Farewell Katherine Johnson

Could the United States have won the so-called space race against the then Soviet Union without the help of NASA's African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson and her team?

By Ringo Bones

Fortunately, she got her due credit while still alive given that her most important mathematical works were done during Jim Crow era America. As of February 24, 2020, former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, also known as Katherine Goble passed away in Newport News, Virginia. Born in August 25, 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, USA became well known as America’s NASA mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics during her employment at NASA were critical to the success of the first and subsequent manned spaceflights.

Katherine Johnson was better known to the generation born after the Apollo moon missions as the NASA African-American mathematician portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures about a group of trailblazing African American women mathematicians employed by NASA during the start of America’s Civil Rights movement at the start of the 1960s. Although Katherine Johnson’s mathematical work began earlier in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics / NACA – the predecessor of NASA – back in 1953. Before being made famous by the movie Hidden Figures in 2016, Katherine Johnson was awarded with the Presidential Medal of freedom – America’s highest civilian honor – by President Barack Obama in 2015.

During the early days of programmable digital computers – whose active components of which were still largely made with subminiature vacuum tubes first manufactured during 1947 – astronauts were not exactly keen on putting their lives in the care of these early electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts according to NASA. So pioneering astronaut John Glenn asked the NASA engineers to “get the girl” – referring to Katherine Johnson to run the computer equations by hand for improved reliability. Johnson and her team of African American women mathematicians did vital work for NASA that eventually made the United States won the space race by successfully landing the first men on the moon and  taking them back safely to earth before President John F. Kennedy’s end of the 1960s deadline.

Japanese Billionaire Seeks Date To Fly With Him To The Moon: One Giant Step For Space Tourism?

Even though it had become the romantic gesture of the moment, does a Japanese billionaire seeking a date for his lunar jaunt represent a one giant step for space tourism?

By: Ringo Bones

His name is Yusaku Maezawa and he is a 44 year old Japanese billionaire fashion mogul who back in January 13, 2020 is seeking for a date to accompany him on a round trip to the moon on a SpaceX rocket by 2023 – maybe the three years preparation includes the spaceflight training for the lucky woman. The lucky woman will be selected via a TV reality dating show. The requirements are she must be single over 20 years of age and has a positive disposition. But whatever the outcome will be, it could represent a “giant leap” when it comes to making space tourism that much affordable for the rest of us.

Before the Douglas DC 3 went into service, it was the very rich who were subsidizing the cost of civil aviation between World War I and World War II. Given that Elon Musk has yet to create a DC 3 equivalent of a space vehicle that could make space tourism affordable for the masses, it is up to the world’s billionaires to foot up the bill for R n’D ing space vehicles whose ticket prices mere mortals can afford. 

Has Science Taken A Back Seat When It Comes To Lunar Exploration?

50 years after NASA managed to land men on the Moon, has science always taken the proverbial “back seat” when it comes to lunar exploration?

By: Ringo Bones

As humanity celebrates the 50^th Anniversary of the Moon landing, it seems that – then and now – science has always taken the proverbial “back seat” when it comes for reasons for the multi-billion dollar lunar exploration missions. With NASA and the powers that be at Capitol Hill already has serious plans for returning to the Moon, it seems that the “science part” of the upcoming missions – like checking out those water deposits that were spotted by visiting unmanned robotic spacecraft during the past few years are usually mentioned last during a typical press interview. Though it is quite refreshing that during a somewhat “misogynistic” U.S. administration that there has been emphasis on sending the first woman astronaut to the Moon as part of the team who will be landing there as soon as 2024, when it comes to the science part of the mission, the intrepid researcher has typically has to “Google deeply” or check out books that were first published back in 1970.

During my elementary and high school days back in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the “scientific instruments” bought by the first trio of NASA astronauts to the Moon – i.e. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins – were not quite general knowledge. It wasn’t until one delves deeply in their local library to find out that the first trio of astronauts did carry a tinfoil made shade to capture “solar wind” particles, a portable seismograph to test for “Moon quakes” and a quartz laser retro-reflector to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon to an accuracy of less than 1 centimeter. The first trio of astronauts who land on the lunar surface may not be “professional scientists” but their mission is for all intents and purposes is a “scientific mission” that’s shrouded in Cold War era politics.

Can Commercial Space Tourism Fund NASA’s Return To The Moon?

Given that NASA now opens the International Space Station to tourists by 2020, is it enough to fund their manned mission to the moon by 2024?

By: Ringo Bones

Unbeknown to most people, the International Space Station does not belong to NASA, it was built with the help of Russia back in 1998 with the help of other space travel capable countries in order to participate in the mission and send up astronauts. The ISS have hosted space tourists with enough cash to spare before, like U.S. businessman Dennis Tito who back in 2001 had paid Russia around 20-million USD for the trip. Others followed his footsteps, the last being Cirque Du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte back in 2009. But this time, it would be different because the proceeds will be used by NASA to fund its return to the moon and as a means for the cash-strapped government funded space agency to financially disengage itself from the orbiting research lab. Given that the International Space Station has a projected lifetime of 40 years and it is already around half that, maybe the money earned and saved by NASA could also be used to build another space station 20 years from now.

Back in Friday, June 7, 2019, NASA’s chief financial officer Jeff DeWitt announced that it will open up the ISS to business ventures including space tourism by 2020. There will be two short private astronaut missions per year, said Robyn Gatens, deputy director of the ISS. The missions will be for stays of up to 30 days. As many as a dozen private astronauts could visit the ISS per year, NASA said.

Even though the rate for staying at the International Space Station is 35.000 USD a night – there are way more expensive honeymoon suites in Dubai with a going rate of 400,000 USD a night by the way – but the round trip bill via Soyuz launch system will cost you around 58-million USD. Expensive the trip may be but the view is literally out of this world.

Space tourism will not be the only way for NASA to make fiscal sense of the rather costly endeavor of space exploration. This would include startups developing techniques for building materials in conditions of weightlessness in which experiments conducted on early NASA Space Shuttle missions have proved to be of vital importance – i.e. ultra strong and yet lightweight metal alloys and protein crystals that can only be fabricated in weightless conditions. Also fiber optic cables can be of extraordinary quality when manufactured at weightless conditions. In terms of space commercialization that makes actual fiscal sense, it seems that space based industries have the potential to earn way more money than space tourism.

Stratolaunch: A Newfangled Satellite Launch System?

Despite the delays since it was announced back in 2011, is Scaled Composites’ Stratolaunch now the largest aircraft by wingspan to ever take flight and a unique satellite launch system to boot?

By: Ringo Bones

Stratolaunch finally took its successful maiden flight back in Saturday, April 13, 2019 10:00 AM local time from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port, which now makes it the world’s largest aircraft to ever take flight. Its 385-foor wingspan beats out Howard Hughes Spruce Goose by a significant margin and its primary purpose is to launch satellites into space at a much reduced cost than existing launch methods.

Originally designed by Silicon Valley billionaire Paul Allen and its construction was made possible by the Northrop Grumman subsidiary called Scaled Composites and the plane’s completion was first announced back in 2011. Unfortunately, Stratolaunch remained on the ground far beyond its originally planned first test flight date back in 2016. Paul Allen died near the end of 2018 of complications related to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though the project continued in his stead.

Despite being made almost entirely of carbon fiber material and related lightweight composites, Stratolaunch weighs in at 500,000 pounds. Much of it is due to the plane’s twin fuselage design and to further reduce costs, the plane uses six Pratt & Whitney jet engines similar to ones used on the iconic Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet and also the plane’s 28-wheel landing gear is also similar to the one used on the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.

Only a handful of twin-fuselage planes have been developed in the past few decades and Stratolaunch will primarily be used for spaceflight – as in a satellite launch system for launching payloads into space. Even though it only attained a speed of 189 miles per hour during its maiden flight, the plane is still very capable of reaching 35,000 to 40,000 feet at such relatively low speeds because launching payloads into space at such heights provides significant rocket fuel savings compared to existing launch methods of using static rockets on ground-based launch pads. Not only satellites, but Stratolaunch can also be used as a basis of a low-cost system to launch manned spacecraft into low Earth orbit and en route into the International Space Station.

Launching payloads at such altitude also minimizes complications from bad weather as the plane can simply fly over storm systems and further fuel savings can be made by flying Stratolaunch over the Earth’s equator and launch satellites there. The plane is capable of launching up to three of Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rockets. Sadly, due to the aircraft’s rather “unique” shape, there are still delays on the plane’s certification by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, not to mention additional more test flights before it can start launching payloads off the planet. And Stratolaunch is also facing competition from Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit – a satellite launch system that’s based on a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft and due to Branson’s plane having a “more conventional profile” compared to Stratolaunch, Virgin Orbit could get FAA approval much sooner than the twin-fuselage Stratolaunch.

Was Israel’s First Lunar Landing Mission A Total Failure?

Slated to perform a series of scientific experiments on the Sea of Serenity, was Israel’s first ever lunar mission a total failure?

By: Ringo Bones

The dishwasher-sized robotic spacecraft was called Beresheet – a Biblical reference that means “in the beginning” – attempted Israel’s first ever privately-funded lunar landing on the night (7:23 PM Israel local time) of Thursday, April 11, 2019, but a failure of its main engine put an end to that. The 600-kilogram four-legged space probe was designed and built by an Israeli nonprofit firm called SpaceIL and with a total cost of about 95-million US dollars, including launch, Beresheet was a bargain-basement spacecraft. Had the mission been successful, it would have made Israel the fourth nation ever (together with the United States, Russia / the then USSR, and The People’s Republic of China) to have an unmanned spacecraft survive a lunar-landing attempt. Nonetheless, Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander managed to transmit one final “photo”, a kind of the unmanned spacecraft’s own selfie, about 23-kilometers above the lunar surface before its main engine failure.

The planned landing site for the Beresheet spacecraft was Mare Serenitatis, or the “Sea of Serenity” in the northern hemisphere of the Moon – a dark lava-covered site of ancient volcanic eruptions and a long-source of magnetic and gravitational anomalies of every unmanned lunar orbital spacecraft that flew above the site. As seen from planet Earth’s surface, the Sea of Serenity is the famed “left eye” of the Man in the Moon.

Beresheet was designed to take measurements of the Moon’s magnetic field using an instrument supplied by the University of California, Los Angeles. If the craft had landed safely, SpaceIL would have shared the spacecraft’s data with NASA and other space agencies and “hop” Beresheet to another location using its thrusters. Bersheet not only spent seven weeks in space but also closed the 3.7-million kilometer gap between planet Earth and the Moon and then entered into lunar orbit – making Israel the seventh country ever to do so – and successfully completed a series of engine burns to poise it for a landing attempt. Due to its low cost, the mission was far from a total failure because the underwriters of the first ever Israel lunar landing mission still has a budget for a second attempt.

NASA Now Paying 19-Thousand USD To Volunteers To Stay In Bed For Two Months?

Does NASA’s recent “laziness experiment” an actual analog for replicating prolonged weightlessness?

By: Ringo Bones

I think it was around the middle of the 1990s when I first heard of NASA’s aviation medicine specialists stating in a press interview that the bone loss experienced by astronauts in prolonged weightlessness is physiologically similar to anyone who’s lying in bed for prolonged periods. Does this make bedsores now the so-called “final frontier” when it comes to tackling one of current space travel’s thorniest problems?

NASA and two other space agencies are asking for 24 volunteers to lie in bed for two months as part of a study, which will pay them about 19,000-US dollars. And the venue of the study will be the European Space Agency’s astronaut training facilities in Germany because part of the requirement of the study is that the volunteers must also possess a working knowledge of the German language. NASA and ESA officials say that “We are looking for test persons to take part in a bed rest study from September to December 2019 in Cologne, Germany and spend 60 days lying down.”

The point of the study is to “research how the body changes in weightlessness. Bed rest simulates this condition.” Based on the study results, scientists will develop techniques to reduce the negative effects of prolonged weightlessness on astronauts. During the two months, the volunteers will live in a single room, but will be divided into two groups. One group will be rotated around in a centrifuge, similar to an artificial gravity chamber, which will force blood back to their extremities. The second group will not be moved. And when they say you’ll do everything lying down, they aren’t kidding. The volunteers must eat, exercise, get dressed and even shower while lying flat on their beds. Another catch, the participants’ beds are tilted slightly downward to encourage fluids to pool in their upper body to mimic as close as possible weightless conditions experienced by astronauts in space.