Stuffis

Still "Brent's pile o' stuff" but at least now there are sections.

Space

Astronomy

• Very cool: If you upload a photo of the night sky Flickr 'astrometry' software attaches labels to the photo identifying the objects in it
• The Antikythera Mechanism: "amazingly accurate" 2nd Century BC metal astronomical calculator made by the Greeks
• GPS demonstrates Einstein's Theories of Relativity
• Good explanation of LaGrange points (L1 through L5)
• Everything (in powers of 10) — or xkcd's version — or How far are the stars? — or Scale Model of the Solar System in Maine — or, another way to visualize it: The Size Of Our World
• Constellations and Stars
• Newton's Principia
• Solar Activity
• Solar Activity and Aurora Borealis
• Solar Activity

Planets, Moons, Comets

• CoRoT-7: a planet only 500 LY away, discovered in early 2008 by the ESA's CoRoT space telescope — first "rocky" planet outside our system (Earthlike, very dense, not a gas giant), smallest planet located so far, 23x closer to its star than Mercury is to ours (fast orbit), one side locked toward star (permanent hot/cold sides)
• All (known) Bodies in our Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter
• 100 Explosions on the Moon
• Astronomers have decided to make the definition of "planet" less inclusive and exclude Pluto (now considered a "dwarf planet"); I wholeheartedly agree. Poor Pluto! Interestingly though it does have three moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra)
• Astronomers were previously thinking about making the definition of "planet" more inclusive
  • The proposal would have included 3 dwarf planets (Ceres (asteroid—discovered in 1801 and considered a planet at that time), Charon (Pluto's moon), and Eris (2003 UB313—Kuiper-belt)) as "planets" — so we'd have had 12 "planets" total
  • Apparently the proposed definition had to do with whether the object (a) "has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape" and (b) orbits a star but isn't a satellite of another planet
  • But: Pluto's moon Charon would qualify because, since the center of mass of the two-body system is outside Pluto, technically they are a "double planet"
• 581 c, a new Earth-like planet found orbiting Gliese 581 (20.5 light-years away) in the Libra constellation
• Two largest asteroid-belt objects: Ceres (dwarf planet), Vesta
• Trans-Neptunian objects (Kuiper belt, Scattered disk, Oort cloud)
  • Eris (2003 UB313 — formerly "Xena"/"Lila"): Kuiper-belt dwarf planet, bigger than Pluto
    • CNN article
    • Good write-up by CalTech's Mike Brown (whose team discovered it) — it also has a moon, Dysnomia
    • This makes the 4 largest trans-Neptunian objects Eris (w/moon Dysnomia), Pluto (w/moon Charon), Makemake, and Haumea (w/2 moons, ellipsoidal); Wikipedia has an image of the largest trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs)
    • Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, and Varuna are another, smaller TNOs (Kuiper-belt objects)
  • Sedna (2003 VB12) — most distant object (more precisely: object with greatest average orbital distance) known in our solar system (Oort-cloud)
• 3753 Cruithne, 2003 YN17, and other quasi-moons of Earth
• Bode's Law (Titius-Bode Law), an easy way to remember the major planets' distances from Sol — holds true except Neptune

Software

• Celestia: great FOSS space simulation software
• Stellarium: FOSS planetarium software

Civilian Spaceflight: Challenges

• The Ansari X-Prize: 3 people, 100km altitude, 2 flights in 2 weeks — Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne won this in October 2004
• The 2007 X-Prize Cup: Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC): Armadillo Aerospace (AA) was the only team to fly this in 2007, and missed it by just 7 seconds
• Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) (rules) (levels 1 and 2): lift off pad A, translate over to pad B, meet minimum hover time, and land — then a second flight from B back to A — all within a set time period
  • Armadillo Aerospace (AA) competed every year from 2006-2009: they were first to complete level 1 in 2008 (1st prize), and first to complete level 2 in 2009 (but 2nd prize)
  • Masten Space Systems (MSS) became second to complete level 1 on Oct. 7, 2009 (2nd prize), and then were second to complete level 2 on Oct. 30, 2009 — plus, they were more accurate than AA, so MSS took 1st prize for level 2
  • NG LLC 2009 Resources
• Google Lunar X-Prize, $20M to the first team that can land a rover on the moon, travel 500m, and return data/video

Civilian Spaceflight: Teams

• Armadillo Aerospace (AA) (John Carmack), "working on computer-controlled LOX/ethanol rocket vehicles, with an eye towards manned suborbital vehicle development in the coming years" (they have some NASA and Air Force contracts) — were clearly the front-runners in the NGLLC competition
• Masten Space Systems (MSS), behind AA, the next leading NGLLC competitor — vehicle "Xoie" uses He for pressurant (lightweight, nonreactive), anhydrous isopropyl alcohol for fuel, and LOX for oxydizer — right down to the wire but they were 2nd to complete level 2 in 2009
• SpaceX:
  • developed the 2-stage Falcon 1 rocket which first successfully launched from Kwajalein March 20, 2007 — Flight 5 successfully put a Malaysian imaging satellite into NEO
  • won a NASA contract for its 2-stage Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to resupply the ISS after the Shuttle retires
  • some of the Google Lunar X-Prize entrants may go up on Falcon rockets
• Unreasonable Rocket (father-son team, Cantil, CA), the 3rd LLC competitor
  • Flew craft for levels 1 and 2 in 2009, but neither was successful — quite an accomplishment though, given the comparably smaller team/resources compared to AA and MSS
  • Looks like they need some basic software development disciplines
• Team BonNovA (Mojave, CA) — close to being the 4th LLC competitor — recently announced they would not make it in 2009
• Scaled Composites (Burt Rutan), whose SpaceShipOne (on the back of WhiteKnight) won the original X Prize for the first private manned spacecraft to reach space twice in two weeks ... sadly they suffered a fatal accident during a July 2007 test in the Mojave Desert
• The Spaceship Company (Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic joint venture), working on SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo, with the goal of providing the world's first commercial passenger space vehicles.
  • Roundup of commercial passenger spaceflight companies including not only Virgin/Scaled but Armadillo, Blue Origin (secret Bezos), SpaceX
• AMSAT-DL (AMSAT Deutschland) is working on a mission to Mars
• ARCA, a team from Romania, who launch their Helen and Stabilo rockets from a balloon — pursuing the Google Lunar X-Prize
• Team Cringely, whose "very aggressive development schedule" will get them to the moon so fast, they can't wait 20 months for the Google Lunar X-Prize contest rules to be finalized! As usual with Cringely projects, more announcements on the status of the project "coming soon".

Other Civilian Spaceflight

• Elevator:2010 - The Space Elevator Challenge and The Space Elevator Blog
  • NASA's Dryden Research Center is hosting the 2010 Space Elevator challenge — next competition to be held November 2, 2009: 1km climb at 5 m/s
  • Overview of the teams
  • University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team (USST) — fell just short of claiming the prize in 2007 (1.8 m/s speed, 2 m/s needed to win) — trailer (3rd to qualify; the "University" team, most experienced in elevator challenges) — Saskatoon, Saskatchewan — in 2009 (using the Trumpf 8 kW laser), they were believed to be the best prepared and in the strongest position, but they had climber motor and GPS reception problems and were unable to reach the top; here's the USST 2009 post-competition analysis
  • Kansas City Space Pirates (KCSP) — laser-powered RC car, and space elevator climber with an automated beam-director — trailer (1st to qualify; the "robotic-club hobbyist" team, but nothing "amateur" about them, prepared and detail-oriented) — Kansas City, MO — in 2009 (using the Trumpf 8 kW laser) had a lot of different system components fail and were unable to reach the top; here's the KCSP 2009 post-competition analysis
  • LaserMotive (LM) — building a laser tracker (2nd to qualify; the "industry" team) — Seattle, WA — in 2009, qualified for the 2 m/s level ($900,000 prize) (using their own 4 kW laser)
  • National Space Society (NSS) (Detroit) — 4th to qualify, provisionnaly; couldn't raise supplemental entry fees, so is out for 2009
• Michigan Tech University is developing a nanosatelite for telescope calibration and space-to-space imaging
• Some MIT students spent only $150 and got a camera up near the 100km (62 mi.) space boundary: Project Icarus (Wired story)

Satellites and Astrodynamics

• Satellite Watching

History

• How the Spaceship Got Its Shape (Air & Space Museum): Here's why the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo programs used a blunt-ended shape for the capsule — and NASA is returning to this design for the new Ares/Orion craft

My contact information, brief autobiography (such as it is), and family tree.