Chicago’s Aqua building

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While in Chicago last weekend for Lollapalooza 2010 I was able to do a bit of sightseeing. Among the highlights was the brand new Aqua building designed by Jeanne Gang. A gem among other Chicago stand-outs, the Aqua was named the Emporis 2009 skyscraper of the year.

The building is an 82-story mixed-use residential skyscraper in the Lakeshore East development in downtown Chicago. Its appearance changes significantly according to the viewer's position. To capture views of nearby landmarks for Aqua's residents, its balconies extend outward by as much as 3.7 meters. The result is a building composed of irregularly shaped concrete floor slabs which lend the facade an undulating, sculptural quality. The name 'Aqua' fits the nautical theme of the other buildings in the Lakeshore East development and is derived from the wave-like forms of the balconies.

The Cape Week in Review – Rockets, Robots and MRO Remembered

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Some interesting things took place at Cape Canaveral this week, lighting up the region in a number of ways. NASA held a payload event showcasing several of the flight hardware elements that will be aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-133 mission. Included in that event was a demonstration of the humanoid robotic assistant Robonaut 2 that will be aboard Discovery. Over at Cape Canaveral, the Air Force launched the first in a series of next-generation military communications satellites.

NASA Hosts STS-133 Payload Media Event

NASA's Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) played host to members of the media on Aug. 14, as the space agency showed off the payload that shuttle Discovery will carry to orbit on Nov. 1. The event covered most of STS-133's payload elements. The star attraction of this event, however, was the human-like Robonaut 2 (R2), a dexterous handyman that is designed to assist astronauts on long-duration space voyages.

Those present were also provided with a tour of the Permanent Multi-Purpose Module (PMM). In actuality the PMM is the refurbished Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) that has traveled to and from space in the shuttle several times. Leonardo has been modified and hardened with micrometeoroid and debris shielding so as to be better suited to being permanently mounted to the International Space Station (ISS) upon the completion of STS-133.

Located further down in the SSPF was the final payload component on display - the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier - 4 (ELC-4). This unpressurized pallet will carry a Heat Rejection System Radiator (HRSR), Flight Support Equipment as well as several Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs) to the orbiting laboratory. Although stocked full of important components, this poriton of the Shuttle's payload was overshadowed by Robonaut-2.

Also scheduled to fly to the space station on Discovery is Space Exploration Technologies' (SpaceX) DragonEye (DE) relative navigation sensor. This element of STS-133's payload was not part of this media event.

Although a final determination has yet to be made, this mission could be Discovery's last. If so, the orbiter will eventually make her way to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

Picture1.jpgRobonaut-2 flexes his muscles during a media event held at kennedy Space Center's Space Station Processing Facility. Photo Credit: awaltersphoto.com

First AEHF Satellite Thunders to Orbit

The United States military has been working to upgrade existing communications satellites with newer, safer and faster models. The first of these next-gen satellites, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency -1 (AEHF-1), rode a fiery trail to orbit atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket Aug. 14. The rocket roared off of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41).

This launch has been delayed several times due to a variety of technical issues. Concerns over the mechanism that controls the payload's protective cover, a balky crane, and other problems all conspired to push the launch back until Saturday. None of these problems were evident when it came to launch however. The satellite's Atlas V launch vehicle rumbled its way into orbit on the first launch attempt.

The AEHF series of satellites is designed to replace the Milstar constellation. These newer satellites are designed to be jamming-proof and to be far more capable than their predecessors. In the event of a nuclear war, they will provide real-time communications between military commanders on the ground and the president.

The Atlas V rocket that hoisted the AEHF-1 to orbit was first used in 2002 to launch the Hot Bird 6 satellite. The Atlas V is built by ULA, a joint operation between aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

969242376_rKigT-M.jpgA United Launch Alliance Atlas V carries the AEHF-1 satellite to orbit. Photo Credit: awaltersphoto.com

This Week in Cape History

August 12, 2005: NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. aboard the first United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket used for an interplanetary mission. MRO's ongoing mission was to map the physical features of Mars, including its atmosphere and its subterranean layering.

PictureMRO.jpgThe Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter scans the Martian surface in this NASA illustration. Image Credit: JPL/NASA
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The Cape Week in Review is compiled by Jason Rhian, the Cape Insider, and is a weekly
round-up of what's happening at Cape Canaveral. If you have information or suggestions for the Cape Week in Review please email us at capereview@spaceref.com.

Are you ready for the Red Planet? Book Review: Mary Roach’s "Packing for Mars"

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Mary Roach's Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void will give you a whole new view of an astronaut's life

Frank Sietzen, Jr.: For most of us spacers human spaceflight is nothing to, well, joke about. After all, riding rockets into the cosmos is serious business, and there's nothing that NASA or we do better than take ourselves seriously - perhaps too seriously. In the last 30 years or so, only Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" gave us permission to laugh out loud when contemplating some of the inconveniences of spaceflight. Until now, that is.

Mary Roach, one of America's most successful and prolific science writers, has made an art form out of picking a little known or understood area of science and doing some first-person research. In her "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers", she tells us more than we'd ever wish to know about what happens to our bodies after we croak. In "Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife" she gives us a window on ghosts, spooks, and what many believe follows death. In "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex" she throws herself into deconstructing the sexual impulse, visiting the top sex researchers in the world's universities and laboratories, while enlisting some front-line help from her long-suffering husband, no less.

In "Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void" Roach gives the same in-depth treatment to global preparations for long duration human spaceflight.

I consider myself a true spacer, having earned my space-writing chops across 25 years of writing about this stuff for many outlets, some of whom no longer exist. But Roach puts me to shame with her two years of on-the-scene research around the globe wherever planning was underway for extended duration spaceflight.

She traveled to Japan to follow along Japanese astronaut candidates (you'll never think of Origami the same way again). She followed the Russian astronauts in Star City, flew the NASA "Vomit Comet", talked with former Apollo astronauts and current Shuttle and Space Station mission participants to get the goods on living in a space capsule and Shuttle (including Jim Lovell's candid assessments of life aboard Gemini 7), test flying the Shuttle's zero gravity toilet, and following the test procedures for the original Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (which used, astoundingly, actual cadavers to test capsule impact abilities).

Roach read through thousands of pages of transcripts from the Apollo lunar missions to ferret out the crew's candid statements about life in space and on the Moon (including what John Young told Charlie Duke he "got" while walking on the Moon during Apollo 16). Hey, I love this stuff but I doubt I'd have the stamina to go through all that she went through to help her readers get a feel for spaceflight. Geese that why there's the Science Channel...and books like this.

In chapters she addresses how Japan picks an astronaut, the psychology of isolation in spaceflight, astronaut's secret misery, the strange careers of monkeynauts Sam and Enos, "spaced" hygiene or the lack thereof, sex in space (of course!), bailing out of a spaceship ("Withering Heights"), discomfort food, and eating your pants (no fooling) when planning for a Mars mission, among others.
There's plenty of new details about familiar subjects, all well-written with grace and laugh-out-loud humor.

Roach came by her book-writing chops honestly. "I spent a few years working as a freelance copy editor before landing a half-time PR job at the San Francisco Zoo," she writes on her web site. "My office was in a trailer next to Gorilla World. On the days when I wasn't taking calls about elephant wart removal surgery or denying rumors that the cheetahs had been sucked dry by fleas, I wrote freelance articles for the local newspaper's Sunday magazine. Eventually, my editors there moved on to bigger things and took me along with them". Seems to me that working in a zoo was perfect preparation for writing about NASA. OK, just kidding....

You'll come away from this small book with a renewed appreciation for the hazards, difficulties and sheer commitment that it takes to even think about living in space for extended periods. Yet that is exactly what America, Japan, Russia and others are doing today, all with little or no certainty that their respective governments will actually commit to distant voyages to Mars in our lifetimes.
With so many making ready to go, what's the holdup?

NASAWATCH readers, I'd like your thoughts.

Well, here's one of mine:

On a hill in Arlington National Cemetery near my home, one can look south down into the streets of the District of Columbia. In that view, a person can see monuments to American Presidents from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, and slightly hidden from view, Abraham Lincoln. Turning around, that person would then face the grave site of the 35th President and read excerpts from his selected speeches. Of all of the 44 presidents of the United States, this one, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and buried on that hillside, lives in history's memory as the most spacefaring of them all.

Many remember that President Kennedy summoned Americans to journey to the Moon, starting with two stirring speeches and ending in missions that began more than half a decade after his death, in what we now call spaceflight's "Golden" age. In this mythic memory of those Americans that think at all about space exploration, it is the Presidency that most often frames the issue of which space missions to pursue-and why. In point of fact, three of Kennedy's successors have claimed his mantle of spacefaring by calling America to humans to Mars.

But in that southernmost view from John Kennedy's grave, visitors can also see another federal edifice in Washington, DC. It is the unique dome of the Capitol, topped by a bronze statue of liberty and illuminated by lantern when Congress is in session. Few Americans think of the legislative body when they think or hear about space flight events, if they ever think of space affairs at all. But in the nearly five decades that have passed since John Kennedy asked Americans for the Moon, it has been Congress that has had the strongest and most sustained role in seeing that the United States continued to explore space, albeit with as little funding as possible.

If America follows Roach's call for humans to Mars, those who work across from that dome will decide when and how fast, or if at all to make that trip. Thus far, Congress has echoed President Barack Obama's call to Mars. But the funding bills now circulating through Congress don't contain the dollars or long range commitments to return to the Moon, much less Mars. They call to start deep space travel with a capsule and heavy lift rocket, but no money for a habitat to house the astronauts for the long journey, insufficient funds for the rocket to take them there, and less money to design ways to shield the flyers from the radiation hazards that they'll surely face. In other words, they like the idea of Mars more than the wherewithal to get there. Maybe they should read Roach's book.

Roach closes her stories with the admonition that America should go to Mars ("Let's go out and play"), the difficulty she details notwithstanding. But it is the players beneath that great white dome visible from JFK's resting place that, more than any American President, will determine when and how such a voyage will take place. George H.W. Bush, his son, and now Barack Obama have made humans to Mars a national goal. Up until now it has always been a futile exercise, much like writing national space policies, which are always approved but often ignored. In many technical respects Mars is further away today than the Moon was in Kennedy's time, regardless of the effort now underway, as Roach chronicled so well, to understand and sustain human long duration spaceflight.

It will take political determination, matched with courage, reason and principle on the order of those chronicled in this book to make it a reality. The issue isn't a shortage of heroes willing to make the trip. I think the issue is a shortage of money and political will that goes beyond words and pronouncements to tangible commitments, which in the current era are in shorter supply than speeches.
Shakespeare said it best in Henry IV. "I can call spirits from the vasty deep!" the politician and erstwhile sorcerer Owen Glendower boasts. But it is his wily cousin Hotspur that reminds him - and us Mars aficionados - that such boasts are cheap. "Why so can I, so can any man," Hotspur replies dryly. "-but will they come when you call for them?"

"Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void" Norton, $25.95 U.S. in all major bookstores, and Amazon.com. Listen to Mary Roach tell her space stories in person by following her book tour at maryroach.net.

Caster Wheels

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could someone please clarify the advantage of using steerable caster wheels instead of steerable ordinary wheels in a wheelchair. thanks in advance.

The ‘Create the Future’ myth

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A popular notion amongst futurists, technoprogressives and transhumanists alike is the suggestion that we can proactively engineer the kind of future we want to live in. I myself have been seduced by this idea; back during the Betterhumans days our mission was to "connect people to the future so that they can create it." Given the seemingly dystopic and near-apocalyptic trajectory that humanity appears to be heading in, this was and still is a powerfully intuitive and empowering concept.

Trouble is, we're mostly deluded about this.

Now, I don't deny that we should collectively work to build a desirable future that is inherently liveable and where our values have been preserved; my progressivism is unshatterable. What I am concerned about, however, is the degree to which we can actually control our destiny. While I am not an outright technological determinist, I am pretty damn close. As our technologies increase in power and sophistication, and as unanticipated convergent effects emerge from their presence, we will increasingly find ourselves having to deal with the consequences. It is in addressing these technological side-effects that our desired trajectories will be re-routed by pragmatism and survivalism.

In other words, adaptationism will supercede idealized notions of where we can and should develop as an advanced species.

For example, consider the remedial ecology and geoengineering concepts. We have not voluntarily chosen to explore these particular areas of inquiry. These are technologies of adaptationist necessity. Because we have buggered up the planet, and because we may have no other choice, humanity finds itself compelled to pour its time and resources into areas in which we wouldn't have otherwise cared about. Breaking down toxic wastes and removing carbon from the atmosphere was not anything anybody would have desired a century ago; our present is not the future that our ancestors could have anticipated or created.

Technological adaptationism also extends to ramifications in the social and political arenas. The entire back-half of the 20th Century was marred by the Cold War, a biopolar geopolitical arrangement that emerged due the presence of ideologically disparate hegemons in the possession of apocalyptic weapons. We have no reason to believe that a similar arrangement couldn't happen again, especially when considering the potential for ongoing nuclear proliferation and the development of novel apocalyptic-scale technologies such as nanoweapons and robotic armadas. Even worse, given the possibility that a small team (or even a single individual) may eventually be capable of hijacking the entire planet, our civil liberties as we know them may cease to exist altogether in favour of mass surveillance and quasi-totalitarian police states.

Again, this isn't anything that any progressive futurist wants. But these are the unintended consequences of technological advancement. We are slaves to technological adaptationism; to do otherwise would be to risk our very own existence. And in order to avoid our extinction (or something similarly catastrophic), we may be compelled to alter our social structures, values, technological areas of inquiry and even ourselves in order to adapt.

As to whether or not such a future is desirable by today's standards is an open question.