Yep -- I especially liked Voyager's "sticky string" method of gathering samples for its biological lab to analyze.

-the other Doug

Initially the planning was to use AS-205 to launch the CSM and AS-208 to launch the LM. Then, after the Fire, the planning was pushed back farther into the Saturn IB inventory and the CSM was shifted off of AS-205 and onto AS-207. All of this planning went away when the manned Apollo flights were pushed back long enough for the Saturn V program to mature and produce a flyable booster prior to the Earth-orbital manned LM checkout flight.

The initial mission was informally referred to as "AS-258," the later one informally designated "AS-278." Eventually, Apollo 9 flew as AS-504.

-the other Doug

Yep -- and while looking at some other things on YouTube, I came across a trailer for yet another interview-the-Moonwalkers film, "The Wonder of it All," which is being shown at various special functions across the U.S. right now but seems never destined for general release.

-the other Doug

Unfortunately, Nick, Venus' mass is very nearly exactly that of Earth -- close enough that I wouldn't expect to see any statistical differences in atmospheric gasses related to escape velocity.

When I look at Venus, Mars and the Earth, and ask myself what atmospheric condition is shared by the former two and not by the latter, the only thing that comes to mind is direct interaction between the atmosphere and the solar wind. Earth's magnetic field wards off the direct solar wind, but Venus and Mars both endure direct impact of the solar wind into their upper atmospheres.

This continual "spalling" of the atmosphere is what has supposedly accounted for the reduction in Mars' atmosphere to such a pitiful remnant at this point in geological time. If Venus has been sans magnetic field for most of its history, you'd have to think it's regenerating its air a lot more robustly than Mars ever could.

But, in any event -- could this unusual concentration of rare isotopes be the result of high-energy interactions between the solar wind and the upper atmosphere? The only other thing I can imagine that would account for it would be differentiation in the solar nebula -- but for that to be the case, you'd have to have a relative abundance of certain isotopes and a "desert" of such isotopes in the band of the nebula from which Earth accreted. Occam's Razor would suggest we're looking at a post-accretion effect and not a question of solar nebula composition.

-the other Doug

As I have mentioned before, I'm lucky enough to have a cable TV system that offers NASA TV as part of its basic service. Today is the second day of my weekend (shift work... *sigh*...), and being a little loopy on the Vicodin I got after an unplanned root canal yesterday... well, let's just say I've been sitting like a vegetable watching NASA TV all day.

I was lucky enough to see two full replays of this morning's Soyuz launch of the Expedition 16 crew. I have to say, I don't recall seeing such high-quality tracking camera views of earlier Soyuz launches as I saw today.

The dynamics of the launch were interesting. It was just dusk at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and of course the rocket was launched to the east, into the rapidly darkening sky. For the first minute and a half of flight, it was a night launch, with the exhaust of the Soyuz booster gleaming brightly against a dark sky.

Then, about 30 seconds before the outboard strap-on boosters burned out and were dropped, the vehicle flew up and out of the Earth's shadow. Highlighted for a moment in the golden hues of sunset, the vapor trail suddenly glowed brightly, which dramatically highlighted the pyrotechnics when the boosters flared out and dropped away, followed by the core stage.

The quality of the telephoto tracking camera system was very, very good. All stage separation events were clearly visible. It caught fantastic details in the plumes of the engines as the vehicle gained altitude and the plumes spread widely.

Does anyone know if the Russians recently upgraded their tracking cameras? Or, perhaps, has NASA lent the Russians a few tracking camera systems in the spirit of good PR?

In any event, it was a very satisfying bit of launch coverage. Though, as someone who remembers Mercury and Gemini launches and the Cold War "space race," it is still very odd for me to turn on my TV and watch a Soyuz launch live, on which an American is a passenger.

I'm not complaining, mind you. It's just a very strange feeling.

-the other Doug

Me? I'm just happy that we're gettng post-storm pictures...!



-the other Doug

The Moon actually has its basins evenly distributed around the globe. Within statistically significant limits, there are just as many basins on the far side as on the near side, and there as just as many in the southern hemisphere as the northern hemisphere.

However, the basins on the near side are almost all filled with mare lavas, while the basins on the far side are almost exclusively not mare-filled. There is also a tendency for the southern hemisphere basins to be less mare-filled than those in the northern hemisphere, even on the near side.

The question is more why the Moon's lava flows occurred preferentially on its Earth-facing side? The best theories I have heard involve tidal interactions, the "freezing" of a tidal bulge on the near side, and these factors interacting with a non-homogenous melting of the upper mantle around a non-melted chondritic lower mantle. But there is not yet a satisfactory theory that addresses all of the observed facts.

It actually occurs to me that the Moon is similar to Iapetus, in that it is quite a bit darker on one side than it is on the other. The albedo range isn't as great, but it is significant.

-the other Doug

Hmmm... for some reason, I was surprised at the thought of a meteor being a breccia. The more I think about it, though, the more reasonable it sounds.

I can well imagine that a lot of meteors are "flakes" of material that has been ejected from energetic collisions between asteroids. And it makes sense that much of the material that would be flung away from such an impact would be some of the most energetically altered. Those are prime conditions for forming breccias.

Is this what chondritic breccia looks like? All of the breccias I have ever seen were composed of clasts of differentiated materials, and matrices made up of shock melt generated from differentiated materials. Since chondritic material is, by definition, undifferentiated, I suppose breccias made up of them might look a little different from anything I've ever seen.

It does also occur to me, though, that many asteroids show signs of having melted enough to undergo some degree of differentiation. So I can also imagine there are a lot of breccias floating around out there which are mixtures of chondritic and differentiated materials.

I love geology, ya know?

-the other Doug

There were some *minor* modifications made to the SMs of Skylab CSMs to add heaters for long periods in solar inertial orientation. But in this case, about the heatshield materials, you're wrong, Jim. The heatshield material used on Skylab CSMs was indeed different than that used on lunar flights. And the *primary* reason for PTC on lunar flights was heatshield thermal control. Look it up. (The ethylene glycol active thermal control system in the CSM was designed to maintain thermal control inside the vehicle throughout translunar and transearth cost, with the understanding that attitudes would be shifted *on occasion* to avoid hot spots. PTC was *only* introduced to address the heatshield thermal regime issue.)

Actually, the largest modifications made to Skylab CSMs had nothing to do with the thermal regime. They had to do with the seals used on the hypergolic fuel systems. Mainline Apollo CSMs (and LMs, for that matter) used a variety of plastic seal materials on the hypergolic fuel systems that fed the various engines. The useful lifetime of an Apollo CSM was measured from the first moment it was fueled. At that point, the seals in the fuel lines began to deteriorate. You could not fly an Apollo CSM or LM more than two months after it was first fueled without tearing it apart and replacing all of the seals. For Skylab, the plastic materials (nylon mostly, IIRC) were replaced by newer materials (metals, in some cases) which resisted the corrosive effects of the hypergolics better, and for longer periods. Unfortunately, they didn't work as seals *quite* as well as the original materials -- the fuel leakage in the Skylab 3 RCS fuel system occurred around one of these new, longer-lasting seals.

But, once again, if you delve deeply into the Skylab historical documents, you'll find that the heatshield materials used were modified to avoid the cold-soak deterioration issue that lunar Apollo heatshields were prone to. The Skylab chronology mentions the subject at least a couple of times.

-the other Doug

There *are* no Walter Cronkites or even (shudder) Jules Bergmans out there today. There are no mainstream media commentators who champion space exploration, or who even seem to "get it" at even the most fundamental levels.

All we have are Miles O'Brien on CNN (who gets excited about these things, but who will abandon that excitement if it means getting a promotion to something beyond "science correspondent") and occasionally Keith Olbermann. Beyond that, space is treated in the media as an "amusing little story" at best and "a horrible waste of money" at the worst.

The only media outlet championing space exploration right now is the Discovery Channel and its myriad associated networks. While they mostly do a good job, their contributions are few and far between -- we get new programming, on average, of once a *year* (during "space week") and then spend the rest of the year (i.e., the *other* 51 weeks) watching the same repeats over and over. Or watching absolutely *no* programming about space exploration. At all.

Even NASA TV gets to where it re-runs the same films over and over. Yes, you get some fine little bits and pieces from them, including press conferences and such, but in terms of historical films, there are at least 50 hours worth of films covering early space achievements -- and we get to see about four hours' worth of them, repeated over and over and over.

Forget a balloon flight -- we here need to be setting up our own cable network!!!

-the other Doug

Y'all have painted the Apollo thermal problem with too broad a brush, I'm afraid. The issue wasn't with CSM systems -- the CSM was fitted with radiators that served to keep its internal temperatures within acceptable ranges, even in heat soak / cold soak conditions. The fact that CSMs were able to fly in Earth orbit without any problems without resorting to passive thermal control proves this, as does the fact that CSMs were used as crew ferry vehicles during Skylab, during which time they spent days at a time with roughly the same solar orientation (they had to, Skylab spent a large amount of time in solar inertial attitude so that the ATM could make long-term solar observations).

The thermal issue with Apollo was entirely and solely with the ablative used on the lunar CMs. A different ablative was used on CMs designed for return from the Moon than was used on Skylab CMs, for example. It had better characteristics under the higher heat loads encountered on a lunar entry trajectory than anything else out there. But it had a very nasty tendency to deteriorate when it got too cold.

The lunar CSMs were, during trans-lunar and trans-earth flight, faced with a much more complete blackbody environment on their shadowed sides than is found in orbit around a reflective body such as Earth, or even the Moon. The CSM systems could maintain temps in the CM and SM, no problem, even in that environment and even in cold-soak conditions. But the heat shield needed to be rotated in order to keep it from getting too cold and deteriorating (shredding is a better word).

That's the reason why the extra-long entry blackout was more worrisome than anything else on Apollo 13 -- that spacecraft had used a very badly controlled PTC on its way back to Earth, and by the end the CM and LM were mostly in shadow, with the sun shining mostly down the throat of the SPS engine bell. That heat shield got colder than any other during Apollo, and the great fear was that it would have deteriorated enough to be ineffective during peak heating. Those who knew the risk at the time took every second that blackout lasted longer than normal as additional confirmation that the crew had been incinerated. It was a very emotional moment for those people when contact was finally regained.

-the other Doug

Note how o'Phil neglects to mention that Spudis' comments come from the point of view that it's a much better idea to send humans to SPA who can intelligently gather samples and who can collect more samples than a robotic sample return mission.

We still have a LOT to learn from the Moon. We need to go back.



-the other Doug

Well, I saw it yesterday. I was impressed.

For one thing, of the nine men still alive who walked on the Moon, they had commentaries from eight of them. Only Neil Armstrong chose not to participate -- and it's not like we didn't see and hear him, from contemporary recordings and films. Interestingly, perhaps in silent memory of them, there were almost no images of the three moonwalkers who have passed on -- Conrad, Shepard and Irwin -- with Al Bean only even mentioning Pete's name once.

There was a good amount of commentary from a guy who only ever flew as a CMP, too -- but then again, Mike Collins has such a startlingly intelligent wit and delightful way of telling a story, I was *really* happy to see a lot of him in this piece.

The next most prolific contributor was Charlie Duke, and this again met my wholehearted approval. Charlie was always the most enthusiastic of the guys who went to the Moon, and while he has lost some of that frenetic energy with age and the calming influence of his faith, he was more boyishly happy in his reminiscences than I've seen him in years. He even admitted to having been so incredibly relieved when Apollo 11 finally touched down on the Moon that "...I couldn't even say Tranquility. I said 'Twangquility' or something like that." Which is very true.

Charlie had one of the best insights into himself and into Neil Armstrong, as well. He said something along the lines of (paraphrasing from memory, here) "Neil was the best guy to be the first guy on the Moon. He was real -- controlled. He had a lot of control, he thought up that great line. I wouldn't have been a good choice, I wouldn't have had any control, I would've just screamed 'Yahooooo, I'm on the MOON!' or somethin' like that..." In point of fact, Duke was the *only* guy to let out a scream when his LM landed, and he did sort of holler "That first step on the lunar surface is SUPER, Tony!" when he had his own shot at climbing down that ladder and setting his own foot onto the Moon.

I was very pleased to see John Young appear, albeit somewhat briefly. He had some very pithy and insightful things to say, though. Just like John -- never use six words when three will do.

Al Bean was confident and happy. Dave Scott was only on screen a little, but as always he was well-spoken. Cernan, as usual, came off as a cheerleader who hasn't yet realized that high school is over. Schmitt was reserved and somehow sad. Mitchell showed the sense of awe and wonder that the trip brought out in him, never to be put back in the bottle like the proverbial djinni.

There were maybe 20 seconds of footage that I had never seen before, almost all of it from one of the trasnposition and docking maneuvers. There was a very nice piece of film editing, though, that I had never seen before -- someone matched the multi-loop MOCR recordings to the 16mm film being shot in the control room on July 20, 1969, and we got to watch Charlie Duke throughout the descent, hearing the actual words he spoke *and* watching his face as he spoke them. That was a very nice piece of work.

Finally, they end the film running each and every one of the guys' reactions to being questioned about the "moon hoax" thing. From John Young's "Why would you want to take the most impressive thing people have ever done and crap on it like that?" attitude to Charlie Duke's "I could maybe see faking it one time -- but NINE TIMES???? Why in the world would anyone do that?" to Mike Collins' "You ever have two people who know a secret? You can't even keep it then. You just CAN'T <breaking out in laughter> you CANNOT have TENS of THOUSANDS of people in on a secret like that!"

It was an amusing way to end the piece.

-the other Doug

"Mankind is more disposed to suffer what evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they have become accustomed."

-the other Doug

Testimony to how it's just not possible to design a one-size-fits-all interplanetary probe, mix up the sensors a bit, and fly the same thing to a different place every few years.

It's not just a matter of pulling one camera off and sticking another one on -- changing camera technology means changes to signal conditioning, data processing, transmission encoding, etc., etc. And that's not even considering the advances made from year to year in each of *those* technologies, either.

These things are designed to do certain things as efficiently as possible with not a milligram more mass than is absolutely necessary to do those things. That means they have to be specially designed to their tasks, each one unique to its mission.

If we were flying five to ten a year, an adjustable one-size-fits-all approach might work. But for flagship missions that fly every five to ten years? Nope.

-the other Doug

The Sun is *not* environmentally friendly. Without our magnetic field and our ozone-capped atmosphere, the Sun would make this entire planet unlivable.

The Sun is like the government -- you know you need it up there, providing basic services that you simply cannot live without. But you don't ever want it in your living room...



-the other Doug

It's early spring in South America. There's a lot of moisture in the air over the entire continent. That, combined with the rather extreme slant angle through which we're looking at the ground in this image (putting a lot of air between the viewpoint and the ground) means that yes, it likely is a true-color view.

-the other Doug

Hmmm... maybe not the best choice in concepts, there, karma-wise, Doug...

-the other Doug

Well... considering the fact that Voyagers 1 and 2 were originally to be Mariners (though I have no idea if they would have been Mariners 11 and 12 or not), we *almost* got a second successful pair-launch out of the program!

-the other Doug

No need to worry -- we all know that the world will only end just as soon as quantum reality coalesces around the event of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. No less than a picosecond before that event occurs, this world, aye, perhaps even this entire universe, will meet its end.

But since this is the Cubs we're talking about, I don't imagine we have anything to fear anytime soon... wait, what's that, you say? The Cubs just won their division and are in the playoffs?

Uh-oh...

-the other Doug

I doubt it, Nick. Jason is only interested in active or recently active volcanoes, I do believe -- and the youngest volcanic features on the Moon are on the order of a billion or so years old. (Some may be just younger than that, but not much -- the absolute youngest features may be as little as 800 million years old, but that's not very rigorously constrained.)

There has been volcanic activity on Mars far more recently than on the Moon, and we all know how Jason feels about that red *thing*...

-the other Doug

That, Stuart, is a masterful expression of... well, of my own mind. For one.

If I don't say I appreciate your gifts often enough, I apologize...

-the other Doug

True -- though I am ancient enough to remember the very first telecasts relayed by comsats. The first one, which I do recall, was bounced off of Echo. I remember several, including some of the coverage of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics (if I'm remembering correctly) which had the video subtitle "LIVE via Early Bird"...

We take them for granted now, but I recall a day when live telecasts from remote portions of the world were a Space-Age Wonder. (Then again, I can recall that the very first "live" coverage of a manned spaceflight splashdown was on Gemini V, and consisted not of video but of telephoto still images relayed in near real-time.)

-the other Doug

Well, it's playing at the local "art house" theater here in Mpls this week, and looks as if this is the only week it will be playing. I'm planning on seeing it over my weekend (Tues.-Weds.), though I have a feeling I've seen every piece of footage they have. Maybe not as cleaned up as they've managed, but if there is a single bit of film taken during the Apollo missions that I haven't seen, I'd be quite surprised...

-the other Doug

I will also point out that some Viking materials were copied to or delivered directly to other institutions, some of which may have archived them. For example, Cornell received a lot of Viking materials, since Sagan and others in Ithaca were on the Viking imaging teams.

I know there are (or were) Viking images at Cornell, but have no idea what other materials may have been sent there as "support" data. It might be worth making some inquiries there and at the universities where other Viking PIs were employed.

-the other Doug