Going up?

Space elevators?
It reads a bit like science fiction, but the proposal to build an elevator to space – which is science fiction right now – is an intriguing concept.
The idea, as I understand it, is to run an 8.000-mile-long piece of - for the lack of a better term - carbon-fiber rope up into geostationary orbit around the earth. Then using the rope, you haul things up and down to space. Great idea, but how the heck are they going to get that long string out to somewhere in space.?
Look, I know that engineers have a long history of stringing long pieces of wire together to make very strong structures. Just look at suspension bridges like the Gold Gate Bridge. There are thousands upon thousands of miles of wire twisted into giant cables that hold those bridges up. It is not rocket science, but getting a wire like that into space seems to me that it will take a whole lot of rocket science.
How would you do it? I haven’t a clue. Do you take the wire up into space and then dangle it back down or do you try to tow it up into space? Do you have any idea how much weight that would be? Lordy, it would be more than any rocket we now have even on the design boards.
I think it is a great idea, and I volunteer to be the elevator man that runs the car up and down. For you younger people, elevators used to have operators who ran the elevators in most big buildings, instead of just pushing a button for the floor you want.
Pappy told me a great story about an elevator man he met in Kansas City about 70 years ago. It seems that Pappy was checking into a hotel there in the evening and just as the elevator car came to take him up to his floor, these two big bodyguard types with a rather inebriated fellow slung between them came rolling up. The elevator man looked at Pappy and said, “One moment, sir, I will be right back” and then whisked the trio up to the top floor. When he got back, the elevator man – being quite a gentleman about it, Pappy said – apologized to Pappy and said, “You know, of course, who that was?” Pappy admitted his ignorance. The elevator man said, “Why that was Senator Truman.” (As in Harry S. Truman, the Pendergast machine hack politician who would become president of the United States in 1945 when Franklin Roosevelt died.)
Elevator operators got to meet the most interesting of folks. Too bad we are so automated these days we don’t need them any more.

And the flag was still there!

Lunar orbiter spots flags

 

It sounds almost like a like a line out of the Star-Spangled Banner … and the flag was still there. It seems the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has peeked at all seven of the Apollo mission landing sites and at six of them, the U.S. flag put up by the visiting astronauts is still standing, still “waving.”

Having watched Apollo 11 (the only one that blew down its flag when the lander launched itself back into space) and most of the rest, it still makes the old heart swell with pride to know that the vagaries of time and space have not wiped out the souvenirs America left on the moon.

Lots of hot days and cold nights have passed, but the flag is still there. Where is Frances Scott Keys when you need him.

It would be my dearest wish to be able to see a return of manned flight to the moon. Of course, it won’t be by the U.S., but maybe the Chinese will do it next. Maybe, being that the Chinese traditionally take a much longer view on things that the Americans, the Chinese will go to stay and set up camp on the moon.

As I said, it is what humans do. We explore and, yes, we conquer. I would hope that there would have been more of an effort from my fellow Americans about pursuing manned spaceflight, but alas, unlike other things, the pace of history of exploration has not sped up like other human developments.

If you look at history, especially of the European exploration of the planet that basically opened the world up to all the advances we have seen in the last two centuries, you would see that that exploration, that began in the 15^th Century under Henry the Navigator, the king of Portugal, would extend almost five centuries before our small domain was pretty much explored out. We have been only going into space for less than half a century. Essentially, we are about where Henry and his explorers were at the same time, barely halfway down the west coast of Africa.

Like most Americans, I guess, I lack the patience to look at the long term and realize that we actually have come a long way in conquering a very hostile environment that is just low earth orbit. It is a bit like sailing out into the Atlantic Ocean in 90-ton caravel. It would be almost 200 years before ships displacing nearly 1000 tons would be sailing the oceans and more than 500 years later, we are finally putting ships 500-times that size to sea.

If we persevere, we will get there. I just wish we would go faster.

Mars and beyond

Group plans mission to mars
A group from the Netherlands plans to start an emigration effort to Mars. Wow.
Now the headline on the Fox News story up there is a bit of a misnomer. It says it is a “suicide mission.” No, for Americans, this is no more a suicide mission than were the English and other European nations’ efforts to establish colonies in North America in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. Some succeeded, others didn’t.
The point to me is that they even tried.
If you go back to the 16^th Century, you will find a number of references to unsuccessful settlements along the U.S. Atlantic Coast. I suspect that none of the people in this “colonies” viewed their trip as a suicide mission, although it ultimately turned out to be one for many of them.
In all of these colonies, the people who moved there undoubtedly knew the opportunities to return to their native lands were marginal at best … and in some cases they were successful in bailing out. There probably will be no such opportunities for these space-faring pioneers.
Only St. Augustine survived of the pre-1600 efforts and the most successful efforts in the U.S. came in 1607 (Jamestown, which nearly failed) and 1620 (at Plymouth, which also had a rough time of it). More followed and the risk of dying in the process was reduced.
This “pioneering” spirit is part of the energy that was invested in what became America. A similar spirit has been replicated in other places around the world, but can be seen going back as far as the Natives immigrating to the Americas more than 10 millennia ago. It was seen in the people from Europe who went on to explore and, yes, conquer the vast relatively open spaces of North America.
It is what humans do. It is what has been done throughout the history of humankind.
It, to me, is inspiring and incredible to see this Dutch group embark on organizing this adventure not as some government project, but as a private venture. They have the technology … we have the technology … mankind has the technology. We have the resources. It will be interesting if this group can raise the resources for this effort.
It is also inspiring to see American private space pioneering companies willing to join in the effort.
The tragedy is that such an effort could have been undertaken years ago to just the moon, which is not such a big leap. It still could be taken, although, this effort shows much more inspiring imagination. To the moon (been there, done that) is one thing, but to MARS … and maybe someday beyond.
My mother, who spent much of her life studying orbital mechanics and writing computer programs to mathematically model missions to orbit the earth, to go to the moon AND to go to Mars, I hope would be smiling down on these adventurers and infusing them with the spirit that she had as child of the American West in Montana.
These are the new pioneers - wish them luck