Upcoming Titan Missions

I wouldn't exactly say that Titan is an "Earth-like" place. It's extremely toxic. Everything about it is extreme. And extremely awesome.

Tidbit of the Week

Ever seen an illusion like this? It's called the Ponzo illusion. Which line looks bigger? They are actually both the same, but the top one looks larger. This is because the human brain interprets the two slanted lines as parallel, like railway tracks. Railroad ties are all the same size, but the further away ones appear smaller because of perspective. But if the further tie appears exactly the same size as the closer one, the brain says it's bigger.

If you thought the moon actually appears bigger in when it's low on the horizon, go out with a ruler and measure. It only appears to appear bigger. It's an illusion.

There is a little known fact that people perceive the sky as bowl-shaped. In reality the sky is thought of as a dome shape, like a hemisphere, but when asked to point ou the midpoint between horizon and zenith, most people make a 30 degree angle, when the true midpoint is at 45 degrees. About a thousand years ago some Arab guy said the sky is probably subconciously compared to the ground in people's minds. The nearest point on the ground is directly beneath you, and the furthest point on the ground is way out at the horizon. So perhaps in subcouncious parts of the brain the zenith of the sky is compared to the point beneath your shoes, and that point on the horizon is waaaaaay far away.

So if the moon is really the same size on the horizon as at its zenith, the brain says "Oh, same size but further away. It's bigger!" Just like the Ponzo effect. But instead of two slanted lines that look like parallel railroad tracks, it's a domed sky that looks rather flattish.

I haven't actually tried this myself, but I think I will. I always thought that the moon looked bigger because the atmosphere of the Earth has more of a lens effect at that angle, but I guess I was wrong. This illusion idea is something I learned in part from the book "Bad Astronomy" by Philip Plait.

Be it known, however, that nobody knows for absolute certain why the moon appears bigger low in the sky. This is just an educated guess.

Books. Are. Awesome.

Partly inspired by The Amateur Geek and partly inspired by my own love for learning, I have decided to beef up my reading list. While I don't think I could manage a book every single day (I'm a slow reader, and piled high with homework from AP classes), I will attept to complete at least two books a week. I recently got a tall stack from the library, including the following:

• Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (Richard P. Feynman)
• The Physics of Star Trek, by Lawrence M. Krauss
• A Tribble's Guide to Space: How to Get to Space and What to do When You're There, by Alan C. Tribble
• Enrico Fermi and the Revolutions of Modern Physics, by Dan Cooper
• 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science, by James Trefic
• Mars: The NASA Mission Reports (very cool stuff!!)
• The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, by Neil deGrasse Tyson
• "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" Further Adventures of a Curious Character, by Richard P. Feynman
• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (I don't read a lot of fiction, but I've heard a lot of people say this is their favorite science fiction novel, so I was curious about it)
• The Authorized Ender Companion, written by Jake Black (It even has an entire encyclopedia of information about it!)
• And a few other books about Mars, because I seem to be going through a Mars "phase." I can't seem to get enough of the red planet.

I also recently finished the following:

• Bad Astronomy, by Philip Plait. While I'm not duped by the many misconceptions described in the book about astronomy and how science works in general, it did give me deeper insights into how the universe works, and how to explain its workings to people who are, well, duped.
• Rocket Dreams, by Marina Benjamin. I didn't really like this book. It wasn't exactly about the exciting things to come in the Space Age, it was basically a comment (or a question, really) as to where the dreams of the Space Age went. What?? There are thousands, millions of people who dream of outer space and deep space explorations. Those dreams haven't died. They haven't even gone dormant.
• Rare Earth, by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. Quite an interesting read. It was rather a roller coaster ride for me: one instant I'll be nodding in agreement, the next I feel like throwing the book at the wall for their ignorance and scientific fallacy. But the basic purpose was to describe why complex life is probably uncommon in the Universe. Yeah. There aren't any aliens.

Reading is excellent! I highly recomend making your own reading list and setting timeframes for completing them. You won't regret it.

A Question.

I have a question for the secular biologist. Do you believe that life was created by chance from nonliving matter? If so, describe how this would result in sentient human beings that are not only concious but highly intelligent and have a sense of emotion rooted deep in their souls. If not, what could possibly have implimented such a profound procreation?

Newly Refurbished

Yes, it looks like we're going to be able to pull it off after all. I'm working on a new payload bay that will be able to hold a much bigger recovery device, and some meatier F's are in the mail right now. We should be cooking with Crisco when we get it all put together. Maybe we'll even make it to Nationals!

Rocket Science is Fun!

Why Did NASA Build the Shuttle Again?

The Space Shuttle didn't turn out to be the money-saving all-purpose reusable and safe space-truck it was meant to be. It is enormously inefficient, both in the engineering sense and the fiscal sense. For instance, to build the ISS, why didn't they fly the modules and a crew capsule up atop ordinary rockets? They would have gotten much better gas mileage. I bet the ISS could have cost much less than $100 billion.

I actually like the Shuttle, but it just isn't worth the extraordinary cost.

However, I hope that when they retire it, they come up with a new space vehicle VERY soon, because I don't like the idea of depending on the Russians to get us to and from the station.

(There are projects planned like Orion and Constellation. I believe these projects are already underway).

A Martian Airplane?

It wouldn't work.

But I spent a whole afternoon thinking about it, just to see if it would be feasible. It might be wasted effort, but just imagine how cool a space probe on Mars would be if it could fly through the atmosphere like here on Earth!

I had to look up a couple things. First of all, the gravity is lower, which is good. It's about 3.7 m/s² as opposed to 9.8 m/s² here on Earth. However, the Martian atmospheric density is only about 0.02 kg/m³, and here on Earth we're blessed with a thick 1.2 kg/m³ atmosphere. Atmospheric density is essential to lift (L=1/2C_Lrv²A), so if you have a density that is 1.7% of Earth's, you're going to get lift that is 1.7% of what it would be on Earth.

But I had fun brainstorming anyway. My initial idea was to have a solar powered plane similar to the NASA Pathfinder or Helios unmanned aerial vehicles. The Pathfinder weighs about 930 N on Mars, so you'd need at least that much force in lift, prefferably more because you have to lift off the ground. I played around with FoilSim, and the highest lift coeficient I can get is about 5. I then picked a realistic value for the velocity, just to see what ball park I'm in. On Earth the Pathfinder doesn't go much faster than 7-10 m/s, so I plugged 7 in. The result: 173 N. Definitely not going to cut it.

What really puts the nail in the solar-powered coffin is that the lower density means the propellers on such a craft would be completely useless, so you wouldn't be able to accelerate to 7 m/s to begin with. Oh, and another thing. The Sun is much further away, so the solar arrays won't get as much energy.

Where else can you get free propulsion on Mars?

I read somewhere that you could theoretically manufacture rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere. Mars' atmosphere is 95% Carbon Dioxide, so you could make methane with the following reaction:

4H₂ + CO₂ --> CH₄ + 2H₂O

The problem with this is that you would only be able to fly but a few moments before the vehicle would have to land and wait a few more years to make more fuel.

Any other good ideas?