spaceflight
esiegel | July 3, 2014“Some prophecies are self-fulfilling
But I’ve had to work for all of mine
Better times will come to me, God willing
Cause I can’t leave this world behind” -Josh Ritter
Sure, many of us have dreams of leaving this world at one time or another. How wonderful it would be to leap from one giant rock to the next, if only it were easier. But the sheer amount of energy it would take leaves it well out of reach for most of us.
Image credit: Daniel Dou of http://www.theendearingdesigner.com/anti-gravity-artwork-seems-to-be-fl….
But what if it were easier? What if we had a gravitational assist from…
esiegel | June 8, 2014“I saw for the first time the earth’s shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word—joy.” -Yuri Gagarin
Most weekends, you can come here and count on me to provide you with a diversion from the science, space and astrophysics we normally talk about during the week. But this weekend, I've got something far too spectacular about the Universe to keep to myself. So have a listen to a classic from The Byrds from…
esiegel | June 4, 2014“There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program — your tax-dollar will go further.” -Wernher von Braun
Over the past 100 years, we've gone from looking out at a Universe whose very nature -- the stars, nebulae, and even the planets -- were virtually unknown to us. And because of the investment we've made as an entire world in the endeavor of science, it's almost breathtaking to realize how far we've come.
Image credit: ESA/C. Carreau, edits by me, via http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2013/03/Planck_history_of_Unive….
But the big question -- the one no one…
esiegel | March 6, 2014“Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.” -Larry Niven
From Earth and beyond, these time lapses show our one-of-a-kind motion through the Universe.
Here on Earth, the night sky (and all the stars in it) appear to rotate a full 360° every 24 hours, producing star trails in long-exposure or time-lapse photography.
Image credit: Roger Groom at http://www.AstroPhotography.com.au/.
But what would you see if you went to space? Would there be star trails up there, and would a spacecraft like the Hubble Space Telescope see the same thing or…
esiegel | February 21, 2014"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
Welcome back to another Ask Ethan! You keep sending in your questions and suggestions, and each week, I'll pick one of my favorites to answer for you and the world. Today's Ask Ethan comes from John, who asks one of the more fanciful and personal questions I've fielded yet, as he wants to know:
If you could jump into the Enterprise, or the Millennium Falcon, or whatever is your favorite faster-than-light starship, what…
esiegel | January 18, 2014"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -Antoine de Saint Exupéry
It's the end of the week here, so it's time for another Ask Ethan column! Today's question comes from longtime reader and fan Jeremy F., who wants to know about the feasibility of the planned Mars One mission. In particular,
I hope 4 people don't just fly to their death, that would be terrible for my chances of getting to Alpha Centauri or Vega before I die.
No kidding. Let's go back to the…
esiegel | November 21, 2013"Mars once was wet and fertile. It's now bone dry. Something bad happened on Mars. I want to know what happened on Mars so that we may prevent it from happening here on Earth." -Neil deGrasse Tyson
Oh, it's true alright, something bad did once happen on Mars. And although there isn't any real danger of that happening to Earth, a little conversation I had earlier this week made me think that it's time to tell all of you a story about our red neighbor, and why it is the way it is today.
You see, when we think about Mars, we think about the smallish, red, desolate world that fascinates us today…
esiegel | October 9, 2013"Even in hindsight, I would not change one whit of the Voyager experience. Dreams and sweat carried it off. But most of all, its legacy makes us all Earth travelers among the stars." -Charley Kohlhase
In the early days of space exploration, it was quite a feat just to get up and out of Earth's atmosphere. There's are two good, simple reason for that, of course: first, it takes a lot of energy to go up that high...
Image credit: Nathan Bergey of http://psas.pdx.edu/orbit_intro/.
and second, if you don't get your spacecraft moving really fast, you're just going to fall back to Earth once you…
esiegel | April 17, 2013“We are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Given the will, we could have humans on Mars within a decade.” -Robert Zubrin
Of all the planets in the Solar System beyond our own, none has captured our imagination quite like Mars has.
Image credit: NASA, via http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA02570.jpg.
From science-fiction fans to scientists and everyone in between, our understanding of the red planet is presently greater than it ever has been in the past. With multiple…
esiegel | April 5, 2013"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Universe has been around for a long time: 13.8 billion years, to be precise. As humans, we're relatively young, and our species has only been around for the last couple of hundred thousand years of it. For nearly all of human history, this is what the night skies have looked like.
Image credit: The Milky Way, by Stephane Guisard.
When the Moon isn't out and you're in a place that's…
esiegel | March 29, 2013“If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens… Where Is Everybody?” -Stephen Webb
It's one of the biggest conundrums in the Universe, known as the Fermi Paradox: if the Universe is so conducive to life, and if there are so many opportunities for it within our galaxy alone, why isn't there any evidence (outside of the History Channel) of extraterrestrial life?
Image credit: Peter Essick, via National Geographic.
Moreover, why haven't we been visited by some extraterrestrial intelligence? After all, given the fact that our Universe is nearly 14 billion years old, while our galaxy itself is only a…
esiegel | August 30, 2012"I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further, since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet. But I have been careful not to advance this supposition to the public." -Giuseppe Piazzi, discoverer of Ceres, the first Asteroid
Out beyond Mars, but not quite out as far as Jupiter, a collection of thousands of rocky objects, ranging in size from pebbles all the way up to the size of Texas, lies the asteroid belt.
Image credit: David Minton and Renu…
esiegel | August 25, 2012"Geologists have a saying: rocks remember." -Neil Armstrong
Looming up above us, hundreds of thousands of miles away, is the largest moon in the inner solar system: our Moon.
Image credit: © 2004 by Ulli and Christian 'Pete' Lotzmann.
One of the greatest achievements in the history of our planet culminated on July 20th, 1969, when the first creatures from our world set foot on the Moon, becoming -- as far as we know -- the first creatures to ever willingly leave their own world and land on another.
Image credit: NASA, of Neil Armstrong's descent towards the lunar surface.
The honor of the…
esiegel | August 7, 2012"I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope." -Albert Schweitzer
As you all know, the most ambitious interplanetary mission ever attempted -- Mars Science Laboratory -- successfully landed its Curiosity rover on Mars earlier this week. Last night, I had the opportunity to go on my local news and speak a bit about it, and as always, it was an absolute pleasure.
(Video credit: KGW / Ben Lacy / Carey Higgins / Steph Stricklen.)
Of course we got to talk about the rover itself and its science potential, and exactly how much more sophisticated it is than any of its martian…
esiegel | August 6, 2012“We are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Given the will, we could have humans on Mars within a decade.” -Robert Zubrin
This is what we can accomplish when we invest in something big.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Mars Science Laboratory.
I'm not talking about the Olympics, of course. I'm talking about investing in science, in exploration, in robotics, in engineering, in technology, and in humanity, and what can we accomplish?
Image credit: Mars Curiosity / NASA / JPL…
esiegel | July 23, 2012"Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known." -Ronald Reagan
Earlier today, Sally Ride, the first American woman ever to fly in outer space, passed away at the age of 61 from pancreatic cancer. To many different people, her life, her achievements, and her death means a great diversity of things. To anyone with a love of outer space, human exploration, and achieving your dreams, her story will likely resonate with you, too. I'd like to share with you what are,…
esiegel | July 20, 2012"The achievements of Apollo were so bold and our subsequent efforts so timid that the energy of those years seems like a youthful dream." -Buzz Aldrin
43 years ago today, humanity took our first steps on another world, venturing nearly 400,000 kilometers from home and walking on the surface of the Moon.
Image credit: NASA, Apollo 11, photo by Neil Armstrong.
Of course, what we found there was a world whose soil was very similar to our own, but devoid of any atmosphere, liquid, or signs of life, present or past. But out beyond the Moon, visible in the distance even when viewed from Earth,…
esiegel | June 26, 2012"We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut
From hundreds of miles up, the International Space Station speeds around the Earth, completing 18 orbits a day, looking down on us and returning some absolutely fabulous images.
Image credit: Fyodor Yurchikhin and the Russian Space Agency Press Services, of Greenland from the ISS.
But what you may not appreciate is that my favorite images taken from the ISS weren't taken by American Astronaut Don Pettit (better known as @astro_Pettit), but rather by a…
esiegel | May 11, 2012"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." -Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut may have it right for most of us, but not all of us spend all of our time on Earth. A select dozen of us, in fact, have made it, as Cat Power would sing, to
The Moon.
Image credit: Apollo 15, Dave Scott, NASA.
Back in 1971, the Apollo 15 astronauts made huge strides in space exploration, making use of the first manned lunar rover and spending over 18 hours on activities outside of the spacecraft. But two (of the three) crew members experienced heartbeat irregularities on…
esiegel | January 8, 2012"I don't run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet."
-Nadia Comaneci
Whether it's a new task, a new subject, a new place or a new person, life is full of wonderful new experiences, if you've got the courage to go out and pursue them. One way to do that, as Thao with the Get Down Stay Down would tell you, is to
Travel.But there are some places I always thought travel -- for everyone -- would be impossible. And one of those places is, well, this.
This (and all images) credit: Lana Sator, 2011…