From the excitingly-titled:

Lumbar Spine Paraspinal Muscle and Intervertebral Disc Height Changes in Astronauts After Long-Duration Spaceflight on the International Space Station

Results.

Paraspinal lean muscle mass, as indicated by the FCSA, decreased from 86% of the total PSM cross-sectional area down to 72%, immediately after the mission. Recovery of 68% of the postflight loss occurred during the next 6 weeks, still leaving a significantly lower lean muscle fractional content compared with preflight values. In contrast, lumbar IVD heights were not appreciably different at any time point.

Conclusion.

The data reveal lumbar spine PSM atrophy after long-duration spaceflight. Some FCSA recovery was seen with 46 days postflight in a terrestrial environment, but it remained incomplete compared with preflight levels.

Short form: long-term microgravity is bad for you. Solution: use some form of artificial gravity if you are in a space station or long-range spacecraft; or get there lickety-split if you’re traveling somewhere. Both are good.

The ESA’s Schiaparelli Mars lander failed to land on Mars yesterday. That’s not to say it didn’t make it to Mars… it just made it there a little faster than it should’ve. Ten parachutes were cut loose too soon and the braking rockets didn’t burn long enough, so it fell out of the sky with an Earth-shattering kaboom. Well… Mars craft have had a pretty unfortunate record.

What’s impressive is that there are enough satellites orbiting Mar that the crash site has already been spotted:

Camera on Mars Orbiter Shows Signs of Latest Mars Lander

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted both the parachute and the scorch mark using its low-rez “Context Camera.” The high-rez “HiRISE” camera will be trained on the site in the near future.

Well, this is just super. On January 1, 2019, the New Horizons probe will pass remarkably close to Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, a chunk of something about 19 to 28 miles across. Telescopic examination has shown it to be reddish, redder than the splotches on Pluto and Charon. The scienticians will tell you that the redness is due to the presence of tholins, reddish-brown chemicals produced when simple organic molecules like methane are exposed to ultraviolet light. But come on, we all know the score… this is a chunk of frozen blood left out in deep space by the fungi from Yuggoth or Yog Sothoth or the Ogdru Jahad or Scientologists. The only question is, what’s the blood *from?* Will New Horizons provide the answer… and will that forbidden knowledge drive everyone *insane?* Personally, I suspect not. The flyby won’t occur until 2019… by which time I expect that the Earth will be a smoking radioactive ruin. Nobody will be manning the radio receivers to hear what New Horizons has to say. Those few who survive will be too busy trying to scratch a living out of the blasted Earth under a smoke and ash filled sky, daily battling hordes of mutated social justice zombies and Kardashidemons.

A few years ago, Jamie XX’s song “Gosh” had an official video released. And then a few days ago, it had another completely different official video released. The music is pretty much the same, some very slight alterations, but the videos are entirely different.

The first video shows what STEM could theoretically achieve. The second video… I dunno what the hell is going on there, if there’s some sort of message, or what. Take a look at the both of them… and see if, like me, the one focusing on the power of science and engineering doesn’t come across as by far the most appealing and inspiring of the two.

Even in the context of art like music videos… what’s more inspiring? A STEM vision, or an Art vision?

Earlier video:

New video:

Now… which one presents a world you’d like to see made real, that you’d like to be a part of? That makes the least bit of any sort of sense?

—

For those anti-science trolls out there, this post is not saying that art should be done away with. But it *is* saying that an understanding of science and engineering allows you to dream dreams not only vaster and more beautiful that you would be able to without science… but those dreams could be made *real.* Without science and engineering and math, nothing you dream will likely be possible or meaningful.

The History Channel has a new series, “Doomsday: 10 Ways he World will End.” Each episode describes some scientifically possible doomsday scenario… the first episode had a dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, the second had the Earth swallowed by a supermassive black hole. (One of these is more likely than the other…). The third episode, aired just a few days ago, has a rogue planet with the mass of Neptune plow into the Earth.

At the end of the last episode, discussion was made of the possibility of mankind surviving Earth getting steamrolled by an interstellar interloper by sending an emergency colonization mission to Mars. It was only a couple of minutes, mostly illustrated with stock footage of modern launch vehicles being assembled. But one of the talking heads suggested that the means of getting to mars would be via Orion nuclear pulse vehicle. A *very* brief shot of the Orion vehicle zipping past was included. The Orion CG model was obviously rather quickly slapped together. It was pretty generic, but on the whole looked reasonable enough. But for some reason the craft was given an unnecessary and impossible to justify rocket nozzle smack in the middle of the pusher plate. I took a few snapshots of the TV screen with my cameraphone… seemed good enough under the circumstances.

Currently on ebay is a single slide, a photo someone took in the 1960’s. It shows a family standing in front of a full-scale mockup of the SV-5, what became the X-24A. This is hardly an unknown mockup; it has been shown elsewhere many times. But I thought this particular view might be of interest to some. It is shown on the back of a truck for transport, attached to a transition section that would, on the real vehicle, then attach to a launch vehicle such as a Titan II or III.

Some interesting things seem to have come out. These haven’t been officially confirmed so far as I know, but interesting nonetheless:

Details from Elon’s speech at the NRO

“We are close to figuring it out. It might have been formation of solid oxygen in the carbon over-wrap of one of the bottles in the upper stage tanks. If it was liquid it would have been squeezed out but under pressure it could have ignited with the carbon. This is the leading theory right now, but it is subject to confirmation. The other thing we discovered is that we can exactly replicate what happened on the launch pad if someone shoots the rocket. We don’t think that is likely this time around, but we are definitely going to have to take precautions against that in the future. We looked at who would want to blow up a SpaceX rocket. That turned out to be a long list. I think it is unlikely this time, but it is something we need to recognize as a real possibility in the future.”

Two things here.

The helium pressurant bottles are carbon fiber overwrapped and sit *inside* the liquid oxygen tank. The LOX on the upper stage was sub-cooled… it wasn’t “just below boiling,” it was “just above freezing.” Keeping the LOX as cold as possible keeps it as *dense* as possible, meaning you can squeeze that much more in the tank. Which is fine… except if you blow down any helium in those tanks, due to the laws of thermodynamics the helium in the helium tank will cool off. Which means the wall of the helium tank will cool off. And any liquid oxygen in contact with the tank, or even soaked in between the carbon fibers, already close to the freezing point, may freeze solid. Solid oxygen in among carbon fibers… not a good idea.
The failure of the Falcon 9 on the pad can be replicated by shooting it with a rifle at long range. In the comments at that Reddit posting, people who are apparently SpaceX employees say they know this because they shot a mockup. And perhaps even more interestingly, they could replicate the results by shooting *at* the rocket… not necessarily by actually hitting it. This would seem to indicate, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the shockwave shed by a presumably big and fast projectile scooting past the fragile outer skin of an upper stage is enough to send a shock into the stage. The shock hits the solid oxygen ice/carbon mixture and *blammo.*

Hmm. As Elon apparently said, they have a long list of groups that would like to see them fail. Competing American launcher companies. Competing European, Russian, Chinese launcher companies. Antagonistic foreign national governments. Religious nuts. Australian anti-STEM trolls. Generic whackjobs. SpaceX had best step up their security game. And about the only way to do that in this case is to make sure that they control all the territory out to probably two miles from the launch site.

If the upper stage can be made to fail like this due to the passage of a bullet *near* it, that may indicate that the marksman was really, really good. It’d no doubt be childs play for a well trained sniper to hit the upper stage. Compared to a human, it’s *huge.* But if you put a bullet through the stage, no doubt there would be considerable forensic evidence left over. The outer skin with a bullet hole would be pretty obvious. The interior components with bullet holes, or scrapings of copper, lead, tungsten where none should be. But if you can successfully pass a bullet within an inch or two of the surface without actually hitting anything… no evidence of the bullet will be left behind. But that’d be an impressive shot, which would *probably* tend to eliminate generic nuts and religious whackos from the list. Someone would have had to have employed a real pro, which means hiring someone really expensive or employing a pro already in your service.

It would be advisable to add a sensor network around the launch facility. Millimeter wave radar can pick up a bullet; audio sensors can nail down the location of the shot. These won’t save your rocket, but they’ll tell you what happened, and if the system is fast enough allow either counter-battery fire or perhaps the unleashing of drones, droids or security guards.

This sort of thing kinda plays into the ideas floated a few days ago re: hurricane Matthew. More launch options means you could get away from people trying to blow up your business.

Most likely it’ll turn out to be a mundane sort of failure. But the fact that after some practical testing they’ve not only *not* discounted sabotage but have actually found evidence *supporting* that explanation, is a bit distressing.

Some news about Stratolaunch:

Orbital ATK and Stratolaunch partner to offer competitive launch opportunities

So far so good. But the artwork included is a little puzzling:

That’s one Stratolaunch carrier aircraft carrying three Pegasus space launch vehicles. Ummm… how often is the capacity to ripple-fire small satellites going to pop up?

In the early 1990’s, OSC looked at a launcher that was kinda-sorta three Pegasus boosters strapped side-by side, carried by a giant new aircraft designed by Scaled Composites. That made a measure of sense, but this new concept does not seem to be something that would be needed. Unless, of course, those are meant for military purposes… launching a number of small recon satellites onto similar orbits, perhaps. Or perhaps those Pegasus boosters are packing warheads of some kind…

On ebay a little while back were some pieces of art illustrating some Martin Marietta concepts for teleoperated spacecraft. Included was an idea for a Skylab reboost spacecraft to be carried by the Shuttle. The reboost spacecraft would, it seems, be based on a simpler spacecraft to be used for general satellite repair, recovery and reboost.

Due out in January is the film “Hidden Figures,” a fact-based look at Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, important but relatively little-known figures in the history of NASA. There are several obvious Social Messages in the movie, but what do *I* see? STEM, baby! The heroes of the piece rise to prominence and save the day because they can Do The Math. The three main characters are mathematicians, computer programmers and engineers.

Also note: I provided a few cyanotype blueprints to be used as props/set pieces. Based on prior experience, the chances of them actually making a recognizable appearance are pretty minimal (movies and TV shows gather a *vast* pile of stuff to use, most of which isn’t used), but you never know.