The first season of HBO’s new series ‘House of the Dragon’ has finished and so I’ll take this opportunity to give my two cents worth. As I’m sure everyone reading this post knows ‘House of the Dragon’ (HOD) is a prequel to HBO’s massively successful series ‘Game of Thrones’ (GOT) and the network hopes to capitalize on the popularity of its biggest ever hit.
HBO’s House of the Dragon (HOD) is the prequel to the network’s hugely successful Game of Thrones (GOT) with much of the same production staff and even input from the creator of GOT George R. R. Martin. (Credit: IGN Nordic)
As a prequel HOD is more constrained in what new ideas can be portrayed than could be done in a sequel. For example, since in the final season of GOT the supernatural creatures the ‘White Walkers’ were totally defeated and destroyed a sequel could replace them by introducing a completely new supernatural foe, maybe some sort of amphibious creature or bat like people. A prequel on the other hand cannot introduce anything too important that’s completely new without explaining why that new thing never got mentioned in the original show.
As a prequel HOD cannot introduce any new ideas or important characters that would cause anachronisms (literally out of time) in the already broadcast GOT. (Credit: IMDB)
HOD definitely succeeds in not going outside the bounds of a prequel. In fact it may succeed too well because whereas GOT is a sprawling tapestry of many stories woven into one, HOD is much more narrow in theme, too narrow in my opinion.
HOD is really just a family squabble played out across the background of seven kingdoms. Nevertheless by concentrating on a single family it loses much of the complexity and variety that made GOT so interesting. (Credit: IMDB)
Season one of HOD concerns itself with the political intrigue between two branches of the Targaryen dynasty that rules the ‘Seven Kingdoms of Westeros’. In HOD the Targaryen family rules Westeros because they control the dragon’s that are by far the most fearsome weapon in the whole GOT Universe.
Since their power comes from their dragons the Targaryen family has taken to revering, almost deifying the creatures. By the way many people have begun to criticize the cinematography of HOD as simply being so dark it’s hard to see what’s happening! (Credit: NPR)
King Viserys Targaryen is the fifth king of that line and when his wife dies in childbirth Viserys names his daughter Rhaenyra as his heir rather than his hot-tempered brother Daemon. Things get even more complicated when Viserys marries a second time to the lady Alicent Hightower who bears the king two sons. The marriage between the old king and the young noblewoman was the contrivance of Alicent’s father Ser Otto Hightower, the king’s first minister, known as ‘the Hand’. Ser Otto seeks to increase his own power by putting his grandson on the iron throne as king. It’s in episode 9, when King Viserys dies that the peace of Westeros unravels as the various claimants grab for power.
As HOD begins the young noblewomen Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower are the best of friends. That doesn’t last long however, not when there’s the throne to be taken. (Credit: Vanity Fair)
And so we have a tale of political intrigue worthy of GOT, but GOT was about a lot more than just than just political intrigue. In GOT in addition to the fight over the iron throne after the death of King Robert Baratheon between House Stark and House Lannister there were the adventures of Daenerys Targaryen across the narrow sea in Pentos, there were the adventures of Jon Snow beyond the Wall in the north, and there were the adventures of Arya Stark with the Assassins, plus a lot more.
George R. R. Martin freely admits that much of his inspiration for GOT came from England’s ‘War of the Roses, a war for the English throne between two branches of the same family. GOT however also went beyond that simple conflict to explore a unique and interesting world while HOD is just a family quarrel. (Credit: Ancient Origins)
There was also a lot more magic, whether it be Bran Stark with the Raven’s eye, or the witch Melisandre along with the religious fanaticism of the High Sparrow, and I’ve already mentioned the demonic White Walkers. In other words there were a lot of things going on at once, I haven’t mentioned a tenth of everything that happened in GOT and trying to keep it all straight was part of the fun. If one story ever got a little boring there were a half dozen other stories to keep your interest.
In GOT the gift of clairvoyance was represented by the three eyed raven (r). Bran Start (l) had it. Aside from dragons there’s a lot less magic in HOD. (Credit: Diply)
HOD isn’t that complicated, and therefore it just isn’t that fascinating. It also isn’t as surprising as GOT was, remember the Red Wedding! A lot of things happened in GOT that were totally unexpected, but that certainly isn’t true of HOD where everything is pretty much predictable. In fact we’re told about Ser Otto Hightower’s plans to put his grandson on the throne at least a dozen times over five episodes before the king dies.
GOT’s ‘Red Wedding’ just before the blood starts to flow. GOT made a point of killing off major characters suddenly and sometimes almost pointlessly, in a sense almost like real life. HOD hasn’t shown that same spontaneity however. Everything that happens is is pretty much telegraphed well ahead of time. (Credit: Herald Sun)
I’ll add one more criticism, at the beginning of GOT we’re told that the Night’s Watch who guard the northern wall are just a shadow of their former glory and at the same time GOT starts with no dragons still alive. Well, when I heard that they were doing a prequel I was hoping to see the Night’s Watch at full strength and learn a little about what happened to the dragons. So far I’ve been disappointed on both counts.
Winter is Coming. In GOT the Night’s Watch were tasked with guarding ‘The Wall’ that kept the wild peoples and supernatural creatures of the north out of the ‘Seven Kingdoms of Westeros’. (Credit: winteriscoming.net)
Now this is only the first season of HOD, and to be honest GOT got a lot better in season 2. Still HOD seems to be much more committed to its main story and when that story sags the whole show becomes uninteresting. And that’s one thing Game of Thrones never was.
In several previous posts I have argued that the United States became the world’s richest and most powerful country not because of our many freedoms, nor thanks to our heroic military. No, in my opinion the US owes it’s status as the world’s superpower because of its educational system, because of our nation’s determination that all of its citizens should have free access to primary and secondary schools while at the same time taking an active role in helping its brightest young people to attend college, whatever their families financial situation. For over a hundred years, from about the 1880s into the 2000s the US graduated more high school students and more college and university students than any nation on Earth. See my posts of 23 June 2021 and 12 July 2017.
Dozens of Colleges and Universities here in the US were initially funded by land grants from the Federal Government. This active promotion of education at all levels of government is the primary reason we now enjoy our status as the world’s richest nation. (Credit: Urban to Ag – WordPress.com)
The benefits of having the world’s largest and best public educational system should be obvious but because so many people nowadays are blind to the obvious I’ll take a moment to mention just a few. By educating its large population the US possessed the trained workforce needed to build the wealthiest economy in history. With the largest number of scientists and engineers that economy grew ever more productive as new inventions were developed and old problems were solved. To put it simply the United States of America had the well-educated, well-trained people it needed to get things done and that, more than any other reason, is why the 20th century was the American century. America’s dominance in science and industry was only made possible by America’s dominance in education.
We used to honor education and our educators in this country. Maybe we’d better get back to doing that. (Credit: ebay)
All that began to change about forty years ago during the Reagan administration. Reagan’s emphasis on lower taxes and smaller government did not immediately effect education, at least it wasn’t supposed to. As time went on however and lowering taxes became the only “proper” way to boost the economy shrinking government budgets meant less money for education leading to lower teacher salaries, larger classroom size and poorly maintained, crumbling schools and school facilities.
Reaganomics does not work. All it has done is caused ever growing deficits and debt while causing an enormous decline in education and infrastructure. (Credit: Mar Martinez Blog)
Public schools faced another threat as well as the “private sector” of the economy came to be preferred over the “public sector”. Private, charter schools grew in number as some parents sought to insulate their children from the growing problems at public schools. Charter schools possessed several advantages over taxpayer funded schools. For one thing since they were not legally obliged to accept all students so that any child who became a disciplinary problem was simply expelled and sent back to the public schools. Because of this, over time discipline in many public schools, especially inner city public schools grew worse and worse when compared to their private school rivals. And because of that those parents who cared about their children’s education more and more sent their kids to charter schools, a vicious feedback mechanism that continues to increase the gap between private and public schools even today.
Charter Schools are ‘For Profit’ institutions. Hence they exist to make money not educate students. When a charter school fails it simply closes its doors leaving its students without a school to attend. (Credit: Weapons of Mass Deception)
Recently even higher education has begun to feel the strain. College enrollment, which reached a peak of 70% of recent high school graduates in 2016, had dropped a full 7% to 63% by just 2020. The causes for this are many but the increasing cost of a college degree along with stories of the crushing debt of student loans on people with bachelor’s degrees has made a growing number of young people question the value of higher education, whether or not a four year degree is really worth the time and money. In fact the state of higher education has declined so much that while back in 2000 the US was second in the world for the proportion of its population between the ages of 25 and 34 with a college degree by 2020 it had fallen to 16th.
The growth in numbers of high school graduates going on to college that occurred during the last half of the 20th century has ended in the 21st, and may even be going down! And that was before Covid! (Credit: Admissionly.com)
So all in all the state of education in this country was pretty bad and getting worse BEFORE the pandemic set in. For the past two years students have been in and out of classrooms, either trying to learn remotely at home on a computer, or at school while social distancing and wearing a mask. The confusion and uncertainty must have surely combined to make learning all that much more difficult.
I don’t know about you but I’m tired of talking about Covid. Unfortunately it’s still out there effected nearly every part of our lives, even education. (Credit: CDC)
Now the results of standardized testing for 9 year olds has shown the effect that Covid-19 has had on education in this country. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests have been conducted since the 1970s as a means of quantifying the basic ability in math and reading of third graders throughout the country. This year the tests were given to 14,900 nine year old third graders and the results compared to those taken in 2020 immediately before the pandemic.
The worst part of the decline in students test scores is that the students that needed the most help saw the biggest decline. (Credit: John Locke Foundation)
The comparison showed a dramatic difference. For the first time ever math scores declined while reading scores saw their largest drop in over thirty years. Worse, the declines were not evenly spread across all ability levels. In math the top 10% of students saw a decline of only 3 points while the lowest 10% saw a 12 point drop, four times as great. And the decrease had a racial component to it as well. Black and Hispanic students on average saw a full 13 point drop compared to only a 5 point drop for the White counterparts. The declines in reading were similar and together they indicate that two decades of progress in education had been wiped out a little over a year.
Minority students had been making considerable progress, catching up to their white counterparts between the years 1970 and 2017. At least some of that progress has been lost due to the pandemic. (Credit: Education Next)
And for children falling behind in first, second or third grade can lead to continuing problems throughout their school careers. So it is that our nation’s educational system, which has been suffering from neglect for decades, has now been further damaged by the pandemic.
Students who fall behind in elementary school rarely catch up. All to often a human brain is already wasted before they are 10 years old! (Credit: Vox)
I’d like to end this post on a somewhat more hopeful note. On the 24 of August President Biden issued an executive order eliminating $10,000 dollars in student loans for millions of Americans and up to $20,000 dollars for Pell grant recipients. Only time will tell if this is the beginning of renewed emphasis on education in this country, but at least it’s something.
P.S. Just a few days after publishing this post another report was released that details the math and reading abilities of 4th and 8th graders here in the US. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card, has been tracking the advancement of our country’s children since the 1990s and this year’s report showed the biggest decline in math and reading scores ever measured.
According to the report math scores for eighth graders fell in every state, every state, with only 26 percent of students showing proficiency in math, down from 2019’s 34 percent. Fourth graders did little better with 36 percent showing proficiency, down from 41 percent, while there were declines in 41 states. The results for reading were little better with 33 percent of fourth graders and only 31 percent of eighth graders being proficient. Once again the scores for the most vulnerable students saw the biggest drops clearly showing that we are in danger of producing an entire generation of the uneducated at just the time when our nation needs all the brains it can get.
It’s early October and that means it’s Nobel Prize time, the one time of the year when the media pays at least some attention to science.
TV doesn’t completely ignore Science, there are a few good Science programs like PBS’s Nova. However compared to all of the cop and doctor shows finding anything about Science is like looking for a needle in a haystack. (Credit: PBS)
The prize for physiology or medicine came first this year on the 3rd of October and the award went to arguably the most interesting of all of this year’s recipents. The winner was the Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo who was honoured for his work in sequencing the entire genome of our ancient cousins the Neanderthals and comparing it and the DNA of another extinct close relative the Denisovans to that of modern humans.
Nobel laureate Svante Paabo with one of his research subjects. (Credit: ABC News)
Dr. Paabo spent more than 20 years assembling bits and pieces of Neanderthal DNA from the best preserved teeth and bones of that extinct species. The task was made more difficult because the minute amounts of ancient DNA that are preserved in fossilized samples can easily be swamped by modern DNA from bacteria or even the paleontologists who unearthed it. In order to carry out his work Paabo first had to develop the clean room facilities and policies that would minimize contamination and even then he had to learn how to separate the ancient DNA from whatever modern DNA that still remained.
Finding ancient DNA is no easy task. Much of it is lost and what little remains can be swamped by the DNA of the scientists unearthing it. (Credit: Nobel Prize)
When Dr. Paabo finally succeeded in assembling the entire Neanderthal genome what he discovered was that the Neanderthals haven’t quite gone extinct. In fact around 50,000 years ago there was a good deal of mixing going on between our ancestors and both the Neanderthals and Denisovans so that today most Europeans and Central Asians have as much as 5% of their genes coming from those ancient relatives.
It’s not quite this straightforward but all of us have inside us the remains of our ancient past. (Credit: Goodreads)
The next day the Physics award was announced and this year’s Nobel went to John Clauser for work carried out in the 1970s at the Lawrence Berkeley Labouratories in California, Alain Aspect, who extended Dr. Clauser’s work during the 1980s at the University of Paris along with Anton Zeilinger of Austria who continued the work of Clauser and Aspect. What the three men studied that won them their Nobel was the strange, almost eerie phenomenon called quantum entanglement, a concept that Einstein rejected as ‘spooky action at a distance’.
This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. From left to right Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger who all contributed to our knowledge of quantum entanglement. (Credit: Nobel Prize)
Quantum entanglement occurs when two or more particles are placed into a system whose characteristics are measured; let’s say a system of two particles with one spin up and the other spin down. If the two particles are then carefully separated, careful being why Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger received a Nobel prize, the particles remain entangled so that if one is measured to be spin up then the other, no matter how far away it may now be, has to be spin down.
Einstein didn’t like the concept but thanks to the work of Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger we now know that quantum entanglement is a real part of our Universe. (Credit: NASA)
Besides being an interesting phenomenon in its own right quantum entanglement also has practical applications in the fields of quantum information and quantum computing. So the work of Doctors Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger may become even more important in the next few decades.
The next revolution in computers may be quantum computers, which operate on principles related to quantum entanglement. (Credit: DUG Technology)
The Nobel prize for Chemistry came next and was announced on the 5th of October. This year’s award went to Carolyn R. Bertozzi of Stanford University in California, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark along with K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute in the USA. The three chemists were awarded the prize for their research into ‘click chemistry’ different techniques that allow molecules to be clicked together like lego blocks in order to build larger molecules.
This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry are, left to right, Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless. This is Dr. Sharpless’ second Nobel a feat only accomplished by five scientists. (Credit: The Washington Post)
It was Doctor Sharpless who coined the term click chemistry in the year 2000 when he and Doctor Meldal independently discovered a chemical reaction called copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition that has allowed a tremendous number of different large molecules to be assembled. Doctor Bertozzi then extended the concept to chemistry performed on biomolecules, often molecules on the outer surface of living cells. These developments have led to new medicines for the treatment of cancer and the sequencing of DNA.
Alkyne-Azide was the original click developed independently by Sharpless and Meldal but in the years since other such techniques have been discovered. (Credit: Research Gate)
The chemistry prize was notable for two other reasons because Dr. Bertozzi is the only woman to be awarded a science Nobel this year, becoming only the eighth woman to do so. Also, Dr. Sharpless’ award makes him the fifth person to receive two Nobels, his first came in 2001 for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions.
The element Copper is very toxic to living cells so Dr Bertozzi developed a copper free form of click chemistry. (Credit: GeneLink)
Finally on the 10th of October the economics prize given ‘in memory of Alfred Nobel’ was awarded to Ben Bernanke, the former head of the US Federal Reserve along with Douglas Diamond of the University of the University of Chicago and Philip Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis. The three men were honoured for their work on the role of banks in financial crises.
And the Nobel Prize for economics goes to, left to right, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their work on Banks during financial crises. (Credit: Kyodo News)
While the studies carried out by Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig were conducted back in the 1980s the results became very important during the financial crisis that shook the world’s economy in 2008. Ben Bernanke was of course Federal Reserve Chief at that time and so he had the opportunity to put his own research into action.
Ben Bernanke’s position as Chief of the US Federal Reserve during the financial crisis of 2008 gave him the chance to put his theories to good use. (GAO)
Bernanke’s work demonstrated how bank failures during the great depression of the 1930s were not caused by the initial recession but instead drove the recession into a deep depression. Bernanke showed how the loss of information about lenders that occurred when banks failed made it difficult for the economy to recover, lengthening the time of the depression. Diamond and Dybvig meanwhile investigated the role of banks in linking lenders and borrowers in ways that are mutually beneficial to both.
The man and his prize. Alfred Nobel funded the prizes in his honour in his will. (Credit: Famous Scientists)
Alfred Nobel’s intend in establishing his prizes was to encourage new and innovative discoveries that would be valuable to all humanity. The work of this year’s recipients demonstrate how well he succeeded.
One of Hollywood’s favourite science fiction plots is that of a massive asteroid or comet headed straight for our planet, a threat to our civilization if not to all life on Earth. The recent movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ (See my Post of 5 January 2022) is just one of many such productions. Of course one reason that the plot is popular is that the threat is actually very real; 66 million years ago the dinosaurs were driven to extinction by a space rock some 10 kilometers in diameter colliding with the Earth.
A somewhat more serious take on the end of the world by asteroid was the 1998 film ‘Armageddon’. (Credit: Rotten Tomatoes)
While 66 million years may seem like a long time scientists are now coming to realize that collisions with smaller asteroids are fairly common, and can still be quite destructive. Archaeologists now have evidence that it may have been an asteroid strike that gave birth to the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah (see my post of 6 October 2021) while the demise of the mound builder culture here in North America has also be linked to an asteroid. So the possibility of a large space rock coming down in the middle of a densely populated area and causing a tremendous amount of destruction is very real.
In 1908 a meteor crashed in the Tunguska region of Siberia. Fortunately few people were hurt because the region was so remote but few such unpopulated areas exist anymore so the next such event could cause enormous destruction. (The Conversation)
Before the space age there was really very little that humanity, or indeed any of Earth’s species, could do to protect themselves from an asteroid strike. The dinosaurs certainly had no idea an asteroid was taking aim at them and they surely all died having no idea what it was that was killing them.
They surely had no idea! (Credit: Space.com)
We can do something to protect ourselves however, we have the technology. Our successes in space have given us the ability to not only see a potentially dangerous asteroid before it strikes, hopefully years before it strikes, but we can even send a spacecraft to that asteroid in a effort to prevent that strike from ever happening.
There are literally thousands of Near Earth Objects, space rocks whose orbit around the Sun comes close to our Planet’s. Fortunately space is awfully big so we don’t get hit very often! (Credit: Astronomy Magazine)
So the question becomes, what is the best way to stop an asteroid that’s headed straight at our planet. Well Hollywood producers certainly knows how they’d do it, nuke the bloody thing. Trouble is that blowing up an asteroid doesn’t completely solve the problem, it could even make the things worse. After all when you blow up something there are still a lot of pieces of it left. So blowing up an asteroid headed for Earth just means you now have a lot of smaller asteroids headed for Earth.
We may like to blow things up but that’s probably not the best way to avoid getting hit by an asteroid. (Credit: YouTube)
NASA’s plan for dealing with a potentially dangerous asteroid is far more gentle. For one thing the space agency has organized and funded dozens of astronomers to search for any ‘Earth Crossing Asteroids’ that could become a danger in the years to come. They have found several thousand but so far fortunately none of them will strike our planet within the next fifty or so years. What NASA hopes is that, when a dangerous asteroid is finally found we will have years if not decades of warning. That will be enough time to deal with any dangerous asteroid more efficiently, more effectively and even more cheaply.
NASA’s DART Mission to test a possible technique for protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids. The idea is to crash a small spacecraft into an asteroid to see how much we can alter its trajectory. (Credit: Applied Physics Labouratory, Johns Hopkins University)
The idea is to simply nudge the asteroid, not much, just a little. Given enough time, let’s say exactly one year, a change of just one meter per second in the velocity of an asteroid that is headed straight for Earth is all that is needed to cause that asteroid to miss our planet by more than 30,000 kilometers, a fair safety margin. That’s all, just one meter per second to save the Earth, if done early enough.
We all know the old story. Slow but steady wins the Race. (Credit: VirilityUnemployed)
But can an asteroid be nudged? Are they solid enough bodies to be gently pushed, or are they just piles of rubble that might break up from even a nudge? Will slamming a projectile into the asteroid work or will we have to spread our push out in order to keep the asteroid in one piece?
Those are some of the questions that NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was designed to find out. Launched on the 23 of November in 2021 the Dart spacecraft was targeted at a system of two asteroids, the larger asteroid is named Didymos and is about 780 meters in diameter. Didymos is orbited by a smaller asteroid named Dimorphos, which is roughly 160 meters in diameter.
The DART Spacecraft isn’t going to study Dimorphos but crash into it. Therefore it only carries the instruments it needs to steer it at its target. (Credit: DART)
The plan was for the DART spacecraft to slam into the smaller asteroid Dimorphos at approximately 6 kilometers per second (kps) after which astronomers will measure the change in Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. You see the reason for choosing the smaller in a two asteroid system as a target is that it has always been easier for astronomers to measure the time an astronomical event takes compared to the distance to an astronomical object.
Human beings learned how to measure time by watching the rhythm of the objects in the sky and even today it is easier to measure time in astronomy than distances. (Credit: www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu)
Think about it, how would you, all by yourself measure the distance to the Moon? But, with only a little effort you could measure the time it takes to go from full Moon to full Moon, at least approximately. Ancient astronomers actually knew pretty accurately the time it took the various planets to orbit the Sun before they knew that the planets really orbited the Sun not the Earth.
Measuring the distance to the Moon requires two different observers plotting the Moon’s position against the stars at the same time from a great distance apart. (Credit: Medium)
Before DART reached Dimorphos astronomers had measured the orbital period of that asteroid around Didymos at 11 hours and 55 minutes. It is expected that the collision with DART will reduce that orbital period to about 11 hours and 45 minutes but again astronomers can take their time and get a very precise measurement of that change. Then, using the well-known laws of orbital dynamics, they’ll be able to calculate exactly how much they’ve succeeded in changing the velocity of Dimorphos.
Kepler’s three laws of Planetary motion are still the basis for any study of astronomy. (Credit: Teachers Pay Teachers)
The DART spacecraft got only one chance at hitting Dimorphos however, if it missed the probe and the asteroid would fly past each other at 6 kps never to meet again. So as you can imagine the atmosphere at the Applied Physics Labouratory of Johns Hopkins University was pretty tense as DART drew ever closer to its target. All the apprehension was unnecessary however for the spacecraft’s autonomous control computer behaved flawlessly. At 07:14 PM on the night of the 26th of September DART smashed into Dimorphos less than 17 meters from the asteroid’s center, a bull’s eye at 10 million kilometers.
Just seconds before the crash DART sent back this picture of Dimorphos. Like many asteroids Dimorphos appears to be nothing more than a pile of rubble. (Credit: CNN)
And DART was taking pictures the whole way in, sending back dramatic images of Dimorphos as the asteroid appeared to grow larger and larger. Not only that but the day before the collision DART had released an smaller Italian cube satellite whose job it was to take pictures of the collision from a few kilometers away. Finally there were several telescopes back here on Earth that also got in the act, taking images of the collision from 10 million kilometers distance.
DART crashing into Dimorphos (top center) as seen by the Italian LICIA cubesat. The larger asteroid Didymos is lower left. (Credit: New Scientist)
So all of the hardware worked, DART smashed right into Dimorphos exactly as planned and NASA got plenty of pictures. In the weeks to come astronomers here on Earth will determine exactly how much the asteroid’s trajectory has changed. Then we’ll know whether or not humanity has at least the beginnings, a breadboard model of a technology that could save us from going extinct the way the dinosaurs did.
NASA’s Artemis program continues to have problems getting off the ground while China slowly but surely moves forward with the construction of a space station. I’ll begin with the troubles of Artemis. Indeed, because of the unending problems and schedule changes happening day by day associated with the Space Launch System I’ve had to rewrite this post four times now.
How many novels would get written if the author stopped to rewrite each sentence seven times??? (Credit: TextCortex AI)
Artemis is the name given to NASA’s long, and I do mean long anticipated program for returning human beings to the Moon. I have written several posts about both Artemis and the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that is going to be the main launch vehicle for the entire program. See post of 23 July 2022. In fact the space agency had originally expected that the SLS’s first launch would take place way back in 2016 but an almost unending string of problems has led to delay after delay.
Break down of Block one of the Space Launch System (SLS) which will be the backbone of the Artemis program taking humans back to the Moon. (Credit: NASA Blogs)
It was no surprise therefore when the originally scheduled launch date of August 29th had to be cancelled once again. The SLS was standing on its launch pad, the countdown was underway but during the rocket’s fueling process two small problems were discovered. The first was a leaky vent valve in the inner fuel tank caused by a tiny crack. Even as the first problem was being dealt with another issue came to light as one of the rocket’s four main engines could not be cooled to it proper temperature. In addition the weather at Cape Kennedy was unsuitable for a launch so NASA quickly decided to scrub the lift off.
Mission plan for the Artemis 1 spaceflight. The mission will be unmanned, if it ever gets off the ground! (Credit: NASA)
A second launch date of September 3rd was soon announced even as NASA engineers sought to resolve the two problems while still keeping the SLS at the launch pad. If it were found that major repair efforts were necessary that would require rolling the rocket back into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Such a rollback is a major process that would add weeks of delay to the mission. With fingers crossed the engineers made their preparations for a launch on the 3rd of September.
Artemis 1 on the launch pad ready to go. Well not quite! (Credit: The Verge)
The problems that plagued the SLS weren’t finished however for as fueling began on the 2nd another leak was found on a quick-disconnect hydrogen intake valve that just couldn’t be fixed while fueling was underway. Once again the launch had to be scrubbed, once again the engineers tired to fix the problem as the rocket stood on the launch pad.
A quick disconnect valve for Hydrogen fueling. Such a thing is a bitch to engineer because hydrogen is the smallest of all atoms so it can easily leak through the tiniest crack. (Credit: Reddit)
Hoping that they had finally fixed the problem of the leaky valve the SLS was subjected to a full fueling test on the 21st of September. You could imagine the sigh of relief at both NASA and Boeing when the huge rocket passed the fueling test without a single hitch. Hoping that ‘third time is the charm’ NASA set a third launch date of the 27th of September.
Not Always. (Credit: Meme Generator)
Now things begin to get a little spooky because starting around the 20th of September a low-pressure storm cell off the northern coast of South America began to intensify and grow. That storm system became hurricane Ian as it moved through the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico and was scheduled to slam into Florida as a major hurricane on, you guessed it, the 26th, the day before Artemis 1 was scheduled to lift off.
Hurricane Ian slamming into Florida. Needless to say NASA wasn’t going to launch a rocket into this! (Credit: NPR)
NASA quickly canceled that launch date; even if Ian gave Cape Kennedy a miss the winds will certainly be too high to permit a lift off. And to protect the $4.1 billion dollar rocket NASA, after several delays decided to roll the SLS back into the VAB.
NASA waiting until the last moment before deciding to roll the SLS back into the VAB to protect it from Hurricane Ian. (Credit: Hindustan Times)
So, with the SLS having to endure another round trip to the VAB the question becomes, how much inspection and possible repair will the rocket have to undergo before NASA will be willing to try, once again, to launch it? One thing for certain is that a launch will not be possible until late October at the earliest. Just another in a continuing series of delays in a program that almost seems to be cursed.
Back during WW2 accidents and problems were blamed on Gremlins. I guess the Artemis program must have more than its fair share of the little stinkers. (Credit: Wikipedia)
On the other hand things are going a bit smoother for the Chinese space agency in its efforts to construct that nation’s first space station. On July 24th the Chinese space agency launched the second module of its planned three-module space station from its Wenchang launch facility on the island of Hainan.
Lauch of the second module in China’s Space Station, named Wentian. (Credit: Global Times)
Christened Wentian the new module will connect with the already orbiting Tianhe module. Tianhe was designed to serve as the main living quarters for the three member permanent crew of the station while Wentian is a multi-purpose module that includes labouratory space and an airlock for Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs). Wentian will also provide some living space during crew transfer periods when there could be as many as six people aboard the station for a day or two.
What China’s space station will look like when completed, perhaps as early as the end of this year. (Credit: Space.com)
The final module, named Mengtian is expected to be launched in October and when it is connected the Tee shaped space station will be completed. At that time Tiangong will be about 20% the size and mass of the International Space Station (ISS) but it will enable China to maintain a permanent manned presence in Earth Orbit.
Though small compared to the International Space Station above, China’s station will still give that nation a permanent presence in Low Earth Orbit (LOE). (Credit: European Space Agency)
And, as happened with the launch of the first station module, the Long march rocket that lifted Wentian into orbit circled the Earth for several days before making an uncontrolled re-entry over the Indian Ocean. The fact the China seems completely unconcerned that their 30 meter tall, 23 ton rocket could land in a populated area is a real problem going forward. The first launch of the Long March resulted in slight damage but fortunately no injuries to a small village in Ivory Coast and sooner or later some real harm will surely occur somewhere.
Re-entry of China’s Long March rocket. Sooner or later a piece of one of these rockets is going to land on top of somebody and do some real damage. (Credit: NewsBytes)
The Tiangong space station is visible on occasion at night over most of the United States, I’ve seen it a dozen times now including with its new Wentian module. Where and when the Chinese station, and the ISS are visible from your location can be found at the website .https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=48274#
