Tag: stratosphere

Views from Space

Views from Space

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The International Space Station orbits Earth at about 400 to 405 kilometers above us (accounting for monthly orbit decay and subsequent boosts), and makes about 15.5 trips around each day.  It is officially a Space Station, modular, and began its life in 1998.

Track the ISS

1998? Really? That recently? It feels like we have always had a space station if you are a Gen-Xer or younger. China has a manned space station in orbit, the Tiangong 1, and before those we had Skylab and MIR.

That’s Las Vegas as seen from the ISS. I happen to live in the dark square to the far right of the picture, just below center. How many of you have seen your home city as it appears from the International Space Station? Not the daylight shots that we get from a few miles or less in the air taken by Google Maps, but a nighttime shot from 250 miles above us?

Did you know you can even see the thing from Earth, and it doesn’t have to be pitch black. Depending on its particular angle in the sky and where you are, it appears as a silvery dot slowly flying through the sky, taking about 4 minutes to cross overhead when it’s directly above.Don’t ignore a look at this feat of human technology. There are people flying overhead, 20 times higher than in airplanes, working on scientific pursuits that have direct effects for us here on the ground. When you get a chance, go out and look at it, watch it pass overhead, and think of how far we’ve come in the last 50 years compared to the last 5000 years. From 3000 BCE to 1900 CE we didn’t make a lot of progress, although those who lived in 3000 BCE might dispute that compared to those in 1800 CE.

Yet in the last century or so, just a little more than 100 years, humans went from balloonists to astronauts. We went from the telegraph to the cell phone. We went from libraries to the Internet. We went from hard labor to robots. It’s downright scary in some ways, and miraculously amazing in others. That I can write this and send it all over the world by pushing a button is something I never even imagined until about 20 years ago.  Technology has opened up the entire world, literally. So go outside and look up when that space station goes by, and wave!

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Yesteryear’s Science Fiction

Yesteryear’s Science Fiction

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https://t.co/VRLnUINSEI

Filling the Dragon

The astronauts are loading supplies into the vehicle that will leave the space station and go to Earth. I had fantasies about this kind of thing as a child. I suppose I should have dreamed about the day they cure all cancers, end poverty, stop making war, but those seemed too realistic (in all honest, thought we would have done it by now). But space travel to anywhere, and space stations in orbit, and filling out an application to be an astronaut?

For those of us who dream that humanity will not only survive but come out better in the long run, reality can be sobering. But looking back at history, we’ve made progress, at least in the modern world. We no longer burn witches at the stake, and there’s probably enough food for everyone if we can just overcome the governments and get it there when it’s needed. We can control reproduction, and we have antibiotics (at least we do for a little while longer). Small Pox is extinct. So are Guinea worms. But then, a lot of species have gone extinct for utterly stupid reasons; rhino horns and ivory come to mind.

I think now, what can be so astounding, is that we have The Internet, and people have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips, and ignore it. We went to the moon, and back. We’ve created and sent robots to all the other planets we share our sun with. If that can be done on the puny budget our world commits to science (oh, about 3% compared to 50% for the war machine), then imagine our future if the budgets were well balanced and people valued the science brought to us by space programs. See, now we’re back to dreaming about touching those stars!
In The Beginning

In The Beginning

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It can take a long time to get something really big to move, like a freight train with 100 cars or a rocket with a satellite. In this case, getting into the stratosphere has been a decade in the planning and simmering stage, followed by the designing and building stage, and now, the launching and moving stage of science fiction.

As a life long nerd and bookworm, it’s a rather natural place for me to land, here, where a three dimensional chess board collects dust in a corner, a periodic table of elements is posted on the wall, and a photograph of an alien carrying off my child to Area 51 is tacked on the cork board. I live in Las Vegas, so it wouldn’t be a long journey; neither is it very far from The Stratosphere. And this is where the epiphany occurred, that primordial need to tell the story, to educate and engage at the same time with a message of hope for what our future holds if humanity will trust in itself.

Expect photographs, breakthroughs, stories about science and space, biology and technology, a touch of history and a spark for your imagination. I’ll try to bring a little comedy along as well, so we aren’t bogged down in serious details but can soar and exercise your imagination while you nourish your soul.

I must warn you to be aware of animal stories that could appear at any time mixed among the nebulae, robots, aliens, and black holes. I hold a state license as a veterinary technician and although I am not working in a clinic, hospital, school or shelter, I’ve done all of those, from parrots to pocket pets, and live with a few dozen critters that keep me occupied and entertained, which I will pass on to you under the category of “biology”, a legitimate science, but more fact than fiction in these cases!

And it’s 3, 2, 1,  liftoff!

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