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!

2

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!

3

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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?

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?

11

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

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.

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.