Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Aerospace

Powered Flight – 104th Anniversary

A hundred and four years ago today, Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first flights from Kill Devil Hill, close to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their history-making effort sparked the greatest period of technology in the United States and abroad.

I took my first flying lesson on December 16th, 1961, just a day short of their 58th anniversary. By then, the sound barrier had been broken, satellites were in orbit, the Russian, Yuri Gagarin had already orbited the Earth, and John Glenn would be in orbit within a couple of months. It was a great time to get into a career in aviation or aerospace.

First Flight

What makes Wilbur and Orville Wright’s achievement so significant is not only that it was the first time in history that a manned, powered aircraft completed a fully-controlled, sustained flight, but it proved to naysayers around the world that heavier-than-air flight was practical. After the Wrights proved their critics wrong, the field of aeronautical engineering was born. Governments, universities, and inventors soon began dedicating vast resources to understanding the science of flight and methods of building improved flying machines. In essence, every event and discovery in aviation either led up to or followed from the flight of the Wright Flyer, and it changed the way we live forever.

Image and text courtesy of AeroSpaceWeb.org.

17 Dec 2007 by Aerospace Aviation Technobabble

Extreme Solar Images

NASA’s SOHO Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) scientific instrument has captured a complete solar cycle in the ultraviolet (extremely short wavelength light waves) spectrum. This remarkable collage demonstrates the extent to which the Sun changes over its cycle. Solar cycles have been documented for several hundred years, but never with so much detailed information as over this past cycle.

solar cycle

Every eleven years, our Sun goes through a solar cycle. A complete solar cycle has now been imaged by the sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft, celebrating the 12th anniversary of its launch yesterday. A solar cycle is caused by the changing magnetic field of the Sun, and varies from solar maximum, when sunspot, coronal mass ejection, and flare phenomena are most frequent, to solar minimum, when such activity is relatively infrequent. Solar minimums occurred in 1996 and 2007, while the last solar maximum occurred in 2001 Pictured above is a SOHO image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light for each year of the last solar cycle, with images picked to illustrate the relative activity of the Sun.

Image, story courtesy SOHO – EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA & Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Please read our previous post about what the Sun is and what it does. Also read about how Solar activity can be correlated with global climate fluctuations. Then please refer to our Global Warming Resources page.

Educate yourselves – don’t trust good-intentioned but misinformed sources, and be wary of political opportunists whose goal is not to save mankind, but to cripple free enterprise and democracy.

03 Dec 2007 by Aerospace Global Warming Rocket Science

B2 Spirit

I found this photo in my archives and wanted to share it here. Little that I have done in my career in aerospace has made me prouder than to have been on the team that produced this magnificent aircraft.

b2_in_trail

09 Nov 2007 by Aerospace Aviation Military

Solar Spicules

Huge spikes of plasma fly out of the Sun’s surface all the time, according to scientists studying observations made by SOHO and STEREO spacecraft. This week’s SOHO Pick of the Week discusses these spikes in scientific terms, although there is still considerable question as to their nature and effects, especially about how they affect the planets — ours in particular.

I’m thankful for the ongoing study of the Sun. The more we learn about it, the more we will be able to refute the hysterical Greenbat nonsense about man-made global warming .

Breaking News! James Hansen’s Fake Temperature Algorithms

From SOHO Pick of the Week:

spiculesA close up view of the top of the Sun as seen in profile shows thousands of little spurts, like small blow torches, shooting out all over the Sun. The movie shows just an average day’s worth of this kind of activity as seen from the STEREO spacecraft (Ahead) in extreme ultraviolet light (August 3, 2007). These spurts are called spicules. With STEREO’s 2048×2048 image resolution and an image every 10 minutes, we can zoom in on features like this with no distortion. Spicules are plasma jets that shoot through the Sun’s atmosphere or corona at about 90,000 kilometers per hour. Discovered in 1877 by Angelo Secchi, they remain largely unexplained, in part because observations are difficult for objects with a brief life (about 5 minutes) and relatively small size (diameters of just 300 miles / 500 kilometers). They are caused by shock waves formed when sound waves at the solar surface leak into the solar atmosphere. More than 100,000 spicules occur at any given time on our star’s surface.

Watch the video below for a dynamic look at Solar Spicules.

Continue reading…

10 Aug 2007 by Aerospace Astronomy Global Warming Greenbats Science

The Flight of the Phoenix

phoenix-lander.jpgYesterday’s launch of the asteroid-bound Dawn Mission was postponed until September due to bad weather and potential interference with the scheduled launch of the Mars Phoenix Lander on August 8th.NASA has scheduled a news conference for later today to discuss aspects of the postponement and the Phoenix program. Prior to the Phoenix presentations, media will have the opportunity to learn in more detail about the rescheduled Dawn launch.

Image left: Artist’s concept of Phoenix on the surface of Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

The Phoenix Lander is the first in a series of landers in NASA’s Mars Scout Program. The “Phoenix” name is taken as the lander is a reincarnation of previous landers or failed missions. Phoenix will land in the icy Northern Plains of Mars and become a fixed-location probe designed to explore the geological history of that region of the planet.

Read more about the Phoenix Lander Program and watch the really cool NASA animated video of the arrival of Phoenix on Mars: Continue reading…

09 Jul 2007 by Aerospace Rocket Science

SOHO — So Spectacular

This video is from a collection of SOHO images taken over the operational lifetime of the spacecraft (a little more than eleven years). In it you can see some of the more spectacular solar activity that occurred over that period.

“The Sun is anything but a stable, yellow ball in the sky.” That quote is the opening line of commentary in a recently-produced NASA video about the STEREO project — another spaceborne observation system that captures solar images in three dimensions.

I look forward to seeing a three-dimensional equivalent of this video from STEREO in the not-to-distant future.

Video courtesy NASA and SOHO

10 May 2007 by Aerospace Astronomy Rocket Science

The Right Stuff – Wally Schirra, 1923 – 2007

Wally Schirra, space pioneer and astronaut, passed away today at his California home.

From WikiPedia:

wally-schirra.jpgOn April 2, 1959, Schirra was chosen as one of the original seven American astronauts. He entered Project Mercury and was assigned the specialty area involving life support systems.

On October 3, 1962, Schirra became the fifth American in space, piloting the Mercury 8 (Sigma 7) on a six-orbit mission lasting 9 hours, 13 minutes, and 11 seconds. The capsule attained a velocity of 17,557 miles per hour and an altitude of 175 statute miles, and landed within four miles of the main Pacific Ocean recovery ship.

On December 15, 1965, Schirra flew into space a second time in Gemini 6A with Tom Stafford, rendezvousing with astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell, Jr. in Gemini 7. This was the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft in earth orbit. The two vehicles, however, were not capable of actually docking. Gemini 6 landed in the Atlantic Ocean the next day, while Gemini 7 continued on to a record-setting 14-day mission.

On October 11, 1968, Schirra became the first man to fly in space three times on his final flight as commander of Apollo 7, the first manned flight in the Apollo program after a fatal fire during tests of Apollo 1. The three-man crew, including Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham, spent eleven days in earth orbit, performed rendezvous exercises with the upper stage of the Saturn 1-B launch vehicle that rocketed them into space and provided the first television pictures from inside a U.S. manned spacecraft for which he received an Emmy.

Condolences to the Family and Friends of Space Pioneer Wally Schirra.

Image: Wally Schirra – courtesy NASA.

03 May 2007 by Aerospace Aviation Military People

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