Lucy launched at 5:34 a.m. EDT on Oct. 16, 2021, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida
Storms cleared just in time for SpaceX to launch more Starlink satellites tonight from Cape Canaveral. Perfect launch but a photo fail here, I think. The launch itself was totally blown out — too bright — but I learned something and had a little fun. That’s really all that matters. FWIW, this is unfiltered straight out of the camera.
— at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.
In the late spring of 1982 shortly after the American shuttle had started flying missions, word reached the west that the Soviet Union had launched their own space shuttle. As was customary at the time, the Soviets gave little to no information on what the spacecraft was, and that left the western press to make their best guess.
The widely respected Aviation and Space Technology magazine released this rendering, which made its way to various periodicals.
Obviously, Buran was very different.
I drove out to Playalinda Beach on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore yesterday (it’s about 30 minutes away) and got a great look at Artemis-1 as it sat on Launch Complex 39-B awaiting Wet Dress Rehearsal on April 1-3, 2022.
Artemis will be at LC-39B until sometime the week of April 4th, when it will be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building to be prepared for its launch to the moon. When it flies, it will be the most powerful rocket ever launched — 39,000 kN (8,800,000 lb) of force — more than the venerable Saturn V.
Given a successful dress rehearsal, it should head to the moon from Kennedy Space Center in June. It will orbit Luna for five days after arrival, and then depart back for the Earth.
When an employee of NASA or one of its contractors participated in a major milestone, they were often sent a thank you letter from their manager. Here’s one my grandfather got from his boss, Dr. Kurt Debus.
In this case, my grandfather got a letter from his boss, Dr. Kurt Debus, congratulating him for his participation in helping to launch America’s first satellite, Explorer 1. The satellite was not only the first for the nation, it was also the first to carry scientific instruments designed to make measurements in the new frontier of outer space.
One of the measurements that the satellite made was cosmic rays — a form of high-energy radiation that constantly bombards the Earth, and originates from outside our solar system. The expected count was thirty strikes per second on the instruments aboard Explorer 1, but periodically, it would drop to near zero. Analysis of this data showed that zero counts were occurring when Explorer 1 was at an altitude of 2,000 km above Earth, but it would rise to the expected level of thirty. This in turn led to more experimentation on later satellites, and as a result, the Van Allen Belt was discovered — a geomagnetic phenomena where highly changed particles are trapped in the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth.
Debus’s letter to my grandfather:
All That’s Left: there is one last piece of the Lassiter Mill Bridge left standing in a Raleigh city park. There’s but one wall of the old mill left, while the dam and the spillway across Crabtree Creek are still there.
The bridge was 110 foot long and 15 foot wide, and stood 20 foot tall. It was a steel truss bridge, and it replaced an earlier wooden bridge.Originally spanning the Neuse River north of Raleigh, the bridge was relocated to the Mill site in 1920. Condemned and demolished in 1984, it is thought to have been the last remaining steel truss bridge in Wake County.
They’re just a feature of an Inside-The-Beltline neighborhood and part of a small city park that most people have no idea is even there.As kids, this spot was a swimming hole, and it was a rite of passage to shimmy up to the top of the bridge and dive in the creek below.
Most people in Raleigh have heard of Avent Ferry Road, maybe they’ve seen a road by the same name 15 miles south in Holly Springs, but few of them know where Avent’s Ferry actually was.
The ferry operated from1775 until 1926, and was vital for transportation and commerce in central North Carolina. The state replaced the ferry with a bridge in 1926, but roads heading south from Raleigh and through Holly Springs still bear its name.
Today, where NC-42 crosses the Cape Fear River, you’re driving across the bridge the replaced Avent Ferry.
Kentucky is a state that’s been on a hot streak producing ground-breaking Americana/rock artists lately: Sturgill Simpson, possibly the best musician to make popular music in the second half of the 2010’s onward, Chris Stapleton, who is making some of the best traditional blues you’ll hear, Tyler Childers, whose work may be best described as traditional country that’s set in a contemporary world, and many others. Now comes Jeremy Pinnell.
All hail from the Bluegrass State.
All are exceptional.
Pinnell has previously released two honky tonk albums that were well-received, but here, he covers Concrete Blonde’s 1989 “Joey” with a lonesome, wrenching solo rendition. 2020 being 2020, he recorded it on his phone in his home and released the results on YouTube. I’d say he did a damn fine job and his version captured the tone and tenor of its time perfectly.And as I always say: there’s a lot of great new music out there, it’s just harder to find than ever.
This song is proof of just that.
“Rogozin is at it again,” harked a post on Twitter today. Rogozin is of course Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, the Director General of Roscosmos, Russia’s state corporation for spaceflight activities and systems. “At it” meant that he had given a speech regarding the current state of the Russian space program, its future and its plans. I suppose “at it” was also meant that Rogozin had made sensational sort of statement, something he’s known for from time to time. He didn’t really do that this time, however, instead he gave a frank statement of how his program needs to improve and what his viewpoint of the American space program is.
Rogozin makes some good points, with a touch of the same sort of jingoism Americans were applauding as it came from the Cape and Houston just a couple of weeks ago as NASA and SpaceX sent two astronauts to orbit on the ISS. Write off the Russian space program at your own peril — they are the ones who have uninterrupted access to orbit for over forty years.
He called out NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz, who told Forbes magazine last week that “cosmonauts will fly on Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner and vice versa.” Aside from Schierholz’s statement, there’s no evidence that Russia is planning to fly on either craft — they have purchased no contracts, nor have they publicly submitted any RFP’s for one. Russia has no need to buy seats, as it has a reliable ride to space of its own.
Rogozin also offered a riposte to Elon Musk, when he said “on May 30 Elon Musk did not bring us down — he brought down his compatriots from Boeing passing them with the beginning of the flight tests. This war is theirs, but not ours. We have a long-standing and continuously working national transport system; we constantly refine it, at the same time building a new and more advanced spacecraft.”
What do you expect him to say? Should he fawn like a SpaceX fanboi on Twitter and suggest that the Russians shut down a program that has ~1900 successful launches, 173 crewed? That is absurd. Rogozin is correct, besides. The competition was not with them, it was Boeing vs. SpaceX. Yes, Russia charged NASA far more than SpaceX will, but the Russians were also charging what the market would bear, something that should be near and dear to a country to claims to love the free market and capitalism. The only possible competition would have come from China, a country that NASA is forbidden to work with in any international space effort. It was Russia or America would have had to abandon ISS entirely. Given that stark choice, Russia’s price was a bargain.
Much was also made in the about the vast superiority of Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 versus Soyuz. Certainly Crew Dragon is more modern, after all, its base design is a little more than a decade old. Its crewed flight capabilities are still being tested for the first time — while it is successfully in orbit, that was only one-third of its mission: go to orbit, stay there and test the long-term capabilities of the craft to stay functional and then return the crew safely home. Until it meets the latter two milestones, one underway, the other yet to come later in the summer, the mission cannot be called a success. On the other hand, Soyuz was and still is the most venerable human launch system in existence. It’s record speaks for itself.
“We have a unique record of 173 successful flights. Even the three emergencies caused by the carrier rocket failures in 1975, 1983 and 2018 occurring during various injection stages showed its unique survivability due to the launch escape system reliability. By the way, the Soyuz rocket of various configurations has performed over 1,900 launches,” said Rogozin.
True. Soyuz is, by far, the most experienced and iterated design of any spacecraft, ever. Is it dated? Yes. But it has continued from its maiden launch in the days of Gemini until now. The Soviets/Russians have not had the capability gaps that existed here between Apollo and STS, the delays after STS tragedies, and the last gap between STS and Commercial Crew.
And it will stay that way, because not all nations want to depend on America for access to space. That is why Rogozin mentioned “the time-honored spacecraft created and designed by Sergey Korolev to conquer the Moon, will serve for a while even after the new Oryol spacecraft becomes operational.” In other words, the Russians will continue to have access to space now and for as far as one can peer into the future.
Personally, some of the best nights in my life were spent in the Village Subway, in Cameron Village, Raleigh, NC US of A. We were sure we were all almost famous, and funny thing, that’s exactly what some of us became. I personally didn’t, but I damn sure had a good time in my early 1920’s.
Imagine a 2,500 square foot club, hot and sweaty, packed to the gills; so tightly that dancing was basically jumping straight up and down. At any given times, there might be three, perhaps four other people pressing up against you, and undoubtedly you were doing the same to someone else. And, oh, the B-52’s playing on a tiny stage ten feet in front of you.
It was just another night at the Café Deja Vu, in beautiful Raleighwood North Carolina in the 1980’s.
I truly believe that The B-52’s have been underrated by a lot of rock historians. They were new, quirky, they were different, and they were silly a lot of the time, but they were also incredibly talented and incredibly fun. Seeing them once was enough to make someone be see them every time they came through town and listen to their records in between.
Without trying to sound like someone waxing about their lost youth, it was always a good time. So were the after-hours parties with Fred Schneider holding court, or maybe my roommate, Berklee graduate David Matos of The Snap showing off his ability to play anything by ear after hearing it once, and by play, I mean every single instrument.
I haven’t spoken to Fred or David in 30+ years now, and I doubt he remembers me, but I do enjoy knowing that my friend Neilan Tyree (whom I met through my wife Maggie) and Fred are good friends. For his part, David did a turn on Broadway as the lead guitarist in Motown The Musical, among many other things. He’s always had a solid career, and still does so far as I know They are all really good people, and it was fun knowing them, however slightly, before they got really famous.
For more, read Heather Leah’s fine piece on The Village Subway.
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