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April, 2016
Santa Monica Amateur
Astronomy Club
The Observer UPCOMING CLUB MEETING:
FRIDAY, APRIL 15 (7:30 PM)
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Ad astra!
Operation Break-
through Starshot
OUR MEETING SITE:
Wildwood School
11811 Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Free parking in garage,
SE corner of Mississippi
&Westgate.
COVER ILLUSTRATION:
Ad astra! Yuri Milner
and Stephen Hawking
announce...a mission to
the stars. (See inside.)
Santa Monica
Amateur Astronomy
Club
Thanks to all of you for accommo-
dating our meeting change. We’re
back to the second week of every
month for the remainder of the
year—so don’t forget!
We’ll resume guest speakers at the
usual time next month. Mean-
while, WE WANT YOU ! For Fri-
day, it’s time for the club to share.
Bring an astronomy book you’d
like to tell us about, or a news item
that grabbed you. Please keep it on
astronomy and space topics! After
all, it’s your club!
If you’d rather just listen, that’s
fine, too! We’ll have quite a lot to
talk about!
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FROM THE “SPACEFLIGHT NOW” WEBSITE:
“With the same outpouring of community support we saw with the arrival of Endeav-our, we look forward to celebrating this gift from NASA as it journeys from the coast through city streets to the California Science Center.”
The month-long journey by sea that began today will take the tank-carrying barge through Panama Canal and around to Marina del Rey, California. Officials say the trip will hug the coastline and would come ashore if bad weather threatens during the trip. Arrival is targeted for May 19.
On Saturday, May 21, the tank will travel the Los Angeles city streets from the marina dock to Exposition Park in 13 to 18 hours, parading a distance of 16 miles.
It will be reminiscent of Endeavour’s 12-mile trek from the Los Angeles International
Airport to the museum in October 2012, albeit less disruptive to utilities and no trees
will need to be cut down this time given the tank’s smaller width.
—Tank #94 is the last External Tank from the Shuttle program. The ET was the only major
part of the Shuttle that wasn’t reused—instead, it was designed to burn up in the atmosphere once it
had served its purpose. Older and heavier than later tanks, this one was never given flight status—it
was used for research and investigation on tank performance. Soon, it will join its counterpart at the
California Science Center. Expect to be very impressed!
WOW! TIME FOR ANOTHER SHUTTLE PARADE!
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Age Old Dream: Landing on a Pillar of Fire...
They finally did it...Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket sent a Dragon cargo freighter
to the International Space Station. About 8 minutes and 35 seconds after
launch, the 15-story tall first stage booster returned, landing on a “pillar of
fire”, just as in the old science fiction movies...and on a floating, moving
platform, no less!
This isn’t the easiest way to bring back a rocket! Cost savings? Childhood
dream? Just to say we could do it? Obsession? All of the above?
The first few attempts were, as we say, ‘not entirely successful’. But, this
one was—so, congratulations.
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In the 1950 George Pal movie, “Destination
Moon”, the ‘pillar of fire’ rocket is nuclear. A
reactor heats up water, which is thrust out
the back at high speed. Nuclear rockets
could probably get us to Mars more quickly
than chemical rockets—but, given the pro-
pensity that rockets have for exploding, this
idea had its detractors.
This was a favorite of club member and late
friend Palmer McBride, who worked on the
Saturn V and the Lunar Module.
Pillars of
Fire!
Even Tintin got in the act!
Drawn by Herge, and now owned by
Nick and Fanny Rodwell...our hearts go
out to our friends in Belgium.
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Yuri Milner is back
with…
OPERATION
BREAKTHROUGH
STARSHOT
Yuri Milner,
Stephen Hawking and
Freeman Dyson
Can we send a
postage stamp-
sized, 1 gram mi-
crocraft to Alpha
Centauri—and
get data trans-
mitted back to
earth? Russion
billionaire Yuri
Milner is betting
$100 million that
we can.
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Powered by a multi-gigawatt laser array on earth, the “nanoprobe” would accelerate at 25,000 g’s,
reach 20% the speed of light, and take about 20 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star sys-
tem to our sun. Once there, it would relay data back to earth with its built-in, ultra-compact laser.
The whole thing would have a mass of 1 gram. (There are 454 grams in a pound.)
Can it really work? The idea has been around for a while. The $100 million—that’s the new part.
Milner hopes to see a picture returned of a planet around Alpha Centauri (4.4 light years distant) in
his lifetime. Of course, if this doesn’t work, Milner, who also founded Operation Breakthrough Lis-
ten, would probably settle for finding alien life.
Some of us got to see the audacious billionaire at the Caltech event advertised in a previous bulletin.
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Alternative Concept for Interstellar Travel Even matter-antimatter propulsion, advanced as it is (and was, for 1968!), has a draw-
back: You must carry all that fuel with you. Accelerating anything up to—let alone
over!—the speed of light takes astounding energy. The laser concept frees the rocket
from having to accelerate its own fuel to near-light velocities.
The BUSSARD SCOOP doesn’t need to leave with a full
tank—it picks up hydrogen and helium along the way, from
the highly rarefied medium that pervades interstellar space.
It then feeds atoms into its fusion drive.
There had better be at least the expected atom per cubic me-
ter out here—it’s a long way to the next gas station.
It’s also a bad day when you run into a speck of dust at near
the speed of light.
***Studio executives couldn’t understand why it
was taking Gene Rodenberry so long to design a
spaceship. “Take a cigar, poke a few holes in it,
there’s your spaceship,” was the directive. Ignor-
ing that time-honored advice gave us the most
iconic spaceship of all time...
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At his “Operation Break-
through Starshot” an-
nouncement, Yuri Milner
was joined by Stephen
Hawking and by Nobel
Laureate Freeman Dyson.
That definitely lends you
a little ‘street cred’ in the
world of science. One
pop news headline talked
about ‘Stephen Hawking’s
wild idea’—but of course,
it isn’t.
The great physicist, sci-
ence fiction writer and
futurist Robert Forward
was a pioneer in these
studies. (Great name for
a ‘futurist’, right?)
Forward pictured a great Fresnel
lens—the kind that focuses an over-
head projector or lighthouse beacon
(remember these things?) directing
a 10 million gigawatt laser at a craft
that’s hitched to a light sail.
Makes the Tri-Flux Capacitor in
“Back to the Future” look like a toy!
How do you stop once you arrive?
Detach the front piece and let it drift
ahead of you, so that it reflects the
laser light backward…
Brilliant!
Once again, the fuel stays at home.
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There are other ideas, of course…
The Alcubierre Warp Drive, inspired by Star Trek, stretches and squeezes
space, so that the expanding space behind the ship pushes it forward.
Miguel Alcubierre is a highly respected physicist...but didn’t Einstein say
you can’t go faster than light? Not exactly! Einstein said that you can’t
send information faster than light. And you can’t go faster than light rela-
tive to the space around you...but the space around you may be warped to
tunnel right through more distant space. Anyone’s brain hurting?
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Don’t Try This At Home! This is Project Orion. Be-
tween his Nobel Prize for
Quantum Electrodyamics
and his backing Yuri
Milner, Freeman Dyson
did a number of studies on
a rocket that drops nukes
out the back, explodes
them, and propels itself
forward to the stars by
surfing the nuclear blast
wakes.
In the 1950s and early 60s,
some thought this was a
capitol idea to get to the
stars—and it might even
help us get rid of our pesky
nuclear arsenals!
What could possibly go
wrong?
About 300,000 thermonuclear (fusion) bombs would get us to 3.3% of the speed of
light, and we (or someone) would reach Alpha Centauri in a mere 133 years. The
rockets could be huge—almost like a ‘spaceship arc’.
The 1963 Test Ban Treaty pretty much ended this rather over-eager enterprise.
Are we there yet?
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You’re kidding, right? Nope...
The military really did test a nuclear powered airplane.
An on-board nuclear reactor would heat the fuel, which
would come shooting out the back. These planes would
be able to stay up in the air for weeks without the need
for refueling.
Working reactors did fly, but they were used for prelim-
inary radiation shielding studies (want to know how the
crew did?), and never got around to powering the plane.
Turbulence turned out to be a problem! It shook the
reactor to the breaking point.
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS! THIS IS GOING TO BE
A WILD RIDE!
The plane
would be the
Convair X-6
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Ceres and Pluto: In the
news again!
Ceres, above: Occator Crater gets
curiouser and curiouser. While
the deposits continue to intrigue, it
see that outer crust of Ceres
seems more rock than ice. It
should be the other way around,
and most outer satellites are icier
and the outside, and rockier in-
side. Then again, Ceres is in a
warmer place…
Pluto, left: This looks for all the
world like a frozen lake—but it
would have been filled, 900,000
years ago perhaps, with liquid ni-
trogen! That would bring to three
the number of ‘types of lake
worlds’: The earth (water),
Saturn’s satellite Titan (methane)
and Pluto (nitrogen). On each of
these, the lake liquid can be solid,
liquid or gas.
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PARTING SHOTS...
Above: Solar eclipse in Indonesia! The Inner Corona was imaged from the ground during the eclipse, and the
out corona is from SOHO. The two were matched, to provide more information about the corona—and a beauti-
ful eyeful!
Also from APOD: Aurora over Lapland. See APOD for more about this remarkable aurora shot.