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Thanks from Orbit

December 21, 2007 12:58 PM

NASA has sent a brief statement which it says was written by astronaut Dan Tani, who is on board the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 210 miles.   

Tani's mother, Rose, was killed in an auto accident Wednesday in Lombard, Il., a suburb of Chicago.  NASA says it is the first time an astronaut has had a death in the family during a mission.  Tani has no immediate way of getting home; he was supposed to be picked up by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, but its launch has been delayed until at least January 10 by a faulty fuel sensor system.

Here is the text of Tani's message:

"I would like to thank everyone who has expressed their condolences during this time of grieving for me and my family.  Living on the space station means that I experience all aspects of life -- be they joyous or tragic -- while circling the Earth without a convenient way to return.  Of course, I was aware of this situation before my mission and I fully accept that I will proudly complete my mission on the International Space Station and join my family when I return.  My NASA management and colleagues have been fully supportive through this and I would like to thank them for their concern and compassion.

"My mother was a complete joy.  Those who knew her will know that words cannot describe her vitality, generosity and warmth.  She was my hero.  We will all miss her dearly."

There is now word from the Tani family that Rose Tani's memorial service on Sunday will not be videotaped, as had been discussed, for Dan Tani to watch in orbit.  He didn't want to become the center of attention, according to his brother Richard.

Instead, says Richard Tani, Dan will tape a brief message from the space station; it will be played at the service.

December 21, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

Would You Want to Know?

December 20, 2007 10:20 PM

Dan Tani may feel like the loneliest man in the solar system right now.  He's the astronaut, now orbiting on the space station, whose mother died in an auto accident near Chicago Wednesday.  His wife and a flight surgeon got on a private radio loop that night to give him the news.

I spent Thursday working on a piece on this for World News.  In a way it affects a lot of people--soldiers in Iraq, sailors on long deployments at sea, people whose jobs take them great distances for a long time.  They all face the possibility that they will miss major events in their families' lives, good or bad, while they're far from home.  An astronaut is not much different.

But most of us never get quite as far from home as Tani must feel right now.  He's only 210 miles up, but it's a long 210 miles. His ride home--the shuttle Atlantis--is delayed at least until Jan. 10.

If you were away, and there was nothing you could do in case of a family tragedy, would you want to know about it?  Before flight, astronauts routinely fill out a checklist of personal preferences, and one of the questions is whether they would like to get bad news. 

A few say no.  But the majority, Tani included, say they'd prefer to know.  In the digital age, astronauts can have video conversations with their families, and get e-mails sent to them in orbit. 

I had a remarkable phone conversation with Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut who spent six months on the space station in 2004-5.  The day before his launch, he told me, his father-in-law died.

He'd filled out the same questionnaires as Tani, and made the same decision, that it's better to know than not. 

But his wife, despite his preferences, told NASA to keep quiet.  Let him have an upbeat, safe launch, she said.  His wife only told him the bad news a few days later, after he'd arrived at the space station.

"She made the right decision," he said.

NASA says Rose Tani's funeral will be recorded if Dan wishes, and the file will be transmitted up to the space station so he can watch it.

December 20, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Save the Shuttles!

December 18, 2007 3:25 PM

For years now, the conventional wisdom about the nation's space shuttles has been that while they were magnificent, multipurpose ships, they were too complicated for their own good.  They also ate up something like $4 billion a year, even if they didn't fly.  So best to get them out of the way as soon as practical, around 2010.

But one place that doesn't go over very well is on the Florida coast around the Kennedy Space Center, where thousands of jobs depend on NASA launching spacecraft.  Rep. Dave Weldon, the Republican who represents the area, is now talking up a bill to allocate an extra $10 billion to NASA, to keep the shuttles flying until the Orion spacecraft is ready around 2015.

Does he stand a chance?  It's not as if anyone has $10 billion lying around.  Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) has suggested NASA squeeze in one extra shuttle flight after STS-133 in the summer of 2010, but that's to launch an experiment that's already been built.  He's on record saying he'd rather see Orion hurried up, to fly in 2013.

Weldon says it would be a "foreign policy blunder" to rely on Russia to ferry American astronauts to the space station during the four-five year gap. 

"It's not an issue of whether the money is going to be there or not," he said in Florida yesterday.  "For us to be totally putting the goal of getting our astronauts into space in the hands of the Russians, I think, is very, very bad foreign policy."

Florida Today quotes him as saying, "I don't want to drive NASA and the KSC work force over a cliff."

What to make of all this?  Good foreign policy?  Protecting American jobs?  Or a bit of Congressional pork?

December 18, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)

Guitar Anti-Hero III

December 17, 2007 3:30 PM

In case you've not heard of "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock," stop the nearest teenage guy--but make sure you have a half hour so you can listen to him rave about how cool it is.

It's a video game--selling frantically--in which you get to be a member of a rock band--Metallica, the Beastie Boys, or others.  The game comes with a plastic guitar, with buttons in place of strings.  If you can keep up, the music comes blasting at you.  Miss your chords, and there's something lacking.

Which leads to the following tale of online woe:

A man, who describes himself as k_lid from the Toronto area, says he moved heaven and earth to find the game as a Christmas present for his 15-year-old son Isaac.  By sheer luck, he found it--right before he found his son smoking marijuana out back of the house with two friends.   

Out the door went the friends--and as punishment, k_lid posted his son's still-unopened copy of Guitar Hero on eBay. 

"I am now finding it hard to justify rewarding him with this gift after he so greatly disappointed me," he wrote. "I know smoking a joint isn’t the end of the world, but if you can convince me that he deserves the gift, then I will end the auction. You will have to be very convincing. I am an elementary school teacher and I know that rewarding bad behavior is just asking for more of the same...."

And so began a phenomenon.  The posting, according the eBay's counter, got more than 75,000 hits, and 42 bids--jumping from $50 to $100 to $150 to--take a breath--$9,100.01 before the auction closed last week.  The high bidder was Australian.  PC World points out that outlandish bids often come from people interested in the publicity.

"The auction has been getting somewhat out of hand, to say the least," wrote k_lid in a followup post. He says he gave his son the option of ending the bidding, but Isaac decided it would be "stupid" to cancel.

"I am not: “sadistic”, “publicly humiliating my son”, “power-hungry”...or any similarly bad things - especially when it comes to my son," he wrote.  "Think of the auction as me “joshing him”, as friends often do, in addition to letting him know that he seriously disappointed me." (Read the full posting HERE.)

Does the punishment fit the crime?  A lot of people clearly have strong opinions.

December 17, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (46) | TrackBack (0)

Godzone Blankie

December 14, 2007 2:55 PM

A hazard of the approaching new year is that dictionaries come out with their lists of new words for 2007, the truthiness of which is sometimes, er, thank you, Stephen Colbert.  The Oxford English Dictionary tries to be a bit above this, but they get the headline today for adding this entry:

"Shagadelic, adj. slang: Sexy, esp. in a psychedelic or `retro' way. Also as a general term of approval. Popularized by the film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) a parody of 1960s spy films, in which the term was used as a catchphrase by the main character."

The O.E.D says it adds thousands of words a year, including, this year, flip phone, pustulent, QALY, bap, and putz (which was already in the dictionary, but not as a verb).

("Godzone," by the say, comes from New Zealand, short for "God's Own Country."  The O.E.D. says "Blankie" is 80 years old, short for--well, didn't you have one as a kid?)

Merriam-Webster, as you may have see earlier in the week, ran a contest online and declared its word of the year to be "w00t (interjection): expressing joy, similar in use to the word 'yay'"--also short for "We Owned the Other Team," borrowed from the gaming world.  The announcement got them some play yesterday--never mind that the word isn't yet in Webster's.

Dictionary.com has a word-of-the-month list, though few of them are new.  "Subprime mortgage" was their phrase for December, in case you've been living in a cave instead of a foreclosed house.  "Itch Mite" was the winner for August; they cite a reference on ABCNews.com.

The Internet has made the search for new words a bit more scientific.  Editors can now devise algorithms to tell them if a word is a new appearance, growing in use.  But a lot of this is done low-tech, sometimes in a spirit of, well, self-promotion.

So new candidates are welcome.  Just don't be snitty about it.

December 14, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

'Tranquility Base Here, the Altair has Landed'

December 13, 2007 6:22 PM

The winning name for NASA's new lunar lander is...Altair.  The agency confirms it.

This is the four-legged landing ship that would land astronauts on the lunar surface, starting, the agency hopes, in about a decade, as part of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration.

Altair would fly to the moon, docked to a mother ship called...Orion.  They would be launched separately by rockets called...Ares 1 and Ares V. 

These are some of the key elements of NASA's Project Constellation.

Altair is the brightest star in the summer constellation Aquila the Eagle.  Hmmm...Eagle...the name used for the Lunar Module flown by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  The logo above does look passingly like the mission patch for Apollo 11. (A hat tip to CollectSpace.com, which seems to have posted it first.)

Got all the names?  There will be a quiz later. 

December 13, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

Oil From Space

December 13, 2007 12:18 PM

South Korean crews are having a tough time with the 2.7 million gallons of oil that spilled from a supertanker last week.  The PICTURES, if you haven't seen them, show a mix of filth, despair, and damage that scientists say could last a decade.

Now, here's one more image, taken from space.  Click on it to enlarge.

The slick, spreading for close to a hundred miles along the Korean shoreline, was recorded by a European satellite called Envisat, from an altitude of about 500 miles.  It's actually a radar image rather than a photo.  Envisat's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar can see at night and through clouds.  As the European Space Agency explains, "oil on the sea surface damps down smaller wind generated waves. It is these waves that reflect the radar signal...causing oil slicks to be seen as dark areas on an otherwise brighter sea."

The largest spill ever remains the Amoco Cadiz, off the French coast in 1978.  The Exxon Valdez, banned from American waters by Congress after the spill in Alaska in 1989, was renamed the SeaRiver Mediterranean, and continued to sail until 2002.

Oil companies maintain that major spills are rare, but concede that they're still nasty business.

December 13, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Glow-in-the-Dark Cats

December 12, 2007 1:55 PM

Please click on the picture to the left and bask in its warm (or cool) glow while you read the rest. 

We're not entirely sure what to make of this story, but a team in South Korea says it has cloned two cats--who happen to glow red when exposed to ultraviolet light.

Just why would you want a cat that glows in the dark?  It was just an interesting accident, says the lead researcher, Kong Il-keun of Gyeongsang National University, as quoted by the South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology.  They were only interested in getting cats with something called red flourescence protein, useful if you want to track genetic activity in the animals. 

From Korea.net: "'The ability to manipulate the fluorescent protein and use this to clone cats, opens new horizons for artificially creating animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes,' a government official said. This, he said, can speed up efforts to find treatment and drugs by allowing scientists to study animals and conduct experiments that are not possible with human patients."

That or you're trying to get a really odd picture.

December 12, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)

Memos Show NASA Managers Debated Astronauts' Safety

December 11, 2007 2:10 PM

This weekend's shuttle scrub over those balky ECO sensors may seem arcane, but internal NASA e-mails show that NASA managers "struggled with the potential risk to astronauts' lives" in deciding what to do about them. 

Today, NASA's working on a plan to figure out just what's wrong with the fuel sensors, so they can launch right after the first of the year.

Two full-time space reporters, Chris Bergin of NASASpaceFlight.com and Craig Covault of Aviation Week & Space Technology, report that after the launch was first scrubbed last Thursday, a debate broke out among shuttle managers.

The problem with ECO sensors -- short for Engine Cut-Off -- has gone on since 2005, and bedeviled four of the last seven launches.  Four sensors for liquid hydrogen are mounted inside the shuttle's orange external fuel tank, and protect against the shuttle's main engines continuing to fire if the tank has run dry.  High-powered pumps could theoretically fly apart in that case, with potentially disastrous consequences.

But Wayne Hale, the head of the shuttle program, is quoted by Bergin in a memo Friday as wondering if the system has ever really worked -- and if "it is now time to consider whether we can live without it." 

He gets emphatic disagreement from William McArthur, an astronaut who has flown four flights and now works on shuttle safety: "'Most at JSC [the Johnson Space Center in Houston] heard direction today to 'find rationale for flight' versus 'is the risk of flying without the ECO sensor system acceptable?'. To me, this seems to be a huge leap."

"We fix things that don't work," he adds.

It's worth reading the full stories to get the context.  Chris Bergin's version is HERE; Craig Covault's is HERE.

There's a lot of jargon in the e-mails, and the bottom line is that engineers are still working on the sensors.  But the e-mails provide a window into the thinking of some NASA people -- who clearly take their responsibilities seriously -- wrestling with a very frustrating problem.

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

Update, 4:00 p.m.

Wayne Hale, in a conference call with reporters, says engineers will try filling the external tank with fuel in a test next Tuesday.  There will be extra instrumentation, so that if, as he expects, the ECO sensor system acts up again, they will be able to isolate the problem.  They're working toward a launch window that begins on January 2.

December 11, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

After Comments on Africans, James Watson's Own Genes Found 16% African

December 10, 2007 12:43 PM

James Watson has long been a renegade.  Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for the structure of DNA, made quite a mess back in October when he was quoted in the Times of London talking about the intelligence of many Africans: “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours-–whereas all the testing says not really.”  (Take a look at this previous POST for some context.)

Watson apologized profusely, retired as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory near New York City, and canceled appearances promoting a new book. 

Now Watson has run into another renegade--Kari Stefansson, head of deCODE Genetics, a biotech company in Iceland that has made repeated (and sometimes disputed) advances in deciphering the human genome. 

It so happens Watson's own genome is online for all to see--and for anyone who's learned in such things to analyze.  Stefansson and his team say they did just that--and concluded that whatever Watson may actually think of black Africans, 16% of his own genes probably come from black ancestors.

This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” said Stefansson in Sunday's London Times.  “It was very surprising to get this result for Jim.”

So far, no comment from Dr. Watson.

December 10, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (31) | TrackBack (0)

Shuttle 'Oversold'--Even According to Astronauts

December 10, 2007 10:31 AM

Sunday's month-long delay of the launch of Atlantis was not that big a deal in itself, but it could become one if they can't get a handle on those troublesome Engine Cut-Off Sensors.  They've been a problem on four of the last seven launches.

NASA only has to get through thirteen more launches before it retires the shuttles in the middle of 2010.  This year it's managed all of three. 

So perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising to read what Stan Love, one of the spacewalking astronauts on the current crew, had to say when we asked him how the space shuttle ought to go down in history.

"It will be remembered as--dare I say it--oversold," he said in a preflight interview with Gina Sunseri of our staff. "To begin with, they thought we would be flying 50 flights a year; we are not even close to that.

"It will be remembered as too expensive to support. That’s the reason why we can’t keep flying it forever. However, when it’s gone, we will be begging to get it back, because for all of it’s faults, for all of the advertising that was done to get it flying, the enormous cost of keeping it flying, it is probably the most capable machine we will have for a hundred years. 

"The shuttle replacement will be smaller, it will be less expensive to operate, it will be further from its margins and safer to operate, it will be very flexible, but it will not be able to do what the shuttle does.   

"It is not going to have a robot arm, it is not going to be able to conduct multiple spacewalks out of the same airlock, it is not going to be able to carry sixty thousand pounds in to orbit, if the orbital inclination is right.

"The shuttle is amazing piece of machinery, I think it just may have been a little bit before its time."

Dr. Love will not get in any trouble for having said that to us; it's been NASA's company line for several years now, ever since President Bush ordered that the shuttles be phased out.

December 10, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (18) | TrackBack (0)

Moon 2.0

December 07, 2007 4:23 PM

The latest version of the X Prize is backed by Google: $20 million to the first private enterprise that can land a robotic rover on the lunar surface, send back images and data, and travel at least 500 meters--with more rewards if it can find artifacts from the early days of lunar exploration, when only the U.S. and Soviet governments could afford to send probes.

The Apollo landings and the probes that preceded them were, to the X Prize managers, "Moon 1.0"--done by Cold War powers in an expensive rush, with no long-term plan to stay and mine the moon for whatever it had to offer.  Now comes Moon 2.0.

"The Google Lunar X PRIZE is an unprecedented international competition that will challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration." say the backers.

They now have their first applicant: an operation called Odyssey Moon, founded by Robert Richards, an entrepreneur who's also founded the International Space University in France. 

"The Moon is a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and a source of solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on Earth -– energy independence and climate change. Moon 2.0 will begin with robotic explorers that will deliver new knowledge about the Moon and the Earth. They will be followed by people with the goal of permanently integrating the Moon into Earth’s economic and social spheres, creating a two-world system for human growth and prosperity," says Odyssey Moon.

In the meantime (using a lot of NASA imagery), Odyssey Moon has produced a very pretty eight-minute video, which can be found HERE on YouTube.

Will any of this happen before NASA's Constellation Project reaches the moon with similar goals to mine the soil and explore beyond?  Google's offer expires in 2014, about the time Constellation expects to launch astronauts. 

December 7, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

'Google's Not the Only Game in Town'

December 06, 2007 9:19 PM

So you're curious to see what ever happened to your best friends from first grade, and you try Googling them, and you get a hundred false leads.  Happens all the time.

Gina Trapani, who edits Lifehacker.com, has posted a feature called "How to Track Down Anyone Online."  It's an interesting read, and it's to be found HERE.

Top of her list is ZabaSearch.com, which says it draws on public databases to find names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers -- both listed and unlisted.  Trapani says she finds it "creepily comprehensive," with data from phone books, court records and everything in between.

She also likes Pipl.com, which says it searches the "deep Web" to find names, locations, publications, etc., that conventional search engines miss.  Think of all the pages out there that are "dynamic" (constantly changing), or password-protected, or don't have other pages linking to them -- Pipl tries to find them.  Pipl cites a White Paper by Michael K. Bergman in the Journal of Electronic Publishing from 2001, estimating that "Public information on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web."

There's more -- ZoomInfo for business links and bios, Wink for social networking sites, Intelius if you want someone's criminal record, and--wait a minute, do you really want to know your friend's criminal record?

Potential employers do all the time, of course.  The question, so often when you wander into privacy issues, is whether the information is accurate, or in context, or pertinent.

ZoomInfo has a disclaimer: "This information has not been verified," and a place to click "this is me" so that you can register for free and correct the record. 

"So, why would I want to be found on ZoomInfo anyway?" the site asks.  It answers, "Let opportunities find you! Millions of people use ZoomInfo to find old friends, colleagues, business associates and talent. And since ZoomInfo profiles show up in Google, Yahoo! and other search results, having a ZoomInfo profile allows you to increase your visibility on the Web and to control your personal brand by creating an accurate, up-to-date Web profile that can be found all in one place and edited regularly. Allow colleagues, recruiters and job opportunities to find you. Update your profile today!"

I tried a little experiment: I looked up one of my best friends from first grade, whom I'll call Bill.  I moved after second grade and lost touch with him.

ZabaSearch found 38 of him around the country.  ZoomInfo found three, all in the same place in Utah.  Pipl found 15, two of whom had pages on MySpace (one was 18, the other 22, and both said they were straight).  He had published a number of medical articles on HIV/AIDS.  There was a link to what seemed to be a conservative website that didn't like him, and to a liberal one that didn't like him either.

Pipl found Bill's "wish list" on Amazon.com; he seems to be into mountain biking. 

All this made me feel a bit of regret for the friendship I let slip away, but I don't think I'll call him.  Pipl linked me to FindAGrave.com, which reported that Bill died in 1510.

December 6, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Stuck on the Runway

December 05, 2007 2:48 PM

Depending on your point of view, carbon dioxide is a good thing (nourishing to plants), or excess carbon dioxide (helping warm the climate) is coming from everywhere--cars, factories, power plants that burn coal or oil or gas.

Today the issue is air travel.  The EPA says aircraft account for 12 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from American transportation, 3 percent of U.S. output overall. (See its summary HERE; you'll hit pay dirt on p. 3 of 393.)

Today the Attorneys General of California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Mexico, the City of New York, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the District of Columbia have joined with a bunch of environmental groups to call for curbs on the carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes.

Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General, in a statement at a Los Angeles news conference: "the EPA should have taken action by now to curb these emissions. Not to do so, ignores the tremendous opportunity for technological innovations that can increase efficiency and reduce emissions...."  More HERE.

He continues, “Aircraft engines burn massive quantities of fossil fuels and inject greenhouse gas pollution at high altitudes-—right where these emissions have a heightened negative impact.”  He and others say that with fairly simple steps, aviation could cut its emissions ten percent.

The full petition is HERE, among other places.  You'll recall that back in April the Supreme Court ruled the EPA has authority--and to advocates, an obligation--to regulate carbon dioxide as an "air pollution agent" that affects public health and welfare. 

The petitioners today have already gone after ocean-going ships.  Aircraft are a knottier issue.  Airlines, which struggle with the ups and downs of fuel prices, have long tried to cultivate a green image.  Some advertise that they tell their pilots to taxi on only one engine; the new Boeing 787 is touted for its fuel efficiency: "The airplane will use 20 percent less fuel for comparable missions than today's similarly sized airplane."

The Air Transport Association, trade group for major airlines, says it's not afraid of the EPA, but it's already doing plenty.  In response to a bill last month by Sens. Lieberman and Warner, it wrote that airlines are "continually improving our fuel efficiency through reinvestment in technology and more fuel efficient operations. In fact, U.S. commercial airlines (passenger and cargo combined) have improved their fuel efficiency by 103 percent since 1978, which (given the one-to-one relationship between fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2)) has resulted in commensurate CO2 emissions savings."  They've posted more on their efforts HERE.

So.  Does every bit help?  Or has the water already been wrung from this stone? 

December 5, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)