"Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing." -Mark Knopfler
There are a whole bunch of great songs in the world, great for a myriad of different things. Some are great for dancing, others for jamming out to, still others for just relaxing and listening to, and then there are the ones that I love to blast while I drive. But it's extraordinarily rare to find one that not only does all of these things for you, but also that tells an interesting lyrical story.
So this week, I present to you a Grateful Dead classic:
This version comes from a 1971 performance, and the Dead had been playing this song since 1966. But where did this song come from? Although this song was made famous by the Grateful Dead, they didn't write it.
The first recording of this song, as far as I can find, goes back to Judy Collins, who recorded her version (link) all the way back in 1964.
But Judy Collins didn't write this song, either. Who did?
Years ago [John Phillips] began receiving publishing royalties from a song on a Judy Collins record with which he was unfamiliar. It was titled "Me and My Uncle". He called Judy to let her know of the mistake because he hadn't written any such song. She laughed and told him that about a year before, in Arizona after one of her concerts, they had a 'Tequila Night' back at the hotel with Stephen Stills, Neil Young and a few others. They were running a blank cassette and John proceeded to write "Me and My Uncle" on the spot. The next day, John woke up to the tequila sunrise with no recollection of the songwriting incident. Judy kept the cassette from that evening and then, without informing John, recorded the song for her own record. Over the years the song was recorded by several people, and eventually became a standard of the Grateful Dead. John used to joke that, little by little, with each royalty check, the memory of writing the song would come back to him.
Maybe someday I'll try this with the astrophysics, but something tells me it wouldn't quite work out the same way. Have a great Labor Day weekend, and hope you enjoyed the song and its story!
"We have been forced to admit for the first time in history not only the possibility but the fact of the growth and decay of the elements of matter. With radium and with uranium we do not see anything but the decay. And yet, somewhere, somehow, it is almost certain that these elements must be continuously forming. They are probably being put together now in the laboratory of the stars. ... Can we ever learn to control the process. Why not? Only research can tell." -Robert Millikan
Ah, energy, if only you were free, limitless, and easily accessible. If you were, we could do anything we wanted, no problem. Including making those pesky, rare, unstable elements and particles.
Say hello to lead. All the way up there at element 82 on the periodic table, lead is the heaviest element that's stable, or that doesn't radioactively decay. Everything heavier, including your friends radium, uranium, and plutonium will all decay. That means that, given enough time, they spit out various particles and turn into lighter elements.
In order to make these, or any other heavy, unstable particle, nucleus, or element, you need a huge amount of energy. For the heavy nuclei, we either need a very intricate man-made fusion apparatus, like this one at Sandia Labs,
or some wonderful source of astrophysical energy, like a supernova!
Of course, there are relatively light, unstable particles, too. Some of them, like the muon, take less energy to make than even a single proton! A muon has nearly identical properties to an electron (including charge), but it's about 200 times more massive. With a half-life of between one and two microseconds, a muon is actually one of the longest-lived unstable particles, measured very accurately by particle accelerators. But there's a much more exciting place, for me, that they come from.
There are very, very high-energy particles whizzing around through space, in all directions, known as cosmic rays. They come from all sorts of wonderful places, like our Sun, neutron stars, black holes, and the centers of galaxies, but they also come from remnants of supernovae! If one of these high-energy cosmic ray particles smacks into something like a proton, say, in the Earth's atmosphere, something wonderful happens.
We get a whole "shower" of unstable particles! We can detect a bunch of these decay products, including electrons, positrons, protons, anti-protons, and photons, but you might be surprised to learn that we also detect muons!
Why is that so surprising? Well, even if you assume these muons move at the speed of light -- the speed limit governing all matter in the Universe -- you still find that your muon shouldn't make it even 1 kilometer before decaying away. Yet these muons that we find can be traced back to originating all the way in the upper atmosphere, tens of (up to even a hundred) kilometers away! In fact, there are so many of them that, if you hold your hand up to the sky, you'll get about one muon passing through it every second!
Well, one of the funny things about these muons is that they are moving at almost the speed of light. And when you move close to the speed of light, time slows down for you! This isn't just true of twins when one of them travels in a rocket ship and one stays home, either.
It works for subatomic particles, too! While you might think these muons are aging 10, 20, or even 100 microseconds, they can move so quickly that -- from their reference frame -- they might not even last for a single microsecond before they make it all the way from the upper atmosphere down to your hand.
And that's why the seemingly impossible -- particles living longer than their measured lifetimes -- happen all the time. Pretty amazing stuff, and a great way to get you psyched for the Labor Day weekend! Enjoy!
They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say.
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll stay. -The Postal Service
It isn't the weekend, but I'd feel terrible showing you these pictures without giving you the right song to take you through it, so here's Iron & Wine's cover of a great song by The Postal Service:
Back in the early 1970s, the United States sent the first spacecraft, successfully, towards Mercury, the innermost planet of our Solar System. Before losing its functionality, Mariner 10 managed to approach very close to Mercury, and took a series of hi-resolution photos that have since been corrected and stitched together to form the first hi-res mosaic of the closest world to the Sun.
It's taken over 30 years to get the second spacecraft launched and headed towards Mercury, but Messenger is there now, having performed three flybys and taken even better pictures than Mariner 10 had to offer.
You'll notice that this world looks more like the Moon than any other planet we know of. It's full of craters, for one.
It's also loaded with very violent scars, such as those emanating from Spider Crater, shown here.
Additionally, there are some mysterious, high mountains, such as that black feature to the lower right of the image below.
And, I know it's just my own personal preferences, but I always enjoy images of the edge of the planet; of the border between bright, reflected sunlight and the blackness of deep space.
Mercury is made out of the densest, heaviest elements of any planet in the Solar System; if it weren't for the effect of gravity, Mercury would be even denser than the Earth. (We are #1, you know.)
But very recently, Messenger did something absolutely spectacular, that I'd previously only seen done from Saturn and the Moon before: looked back and saw us.
Do you see us? At the lower left of the image above, we're the big disk with the smaller disk next to it: our Moon! Let's blow it up for you:
The Earth and Moon always look almost entirely "full" as seen from Mercury, and this picture is no exception. Messenger will enter into orbit, permanently, around Mercury on March 18th of next year, but a picture like this always makes me appreciate just how small, fragile, and lonely our world is against the backdrop of deep space.
So I hope you're enjoying one of the most beautiful sights the Universe has to offer; it's the least I can do to usher in the new month!
"The whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent." -Douglas Adams
As many of you know, if you take a whole bunch of mass, and you've got nothing going on except gravity, it's going to gravitationally collapse. And if atoms, nuclei, pressure, and nuclear reactions don't (or can't) prevent that gravitational collapse from running away, you're going to wind up with a black hole.
But last week, I told you that if you took all the matter in the Universe and shaped it into a cylinder, you'd actually wind up with a huge cylinder of solid matter, as big around as the Earth's orbit around the Sun!
But this cylinder, unlike the other shapes, wouldn't collapse down to a black hole. A black hole would give you, literally, a point-like hole in spacetime (assuming that there aren't violations of, for instance, the strong energy condition, which could happen in theory).
The fact that we observe evidence for black holes in many different regions, most prominently at the center of every large galaxy (including our own), tells us that we're on the right track as to what's going on.
But what if, instead of a hole, you had a huge string? What if, instead of a bunch of point-like (zero-dimensional) holes in your spacetime,
you had a network of string-like (one-dimensional) defects throughout spacetime?
While this might remind some of you of the Nexus from Star Trek: Generations, this is a real possibility in theoretical physics! (Although it hasn't been observed.)
We learn something interesting about the expansion of the Universe from playing around with this idea of a cosmic string, or network of strings. (The wikipedia page is so bad I refuse to link to it.) First off, if we fill spacetime with 0-dimensional defects (point-like masses), the expanding Universe slows down its expansion, as gravity works to counteract the expansion. A model Universe, full of point-like black holes, can eventually have the expansion rate asymptote to zero, decelerating but never turning around. (Following the curve labeled B, below.)
Yet if that same Universe is full of cosmic strings (1-D defects), the expansion rate doesn't decelerate! It follows curve C above, and a Universe filled with cosmic strings will continue to expand, with the expansion neither accelerating nor decelerating.
But you may decide to make things a little more interesting. What if, instead of 0-D or 1-D defects, you filled the Universe with domain walls, a 2-D topological defect? (Instead of a point or a string, a "sheet-like" defect in spacetime.)
Of course, this is observationally ruled out, too, but just for the fun of it, you get a Universe whose expansion rate accelerates! Mind you, it doesn't accelerate the same way our observed Universe does; it doesn't quite do it as quickly.
But if you change the dimension of your defects in spacetime, you can ad-hoc your way to any expansion rate you want.
And interestingly enough, if you decide to tweak your toy model of defects in spacetime to reproduce dark energy -- the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe -- what do you suppose you get?
Three-dimensional defects, known technically as textures! In other words, if you filled the Universe with the right amount of 3-D defects in spacetime, the expansion rate you'd see would match up perfectly well with the observed dark energy!
Before you get too excited, let's be realistic, here. We've never detected any of these topological defects in 1, 2, or higher dimensions, so they're only theoretical constructs. In principle, however, we know how we could make or generate them, and it's pretty straightforward! ("Knots" in spacetime, theoretically caused by many things, spread out widely enough over 1, 2, or more dimensions.)
Searches for evidence of strings, domain walls, textures, and other defects are still ongoing, and although they've come up empty so far, detection of say, a texture, could revolutionize the way we think about dark energy! Some food for some deep (speculative) thoughts on a Monday; enjoy!
Most of you reading this know me. How you know me may vary; some of you know me as a scientist, some as a science writer, as a professor, or maybe just a friend or acquaintance. But before I was any of those things, I was born a citizen of the United States of America.
And, like all US citizens, I have certain rights and privileges guaranteed to me by law; every citizen is protected by, among other things, the Bill of Rights. I think of these as my basic freedoms, including my free speech, my freedom of assembly, and my freedom of religion. And I have all of these freedoms whether anyone else agrees or not with my speech, my cause of assembly, or any of the tenets of my religion (or lack thereof). If anyone would try to take these rights away from me, not only would I fight them, but I would expect many of my fellow Americans to come to my aid, and defend my basic rights. In fact, if anyone tries to take them away from any American, it's everyone's responsibility to defend their rights.
After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, I knew that many of us would be afraid that there are people in the world plotting our death and destruction. But I also knew what kind of courage we're all capable of, and was heartened by our then-President's words:
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom will be defended." -George W. Bush
Now, more than ever, it is time to defend the freedoms of Americans. The freedom to live your life without being racially or religiously profiled. The freedom to be allowed to conduct commerce and purchase goods without being asked where you got the money. The freedom to worship whatever or whomever you want without fear for your personal safety.
Here in America, the reality is that these freedoms are in jeopardy.
In New York City, a cab driver was asked if he was Muslim. After responding in the affirmative, his passenger pulled out a knife and attacked him, slashing the man's throat.
In Tennessee, a new Islamic center being built outside of Nashville was just the victim of arson, as a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment sweeps across our nation.
Where is this hatred and violence coming from? It's no mystery.
People are afraid. People are afraid that the people who caused 9/11 will do it again, and that since they were Muslim, the response is to be suspicious of all Muslims.
But we do not let fear dictate what we are free to do. Syed, Atiyah, Freida, and all the other Muslims I grew up with are no more or less American than any of us, and it is the right of every Muslim-American to expect the exact same freedoms that we have.
And that includes the freedom to buy an abandoned building in New York City and build a community center there, regardless of whether it's a Christian, Jewish, Interfaith, Atheist, or Muslim center.
People are asking if you are for or against the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center two blocks away from Ground Zero, and they are asking the wrong question. Your opinion, my opinion, anyone's opinion is not what's relevant here.
What's relevant is ensuring that everyone's freedoms are protected, including the freedom of peaceful Muslim-Americans to have a place of assembly and worship. Which is all they're trying to do. (And, as an aside, I'd be willing to bet that the people who masterminded 9/11 think of most Muslim-Americans as Americans long before they think of them as Muslims.)
We do not let fear limit our freedoms, not for ourselves, and not for anyone in this country. We are better than our recent actions have indicated, and we need to do better than this. It's my country, too, and I am officially speaking up against violence, against racial and religious mistreatment of others, and in favor of equal rights and protections for all Americans. Even Muslims, even two blocks away from Ground Zero.
"The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible." -Albert Einstein
The observable Universe is huge. Incredibly, mind-bogglingly huge. When we look out, in any direction, we see galaxies upon galaxies upon galaxies, stretching for billions and billion of light years.
This one picture, taken of a region of sky just one-tenth the size of the Moon, contains more than 10,000 unique galaxies. And there are maybe close to a hundred billion galaxies similar to ours in the Universe; each one contains billions and billions of stars and planets, along with huge molecular and atomic clouds of gas and dust.
All of these galaxies cluster together gravitationally: the places that start out with more matter pull on more and more galaxies, becoming clusters or giant clusters of galaxies, while the places that start out with less can't attract them at all, and become great voids in space.
In fact, we've mapped out where the matter close to our neighborhood (within a few hundred million light years) lives, and here's what we've found!
Pretty impressive, no?
But it gets better. Based on a whole host of observations, we can simulate, on large scales, what the matter in the Universe ought to look like! And what we find, spread out over a sphere 93 billion light years in diameter, is a Universe filled with stars, galaxies, and clusters like so.
All told, there are around a whopping 1080 atoms filling our observable Universe. This is a ridiculously huge number. If you and I were to each choose an atom in the Universe at random, the probability that we'd each choose the same atom is 1 in 1080, or about as likely as winning the powerball jackpot ten times. In a row.
But the Universe is also very large, and these atoms aren't packed together very tightly. So I've got a couple of questions for you.
What if you took all of the atoms in the Universe and packed them together into a solid disk with the same radius as the observable Universe?
How thick do you suppose that disk would be, containing all of the matter in the Universe?
Let's ask the second one: what if, instead of a disk, you packed all of the atoms in the Universe together into a solid cylinder whose length extended across the diameter of the Universe?
With all the atoms in the Universe packed in there, how thick would this cylinder be?
You've had your fun guessing; I've got the answers all figured out, but where's the fun in a giveaway like that?!
Come on, Ethan, don't be like that! GIMME THE ANSWERS!
Okay, okay already. If you compressed the Universe into a disk, it would be about 200 microns thick, or about the size of a paramecium.
But if you compressed the Universe into a cylinder, it would have the same diameter as Earth's orbit around the Sun!
Pretty impressive? Not as impressive as this fact: the cylinder case would be so dense that it, itself, would be a black hole, with light unable to escape it! Just some food for thought on a Friday, and I hope you enjoyed thinking about it!
Update: I realized that the cylinder wouldn't form a black hole, but an object from which no light could escape stretched across the entire Universe known as a cosmic string! WTF is a cosmic string? You'll have to come back on Monday...
"You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does..." -Tom Petty
With Labor Day just around the corner in the US and summer winding down, it's nearly time for the school year to start up again.
Only this time, I get to advise the incoming Freshmen. Of course, the most important part of the plan is to listen. To their interests, to their concerns, to their hopes and aspirations, and to what they hope to get out of their time here at College. And to help them select classes in their first semester that will help them succeed at their goals. I also plan on encouraging them to grow as people, which will likely include exploring student life, discovering the city that many of them are new to, and opening themselves up to new and varied learning opportunities.
So my chance to advise many of them also affords a great opportunity for general advice and guidance. I meet the incoming Freshman on Friday morning, starting at 9:00 AM. So my questions to you (depending on your age) are:
What advice do you wish you had received when you were just starting college?
If you were speaking to an 18-year-old incoming freshman today, what advice would you most like to give?
If you're college-age or younger, what are the most important (to you) topics that a faculty member could advise you about? What information would you be most glad to receive?
You've got roughly 24 hours to reach me with useful tales and comments; let's hear it!
"The only problem with the speed of light, is it gets here too early in the morning." -Danny Nevrath
One of the most common questions I get asked is whether gravity is instantaneous, or whether there's a speed limit to how fast the force of gravity can travel.
It's a good question! After all, we know how fast light travels, and if the Sun were to suddenly wink out of existence, we'd still receive light from it for just over 8 minutes after it disappeared! But what about gravity, and the Earth's orbit? Would the Earth simply fly off in a straight line, like a twirled poi ball the instant a string broke?
Or would it continue to move in its planetary for some time, and perhaps suffer some more interesting effects? Believe it or not, this is one of the most severe differences between Newton's old school theory of gravity and Einstein's General Relativity. According to Newton, you have two masses separated by a distance, and that determines the force. You take one of those masses away, and the force instantly goes away. End of story.
But in general relativity, things are much more intricate, and incredibly interesting. First off, it isn't mass, per se, that causes gravity. Rather, all forms of energy (including mass) affect the curvature of space. So for the Sun and the Earth, the incredibly large mass of the Sun dominates the curvature of space, and the Earth travels in an orbit along that curved space.
If you simply took the Sun away, space would go back to being flat, but it wouldn't do so right away at every point. In fact, just like the surface of a pond when you drop something into it, it snaps back to being flat, and the disturbances send ripples outward!
In Einstein's theory of gravity, these ripples move at the speed of light, not instantaneously.
This is a really amazing idea, and leads me to ask another question. Think about it; if the Earth was stationary, it would feel the ripples in one way, but if the Earth were moving over the surface of space, wouldn't it feel the ripples differently?
It turns out, that while Newton doesn't care what your velocity is, Einstein does. The Sun, as it is right now, won't have its gravity affect Earth for another 8+ minutes, and the gravity that the Earth feels right now pulling it towards the Sun is actually pulling it towards where the Sun was 8+ minutes ago! (Weird, isn't it?)
The Earth, of course, since it's also moving, kind of "rides" over such a ripple, so that it comes down in a different spot from where it was lifted up. It looks like we have two effects going on: velocity affects gravity, and so do changing gravitational fields.
So, in theory, we know that the speed of gravity should be the same as the speed of light. But the Sun's force of gravity out here, by us, is far too weak to measure this effect. In fact, it gets really hard to measure, because if something moves at a constant velocity in a constant gravitational field, there's no observable affect at all. What we'd want, ideally, is a system that has an object moving with a changing velocity through a changing gravitational field. What would that take?
Something intense, like two neutron stars orbiting each other extremely close together! Occasionally, we get very lucky, and a neutron star emits very regular blips of light, pulsing with incredible precision: this makes it a pulsar! If one of these neutron stars is a pulsar aimed at us, we can test whether gravity moves at the speed of light or not!
Incredibly enough, we've discovered multipleindependent binary pulsars with this exact configuration!
Not only is the gravitational source (star #1) moving, but the other object (star #2) is changing its velocity, as it changes its direction in orbit around the gravitational source! Remarkably, this effect causes the orbit to ever-so-slowly decay, which leads to time changes in the pulses!
The predictions from Einstein's theory of gravity are incredibly sensitive to the speed of light, so much so that even from the first binary pulsar system, PSR 1913+16 (or the Hulse-Taylor binary), we have constrained the speed of gravity to be equal to the speed of light with an error of less than1%!
While we'd love to be able to detect these gravitational waves directly, rather than make an indirect measurement, we're likely going to have to wait until close to 2030. Why? We'll need to have LISA up and running, where it's capable of detecting a system like this and directly measuring the speed of gravitational radiation.
But until then, indirect measurements of very rare pulsar systems like this give us the tightest constraints, and tell us that the speed of gravity is between 2.993 x 108 and 3.003 x 108 meters per second, which is an amazing confirmation of general relativity and a terrible difficulty for alternative theories of gravity! (Sorry, Newton!) And now you know not only what the speed of gravity is, but where to look to figure it out!
"There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen." -James Lovell, Astronaut: Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8, and Apollo 13
A few weeks ago you had your chance to ask a commercial astronaut anything, and you gave some great responses! We selected the five best questions to ask the first group of commercial astronauts, including my favorite: the question of whether they'd be willing to go on a trip to Mars, even if it were doomed to be one-way.
Well, the results are back from Astronauts4Hire, and they have generously provided both video and written answers for us! These answers are not just well-thought-out and professional -- although they do come from the pros -- but I'm impressed by how personal they are; they give me a real insight as to who these commercial astronauts are as people, as scientists, and as explorers. They were gracious enough to share not only their expertise, but also their motivations and their personal goals. So without further delay, let's dive in and see what they've got to say! (Videos answers are directly above each question.)
1.) What's a Commercial Astronaut, and how does the "commercial" Astronaut differ from other Astronauts, from Cosmonauts and Space Tourists?
There are three types of astronauts: civil astronauts, commercial astronauts, and spaceflight participants. Civil astronauts are government-employed and trained to fly on specific spacecraft like the Space Shuttle. Commercial astronauts are any professional astronauts trained to fly on privately owned space vehicles. Spaceflight participants, more commonly called space tourists, are people who pay for the spaceflight experience and do not provide a recurring service as career astronauts. In any case, astronauts become official when they reach an altitude of 100 km.
The first commercial astronaut to fly a private spacecraft was Mike Melville's 2004 flight of SpaceShipOne. A commercial astronaut is a highly trained individual possessing both a great diversity of scientific, technical, and spaceflight operations skills to prepare them for the highly varied demands of spaceflight. As such, commercial astronauts have both similar backgrounds, and are trained in similar ways, as astronauts in civil service. Commercial astronauts, like civil astronauts, are professionals that have advanced degrees in science or engineering, and often both. Further, they have the background, prior experience, and training to be fully responsible to the successful operations of the spacecraft systems and the scientific payloads being flown aboard the spacecraft.
To date, there have been seven spaceflight participants, starting with Dennis Tito in 2001. When private suborbital spacecraft begin routine operations in this decade, business models project that there could hundreds of paying space passengers per year. Training of a spaceflight participant is condensed version of the training commercial or civil astronauts must undergo to become acclimated to the space environment prior to a mission and be prepared to deal with in-flight contingencies.
2.) Do A4H's requirements and training differ from NASA's? What types of background and training do you (as private astronauts) have?
A4H is defining the qualification standard to establish the requirements its members must meet in order to be certified for suborbital, and later orbital, spaceflight. The suborbital training includes academic modules pertaining to spacecraft systems and practical modules including hypobaric, centrifuge, microgravity, and unusual attitude training. The orbital training standards are more rigorous and extensive due to the longer duration of orbital missions. We are working with the commercial spaceflight industry to help establish these standards.
The ability be prepared for the unusual conditions of microgravity while being proficient with the particular spacecraft and tasks at hand are key elements of the commercial astronaut workforce. We model our membership requirements and training curriculum from existing models, notably NASA's, though there are some differences. Whereas NASA astronauts generally train for flights on one or two vehicles, commercial astronauts need to consider the need to fly on a variety of spacecraft. Thus, our training is generalized to account for variations in potential spacecraft, their corresponding subsystems, and contingency procedures such as emergency egress, etc.
Many of the A4H commercial astronaut candidates have been competitive throughout previous civil astronaut selection processes. Our candidates have degrees in science or engineering and many have multiple advanced degrees or a doctoral degree. Further, many of our candidates are skilled in aviation, SCUBA diving, foreign languages, or have training in zero-G or simulated extravehicular activity. Our training program aims to round out our candidates with a broad skill base through contracting a number of individual training specialists or by cross-pollinating from within our own skill base.
3.) What are your primary motivations and personal goals for wanting to be an astronaut? Was this your childhood dream? Is there a special scientific/engineering/patriotic/personal aspiration that you hope to fulfill?
Many of the A4H members have different stories and backgrounds, but a common thread is a long-standing, deep fascination with space exploration and the desire to explore. For most of us, becoming an astronaut is an ambition that began in childhood. For Alli Taylor, it was the space shuttle program and "the legacy of Christa McAuliffe growing up in New Hampshire" that inspired her. For others, like Ben Corbin, "it was a combination of the legacy of the Apollo program and the accomplishments of explorers from the distant past". Amon Govrin's dreams began "as a kid growing up in Israel of the 1980s [when] going to space was an unattainable goal."
Despite the odds and inspiration, however, we all chose a path where we followed our interests while keeping the dream in mind. Brian Shiro says he has been "grooming himself to be an astronaut since he was a boy." Alli built on her natural skills in art and "worked really hard at math and science," while Amnon emigrated to the United States where he has built upon his "first job after college as a test and experimentation engineer in the Israeli Defense Force." For Jose Hurtado "the hope and possibility of it has always been a motivation for me... at times it has been deep in the background, and, at other times... it has been at the forefront."
"These childhood dreams... inspired me to pursue an education in science and engineering," says Jason Reimuller, "though my spaceflight motivations now are very different than my earlier childhood motivations... I am [now] also driven by a desire to foster international cooperation, help mature technologies that might lead to a more sustainable coexistence here on Earth, and contribute towards a foundation that will assure the eventual long-term survival of mankind." All of the A4H members share a similar sentiment as well as the sense of being on the forefront of an important paradigm shift in asrtonautics. Ben summarizes it best: "We may not be the first people to go into suborbit or low Earth orbit, but we are creating something new, something sustainable, and the first stages of something that can be built upon for generations and millennia to come."
Jose and Brian, both geoscientists, hope to make their mark on another world someday. "The expertise I bring to the table is mainly in the earth and planetary sciences, and I hope to someday do geophysical exploration on another world," says Brian.
4.) Being commercial astronauts, what types of missions and tasks will you likely be performing? How much control will the private sector have over the types of missions conducted, and what are the other factors, if any?
The burgeoning private spacecraft industry will provide opportunities not only to spaceflight participants but will lead to a new generation of platforms for conducting research. Areas of study will include medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, atmospheric science, remote sensing, and technology development. Researchers wanting to fly experiments in space will need someone to monitor the payloads, take measurements, and ensure successful operation of the experiment during the flight. They will also need subjects to test engineering designs and systems. The private sector will have a great deal of influence over the types of missions conducted, but much of the research funding will likely come from government grants at first.
Although a few scientists may be able to spend the time and money to get trained to fly themselves, most probably will not. They will need to contract out the work to experienced, trained professionals who can efficiently work in the spacecraft environment, such as those at Astronauts4Hire. As more flights become
available and prices decrease, research opportunities will broaden allowing for more universities, research facilities, and corporations to participate. And we're not limited just to research! If a company wants us to test a product, film a commercial, or otherwise do a job for them in microgravity, A4H members are available to fill the need.
In the near future, our efforts will concentrate on suborbital flights and training. However, in the longer term future, Astronauts4Hire will be training candidates for commercial orbital flights as well. Launch providers and commercial space corporations will need highly-trained individuals for a variety of missions, from space science to orbital tourism, and even further down the road, perhaps mining and other resource gathering. Astronauts4Hire will act as a facilitator in bringing companies and astronauts together and ensuring that people hired as astronauts are trained for the job on the specific commercial launch entity's vehicle.
5.) As a commercial astronaut who might be hired independently for a Mars mission, would you go on any craft, even if it wasn't your own country sponsoring the journey? Also, would you go if you knew it was a one-way trip?
Many A4H members encourage commercial spaceflight independent of ones nationality. Countries who have historically been leaders in spaceflight should continue to set the example by encouraging this development of the industry.
The question of "would you go" is a difficult one to answer. The general consensus is that any of us would jump at the chance to be a part of a Mars mission. "Yes, I want to go to Mars!" Brian Shiro says, and others agree. "It is my life goal to go to Mars!" says Ben Corbin, but some of us are more hesitant. Alli Taylor says, "I would most likely take the trip however it depends on my age and any children I may have at the time." Others see themselves with responsibilities here on Earth. Amnon Govrin says, "Being a husband and a father of three, a choice to go for the currently imagined year-and-a-half mission... would have to be made with more considerations in mind than my own and involve everyone affected." Indeed, even short journeys to Mars take up a significant portion of the crew members' lives.
Given A4H members' broad acceptance of international and commercial efforts in space, it's no surprise that many would jump at the chance to go no matter what country's flag was planted first. Jason Reimuller believes "there is a greater allure over the sense of internationalism of modern manned spaceflight and the current research endeavors of global import," and "though I will proudly wear a US flag on my spacesuit, I realize that I am a member first of a global community." Jose Hurtado agrees: "I would accept a spot on an international mission, regardless of the sponsor and without hestitation." Brian Shiro adds, "it doesn't matter who sponsors the journey: US, international, commercial. I'm up for the challenge."
However, A4Hers also understand there are great risks involved, and we acknowledge that risk plays in making a decision such as accepting a mission like this. Alli hopes that "any vehicles able to perform a trip to Mars will be well tested and meet certain safety criteria". Jason also would go "provided it has been properly designed and tested." Others are willing to put even more on the line, Regarding risk, Ben thinks, "as long as there is at least a 50% chance of success," he would go.
As for the idea of a one-way mission: "That's a tough one," Ben says before thinking about it. Not everyone was so quick to jump on the idea. Even Brian was introspective with his response, saying, "If it were a one-way trip, I probably wouldn't go at this stage of my life. However, later on when my kids are grown up, or if families go to form a colony, I would consider it." Alli says: "After thinking long and hard, I would probably not go to Mars on a one-way trip," but for her it would depend greatly on the circumstances. Jason was skeptical of the question itself, saying "there is little to gain by designing a one-way mission, so I feel this question is hypothetical. A sustainable presence requires a round-trip architecture, and that would be the only mission that I would be willing to sign up for." Jose agrees and believes his participation "would depend on the nature of the mission."
This is an amazing time, and while some people are lobbying Congress to keep manned spaceflight as an arm of the US government, I think that commercial spaceflight is not only the wave of the future, but it's ready to start now.
Thanks so much to all of the Astronauts4Hire who helped out, and for giving us a glimpse into their professional and personal lives! And a special thanks to A4H President Brian Shiro, who made this interview possible. Good luck to you all, and may you enjoy your journeys, wherever they may take you!
