NASA's Final Shuttle: The End of an Error?

Xnewsman sends in this great article from time that holds an unflinching eye on the last Shuttle flight and the end to the program.

From the Time article:

• Friday, the 135th and last shuttle mission is scheduled to be launched, ending a program in which five ships carried 777 passengers into space, traveling a collective half a billion miles

As the article points out, the shuttle program built the International Space Station, launched the Magellan, Ulysses and Galileo probes to Venus, the sun and Jupiter. Plus the truly shining accomplishment has to be placing the Hubble Space telescope in orbit and returning to service it several times.

But then there was also these.... The $500 million price tag every time one took off, the months of maintenance and prep work needed between flights, the thermal tiles the ships would shed like dry leaves and finally the loss of 14 astronauts.

The shuttle was envisioned as a way for workers in space to commute to work, it was supposed to reduce the cost of delivering material to orbit to a tenth of the cost and each shuttle was supposed to last 100 launches. The truth is it never became a commuter anything, cost over runs and delays plus losses managed to increase the cost of launching to a point that the only customers to use the shuttle was NASA and the military. Shuttles never can close to the overly optimistic 100 flights. Discovery which was the most flown managed only 38 trips in 28 years.

Any system has it good and bad traits, the venerable shuttles were no exception.

There is some wonderful history and photography in the Time article. Read more by clicking here

Review: The Spirit

The spirit

Starring Gabriel Macht Samuel L. Jackson Scarlett Johansson

Based on The Spirit by Will Eisner

Directed by Frank Miller

Wiki calls this movie a American superhero noir film, Jackson plays a character called The Octopus and Macht is The Spirit. I have another name for this movie....probably isn’t too polite either. This movie is a 'how to' on 'by the numbers film-making'. Basically this is how you do it: Hire actors who are there for a payday. Make sure you mix in every movie dialogue cliche and you have The Spirit.

Oh and I here by nominate Jackson movie slut of 2008 when this was released. Wiki says this film didn’t do well in general release...NO! Did better in DVD/Blu-ray which I can understand because you can stop it when-ever you want or or go back and find the most atrocious lines and play them over and over again.

I am not even going to try and describe what the plot line is other than maybe Sin City in a food processor. It’s demented, it’s funny by accident, and its Sam Jackson over acting...oh yes,that IS possible.

I wouldn’t even rent it... HULU has it available (that’s where I saw it) and I can’t even rate it, because that would mean I would have to admit it’s a movie.... Oh damn it, there are real actors in it so it deserves some sort of a rating...maybe a 3 and if it had features on the blu-ray describing why they thought it was ok to foist this off on the viewing public might bring the rating up and that might be a reason to rent it........naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

noir it is...I guess. Take the 30s and 40s gumshoe/detective movie and say oh I don’t know make everyone in the film drink a cocktail laced with lsd and crack.

This is my impression. Describe a Sam Spade movie and a Batman movie to someone who has never seen either and while describing them, don’t differentiate between the two. Then have this person write a screen-play.

If you want to read more - check out the wiki article here

New Software Can Predict What You Are Going to Do Before You Do It!

Researchers at the Center for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario, using brain imaging software, can now determine what a person was planning, before that action is actually executed.

Possible uses for this software might be controlling prosthetic or helping paralyzed patients regain movement.

Of course if you can predict what a person is going to do could lead to a world very much like the one Philip K. Dick envisioned in his novel The Minority Report.

BMU # 268 now online!

This week in episode 268 I start with the July 4th episode of Earth Sky. This week’s article is about the seasons and why the summer in the northern climes and winter in the southern are longer and why the winter in the north and summer in the south are short, even though it seems just the opposite. The Earth Sky article is fun as well as informative.

Our first story of the afternoon is a piece of flash fiction from Duncan Shields called Silicon Valley. Duncan’s story tells the tale of a future where all the humans have disappeared in-explicitly. While the robot take up where the humans left off. Duncan’s tale is a curious journey to self awareness, from a most unusual subject.

Before I play the last story, I take a jaunt to the BMU blog at wrfrbeameup.blogspot.com.

Since the shuttle program is coming to an end shortly I begin by discussing an end to the space age. During a short break, Barry weighs in with the point that the military was the driving force in the earlier programs and until the military decides once more that we need the high frontier, we may never get there again…

On another really fascinating front, is it possible that bio-mechanical frameworks like those developed for yep, you guessed it, the military, be a boon to the handicapped? The inventor of the Segway thinks that many of the devices can be ported to aide in rehabilitation.

A two hour flight across the Atlantic may be possible within 10 years. Employing new hyper speed engine technology the HyperMach’s proposed ultra high speed plane the SonicStar will be able to fly at 3.6 mach and do so at altitudes above 60 thousand feet but only carrying 20 people?!!!

on June 27th of this year. A bus sized asteroid flew so close to the Earth that it was well inside many of satellites orbits.

A bus sized asteroid 2011 MD, passed within 7500 miles of Earth, passing over the coast of Antarctica before being slingshot back into deep space.

Scientists at Tokyo University with assistance from Sony, have developed PossessedHand which consists of a pair of wrist bands that deliver mild electrical stimuli directly to the muscles that control your fingers, with hopes of say teaching your body how to properly position your fingers to play an instrument. Or other equally creepy uses….

And for our last story, Gary Cuba has let me read his excellent story Manifest Error. What would you do if you found that a delivery is late…..by a century! I describe the tale as an “uplift” story for the real world.

Is This the End of the Space Age?

Long time listeners to BMU will recognize this sentiment. Even back in the 80s on my tiny little BBS I was saying that we should be looking hard and long as to what the Shuttle really meant in terms of space exploration. Now that even that system will cease to be within day, I have been saying that our glory days are done and now we little more than renters. Now I see that others are raising a hue and cry. I see that Charlie Jane Anders writing for IO9 is voicing valid concerns about what the end of the Shuttle program can mean to the US's presence in space. It is still painfully obvious that the public is confused as to what the question ultimately means. There is talk of probes picking up the slack and of course that will continue. These self same people though should remember that we put some very sophisticated devices on the moon but ultimately nothing replaces a human foot for genuine exploration.

From the IO9 article:

• It is quite conceivable that 36,000km ( 22369.36 miles) will prove the limit of human ambition.
• It is equally conceivable that human space flight, long the stuff of science fiction, will return to fantasy.

To me it was painfully obvious when Apollo 17 came home. We had to make do with the shuttle. The most powerful nation on the planet relegated to high priced furniture movers. Yes, the robotic craft out there are doing spectacular science, but was Apollo our first and only steps on another world? Is travel to other planets once again on the purview of science fiction?

Do you want to have your opinion on the health of space travel on record? Nothing big and fancy, just a yes or no about this - you can go to the economist and vote. [The Economist]