors for private aerospace companies, new and old. Earlier today, NASA announced five companies were receiving large grants, while other companies, such as SpaceX, will be tasked with shuttling people and materials back and forth between the earth and orbit. Private industry will likely be a better choice for space technology, because it is freed from the constraints of public funding and politicians. This doesn't necessarily mean that NASA will be out of the space business either - several programs that will be brought up will be focusing on robotics and orbital stations, as well as investigating new equipment and technology, which will undoubtedly help create a foundation for further exploration to the moon and solar system.

There are some drawbacks to this. It'll take longer, which will push the United States back a bit, and it will place some exploration in the hands of machines, rather than people. That, however, is a smaller price to pay if it helps to put the United States and humanity on track to reach the stars on a bit more of a permanent basis. What I can foresee, is a buildup of additional companies such as SpaceX, which will help to build a large industrial and commercial basis for human habitation in space. That, I believe, is incredibly important, especially given the problems with the economy as of late. This would provide the US with a wholly unique industry, something that is badly needed.

The problems with going to space are complicated, and returning to orbit will be a very different thing after twenty years of depending on the space shuttle. Hopefully, these changes will be the start of new priorities for the space agency, and hopefully, exploration to the Moon and Mars won't be too far behind.

Remembering Gus Grissom

On January 27th, 1969, the three members of Apollo 1 were conducting a routine test of their spacecraft when the unthinkable happened: a spark, most likely caused by a short in the cockpit wiring and fueled by a pure oxygen environment, caused a flash fire that killed the crew. The tragedy pushed America's spaceflight ambitions back as many elements of the program had to be redesigned to better crew safety.

The commander for the mission was Gus Grissom, a forty-one year old astronaut who was the likely candidate to become the first man to land on the moon. Born to a Midwestern family in 1926, Grissom joined the US Army Air Corp during the Second World War, but never saw flight time, as the war ended. Using the GI Bill, he attended Purdue University and obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering. In 1950, with the United States headed back to war with Korea, Grissom rejoined the US Air Force and trained as a pilot, eventually flying 100 combat missions. In 1959, Grissom was summoned to Washington, along with over a hundred other test pilots, where he learned that he was selected for a number of tests to screen out qualified pilots for the newly established space program. In the end, he was one of seven astronauts chosen for the program, who would later be known as the Mercury 7. The next couple of years would see intense training and preparations for the missions. In 1961, John Shepherd Jr. become the first of the Mercury astronauts to be launched into orbit; Grissom would be the second, in the Liberty Bell 7, on July 21st, 1961.

Arguably, Grissom held what was the more important of the two launches. While Shepherd is better known for being the first American in space, Grissom should be better known for the astronaut who proved that American spaceflight was on the right track, and that the flight of the Freedom 7 was not just a lucky break. Grissom demonstrated that spaceflight was a repeatable event, and did so at considerable risk, as his spacecraft was lost when the door blew off after landing. Grissom almost perished in the accident, but was pulled to safety.

Grissom was also scheduled for the second flight of the Gemini Program, but when Alan Shepherd was grounded due to illness, Grissom and astronaut John Young were tasked with the first flight, which launched in 1965. The flight went well, orbiting the earth three times before splashing down, helping to demonstrate that men could do more than merely go into space for short periods of time: the Gemini project helped show that people could live in space, and set the groundwork for Apollo. Following that mission, Grissom and other astronauts helped with the design process for the Apollo module, although their frustrations grew as more errors were discovered with the spacecraft.

At the point of his death, Grissom was one of the United State's most experienced astronauts, having completed missions on both the Mercury and Gemini projects. The astronauts were integral to the development of the space program, and Grisson's background in Mechanical engineering, as well as his experience as a test pilot, made him an ideal candidate to lead the way into space. Despite Grissom's death, space travel did continue onwards, although it would be another two years before Americans would set foot on the moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin manning Apollo 11. There is much speculation that Grissom would have been in charge of that mission, had he survived.

Interestingly, one of the quotes attributed to Grissom sums up one of the harsh realities of space travel: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it wll not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." (Gus Grissom, John Barbour et al., Footprints on the Moon, Associated Press, 1969, p 125.)

Source

Top Geek Things of 2009

Now that it's close to the end of the year, it's time to look back, like everyone else and their mother on the internet, on the past year. 2009 has been a fantastic one for all things geek. There have been a number of fantastic movies, books, television shows and so forth, as well as a bunch of things that really didn't come off as well. Here's what I've been geeking out (or complaining about) this year:

The Best:

Moon Moon is easily one of the best Science Fiction films that I've ever seen. Ever. It's been added to a very small list of films (The Fountain, Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, etc) of exceptionally conceptualized, produced and thoughtful SF/F films out there. Moon is one of two really good films this year that I really enjoyed and for a number of reasons. The story is fantastic, playing off of common themes with new eyes, it's visually stunning and it's a largely original story, one that's not based directly off of prior works. And, it has a fantastic soundtrack by Clint Mansell.

Star Trek This appears three times on this list, because I'm still largely split over how I feel about it. The best parts of this is that it's a fantastic, visually stunning film, and really does what Enterprise and Nemesis failed to do: reboot the franchise in grand style, with over the top action, adventure, everything that really comes to mind when you think Big Budget Space Movie. The cast, pacing and visuals made this one of the most successful films of the year, and the best of the big budget films that came out this year.

District 9 When it comes to fantastic Science Fiction films, Moon and Star Trek didn't have a monopoly on this at all - District 9, coming out of San Diego Comic Con with an incredible amount of buzz and a good viral marketing campaign showed that there was still a place for an innovative filmmaker armed with a good story. The end result is a compelling take on first contact. Instead of an us against them, or invaders from outer space flick, we see refugees from outer space, with an acute political message that makes this movie even more interesting.

The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button This was an interesting film, one that got a bit of press, but wasn't a blockbuster by any means. The story of a man who ages backwards from birth, one that proved to be a powerful and somewhat heartbreaking love story leaves much room for discussion, but at points, was slow and ponderous. Brad Pitt did a fantastic job, as did the special effects artists who provided the CGI throughout.

The Magicians, Lev Grossman The Magicians was a book that came out of nowhere for me, until a Borders email let me know about it. Picking it up, with few expectations, I was enthralled with Lev Grossman's take on the fantasy world. Drawing much from C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and elements of Harry Potter, this book looks at a boy in a magical academy in a far more realistic sense, injecting a good dose of post-college reality into a field that is often ripe with monsters and epic quests. A quest of sorts is in here, but the buildup is fantastic.

Wired For War, P.W. Singer Wired For War is a book from earlier this year that looked at the developments of robotics in warfare. P.W. Singer takes a long and comprehensive look at not only the state of robots and their use in combat operations, but also looks to how the use of robotics is integrated into wartime planning, and how this impacts command and control structures already in place. From this point, he looks to the future of warfare, where robotics will go through the next decades and what the face of futuristic warfare might look like. It's also peppered with numerous Science Fiction references. I had a chance to speak with and interview Mr. Singer, who was extremely pleasant and eager to talk about his book, and write up several major articles for io9, which was a thrill as always.

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi Recently selected as one of Time Magazine's top books of the year, Paolo Bacigalupi's first novel, The Windup Girl is a stunning one. Taking place in the near future, in a world without oil, alternative energy has become paramount, while agricultural firms have put profit before common sense and as a result, plagues ravage the world, except for Thailand, whose isolationist policies hold back the outside world and its problems. The book covers a lot of ground, from governmental policy to corporate greed to bioethics, with a wide range of characters who all fall within a gray area. This book is fantastic, and if it doesn't win a Hugo, there's seriously something wrong with the world.

The Moon Reigns Supreme - 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 & Water on the Moon This year marked 40 years since 1969, when man first landed on the moon with Apollo 11, and with a successful follow-up mission with Apollo 12. Easily one of humanity's greatest accomplishments and it has been followed up with a number of projects. NASA found and restored footage of the landing and EVA activities, cleaning it up a little. NASA also took pictures from orbit of the Apollo landing sites, down to footprint trails with some stunning work from LCROSS. In addition to NASA's efforts to celebrate the anniversary, there were a number of other things out there. The Kennedy Library launched the website 'We Chose the Moon', which documented, in real time, the Apollo 11 mission. I listened at the edge of my seat, following along with the mission transcript and listened as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface. Finally, Craig T. Nelson's book, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men On The Moon, was released earlier this year to also commemorate the mission, which proved to be a detailed and fantastic read, one that helped to influence my thinking on the lunar mission. The Lunar landing wasn't the only press that the moon got this year - the LCROSS mission launched a component that slammed into the surface and let up a plume of debris - analysis revealed that there is water on the moon - a lot of it. And for all of those people who complained about this, keep in mind the number of craters that are already there.

Last servicing mission to Hubble. NASA wasn't just in the news for Apollo 11; this year marked the last servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 1990. Despite its troubled history, the satellite has returned some of the most fantastic, beautiful and stunning images of the universe around us, and will continue to do so for a couple more years. Space Shuttle mission STS-125 was launched in May, where a new camera was placed onboard and several other minor repairs. The satellite is slated to continue operation through 2014, so don't fret yet.

James May's Toy Stories James May, one of the three presenters on Top Gear, has been doing a limited TV show on classic toys, including Mecano, Plasticine, and eventually, Lego, looking a little at their history and then building something supersized out of them. It's quite a treat to watch.

Fringe I called Fringe one of the worst things last year, but it's turned around for me. Picking up the boxed set, I was hooked. It's a bit cheesy, gory, but a whole lot of fun. Walter, weird science, teleportation and alternate universes make this show a huge joy to watch. Season 2 is proving to be just as good, now that they've locked down a story, and I'm eager to see where it goes.

Dollhouse Dollhouse debuted earlier this year with a short, 13 episode season that started off slowly, but picked up an incredible amount of steam. While it's more uneven than Joss Whedon's earlier show, Firefly, Dollhouse's better episodes help make up for the slack by introducing some of the most challenging moments in Science Fiction, and deal with issues such as the soul, personality and consent, while also offering cautionary tales on the uses of technology. Unfortunately, with the show's cancellation right as it gets good, there's a limit to what can be told, but with plenty of time for this show to wrap up all the remaining storylines, I think that this will become a cult classic.

Battlestar Galactica Where to begin with Battlestar Galactica? It's been a rush over the past six or so years, with a miniseries and four seasons of television and two movies, and like all good things, it had to end sometime. Fortunately, it ended when it was good, and while the finale garnered quite a lot of talk and dismay from some people (io9 listed it as one of the bigger disappointments), I think that it was carried off well, with a rich blend of religious allegory, action and a satisfying ending that few science fiction shows seem to get.

Kings Sadly, Kings was another short lived show that was cancelled before its time. Taking the story of David and Goliath from the Bible and updating it in a modern, alternate world with inter-kingdom politics, faith and destiny. The stories were superb, well told, with a fantastic cast. This is precisely the type of show that should have been on SyFy, especially with their upcoming show Caprica.

Stargate: Universe SyFy's latest show from the Stargate Franchise, Stargate: Universe is possibly the most interesting and compelling installment in the series. Taking the very basics of Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis, this show takes more cues from Battlestar Galactica than it does Stargate. The result is a far more realistic show, with more personal stories and situations that are much darker, and more grown up from the first show.

Landing At Point Rain The Clone Wars thunders on, with mixed results, but easily the best episode that's aired thus far is Landing At Point Rain. Taking influences from Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and other war movies, the show finally lives up to its title: The Clone Wars. There's plenty of action, less of the stupid lines and fantastic animation that really made this episode one of the most exciting moments in the entire franchise.

The Hazards of Love, by the Decemberists The Decemberists have long dabbled in interesting and wordy music, as well as fantasy, with their last album, The Crane Wife, and The Tain, but The Hazards of Love is their most ambitious attempt at a concept album to date, one with an overarching story of Margaret and William, a town girl and a cursed man, their love for one another and the Forest Queen who conspires to keep them apart. The album is filled with supernatural elements, and seems to draw from Lord of the Rings and traditional mythic stories to put together one of their best works to date. The band in concert was also a treat to see.

Do You Want To Date My Avatar? I'm not all that familiar with The Guild, but Felica Day's clever music video is hands down fantastic.

Dr. Horrible Wins an Emmy Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog was one of the coolest things to come out last year, and this year, it received an Emmy, which helps to solidify the web as a growing platform for serious and professionally produced entertainment. Hopefully, its success will mean that we’ll see smaller, independent productions going online and succeeding.

Symphony of Science Symphony of Science is a project that puts noted scientists (notably Carl Sagan) to music by using an auto tuner. The result is a series of music videos and songs that help to convey some of the beauty and wonder of physics though some fairly clever songs. I've been listening to them constantly, and as a sort of electronica style music, they're quite fun, and very geeky to listen to. Best of all, there is plans to make further songs.

Star Wars In Concert One of the most iconic elements of Star Wars isn't just the action and epic story; it's the music that it's set to. For much of this fall, a travelling show, entitled Star Wars In Concert has been travelling around the nation. Unfortunately, it's winding down, but it will likely continue into next year. The 501st was called out at most of the events, and through that, I was able to watch the show. Combining a live orchestra, clips from the movies and narration from Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), the entire evening was a fantastic experience that gave me chills throughout.

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag The Tauntaun Sleeping bag started out as an April Fool's Joke, but the demand and interest was so prevalent that ThinkGeek actually went out and made it. What a fantastic idea - I kind of want one.

Slingers The final thing on this list is Slingers, a short conceptual teaser for a show that's heading towards production. The 3 minute teaser is easily one of the best moments in SF that I've seen in a while and I've been bouncing around, positively giddy at the prospect that this might be made. It's got humor, some interesting characters and a very cool look to the future. Plus, it's a space show, and there aren't many of those around now. It left me seeing more, and I'm sure that we'll see more in the next year or so.

Meh:

Fanboys For all the hype, Fanboys was a bit of a letdown. The cancer story was kept in, but so were some of the immature and cheap laughs that brought the entire film down. It's good for a laugh, and there's a lot that went right with it, but still, I was left wishing that there was more to it, without the frat boy humor in it.

Watchmen Don't get me wrong, Watchmen was stunning. It looked, felt and acted like the comic book that it was inspired by, and the transition to the screen worked fairly well. At the same time, for all the hype that there was here, I'm not that enthused to see it more than once or twice. It's still on my to get list, but it's not necessarily a priority. I think my biggest issue with this is that it's too much like the comic book, and that the drive to make everything exact harmed the overall production. It's less of a movie than it is an homage from the director. Sin City was the perfect comic book movie, this wasn't, and it really should have been. Still, it's worth watching.

Star Trek Star Trek, one of the best, one of the eh, moments of the year. It looks and feels spectacular, but when you get down to it, there's the shoddy science, and an incredibly weak story that pulls the movie along. The story's really not what the film was about, this was a character start for more Star Trek, but for me, story is central to Science Fiction, and this just didn't have it.

9 The trailers for 9 looked great, and there was quite a bit of interest in this. I went into the theater with high expectations, and those were largely met - the film looked spectacular, and it was a fun ride, but the story and characters were pretty lacking. It needed quite a bit of story and character development that was needed, and that harmed the film. Plus, it didn't seem to know if it was a kid's movie or one for an older audience. This is probably something to rent, not to buy.

V The new V should have been great - the cast, producers and network put together a good premise, but with the first couple of episodes sped through just about everything that made the show interesting. The themes of first contact, of a ship arriving over earth with a message for peace contain so much when it comes to religion, science and society, all rich territory that could be exploited, but instead, it's gone past too quickly, with crappy teenage romance storylines. I'll probably not pick up watching again, but I'll see what's going on in the show, in case, by some miracle, it's picked up for a second season.

The Prisoner AMC's The Prisoner was another show that should have been great. The trailers presented a fantastic looking story of psychological stress with a weird desert backdrop, but honestly? I can't tell you what it was about. It was convoluted, unconnected and dull, and while it looked very pretty, and had some decent episodes, it was a pretty big letdown.

Spirit gets stuck in the mud The Spirit Rover on Mars got mired down in a patch of sand earlier this year. Put into operation in 2004, and only intended for a 90 day mission, the rover was still going strong until it got stuck. Hopefully, the boffins over at the JPL will be able to get it out and about once again, although if I remember correctly, the last thing that they were intending to try was to back it out the way it came in. I would have thought that would have been the first thing to have tried.

Google Wave - lights are on, but there's nobody there. Late this year, Google Wave got turned on, and like any major Google product with exclusive access, it was, well, popular. But nobody really seems to know what it's for, and unlike Gmail, which could be used as an e-mail client from day one, its limited access restricts a lot of what you can do with this. People aren't using it like e-mail if it was designed today; it's essentially a glorified Gmail chat window, or a really good business collaborative tool. Still, it's pretty nifty, and I really hope that they can integrate it into Gmail someday.

Worst:

G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers, Terminator & Big Budget Crap I know I've singled out Star Trek a couple times here, but more than ever, especially with far superior, low budget films competing with them this year, we see once again that tons of special effects doesn't necessarily equate to a good film. G.I. Joe landed with horrendous reviews, Star Trek had a smaller plot than a television episode and Terminator: Salvation was a huge disappointment, critically. (I thought it was decent, but nowhere near as good as the trailers led me to believe). My biggest gripe is extravagant use of CGI and an over-reliance on special effects for a dumbed down audience. Among other things, Moon and District 9 demonstrated that a good looking, intelligent film could be done for a fairly low cost, and I know that I'll be going back to those far more than the others. Still, big budget summer movies aren't going anywhere - a lot of these films made quite a bit, and the jury is still out on Avatar, which drops in a couple weeks.

Karen Traviss Quits Star Wars - Twice Karen Traviss was really a shining star within the Star Wars Universe. Her first entry, Republic Commando : Hard Contact, was followed up by several very good novels, with some different and intelligent views on the Clone Wars. Then, there was a bit of a row over Mandalorians, causing her books to come into conflict with the Clone Wars TV series. Since then, there's been a bit of a row about this, and Traviss has left the universe for others, such as Gears of War and Halo, and hopefully, her other works. Karen explains everything here, and makes some good points. She will be missed, however.

Black Matrix Publishing Row With harder times coming around, some publishers found a new revenue stream: aspiring writers who have little common sense. One notable SF ones was Black Matrix Publishing, called out by author John Scalzi recently on his blog, Whatever. While Scalzi had quite a lot of very good advice in his usual up front fashion, there were a number of people who went on the offensive and critizised him as an elitist writer, issuing some of the most ridiculous arguments for why Black Matrix had been wronged. I'm not necessarily involved in either side, but Scalzi presented a reasonable argument. Why is that so hard?

The ending to Life On Mars I really got into Life on Mars. It wasn't as good as the UK version, but it was unique, interesting and divergent from it. While the show basically adapted the original show to a large extent at first, they had an interesting pace and storyline starting up, and far better than the first pilot that was shot, which was just terrible. The creators had a delicate balancing act to follow, and did a very good job with giving their characters their own personalities and stories that diverged from the UK version. Then, the show was cancelled and they ended it, and the last ten minutes of the show just dropped like a rock. Clunky, very, very poor production values that made me wonder if this was all slapped together at the last minute, and quite honestly, it dimmed the entire series for me, especially compared to the brilliance of the UK version. I'll watch the show again, but I'll be doing my best to forget about the conclusion.

SciFi becomes SyFy, nobody cares One of the biggest furies of the year was when SciFi became SyFy, and the internet erupted into such indignation that I thought the world was going to end. Quite simply, the channel changed names to create a stronger brand, not change content, and so far, they seem to be doing pretty well, with Warehouse 13, Stargate Universe, Alice and presumably, Caprica doing really well in the ratings. All of which is good, for the network to expand further and really show that geek is really in right now. While the name looks silly, it's really a superficial change. Now, if they would just get rid of wrestling. Or pick up Slingers for five seasons.

Orbiting Carbon Observatory crashes - Mission Failure This was a satellite that I tracked earlier this year while really watching the space stuff. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was an expensive one, designed to monitor global carbon levels to get a better idea just how climate change is progressing and providing us with a very good look at just how the environment is changing around us. Ultimately though, part of the nose failed to separate from the capsule, and with the extra weight, the rocket crashed into the south Atlantic.

Heroes continues. Meh. I've given up on Heroes, after the dismal decline in quality, storytelling and characters. They should have stuck with the original plan, and killed off the first season's cast when they had the chance, instead of bringing people back time and time again. The fact that ratings are declining is just stunning to me, especially now that the show is into it's fourth season, and I have doubts that it will return. Hopefully not.

FlashForward Look, if I want to watch LOST, I'll watch LOST. I'm not going to watch a show that's a poor copy of it.

Deaths: Every year, there are a number of deaths in the geek genre/fan community. A couple notable ones were Ricardo Montalbán, who played Kahn in Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn, Michael Jackson, who's song Thriller places him on the Geek spotlight, Kim Manners (X-Files/Supernatural Producer), Philip José Farmer, author of Riverworld and numerous other SF books, Dave Arneson, one of the D&D co-founders, and Norman Borlaug, who saved the world through science. There are others I'm sure, but it's still hard to see people in the genre leave us forever.

Unknowns

A couple of unknowns for me include The Lovely Bones, Sherlock Holmes, Avatar and Zombieland, which I haven't seen, Deathtroopers, which I haven't read, and Halo ODST, which I haven't played. (Okay, haven't played much. I've liked what I've played. And the soundtrack. And the fact that the entire Firefly cast is somewhere in there)

What's coming up for next year? The new Tron movie is coming out, which I'm horribly excited for, especially after watching the trailer and then the old movie. Slingers is likely going to get some more buzz. Iron Man 2 will be big, as well as Clash of the Titans, Inception (Really want to see that one), Chronicles of Narnia 3, The Book of Eli, and Toy Story 3. Hopefully, Scott Lynch will have his third book out, and Caprica will be beginning (High hopes for that one), as well as the second half  and second Season of Stargate: Universe. Who knows what else?

Apollo 12

On this day in history, Apollo 12 touched down on the lunar surface, allowing Astronauts Alan Bean and Pete Conrad to become the third and fourth men to step onto our nearest neighbor in space. Command Module pilot Richard Gordon remained in orbit during the EVA operations.

Where Apollo 11 saw the first steps in lunar exploration, quite literally, Apollo 12's mandate was far more important in the greater scheme of things. While there were some shaky beginnings to the mission, caused by an electrical strike upon liftoff, but the mission was salvaged by the quick actions of the astronauts on. On November 19th, the lunar lander touched down in the Ocean of Storms, and saw the first success of the mission, a more accurate landing that what had been required of Apollo 11, where Neil Armstrong had manually flown the craft to its eventual location. In this instance, the craft was within 200 meters of their intended target.

Apollo 12's landing zone was chosen because of its proximatey to Surveyor 3, a probe that had landed two years earlier, in 1967. Samples were taken from the probe to be brought back to Earth, and the Astronauts collected rock samples, in addition to sensors that were put into place to better determine some of the characteristics of the moon's surface and environment - sensors that determines seismic events, magnetic fields and solar wind were put into place, which were designed to operate long-term.

NASA also sought to improve the quality of the footage that they shot on the moon by bringing along a color video camera - however, this was something that they weren't able to carry out as the camera was pointed directly at the sun, disabling the camera and putting it out of commission.

After taking off from the lunar surface, the newly reunited crew remained in lunar orbit, taking pictures, and returned to Earth on November 24th, 1969, thus completing the 6th manned Apollo mission. The next mission, Apollo 13, took off in April of 1970, and was aborted due to an onboard explosion that terminated the mission, although the crew was returned safely.

One of the things that has been bothering me a little is the relative lack of interest in the missions that took place after Apollo 11 - aside from Apollo 13, the other missions were successes in that they reached, explored and returned to Earth safely, but not nearly as dramatically as the first steps on the moon, or a major accident. This is a trend that has largely continued through to the present-day - when naming space shuttles, Columbia and Challenger come readily to mind, and attract the most attention for their destruction, but how many people could name the remaining shuttles in the fleet, or tell me right now which one is in space at this very moment? (It's Atlantis).

This is even more of a shame, because this mission contained some of the more interesting astronauts, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean. Bean is by far one of my favorite astronauts - he left the service after becoming an instrumental member (and Astronaut) for the Skylab program - another incredible mission on NASA's part - and has since become a painter. His artwork is stunning, and well worth checking out.

To me, a moon landing is an incredible spectacle, where humanity has demonstrated a proficiency in technology that allows us to reach another body, and to tell us so much about our world and the next. Apollo 12 showed us that humanity's first steps on the moon were not its last, and in true scientific method, repeated an experiment with the same results. It showed that we can return to the moon.

“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.”

Air Canada says it has accepted 2300 reservations for flights to the Moon in the past 5 days. - Cape Canaveral, July 24th, 1969, in the morning news report to the crew of Apollo 11.

After the successful launch, journey and lunar landing, Apollo 11 safely touched down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24th, 1969, the final successful note to one of the greatest adventures in human history. Apollo 11 was the touchstone of the entire space program, and on that day, the three astronauts on board, and the entire NASA workforce fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's mandate that had been issued eight years ago. Man had landed on the moon, and returned safely to earth, with five months to spare. Between 1969 and 1972, NASA sent six additional missions to the moon, one of which ultimately failed. On December 14th, 1972, Astronaut Gene Cernan became the last human being to set foot on the moon.

In the thirty-seven years since we last stepped on another worldly body, we have yet to break out of lunar orbit, despite the fantastic momentum that had been built up in the years preceding the Apollo program, and bringing the constant question: When will we return?

There are two major reasons for the lack of further lunar missions, one folding into the other. The first is the very nature of Kennedy's mandate. We would go to the moon, land there and return safely by the end of the decade. As far as a mission goes, it translates well into the American public - there is a where and a when, and that was it. Following the Apollo 11 mission, public interest in the lunar missions waned to the point where major news networks refused to air the crew's broadcast during Apollo 13. Far fewer people took interest in the later missions, and the planned missions for Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were scrapped, despite having the hardware, crews and support staff in place.

This lack of interest, and extra hardware moved NASA to a different direction. In 1972, preliminary funding for the Space Shuttle orbiter was announced, and in 1973, Skylab, the US's first space station, was launched, the result of the Apollo Applications Program, which was designed to modify Apollo hardware to fit other uses. With the launch of Skylab, and the move towards orbital shuttles, NASA transitioned from an agency designed to break barriers and explore new ground (figuratively) to one that was designed towards scientific endeavor and research. This mode of thinking provides an impossible environment for the planning of the types of missions that lunar or even eventually, Martian missions require.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were carried out in a highly logical, stepping-stones manner that allowed us to reach the moon. Unfortunately, it did not allow for us to continue returning to the moon after the initial missions were carried out. An Apollo-type program is needed for our eventual return - new rockets are under construction, as well as a new lander and spacecraft, with the intention to return to the lunar surface by 2019 with the Orion 15 mission.

What is lacking is the proper environment in which space travel and lunar missions can thrive. We reached the moon because we were attempting to beat the Russians to the surface, ending the Space Race readily. It was competition, with a sense of national pride and honor at stake that allowed for the massive budget and organization that allowed NASA to go to the moon. Now, with things such as healthcare, terrorism and other major national issues crowding the legislative agenda, there is little desire to go to the moon, it would seem, as there are pressing matters here on earth to do.

I'm often skeptical of such assertions. While yes, a lunar mission is a costly affair, (the Apollo project cost $135 billion, adjusted), the current war in Iraq has cost $669 Billion dollars. That sort of money could easily be used to spend on health care, paying down the national debt and other notable things, but it is the projects such as this that make the United States what it is, and provides a reason for people to continue to imagine, and to provide something absolutely splendid for the country to point at and look upon with pride. Apollo was an absolutely stunning national achievement, one that makes everything that we do worth living for, and to defend.

We will return to the moon, and we will eventually travel to Mars, to Io, and Titan, whether brought there by NASA or by private enterprise, but it is within human nature to travel and to explore.

It Was Beautiful from Here, Tranquility

Hey Houston, that may have seemed like a very long final phase. The AUTO targeting was taking us right into a football-field size- football-field sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks for about... one or two crater diameters around it, and it required a ... in P66 and flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good area.- Tranquility Base, minutes after the successful touchdown of the LM.

On July 20th, 1969, humanity took its first steps on a different world. Neil Armstrong's iconic words still ring true today, as the moment represented an enormous step forward for humanity. Apollo represented the pinnacle of scientific, economic and philosophical achievement for what the human race was capable of, and has transformed the world that we live in.

Four days earlier, Apollo 11 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, and would reach the moon just days later, following the path that had been blazed before by Apollo 8 (which had been the first human spacecraft to escape earth orbit and circle the moon), and Apollo 10, which served as a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing, with the Lunar Module coming within 8 miles of the surface of the moon, in May of 1969.

Upon reaching the moon on July 19th, Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were able to observe their landing site, and on July 20th, Armstrong and Aldrin boarded the Lunar Module and separated from the Command Module, Columbia. After an inspection to make sure there was no damage. With this separation, a burst of air in the tunnel pushed the LM off a bit faster than calculated, which was noted by the crew. As the Eagle descended to the Lunar Surface, problems arose, with the computer becoming overloaded with information. The alarms were silenced, and the craft continued its landing. Because of the air burst, the Eagle was pushed off course, and as Armstrong looked outside, he could see that the computers that were guiding the ship in were bringing the lander towards a large boulder field. He took control of the ship and set a course that brought the ship flying over the landscape, with Aldrin calling out altitudes. Finding a spot, they landed with 25 seconds of fuel left in the tanks. The Eagle had landed.

The mission called for a five hour sleep period, but this was skipped, as the astronauts felt that they would be unable to sleep. After a long preparation period, Armstrong exited the landed and descended the ladder. A television camera captured his decent, with an audience of over 600 million people on Earth watching his first steps down onto the Lunar surface. With one step, Armstrong changed the world.

After landing, Armstrong grabbed a rock sample, and was soon after joined by Aldrin, who then planted the American flag on the surface and spoke with President Richard Nixon from the White House. From there, the astronauts collected rock samples, deployed scientific instruments for a total EVA time of two and a half hours. After their experiments and samples were deployed and collected, the astronauts reentered the spacecraft, slept and lifted off from the moon, for a total duration of over twenty-one hours. They rejoined the CM and by July 24th, they had returned home.

The Apollo mission was the fulfillment of decades of work in rocketry and spaceflight experiments, and was propelled along by the advent of the Cold War and subsequent arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. For this reason, the Apollo segment of the US Spaceflight programs was probably more detrimental for the prospects of long term spaceflight than had it happened under other circumstances. President John F. Kennedy had stated in 1961 that the US would land on the moon by the end of the decade. With Apollo 11, that was accomplished, and the subsequent lunar landings gained far less attention, and the program was ultimately scrapped, and the entire focus of NASA shifted from an exploration mode to scientific one, as demonstrated by the Skylab program and later on, the Space Shuttle.

Apollo 11 remains one of the most dramatic elements of human spaceflight history, surpassing Yuri Gagarin's historic entry into space, Alan Shepherd's followup, and the numerous achievements that made up the space race. For a brief moment, the entire world was united as we stepped on the moon for the first time, 40 years ago. In a recent documentary, In The Shadow of the Moon (not to be confused with the wonderful book by the same title), astronaut Michael Collins noted that people around the world often said "We did it." Not "You Americans did it." What the United States had accomplished was extraordinary, surpassing borders and politics. There is no modern equivalent, I think, that we will ever see in our lifetime.

I have my reservations about Apollo, especially when it comes to long term manned spaceflight, but for that one moment, with those words, Armstrong and Aldrin changed the world, which makes up for everything in such elegance and imagination. We have gone to the Moon, and I have to wonder, when will we return?

The Road to the Moon

"Many years ago the great British Explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there." John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962, at Rice University

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man made satellite, Sputnik 1,  into Earth's orbit, signaling the beginning of a decade long race to Earth's closest celestial body. The space race would continue on for another twelve years before the stated goal of reaching the moon was achieved on July 20th, 1969. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the lunar landings that changed the world, and makes for a good time to reflect on just how difficult the lunar landings were and just what it meant. Sputnik came at a time that was shattering to the American public - there had been much confidence in the progress that the nation was making, but that percieved lead was taken with the successes of the Soviet Union. The race to space had to be sped up, and the US was lagging far behind.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy laid down what seemed like an impossible goal for the nation: to reach the moon and land successfully before the end of the 1960s. At that point, the United State's cumulative experience with human spaceflight was a mere fifteen minutes with Astronaut Alan Shepherd's flight. In his speech to Congress in 1961, Kennedy linked the efforts in space to the the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, placing the efforts in space as a way to deter tyranny and dark nature of the Soviet Union. This was a feeling that was very much in fashion in the years following the launch of Sputnik. NASA administrators were asked before Congress if the Soviet Union would gain the ability to reach the moon before the United States, and if they would be able to color the surface red, as a constant reminder of the power of the Soviet Union. The race to the moon had become far more than mere scientific endeavor and exploration; it became a powerful tool and symbol of the might of both countries as they locked horns during the Cold War.

NASA had been formed only a couple of years prior, in 1958, and instituted Project Mercury a year later, designed to bring a human into space and back again safely. This project was the first of three projects, with the overall intent on bringing people to space, and later, to the moon. Mercury was possibly one of the most popular projects that NASA ever undertook after Apollo. The general public was riveted to news of the astronauts. The Mercury 7 astronauts were instant celebrities upon their announcement, and even more so after the publication of Tom Wolfe's book, The Right Stuff.

Mercury was the proving ground that saw the first American into space, Alan Shepherd, as well as the first American to orbit the Earth (John Glenn Jr, who would become the oldest man in space many years later) and the first US flight that would exceed 24 hours with Gordo Cooper. NASA proved with Mercury that humans could go to space, operate for an extended period of time, and then return safely. That was the first, and most crucial step that all American spaceflights have predicated on.

Mercury was only the first step. NASA proved that they could get into space, but with President Kennedy's mandate to fly to the moon and land on it, a far more complicated project was in order. Gemini was born, and was put into place to test the more advanced methods that would be required in space for a mission as complicated as a lunar landing. A new group of astronauts were brought into the fold, with notable names such as Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and others - astronauts that would gain valuble spaceflight experience prior to being assigned to the upcoming Project Apollo.

Gemini tested a number of procedures and maneuvers that would be required for longer missions. Two crew members would fly each manned mission, rendezvous and docking maneuvers would be tested to link together the command module and landing module, Extra Vehicular Activity was accomplished for the first time by an American and numerous other scientific and practical procedures were tested out during these missions. Ten missions were undertaken between 1965 and 1966, with each mission adding on valuble experience to NASA's plans for a lunar landing, and it brought the United States further along the race to catch up with the Soviet Union, as most of these accomplishments had already been completed successfully by Russia.

Project Apollo was the project that would bring mankind to the moon. Instituted in 1961, before Gemini, this project was the followup to Mercury, and would build upon the experience that NASA gained during Gemini to reach our nearest heavenly body. There are arguments for and against the effectiveness of the three projects. With the successful landing of Apollo 11, the mission was over, and the general public began to lose interest in the launches. However, within the confines of the space race that brewed between the United States and Russia, there was an artificial sense of urgency, with a huge push from their respective governments to reach the moon for no other purpose but to plant a flag on the moon, and leave the other to look up and see this as a powerful symbol of the other's might. Apollo was to be one of the most complex projects ever undertaken at the time, but it was also the most specialized of the missions, with one end goal - to reach the moon, which would be accomplished on July 20th, 1969.

Many thanks to the fantastic site io9 for their link in!

Exploration vs. Scientific Modes of Spaceflight

Now that I've since finished my last seminar of classwork for my Master's, I've begun to switch gears and begun work on my Capstone Paper, the final paper before I get my diploma, should I pass. I'm very excited to begin this mode of work, because I've gotten a topic that I've gotten really interested in - the Space Race. Originally, I'd intended on studying something with the comic book industry and the Second World War, but there's a huge lack of sources. Since then, I've switched gears, and will be looking to the early days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and the military roots and implications that the American space program represented to the United States during the Cold War. I'm still working to narrow down my sources, and will likely spend the weekend working through sources to get a comprehensive bibliography put together, along with a tighter thesis.

While talking with my program director earlier today, I came across a realization about the space program that I hadn't realized or considered before - the current Space program will never, ever be as successful as the Mercury - Apollo era, for one simple reason - there is no certain, end all goal for the current plans for space travel. This is in no way trying to say that what we're doing up there is useless, far from it. The difference between the two is that in 1961, President John F. Kennedy set an end goal for American space ambitions. Americans would reach the lunar surface by the end of the decade - an extraordinary declaration that left many at NASA and the nation stunned, as the cumulative United States spaceflight experience amounted to a mere 15 minutes with Alan Shepherd's Freedom 7 flight earlier in the year.

From that point forward, there was a clear point to work to, and the space missions that came afterwards followed a specific path to reach the moon. The Mercury missions were designed to get mankind to space and into orbit, the longest time in space amounting to just over a day, with Mercury 9. Project Gemini followed with a slate of missions that were designed to test space flight, where the first docking and EVA on the US's part took place. Finally, the Apollo missions are most noted for the Apollo 11 mission that landed on the moon. This was the validation of the efforts of the US, but leading up to that saw other specialized missions that saw humanity to the moon and back, testing the Apollo hardware in each of its phases.

While reaching the moon was the most visible goal and most dramatic part of the space race, it is far from the most important aspect. The space race did a number of things, but everything was done with an overall goal in mind, one that was contested early on by mission planners who felt that we should skip the moon all together and head for the other planets. What the early missions provided was structure and essentially, building blocks that helped to bring the lunar landings from science fiction to reality.

Following the Apollo missions, there was a lull. The space shuttle program was approved, as well as Skylab, and the entire mission and focus for space shifted from an exploration model to one of scientific discovery. Skylab was essentially the turning point, utilizing leftovers from the Apollo missions for something new entirely. However, there has been no overarching goal for space since the Apollo years. The public has turned away from space and NASA's efforts up there, I suspect because of a perceived lack of purpose. The Space Shuttle, while a wonderful machine, has not really full filled any sort of plan to reach the next inevitable stage, missions to Mars, beyond scientific experiments that require a zero-gravity environment, servicing space stations and satellites. The information gathered about living in space for extended periods of time has been incredibly helpful and will no doubt be utilized in a future mission, but these experiments were not expressly conducted for a martian mission.

Mars is the next logical step for future space flight missions beyond the International Space Station (which, looking at it, is a good goal that has brought together nations, but has largely failed to capture the public's imagination like the Lunar landings did. Let's face it, walking around on the moon is a lot cooler). What is required of the United States is a large, overarching series of missions that will begin to pave the way for heading to Mars. The technology is certainly there, as is the willpower, but what is needed the most is guidance from up on high. Kennedy's statement in 1961 was a powerful catalyst that set everything in motion, and any further trips to Mars, and indeed, even the Moon, will require such a thing, but will also require a comparable plan.

Now is also the best time for such a project, when one thinks about it. At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA employed around four hundred thousand people, and that does not count the other multiple hundreds of thousands that would have worked in the defense and aerospace industries during that time designing, building and supporting the missions leading up to the space program. In a book that I've been reading, it was noted that not a single dollar was spent on the moon - it was spent on earth, and provided a massive boost to the economy during that time by supporting those industries. This is exactly what will be needed in the coming years, and I hope that with China and India beginning space programs of their own, this will provide an acute sense of urgency for US mission planners and policy makers to begin to really consider such an endeavour.

Virtuality Moves Up

Has anyone else heard about Virtuality? Fox picked it up for a TV series, and they will be releasing the pilot on June 26th, at 8:00 PM. I've been following the project for a little while now, and it's certainly an interesting project, although it is in limbo as to whether it'll actually become a series or not. Originally, this was slated to be released July 4th on Fox, and this move might indicate that they have a little more faith in it.

Here's how the SciFi Wire described the show:

The crew of the Phaeton is approaching the go/no-go point of its epic 10-year journey through outer space. With the fate of Earth in the crew's hands, the pressure is intense. The best bet for helping the crew members maintain their sanity is the cutting-edge virtual-reality technology installed on the ship. It's the perfect stress reliever until they realize a glitch in the system has unleashed a virus onto the ship. Tensions mount as the crew decides how to contain the virus and complete their mission. Meanwhile, their lives are being taped for a reality show back on Earth.

It's supposed to be quite good, and there are a number of possibilities for where the creators can go with the storyline. It looks like it's got a fairly big cast, although there's nobody that really jumps out at me for people that I recognize. I'm mainly interested in this because Ron Moore's the guy who created it, and given his track record from Battlestar Galactica, there are undoubtably some high expectations for this from other SciFi fans. Plus, Peter Burg is directing the pilot, and I've generally been really impressed with his work.

What gets me more interested is that while there will undoubtably be Matrix and other sort of cyberpunk connections to this, I'm really excited that this seems to be a completely original show and story. This isn't a remake, adaptation or inspired by sort of project, and I really hope that this'll make it to the TV series stage because there are so few good space shows out there at the moment.

Ground Control to Major Tom

On Monday, STS-125, the last space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to replace gyroscopes, batteries and to install two new cameras to outfit the aging satellite for the last time, making it the most powerful in its history. I've talked about space before, and I find it utterly facinating. Hubble itself has had a long and varied history when it comes to space, from a blotched lense to the historic repair mission, not to mention the thousands of beautiful pictures that it's captured over its long life.

The current mission is one that I've been looking forward to for a while now. A couple months ago, I wrote an article for io9, titled Stalking NASA, which was a laundry list of ways in which someone can follow up on NASA's activities via social networking sites. What they have been doing with this launch is really highlighting the mission. In the leadup to the launch, there was numerous updates from a number of twitter feeds for Space Shuttle Atlantis, a couple of the astronauts, NASA and a couple other lines. Facebook had a number of status updates for the specific pages for the mission, and almost the entire mission has been broadcast live online.

I'm really digging the ability to watch this stuff live. Whether it's watching Atlantis docking with Hubble to watching the astronauts work (in some cases, watching from THEIR view) has been absolutely fantastic. You almost get a feeling that you're right there with them in space. The images are absolutely stunning, and I really hope that this'll attract more interest to the space program.

Man, I want to go to space.

Happy Birthday Hubble

Today is the 19th birthday of the Hubble Telescope, which was launched into a high orbit on this day in 1990 by Space Shuttle Discovery. The Satellite has remained one of the most important installations to have been launched. The images that have been taken have helped to vastly increase our knowledge of the surrounding universe, and take some of the most beautiful sights from all over.

The Hubble Space Telescope was an important project for NASA, which was still reeling from the destruction of the Challenger orbiter just four years earlier after faulty parts and negligence contributed to the deaths of the crew members. NASA's public image was tarnished from the accident, and hopes were riding high on the successes of Hubble. The launch, STS-031, brought the Hubble 380 miles up, the second highest orbit, and twice that of the Shuttle's normal range.

After it's deployment on April 25th, scientists found that the images that they recieved weren't as sharp as they'd thought. The primary lense in the telescope was incorrectly built, 2.3 micrometers out of the correct shape. NASA's image was once again tarnished, and scientists worked quickly to devise a solution. This was aided by the design of the Hubble, which was the only satellite that could be serviced in orbit. The first of four servicing missions brought up a sort of add-on that allowed for Hubble's vision to be corrected. The mission was an overwhelming success (except that the astronauts couldn't get one of the doors closed, and had to ratchet it shut). Five spacewalks were performed, and with the new images from the telescope, the public image of the agency rebounded. Three additional Servicing Missions were conducted, one in 1997, 1999 and 2002, each of which upgraded equipment or repaired faulty parts.

The last mission is scheduled later next month, STS-125, which will install a new camera and spectrograph and repair several other instruments that have failed. Following this mission, the Telescope will continue its life through to 2013, and it will be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope at that time.

Hubble's website. Follow it on twitter.

"These, Ladies and Gentlemen, are the nation's Mercury Astronauts."

Fifty Years ago, American received seven extraordinary men with a press conference just a year after the creation of NASA.

The announcement came at a pivotal time in spaceflight history, and unlike the Russian Space Program, which kept their Cosmonauts identities a secret, NASA started off their program with much press and public interest. The seven men, Scott Carpenter, Gordo Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepherd, and Deke Slayton, were turned into instant celebrities.

Spaceflight was perceived very differently at that point. For this announcement, nobody knew if it was even possible to send a person to space. The Mercury Program was designed to see if mankind could survive the journey into space and return safely, part of a larger agenda to bring the United States to the Moon, as outlined a couple years later by President John F. Kennedy.

Each of these pilots were graduates of Navel Test Pilot School, and underwent rigorous tests to reach the Press Conference. Of the original 69 who applied to the program, only the seven made it through. Six would fly the Mercury missions, before the program was phased out to the Gemini Program, which was designed to see if humans could build hardware that would work in space, and to see if we could live for longer durations. Apollo, the third program, would utilize the experience and knowledge gained during the prior two programs to reach and explore the surface of the moon, which was accomplished ten years later, in 1969 by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

In January of 1961, Alan Sheperd became the first American into space, just weeks after Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin accomplished the same feat. He would later go on to command the Apollo 14 mission, and would walk on the moon. The other six astronauts would reach space, although Deke Slayton would only take part in the Apollo-Soyuz mission more than a decade later, grounded because of a heart problem.

The seven men are sadly underrepresented and rather unknown when it comes to World and American History - people tend to only remember Neil Armstrong, and while his accomplishments are nothing short of incredible, these men did more. They showed humanity that our long-held dreams of reaching space were not only possible, they were dreams that were reachable, and that we would return to the edge of our world time and time again. Like explorers of old, they broke barriers and ventured into the unknown to discover something new, to prove that there were no boundaries that could hold back humanity and that we would touch the sky.

You can see the original press conference here, here and here.