And on the John Batchelor radio program on Tuesday, he talked about the following topics:
Segment 1: Space and NASA
Dragon is on its way home. (Landing momentarily.)
Engine tests for SpaceShipTwo a success.
How big will Stratolaunch be? Big, very big!
NASA suspends all outreach and education efforts under sequestration.
He will also be on the Batchelor program tonight (12:30 am) and on Thursday evening. In tonight’s show they will discuss:
Science:
Curiosity back to full science, releases a new panorama.
Comet ISON not brightening as much as hoped.
The weird polar vortexes of Venus.
LEO – LowEarthOrbit is a prerequisite for wannabe space pilots, a place where the rules work differently than here on Earth. Don’t feel bad if you don’t get it straight away…
Back in 1965 Gemini astronaut Jim McDivitt attempted the world’s first orbital rendezvous. After reaching orbit, 17000 miles per hour through the black sky, he aimed his capsule toward a discarded booster and squeezed on some thrust. He expected the booster to grow in his windscreen, but it got smaller. Jim tried again – test pilots don’t give up easy – until all of his spare fuel was expended. The laws of physics did not seem to apply! They learned an important truth that day racing around our planet… the faster you go, the further you will fall behind.
You’ll be able to try this stuff, and more. LEO – Low Earth Orbit is a game for your iPad, Android tablet or computer. It lets you fly in space, learning hands-on the lessons of orbital mechanics that confounded the early astronauts. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, but you are going to need perseverance!
You’ll cover simple lessons, like how and when to fire your engine to make your elliptical orbit circular. How do you transfer from one circular orbit to another? How do you get back to Earth? That’s kind of important, to your family at least, and all space odysseys start with training!
Get that stuff squared away and we’ll give you some real work to do. Space Station rendezvous sounds easy but it isn’t. Docking isn’t so bad, and giving the Station a push out to a new orbit should be a piece of cake.
Occasionally one of those crazy space walking astronauts needs rescuing, and then there’s the space junk — debris left up there by people who don’t treat space like a National Park . Darned dangerous stuff, and you’ll want to get out of the way. Who needs a collision at 8 kilometres per second?
Luckily, the geniuses at head office have got a plan. Have you heard of the Space Junk bounty? They’ll be putting missiles on your ship so you can blast some of that debris into space-dust. I’m sure there’s nothing at all wrong with that plan!
So it’s time to fire up LEO – Low Earth Orbit and get to work. Pay attention to your lessons because wishful thinking will not save you, and physics doesn’t care who your Daddy is!
Visit LEO-LowEarthOrbit.com for release data, product information, media resources and the LEO blog.
The electronic-music composition Oktophonie by the late Karlheinz Stockhausen is being performed this week in New York City with a space themed production:
New York Premiere
By Karlheinz Stockhausen
Environment designed by Rirkrit Tiravanija
Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most significant composers of modern and electronic music, influencing artists from The Beatles to Bjork, Miles Davis to Animal Collective, Frank Zappa, and more. Performed by one of his original collaborators Kathinka Pasveer, the maverick composer’s OKTOPHONIE from his opus Licht gets an exciting new life in an epic production of this monumental composition.
Acclaimed contemporary visual artist Rirkrit Tiravanija stages the work as the composer originally intended—in outer space—creating a lunar floating seating unit to fully envelop the listener in octophonic sound. Adorned in white, the audience takes a ritualistic musical journey from plunging darkness into blinding light to fully immerse themselves in the all-encompassing score and surroundings. The vastness of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall is the perfect setting to fully realize this rarely performed work that Stockhausen so boldly envisioned in its highly-anticipated New York premiere.
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) is a nonprofit organization that promotes and manages research on board the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory. They just unveiled a new mission patch designed by the famous graphic artist Shepard Fairey.
The patch commemorates the first period of research on the ISS to be sponsored by CASIS:
Advancing Research Knowledge 1 (ARK1), originally known as Increment 37/38, is the first launch period sponsored by CASIS. ARK1 is scheduled to run from September 2013 through March 2014. Some planned payloads during this increment include award recipients from CASIS’ first Request for Proposals in protein crystallization, binary colloidal alloy tests with implications to product shelf life, and the education program, “Story Time From Space.” A number of mission patches will also be flown to the ISS to commemorate ARK1.
