Category Archives: Space Travel

Yesterday at 9pm Australian Eastern standard time, the Ingenuity helicopter which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, three metres above the surface and came right back down again.

It may not sound like a huge feat, but it is. Ingenuitys flight is the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet. It marks a milestone in the story of human space exploration.

While the Apollo 11 spacecraft famously touched down on the Moon, upon re-launch it simply had to exit the Moons gravity and return to Earth. To sustain flight within the environment of a world with no atmosphere, however, is a different story.

The now historic Ingenuity helicopter took six years to make. We can understand why, once we understand the complexities of what was required.

There are several technological challenges to conducting a helicopter flight on another world. First, and most significantly, helicopters need an atmosphere to fly.

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The blades, or rotors of a helicopter must spin fast enough to generate a force called lift. But lift can only be generated in the presence of some kind of atmosphere. While Mars does have an atmosphere, its much, much thinner than Earths about 100 times thinner, in fact.

Flying Ingenuity in Marss atmosphere is therefore the equivalent of flying a helicopter on Earth at a height of 100,000 feet. For reference, commercial aircraft fly between 30,000-40,000 feet above the Earths surface and the highest weve ever been in a helicopter on Earth is 42,000 feet.

Testing the craft on Earth required a pressurised room, from which a lot of air would have been extracted to emulate Marss atmosphere.

Then theres the Martian gravity to consider, which is about one-third the strength of gravity on Earth. This actually gives us a slight advantage. If Mars had the same atmosphere as Earth, its lesser gravity means wed be able to lift Ingenuity with less power than would be required here.

But while Marss gravity works to our advantage, this is offset by the lack of atmosphere.

Ingenuitys success marks the first time such a flight has even been attempted outside of Earth. And the reason for this may simply be that, as laid out above, this task is very, very difficult.

There are two main ways Ingenuity was able to overcome the hurdles presented in Marss atmosphere. Firstly, to generate lift, the two rotors (made from carbon fibre) had to spin much faster than any helicopters on Earth.

On Earth, most helicopters and drones have rotors that spin at about 400-500 revolutions per minute. The Ingenuitys rotor spun at about 2,400 revolutions per minute.

It also has a distinct aircraft-to-wingspan ratio. While Ingenuitys body is about the size of a tissue box, its blades are 1.2m from tip to tip.

Even transmitting the signal for the flight to begin required an array of advanced technology. Whilst it only requires minutes for radio signals to travel between Earth and Mars, there was still a delay of hours for those signals to reach the helicopter.

This makes sense when you consider the journey those signals have to take from a computer on Earth, to a satellite dish, to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to the Perseverance rover and then, finally, to the helicopter.

Ingenuity is what we call a technology demonstrator. Simply, its only purpose is to prove it can complete a series of simple missions. Over the next few weeks, the helicopter will undertake three or four more flights, the most adventurous of which will involve taking off and travelling about 300m away from Perseverance.

Data retrieved from the flights will be analysed and used as crucial input for future designs of more sophisticated aircraft. Once this technology is applied, its potential will be vast.

Drones and helicopters operating on Mars could act as scouts, checking the land ahead of a rover to confirm whether its safe to travel there. Such aircraft could even assist in the search for water and life on the Martian surface.

And in 2035, its expected the first humans will land on Mars. Theres a good chance these crews will be trained in operating aircraft locally and in real-time, surveying the land for obstacles and dangerous terrain that could harm humans, or damage suits, aircraft or rovers.

As a touching tribute to the first powered flight on Earth, scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory added a historic artefact to the Mars helicopter. Attached to a cable underneath one of its solar panels is a small piece of the wing from the Wright brothers 1903 Wright flyer.

This item of flight history is the second piece of an Earth aircraft to go into space; a similar piece of the wing was taken to the Moon during the Apollo missions.

Missions are already in work to push the barriers of powered flight on other worlds. In particular, the Dragonfly helicopter is planned to fly above the surface of Titan, one of Saturns moons, with arrival scheduled for 2034.

Maybe it too will take a piece of Earths history along for the ride as we continue our exploration of other planetary bodies, one world at a time.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The RAAF will be faster, smarter and have longer reach in its next 100 years

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So a helicopter flew on Mars for the first time. A space physicist explains why that's such a big deal - The Mandarin

International Space Station

Space Hero will be the world's first global competition to send a civilian into space on a $55M, 10-day trip to the International Space Station. The competition for this once-in-a-lifetime journey will begin at the end of 2021. The call will be open to candidates over 18 with fluency in English, and its first flight is targeted for 2023. Space Hero is planning fifteen seasons over the next thirty years, eventually flying beyond the ISS to the Moon and Mars.

Yesterday, Deborah Sass and Thomas Reemer, the co-CEOs of Space Hero, signed a feasibility agreement with NASA, marking the 60thanniversary of the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin. For two compassionate entrepreneurs, sending someone like you or me barreling through the atmosphere is their dream that is quickly becoming a reality. And Stephen Colbert featured the project on a segment he calls Space News last week.

I recently had the chance to meet this very dynamic duo to learn about their backgrounds and how this towering concept took a foothold in their lives. Their 17-year friendship began after having multiple run-ins at entrepreneurship conferences around the globe. Sass, who rose from humble beginnings in London, worked her way into the media and digital music industry serving clients such as Amazon, iTunes, Shazam, and Spotify.

Deborah Sass, Co-CEO

Reemer, a scrappy entrepreneur in his own right, grew up in East Berlin and eventually opened one of the first hip-hop nightclubs there. He managed a pop band that won four No. 1 hits in Germany and attended Sir Paul McCartney's prestigious music school, The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.He worked with other artists, including Prince was a co-founder and CEO at the first e-commerce platform for musicians, Artists First.

Thomas Reemer, Co-CEO Space Hero

Space Hero's story begins with Reemer, who was hawking a music show in Russia in 2008. One night, a powerful Czar took him out to dinner and pitched him on the lofty concept of a show that sends one winning civilian to space. After raising funds and building out the idea, the show was shelved as seats to the ISS were unavailable for private missions. A few years later, with the emergence of SpaceX and Boeing programs, seats became available once more, and Reemer revived the show.

When he initially pitched the idea to Sass, she enthusiastically accepted before asking, "I've just got one question, Thomas, what's the ISS?" Sass soon learned not only what the ISS was but found herself jetting around the world to convene with the heads of the global space industry.

We discussed the four monstrous tasks that need to happen for this show to come to fruition during our conversation. The first task was securing a deal with NASA. The second task, securing a ticket with a launch provider. The third, finding the right production company. The fourth task is securing a distribution deal. Sass and Reemer are currently deep in negotiation with several name-brand media giants.

What I was most inspired by, perhaps more than even the allure of space travel itself, was the sentiment that drives Sass and Reemer to make this project a success. "When you were 6, everybody wanted to be an astronaut. By the time you were sixteen, you were so far removed from it. And what we want to do in a very simple way is make space cool and sexy and pop culture again. Let's make space mainstream!" Sass declared. Here is Stephen Colbert poking some good-humored nerd fun at their concept:

All kidding aside, Sass and Reemer are driven by a beautifully untainted incentive; they want to sensationalize careers in STEM and inspire people from all backgrounds and nationalities to be technicians, astronauts and scientists again.

For audiences tuning in, the excitement and thrill of a space expedition have been freshly repackaged. Instead of watching a cohort of astronauts, a notoriously untouchable handful of elite trained specialists, viewers will witness an ordinary citizen of Earth embarking on the space voyage.

There are no formal credentials to apply to be on the show. Sass and Reemer are only critiquing applicants through the lens of how they define who a hero is. To them, a hero is simply a person who helps someone without expecting anything in return.

Applications to enter the contest are not officially open yet, but there was a program to become a Space Hero Insider, an ambassador for the program. They have received thousands of inquiries worldwide, ranging from school teachers in Nigeria to fishermen and fisherwomen in Japan. Of the pool, 450 insiders were chosen to represent fifty eight countries. , who Sass and Reemer each spoke with personally for five minutes.

"Space is a mirror that we take a look in and understand what kind of challenges we also face here on Earth," says Reemer. "Space Hero will bring together arguably the biggest crowd that has ever voted." To learn more, visit SpaceHero.org, where you can follow the project as it progresses and fill out a form and become a Space Hero Insider.

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Space Travel Reality Show Partnered With NASA, Featured On Colbert - Forbes

Artists concept of a Starship on the moon. Credit: SpaceX

NASA has selected SpaceX to build a spacecraft to land the first astronauts on the Moon since 1972, choosing Elon Musks space company over competing proposals from Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin and the aerospace firm Dynetics, officials announced Friday.

A derivative of SpaceXs next-generation Starship vehicle will carry the astronauts to the lunar surface and launch the crew members back off the Moon. Under NASAs plans, the astronauts will blast off from Earth on the agencys heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and fly an Orion capsule to the vicinity of the Moon, then transfer into the Starship for the final leg of the journey to the surface.

The human-rated lunar lander, which NASA calls the Human Landing System, is one of the final major elements of the agencys Artemis program to be developed. NASA selected three industrial teams last year to work on lunar lander concepts, culminating in the agencys selection of SpaceX to build the lander for the first Artemis Moon landing mission.

Today, Im very excited, and we are all very excited, to announce that we have awarded SpaceX to continue the development of our integrated Human Landing System, said Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASAs HLS program manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center. SpaceXs Starship is a fully reusable launch and landing system designed for travel to the Moon and other future destinations.

Its a single stage crewed landing system, Watson-Morgan said. It utilizes Earth orbit refueling of liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants. The system leans on the companys flight heritage of Dragon and Falcon vehicles. Starship includes a spacious cabin and two airlocks with a great deal of space for our crew, as well as additional payload capability that will permit us to take experiments to the moon, and return samples back, and do all the important science that we want to do on this mission.

We are humbled to help NASA usher in a new era of human space exploration, SpaceX said in a statement.

NASA is seeking to land the first astronauts on the Moon since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972.

As the first human lunar lander in 50 years, this innovative Human Landing System will be a hallmark in human space exploration history, Watson-Morgan said. And were going to help write that history.

SpaceX beat out a bid from a team led by Blue Origin, who proposed a multi-element spacecraft consisting of stages made by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Blue Origin itself. Draper assisted on the landers guidance and avionics systems.

NASA also worked with Dynetics, an aerospace and defense contractor based in Alabama, on a third human-rated lander concept.

In the end, NASA selected SpaceXs Starship for the job of landing the next astronauts on the Moon. The firm-fixed price contract has a total value of $2.89 billion, and covers development of a test flight that will land on the Moon without astronauts on-board, then a demonstration known as Option A in NASAs procurement language to carry a crew to the Moons south pole.

NASA originally planned to pick multiple companies to continue developing lunar landers, but budget restrictions forced the agency to rethink its strategy. Congress approved $850 million for the Human Landing System program in fiscal year 2021, about a quarter of what NASA requested.

That limited what NASA could do with the first HLS development contract, but officials said the agencys Option A contract with SpaceX fits within the expected budget. SpaceXs proposal had the lowest price of all three bids, but NASA and SpaceX still had to rework some of the contracts milestone payments to get the price within the agencys funding plan.

With the final agreement complete, NASA said SpaceX will self-fund and assume financial risk for over half of the Starship landing systems development and testing.

The Starship is significantly larger than the other human-rated lander concepts NASA evaluated, and can deliver heavier cargo to the Moon. SpaceXs lander will stand about seven-and-half times taller than the Apollo lunar module that carried astronauts to the lunar surface.

The scale of SpaceXs lander architecture presents numerous benefits to NASA, wrote Kathy Lueders, head of the space agencys human spaceflight division, in aa source selection statement posted on NASAs website.

Blue Origins proposal was the second-highest rated in NASAs procurement process, according to the source selection document.

Steve Jurczyk, NASAs acting administrator, said the agency considered the technical parameters, cost, and management of each of the three HLS bidders. While SpaceX won the contract to attempt the Artemis programs human landing on the Moon, NASA will soon start another competition open for all U.S. companies to bid on a contract for a series of follow-on lunar landings later in the 2020s.

The commercial mode, where the government and industry share costs, is similar to NASAs partnership with SpaceX that helped produce the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Given the evaluation of the three proposals based on technical approach, cost, and management approach, and the budget we have available, we determined the best way forward for us was to select SpaceX for Option A, and then move forward and accelerate the landing services procurement, Jurczyk said.

We awarded the contract with SpaceX given the appropriations we have in FY21 and what we believe are realistic budgets in future years, Jurczyk said. So we believe this is doable within what we have and what we can expect in funding.

SpaceX is building and testing Starship prototypes in South Texas. The stainless steel rocket, wider than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet is designed for vertical takeoffs and landings, but uses a dramatic flip maneuver to switch from a horizontal belly flop position to an upright orientation just before touchdown.

Starship prototypes have launched on four high-altitude atmospheric test flights over the companys rapidly-growing development facility near Brownsville, Texas. All four of the rockets have exploded during landing or shortly after touchdown.

An upgraded Starship prototype is on SpaceXs launch pad in South Texas for another atmospheric test flight as soon as next week. The test flights are stepping stones toward an attempt to launch the Starship into low Earth orbit, which Musk says could happen later this year.

A giant booster SpaceX calls the Super Heavy will be required to hurl the massive Starship into orbit around Earth. The Super Heavy, which has not yet launched on a test flight, will be powered by 28 methane-fueled Raptor engines collectively generating more than 16 million pounds of thrust, more than twice the power of NASAs Apollo-era Saturn 5 rocket.

Like the Starship, the Super Heavy will return to Earth for a vertical landing, and is reusable.

The spaceflight-capable Starship will have six Raptor engines. All the high-altitude Starship test flights to date have had three Raptor engines.

The Starship will serve as an upper stage, a deep space transport, a propellant transfer tug, and a planetary lander.

Flying between lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon, Starship will carry crew and all of the supplies, equipment, and science payloads needed for extensive surface exploration, SpaceX said. Building off the safety and reliability of Dragon and Falcon, Starship will feature proven avionics, guidance and navigation systems, autonomous rendezvous, docking and precision landing capabilities, as well as thermal protection, and a spacious cabin with familiar displays and interfaces utilized on Dragon.

SpaceX said it is rapidly advancing development of the Starship, with five test vehicles currently in production.

Since January 2020, SpaceX has built 10 Starship prototypes, with production and fidelity accelerating on each build, the company said. SpaceX has manufactured and tested more than 60 of Starships Raptor engines, accumulating nearly 30,000 seconds of total test time over 567 engine starts, including on multiple Starship static fires and flight tests.

In the source selection statement, Lueders said the Starships capabilities, in many cases, far exceed NASAs requirements for the first Artemis landing mission. The multi-engine vehicle can recover from an engine failure, has plentiful propellant reserves, and can accommodate large and bulky payloads.

SpaceXs capability will support the delivery of a significant amount of additional hardware, including bulky and awkwardly- shaped equipment, for emplacement on the lunar surface, Lueders wrote. This has the potential to greatly improve scientific operations and EVA capabilities.

Lueders also lauded SpaceXs aggressive approach to ground and flight testing. This will allow SpaceX to isolate and address performance and operational issues early in its development cycle, she wrote.

But Lueders also noted the risk in SpaceXs approach.

SpaceXs mission depends upon an operations approach of unprecedented pace, scale, and synchronized movement of the vehicles in its architecture, she wrote. This includes a significant number of vehicle launches in rapid succession, the refurbishment and reuse of those vehicles, and numerous in-space cryogenic propellant transfer events.

I acknowledge the immense complexity and heightened risk associated with the very high number of events necessary to execute the front end of SpaceXs mission, and this complexity largely translates into increased risk of operational schedule delays, Lueders wrote. However, these concerns are tempered because they entail operational risks in Earth orbit that can be overcome more easily than in lunar orbit, where an unexpected event would create a much higher risk to loss of mission.

Under NASAs current planning, the Starship outfitted to land astronauts on the moon will blast off on top of SpaceXs Super Heavy booster. Once it is in orbit, a series of tankers will launch to fill the Starship with additional methane and liquid oxygen propellants, then it will fire off toward the Moon.

The Starship will maneuver into an elongated orbit around the Moon, where it can wait up to 100 days for the arrival of the astronauts on an Orion capsule after it launches on an SLS rocket from Florida. For the first Artemis landing mission, the Orion capsule will dock directly with the Starship to enable the crew to float into the lander for the trip down to the lunar surface.

After landing, the astronauts will ride an elevator from the pressurized cabin near the top of the 15-story Starship down to the ground. After performing several spacewalks, the crew will board the Starship to carry them back to the Orion spacecraft, which they will fly back to Earth.

SpaceX will have multiple launches, and part of their concept is to have refueling in low Earth orbit, Watson-Morgan said. Theyll perform that refueling and that will allow them to go back and forth. Once the Starship portion is fully checked out, then the SLS will launch the Orion to the appropriate rendezvous point.

The architecture means NASA wont require SpaceX to prove out the Starships ability to re-enter the Earths atmosphere and perform its dramatic landing maneuvers with people on-board. That job will be done with the Orion capsule with a more traditional parachute-assisted splashdown in the sea.

But SpaceX eventually wants to use the Starship system as an all-in-one transporter to ferry people throughout the solar system. Musks ambition is to make the Starship easily reusable, significantly slashing the cost of space transportation.

Each copy of NASAs Space Launch System rocket can only be used once. The first SLS test launch is scheduled for late this year or early 2022, and the all-up Artemis 1 demonstration mission will send an unpiloted Orion spacecraft to orbit the Moon, paving the way for the first SLS/Orion launch with astronauts in 2023.

Artemis schedule underreview

The Trump administration planned for the third Artemis mission in 2024 to be the programs first attempt to land astronauts on the moon.

Jurczyk said Friday that NASA and the Biden administration, which has endorsed the Artemis program, are conducting an internal comprehensive review of the lunar program to ensure that they can be implemented as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible.

NASAs contract with SpaceX provides for a lunar landing as soon as 2024. Thats whats in the plan right now that SpaceX proposed and were awarding a contract for, Jurczyk said.

These human rated system developments are very complex, and there is risk, but the NASA team will have the insight into the progress that SpaceX is making, if theyre hitting their milestones, if they have a shot at 2024, Jurczyk said. Well keep you updated as we move along with SpaceX.

Later in the 2020s, NASA aims to build a mini-space station called the Gateway in orbit around the Moon. Future lunar missions after the first Starship landing will come and go from the Gateway, which will act as a research lab, astronaut safe haven, and a refueling station in deep space.

We are working diligently with the partners to ensure we meet our national goals of landing the next American astronauts on the Moon as quickly and safely as possible, Jurczyk said. At least one of those astronauts will make history with this lander as the first woman on the Moon Additionally, the first person of color will also walk on the Moon as part of the Artemis program.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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NASA chooses SpaceX to land next astronauts on the Moon Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster than light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the universes ultimate speed limit by bending the fabric of reality.

It was an intriguing idea even NASA has been researching it at the Eagleworks laboratory but Alcubierres proposal contained problems that seemed insurmountable. Now, a recent paper by US-based physicists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire has resolved many of those issues and generated a lot of buzz.

But while Bobrick and Martire have managed to substantially demystify warp technology, their work actually suggests that faster-than-light travel will remain out of reach for beings like us, at least for the time being.

There is, however, a silver lining: warp technology may have radical applications beyond space travel.

The story of warp drives starts with Einsteins crowning achievement: general relativity. The equations of general relativity capture the way in which spacetime the very fabric of reality bends in response to the presence of matter and energy which, in turn, explains how matter and energy move.

General relativity places two constraints on interstellar travel. First, nothing can be accelerated past the speed of light (around 300,000 km per second). Even traveling at this dizzying speed it would still take us four years to arrive at Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun.

Second, the clock on a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light would slow down relative to a clock on Earth (this is known as time dilation). Assuming a constant state of acceleration, this makes it possible to travel the stars. One can reach a distant star that is 150 light years away within ones lifetime. The catch, however, is that upon ones return more than 300 years will have passed on Earth.

This is where Alcubierre came in. He argued that the mathematics of general relativity allowed for warp bubbles regions where matter and energy were arranged in such a way as to bend spacetime in front of the bubble and expand it to the rear in a way that allowed a flat area inside the bubble to travel faster than light.

To get a sense of what flat means in this context, note that spacetime is sort of like a rubber mat. The mat curves in the presence of matter and energy (think of putting a bowling ball on the mat). Gravity is nothing more than the tendency objects have to roll into the dents created by things like stars and planets. A flat region is like a part of the mat with nothing on it.

Such a drive would also avoid the uncomfortable consequences of time dilation. One could potentially make a round trip into deep space and still be greeted by ones nearest and dearest at home.

How does Alcubierres device work? Here discussion often relies on analogies, because the mathematics is so complex.

Imagine a rug with a cup on it. Youre on the rug and you want to get to the cup. You could move across the rug, or tug the rug toward you. The warp drive is like tugging on spacetime to bring your destination closer.

But analogies have their limits: a warp drive doesnt really drag your destination toward you. It contracts spacetime to make your path shorter. Theres just less rug between you and the cup when you switch the drive on.

Alcubierres suggestion, while mathematically rigorous, is difficult to understand at an intuitive level. Bobrick and Martires work is set to change all that.

Bobrick and Martire show that any warp drive must be a shell of material in a constant state of motion, enclosing a flat region of spacetime. The energy of the shell modifies the properties of the spacetime region inside it.

This might not sound like much of a discovery, but until now it was unclear what warp drives might be, physically speaking. Their work tells us that a warp drive is, somewhat surprisingly, like a car. A car is also a shell of energy (in the form of matter) that encloses a flat region of spacetime. The difference is that getting inside a car does not make you age faster. That, however, is the kind of thing a warp drive might do.

Using their simple description, Bobrick and Martire demonstrate a method for using Einsteins general relativity equations to find spacetimes that allow for arrangements of matter and energy that would act as warp bubbles. This gives us a mathematical key for finding and classifying warp technologies.

Their work manages to address one of the core problems for warp drives. To make the equations balance, Alcubierres device runs on negative energy but we are yet to discover any viable sources of negative energy in the real world.

Worse, the negative energy requirements of Alcubierres device are immense. By some estimates, the entire energy in the known universe would be needed (though later work brings the number down a bit).

Bobrick and Martire show a warp drive could be made from positive energy (i.e. normal energy) or from a mixture of negative and positive energy. That said, the energy requirements would still be immense.

If Bobrick and Martire are right, then a warp drive is just like any other object in motion. It would be subject to the universal speed limit enforced by general relativity after all, and it would need some kind of conventional propulsion system to make it accelerate.

The news gets worse. Many kinds of warp drive can only modify the spacetime inside in a certain way: by slowing down the clock of the passenger in exactly the way that makes a trip into deep space a problem.

Bobrick and Martire do show that some warp drives could travel faster than light, but only if they are created already traveling at that speed which is no help for any ordinary human hoping for a bit of interstellar tourism.

Remember that a warp drive can modify the region of flat spacetime it encloses. It can, in particular, speed up or slow down a clock inside the drive.

Consider what it would mean to have such an object available. Want to put someone with a terminal illness on ice? Stick them in a warp drive and slow their clock down. From their perspective, a few years will pass, while a hundred years will pass on Earth time enough to find a cure.

Want to grow your crops overnight? Stick them in a warp drive and speed the clock up. A few days will pass for you, and a few weeks will pass for your seedlings.

There are even more exotic possibilities: by rotating the spacetime inside a drive one may be able to produce a battery capable of holding huge amounts of energy.

Faster-than-light travel remains a distant dream. But warp technology would be revolutionary in its own right.

Written by Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University.

Originally published on The Conversation.

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Intriguing Warp Drive Research Dashes Faster Than Light Travel Dreams But Reveals Stranger Possibilities - SciTechDaily

Everetts Christopher Sembroski always loved looking up. He grew up stargazing, learned to launch model rockets, but couldnt fathom ever becoming a space traveler.

In all of history, fewer than 600 people have gone into space. I had a better shot at getting into the NBA, the 41-year-old data engineer and father of two girls said Friday.

Yet if all goes according to the plans of a tech billionaire, Sembroski is just months away from three days in space. On a mission called Inspiration4, he is to be launched, in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Floridas Kennedy Space Center, along with three others. The hope is to launch sometime after mid-September.

Jared Isaacman, the CEO of Shift4 Payments, is commander of the philanthropic mission aimed at raising millions of dollars for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis. The high-flying Isaacman, who has piloted military jets in airshows, is paying for whats billed as the first all-civilian mission to space.

If you watched Super Bowl commercials Feb. 7, you may vaguely remember one that started with an angelic voice singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. It ended with an invitation to visit Inspiration4.com for your chance to go to space.

Although he considers himself a space geek, Sembroski hadnt heard of Inspiration4 before seeing the ad.

I had no clue about any of this, said Sembroski, a reliability engineer with Lockheed Martin who works from home. Hes also an Air Force veteran, once stationed in Montana with the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron. His wife, Erin Duncan-Sembroski, teaches sixth-grade English at Explorer Middle School in the Mukilteo district. Their daughters are 3 and 9.

Life has taken an out-of-this-world turn for Sembroski, who enjoys hiking and other outdoor fun.

Seeing the Super Bowl ad, he donated not a fortune, but he didnt share how much to the St. Jude cause. That put his name in the running. But it was a friend whod attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida with Sembroski who actually won the chance for the low-earth-orbit mission.

That friend, whos keeping a low profile, decided against going.

By early March, Sembroski was on a dizzying journey toward space flight. He learned in a Zoom meeting with his college pal and Isaacman that hed be filling the seat his friend had declined. Within days, Sembroski traveled to the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California, founded by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, and to UCLA Medical Center for physical tests.

Along with Isaacman and Sembroski, the Dragon crew includes pilot Sian Proctor and Hayley Arceneaux. A survivor of childhood bone cancer, Arceneaux works at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital as a physician assistant.

At the National Aerospace Training and Research Center in Pennsylvania, the crew experienced centrifuge training. The NASTAR Center specializes in training for commercial spaceflight. In what almost seems like a wild carnival ride, the trainee is seated in a capsule at the end of a long arm and the thing rotates rapidly.

Its so exhilarating and a lot of fun, Sembroski said of the high G-force training. The gravitational pull helps prepare a person for the rigors of a launch, he said.

Another heady experience the publicity came March 30. Thats when the world learned that Sembroski and Proctor, an Arizona community college instructor and space enthusiast, would join Isaacman and Arceneaux on the mission. The New York Times, NBCs Today show and other news outlets prominently featured the crew.

The crew members seats are labeled, with Sembroski representing Generosity, Arceneaux standing for Hope and Proctor for Prosperity. One message of the mission, Sembroski said, is that you dont need to have deep pockets to show generosity.

It is my hope that this flight will inspire others to pay that generosity forward by pledging their support for St. Jude and encouraging kids to dream the impossible, ushering in a new era of space exploration open to all, he said in a statement.

Sembroski grew up in Kannapolis, North Carolina, outside Charlotte. As a teenager, he took to late-night stargazing from the roof of his high school. By college, he had moved on to launching high-powered model rockets. And he volunteered with ProSpace, a lobbying effort that promoted legislation to help foster space travel and clear the way for companies such as SpaceX.

About 20 years ago, Sembroski was helping inspire kids as a Space Camp counselor. The camp, part of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, once had a Florida location. It was there that Sembroski helped conduct simulated Space Shuttle missions and encouraged kids to concentrate on STEM subjects.

Many of our children who come to Space Camp want to be astronauts, said Pat Ammons, Space Camps senior communications director. As commercial space develops, this is sort of a hope to all those who carry that dream.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who was scheduled to return from the International Space Station this weekend, is a Space Camp alumna, Ammons said.

Along with maintaining Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, Sembroski was deployed to Iraq while in the Air Force. He and his family moved here in 2007 after he left active duty. He said they moved from Great Falls, Montana, because they love this area and all the things people do in the Pacific Northwest.

During those three days in orbit at an altitude of about 335 miles, more than 100 miles higher than the space station Sembroski said hes most excited about looking back at earth. Hell be taking an iPad and plans to keep a journal. Splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean will await the space travelers.

To become a civilian astronaut, Sembroski is working with a physical trainer to build strength. Hell spend time with the Inspiration4 crew, and do some mountaineering. Hell keep his Lockheed Martin job, and of course the duties and joys of fatherhood. The 9-year-old knows whats up, he said, but not so much her little sister.

Sembroski recently spent an evening making smores with his family around their fire pit. Its a regimen far different than what those early astronauts, chronicled in Tom Wolfes The Right Stuff, endured. Its a side gig Ill do on weekends, Sembroski said.

He didnt see it coming, but at 41 hes about to be a spaceman.

Its surreal, he said.

Julie Muhlstein: jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com

Learn more

Information about the Inspiration4 mission: inspiration4.com

Gallery

Everetts Christopher Sembroski during centrifuge training at the NASTAR Center in Pennsylvania. (John Kraus/Inspiration4 photo)

The crew of the Inspiration4 mission planned for later this year, from left, Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, and Everetts Christopher Sembroski. (John Kraus/Inspiration4 photo)

Go here to see the original:

Everett's own spaceman thrilled to join all-civilian mission | HeraldNet.com - The Daily Herald

Anybody who fancies watching a new science fiction film this month can count their lucky stars. A Netflix drama, Stowaway, features Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette and Daniel Dae Kim as a trio of astronauts who are on their way to Mars when they discover that an unfortunate launch-plan engineer, Shamier Anderson, is still onboard. The trouble is, there is only enough oxygen for three of them. American viewers can also see Voyagers (due for release in Britain in July), in which 30 hormonal starship passengers are preparing to colonise another world. The trouble is, something goes wrong on their mission, too, and the trip turns into an interplanetary Lord of the Flies. The moral of both stories is that you should probably push astronaut a few slots down your list of dream jobs. But if youve caught any other science fiction films recently, its bound to be quite far down the list, anyway.

Again and again over the past decade, cinema has warned us that venturing beyond the Earths atmosphere is uncomfortable, dangerous, exhaustingly difficult, frequently tedious, and almost certain to involve interplanetary angst and asphyxiation. George Clooneys morose The Midnight Sky rounded off 2020 with a fatal spacewalk. Aniara and Passengers posited that existence on a colony ship was a lot grimmer than Wall-E had led us to believe. The sad dads in space sub-genre coalesced with Brad Pitts Freudian moping in Ad Astra, and Robert Pattinsons in High Life. No wonder todays youngsters would rather be YouTubers or influencers than astronauts. The overriding thesis of current science fiction films is this: space travel is rubbish.

The films in question are usually hard sci-fi. They unfold in the near future, as opposed to the 25th century, or a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The characters dont have snazzy Lycra uniforms, they have bulky spacesuits and fish-bowl helmets. They dont use warp drives or teleporters to zip around the cosmos, theyre stuck with industrial-looking vehicles that trundle through the void for months or years. Instead of fighting acid-blood xenomorphs, they have to fend off dogs (High Life) or baboons (Ad Astra) or, more often, each other. Orgies and/or murders are inevitable. Life-support systems are unreliable. And even the sturdiest spacecraft is just one asteroid shower away from being scrap metal. Dont imagine that astronauts have a cheerier time on Earth, either. Judging by the characters played by Eva Green in Proxima and Natalie Portman in Lucy in the Sky, the only thing more upsetting than going to space is preparing to go, or coming back afterwards.

The space travel is rubbish (STIR) trope had been touched on before, of course, in such classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris and Silent Running. But a new fleet of STIR films blasted off the launchpad when Alfonso Cuarns Gravity came out in 2013, and screenwriters everywhere scribbled debris cloud and tether snaps during spacewalk in their notebooks. The other big trendsetter was a similarly well-researched and painstakingly realised survival drama: in 2015, Ridley Scotts The Martian argued that an astronauts life wasnt about boldly going where no man has gone before, but about growing potatoes in your own poo. After that, there were two tributes to Neil Armstrong, Damien Chazelles First Man in 2018 and the Apollo 11 documentary in 2019; neither of them science fiction, but both of them key to reminding us that science fact can be traumatising enough in itself. And since then, countless films have pinched their bleak plots and melancholy moods from David Bowies Space Oddity: Here am I sitting in a tin can ... Your circuits dead, theres something wrong ...

Dr Keith M Johnston, the author of Science Fiction Film: A Critical Introduction, sees the STIR wave as a reaction to two things. The first of these is the Marvel, DC and Star Wars blockbusters that have cornered the market in monsters and ray guns. That side of sci-fi is fairly well catered for, he says, so elsewhere the genre has turned away from glossy big-budget fun and back to something serious. Even the more far-fetched of the last decades science fiction films, such as Interstellar, have dwelled on the emotional toll and technological hassle of flying across the universe. Meanwhile, the alien invasions in Arrival, Annihilation and Color Out of Space have invited us to gaze into the abyss, and not Will Smith-style to punch the abyss in its bug-eyed face.

Another thing these films are responding to, says Johnston, is the contemporary reality of space exploration and communication. We get regular updates from the International Space Station, we see people talking to us, singing to us, doing experiments, so we get used to the idea that being an astronaut is a job with large stretches of mundanity. Nasas television channel, Nasa TV, is the same. With the Mars rovers, youve got the launch, and youve got the big event, which is the landing, and in between there are months where nothing is happening. Whats even more disillusioning, says Johnston, is the ego-driven work of the billionaire build-a-rocket boys, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. Theyre taking the excitement out of space travel.

But what about the sheer gloominess of these STIR films? Considering that so many of their characters are searching for somewhere new to live, because our own planet is in such a mess, its fair to assume that climate change is a factor. They tackle the terrestrial environment from three directions, says Dr Mark Bould, author of The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture. Gravity, for instance, points out that space is really inhospitable, and our only hope for survival as a species is Earth. Aniara shows that space is really big, so dont waste time planning on there being a Planet B any time soon. And the miserable-astronauts-back-on-Earth movies suggest that the planet we have fashioned through our economic, social and political systems might be biologically habitable, but is a pretty miserable world even for the absurdly privileged white folks of the global north. So ... dont come to science fiction for escapism. The message is that theres no escape.

One curious aspect of these films, with their isolation and anxiety, is that they seem to be tailor-made for lockdown viewing, despite being products of the pre-Covid-19 era. If they had come out in the next 10 years, rather than the last 10, I would have said that they were all about being cooped up at home with the same people for weeks on end. As it is, they can claim to be what so few science fiction films ever are: genuinely ahead of their time.

Stowaway is released on Netflix on 22 April.

Excerpt from:

Sitting in a tin can: why sci-fi films are finally telling astronaut life like it is - The Guardian

In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster than light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the universes ultimate speed limit by bending the fabric of reality.

It was an intriguing idea even NASA has been researching it at the Eagleworks laboratory but Alcubierres proposal contained problems that seemed insurmountable. Now, a recent paper by US-based physicists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire has resolved many of those issues and generated a lot of buzz.

But while Bobrick and Martire have managed to substantially demystify warp technology, their work actually suggests that faster-than-light travel will remain out of reach for beings like us, at least for the time being.

There is, however, a silver lining: warp technology may have radical applications beyond space travel.

The story of warp drives starts with Einsteins crowning achievement: general relativity. The equations of general relativity capture the way in which spacetime the very fabric of reality bends in response to the presence of matter and energy which, in turn, explains how matter and energy move.

General relativity places two constraints on interstellar travel. First, nothing can be accelerated past the speed of light (around 300,000 km per second). Even travelling at this dizzying speed it would still take us four years to arrive at Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun.

Second, the clock on a spaceship travelling close to the speed of light would slow down relative to a clock on Earth (this is known as time dilation). Assuming a constant state of acceleration, this makes it possible to travel the stars. One can reach a distant star that is 150 lightyears away within ones lifetime. The catch, however, is that upon ones return more than 300 years will have passed on Earth.

This is where Alcubierre came in. He argued that the mathematics of general relativity allowed for warp bubbles regions where matter and energy were arranged in such a way as to bend spacetime in front of the bubble and expand it to the rear in a way that allowed a flat area inside the bubble to travel faster than light.

Read more: Don't stop me now! Superluminal travel in Einstein's universe

To get a sense of what flat means in this context, note that spacetime is sort of like a rubber mat. The mat curves in the presence of matter and energy (think of putting a bowling ball on the mat). Gravity is nothing more than the tendency objects have to roll into the the dents created by things like stars and planets. A flat region is like a part of the mat with nothing on it.

Such a drive would also avoid the uncomfortable consequences of time dilation. One could potentially make a round trip into deep space and still be greeted by ones nearest and dearest at home.

How does Alcubierres device work? Here discussion often relies on analogies, because the maths is so complex.

Imagine a rug with a cup on it. Youre on the rug and you want to get to the cup. You could move across the rug, or tug the rug toward you. The warp drive is like tugging on spacetime to bring your destination closer.

But analogies have their limits: a warp drive doesnt really drag your destination toward you. It contracts spacetime to make your path shorter. Theres just less rug between you and the cup when you switch the drive on.

Alcubierres suggestion, while mathematically rigorous, is difficult to understand at an intuitive level. Bobrick and Martires work is set to change all that.

Bobrick and Martire show that any warp drive must be a shell of material in a constant state of motion, enclosing a flat region of spacetime. The energy of the shell modifies the properties of the spacetime region inside it.

This might not sound like much of a discovery, but until now it was unclear what warp drives might be, physically speaking. Their work tells us that a warp drive is, somewhat surprisingly, like a car. A car is also a shell of energy (in the form of matter) that encloses a flat region of spacetime. The difference is that getting inside a car does not make you age faster. That, however, is the kind of thing a warp drive might do.

Using their simple description, Bobrick and Martire demonstrate a method for using Einsteins general relativity equations to find spacetimes that allow for arrangements of matter and energy that would act as warp bubbles. This gives us a mathematical key for finding and classifying warp technologies.

Their work manages to address one of the core problems for warp drives. To make the equations balance, Alcubierres device runs on negative energy but we are yet to discover any viable sources of negative energy in the real world.

Worse, the negative energy requirements of Alcubierres device are immense. By some estimates, the entire energy in the known universe would be needed (though later work brings the number down a bit).

Bobrick and Martire show a warp drive could be made from positive energy (i.e. normal energy) or from a mixture of negative and positive energy. That said, the energy requirements would still be immense.

If Bobrick and Martire are right, then a warp drive is just like any other object in motion. It would be subject to the universal speed limit enforced by general relativity after all, and it would need some kind of conventional propulsion system to make it accelerate.

The news gets worse. Many kinds of warp drive can only modify the spacetime inside in a certain way: by slowing down the clock of the passenger in exactly the way that makes a trip into deep space a problem.

Bobrick and Martire do show that some warp drives could travel faster than light, but only if they are created already travelling at that speed which is no help for any ordinary human hoping for a bit of interstellar tourism.

Remember that a warp drive can modify the region of flat spacetime it encloses. It can, in particular, speed up or slow down a clock inside the drive.

Consider what it would mean to have such an object available. Want to put someone with a terminal illness on ice? Stick them in a warp drive and slow their clock down. From their perspective, a few years will pass, while a hundred years will pass on Earth time enough to find a cure.

Read more: The art and beauty of general relativity

Want to grow your crops overnight? Stick them in a warp drive and speed the clock up. A few days will pass for you, and a few weeks will pass for your seedlings.

There are even more exotic possibilities: by rotating the spacetime inside a drive one may be able to produce a battery capable of holding huge amounts of energy.

Faster-than-light travel remains a distant dream. But warp technology would be revolutionary in its own right.

Read more from the original source:

New warp drive research dashes faster than light travel dreams but reveals stranger possibilities - The Conversation AU

In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster-than-light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the universes ultimate speed limit by bending the fabric of reality.

It was an intriguing ideaeven NASA has been researching it at the Eagleworks laboratorybut Alcubierres proposal contained problems that seemed insurmountable. Now, a recent paper by US-based physicists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire has resolved many of those issues and generated a lot of buzz.

But while Bobrick and Martire have managed to substantially demystify warp technology, their work actually suggests that faster-than-light travel will remain out of reach for beings like us, at least for the time being.

There is, however, a silver lining: warp technology may have radical applications beyond space travel.

The story of warp drives starts with Einsteins crowning achievement: general relativity. The equations of general relativity capture the way in which spacetimethe very fabric of realitybends in response to the presence of matter and energy which, in turn, explains how matter and energy move.

General relativity places two constraints on interstellar travel. First, nothing can be accelerated past the speed of light (around 300,000 kilometers per second). Even traveling at this dizzying speed it would still take us four years to arrive at Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun.

Second, the clock on a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light would slow down relative to a clock on Earth (this is known as time dilation). Assuming a constant state of acceleration, this makes it possible to travel to the stars. One can reach a distant star that is 150 lightyears away within ones lifetime. The catch, however, is that upon ones return more than 300 years will have passed on Earth.

This is where Alcubierre came in. He argued that the mathematics of general relativity allowed for warp bubblesregions where matter and energy were arranged in such a way as to bend spacetime in front of the bubble and expand it to the rear in a way that allowed a flat area inside the bubble to travel faster than light.

To get a sense of what flat means in this context, note that spacetime is sort of like a rubber mat. The mat curves in the presence of matter and energy (think of putting a bowling ball on the mat). Gravity is nothing more than the tendency objects have to roll into the the dents created by things like stars and planets. A flat region is like a part of the mat with nothing on it.

Such a drive would also avoid the uncomfortable consequences of time dilation. One could potentially make a round trip into deep space and still be greeted by ones nearest and dearest at home.

How does Alcubierres device work? Here, discussion often relies on analogies, because the math is so complex.

Imagine a rug with a cup on it. Youre on the rug and you want to get to the cup. You could move across the rug, or tug the rug toward you. The warp drive is like tugging on spacetime to bring your destination closer.

But analogies have their limits: a warp drive doesnt really drag your destination toward you. It contracts spacetime to make your path shorter. Theres just less rug between you and the cup when you switch the drive on.

Alcubierres suggestion, while mathematically rigorous, is difficult to understand at an intuitive level. Bobrick and Martires work is set to change all that.

Bobrick and Martire show that any warp drive must be a shell of material in a constant state of motion, enclosing a flat region of spacetime. The energy of the shell modifies the properties of the spacetime region inside it.

This might not sound like much of a discovery, but until now it was unclear what warp drives might be, physically speaking. Their work tells us that a warp drive is, somewhat surprisingly, like a car. A car is also a shell of energy (in the form of matter) that encloses a flat region of spacetime. The difference is that getting inside a car does not make you age faster. That, however, is the kind of thing a warp drive might do.

Using their simple description, Bobrick and Martire demonstrate a method for using Einsteins general relativity equations to find spacetimes that allow for arrangements of matter and energy that would act as warp bubbles. This gives us a mathematical key for finding and classifying warp technologies.

Their work manages to address one of the core problems for warp drives. To make the equations balance, Alcubierres device runs on negative energybut we are yet to discover any viable sources of negative energy in the real world.

A two-dimensional visualization of an Alcubierre drive. Expanding and contracting regions of spacetime on opposite sides of the central flat region cause it to move. Image Credit: Applied Physics

Worse, the negative energy requirements of Alcubierres device are immense. By some estimates, the entire energy in the known universe would be needed (though later work brings the number down a bit).

Bobrick and Martire show a warp drive could be made from positive energy (i.e., normal energy) or from a mixture of negative and positive energy. That said, the energy requirements would still be immense.

If Bobrick and Martire are right, then a warp drive is just like any other object in motion. It would be subject to the universal speed limit enforced by general relativity after all, and it would need some kind of conventional propulsion system to make it accelerate.

The news gets worse. Many kinds of warp drive can only modify the spacetime inside in a certain way: by slowing down the clock of the passenger in exactly the way that makes a trip into deep space a problem.

Bobrick and Martire do show that some warp drives could travel faster than light, but only if they are created already traveling at that speedwhich is no help for any ordinary human hoping for a bit of interstellar tourism.

Remember that a warp drive can modify the region of flat spacetime it encloses. It can, in particular, speed up or slow down a clock inside the drive.

Consider what it would mean to have such an object available. Want to put someone with a terminal illness on ice? Stick them in a warp drive and slow their clock down. From their perspective, a few years will pass, while a hundred years will pass on Earthtime enough to find a cure.

Want to grow your crops overnight? Stick them in a warp drive and speed the clock up. A few days will pass for you, and a few weeks will pass for your seedlings.

There are even more exotic possibilities: by rotating the spacetime inside a drive one may be able to produce a battery capable of holding huge amounts of energy.

Faster-than-light travel remains a distant dream. But warp technology would be revolutionary in its own right.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Mathew Schwartz / Unsplash

Read more here:

New Warp Drive Research Dashes Faster-Than-Light Travel Dreamsbut Reveals Stranger Possibilities - Singularity Hub

The Soyuz MS-17 mission took off 185 days ago, and after six months of research on the ISS, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins andRussian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov returned to Earth safe and sound on Saturday, April 17th.

On March 19th, the trio boarded the Soyuz MS-17 "for a port relocation maneuver, moving the spacecraft from the Rassvet module to the space-facing port of the Poisk module. The relocation allowed the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft and its crew to dock to the Rassvet module upon their arrival on April 9th."

This weekend, the capsule landed in the southeast part of the Dzhezkazgan city in Kazakhstan. It was Kate Rubins' and Sergey Ryzhikov's second spaceflight and the first flight for Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

Kate Rubins was selected in 2009 as one of nine members of the 20th NASA astronaut class. She received a thorough training in "scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalks, robotics, physiology, T 38 flight and water and wilderness survival".

In the past six months,the astronaut has spent her time working on theISS conducting experiments, researching, and studying the space station's microbiome. She continued her research on DNA sequencing based on experiments she conducted during her first mission in 2016. Her work represents a crucial step in identifying potential risks for astronauts that adventure in space travel.

On Wednesday, April 21st, a meeting will take place in which Kate Rubins will talk in detail about her mission on ISS. The news conference will be broadcasted on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's social accounts.

Excerpt from:

NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins and Crewmates Return From ISS After 185 Days in Space - autoevolution

It has been 40 years since I saw the first space shuttle thunder into the blue Cape Canaveral sky on Apr. 12, 1981. I covered the spaceships premier launch as a columnist for the Athens Observer newspaper. The first flight of the mighty machine was a must-see, so I flew down to Florida to view the launch of Columbia and write my impressions of the historic event.

I have been a long-time space buff ever since my childhood days watching Flash Gordon and Captain Video on early 1950s black-and-white television and reading the science fiction tales of Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clark. I was captivated by Walt Disneys 1955 television series about space travel narrated by Wernher von Braun, the World War II Nazi rocket scientist who was brought to America after the war to lead the postwar U.S. space program. I was amazed at the age of 10 in 1957 when Russias Sputnik became the first satellite to orbit Earth, and I have for decades followed the space programs of both the Soviets and the Americans that culminated in footsteps on the moon and space stations orbiting Earth. As an Athens writer, I have covered such events as protest marches, political conventions and presidential inaugurations for many years, but being on the scene for the first space shuttle launch was an event that is indelibly etched into my mind.

As the day of the spaceships launch neared, towns like Titusville and Cocoa Beach near the launch site bustled with excitement. The ambiance of the area that calls itself the Space Coast was like a high-tech version of Dodge City during a cattle drive. Flags festooned town roads, and businesses posted signs and banners voicing messages like Good luck, astronauts and Hail Columbia. Newspapers published special editions to commemorate the upcoming launch. The Orlando Sentinel Stars special edition featured a large color photo of the shuttle on the launch pad and a huge headline blaring Space Odyssey: 1981. Hotels, motels, bars and restaurants on the Space Coast were packed with tourists and reporters, and local people were thrilled that the area would be back in the space business after a long lull in manned launches since the Apollo and Skylab programs ended in the mid-1970s. Titusville resident R.H. Scobie beamed with pride over the space shuttle as he said to me, Its like Buck Rogers! Who would ever think wed have it? Its beautiful, partner. Its beautiful.

Columbia indeed was beautiful as it stood on the far horizon in the predawn hours before launch, bathed in spotlights and clutched in the steel embrace of its service tower. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over America and around the world were camped out in viewing areas along the Indian River, at Jetty Park, and in the nearby towns of Cocoa Beach and Titusville, all waiting with Zen-like patience for the countdown to come to its dramatic denouement. Car stereos blared Elton Johns Rocket Man and David Bowies Space Oddity. A computer glitch had caused the cancelation of the launch two days before, but the crowd was confident on the morning of Apr. 12, 1981, as astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen boarded their spacecraft.

When the countdown dropped to zero, the crowd was on its feet. An instant orange glow erupted from the faraway launch site, and Columbia fairly vaulted into the early morning sky, trailing billowing smoke and flames hundreds of feet in length as it roared its way into orbit. All around me people shouted, cried, screamed and prayed as the spaceship disappeared from view in just two heart-stopping minutes. Along with many others, I wiped tears from my eyes after the launch. We had seen the future, and it worked.

It was exactly 20 years to the day after Russias Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space on Apr. 12, 1961. Later, I would cover other space shuttle launches, including the first night flight in 1983 and legendary astronaut John Glenns return to space aboard a shuttle in 1998, but the first space shuttle flight 40 years ago was history that I will always remember seeing.

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Continued here:

I Watched the First Space Shuttle Flight 40 Years Ago | Flagpole - Flagpole Magazine