Beyond: Our Future in Space

by Chris Impey

  8. A mesmerizing video showing Baumgartner’s perspective as he plunged 24 miles has had more than five million views on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raiFrxbHxV0. In 2014, Google VP Alan Eustace broke Baumgartner’s altitude record (though not his speed record) by falling and parachuting from 135,890 feet to the ground in just fifteen minutes.

  9. The story of the competition between astronauts and test pilots to reach space was well told by Tom Wolfe in his book The Right Stuff 1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Mercury 7 astronauts were not originally intended to fly their space capsules, and Wolfe contrasted their roles with the high skill of test pilots such as Chuck Yeager, who took their planes to the edge of space. Wolfe’s book was made into a popular film in 1983.

  10. Chuck Yeager and the Bell X-1: Breaking the Sound Barrier by D. A. Pisano, F. R. van der Linden, and F. H. Winter 2006. Washington, DC: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

  11. Press On! Further Adventures in the Good Life by C. Yeager and C. Leerhsen 1997. New York: Bantam Books.

  12. At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program by M. O. Thompson 1992. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

  13. The US Air Force considered an altitude of 50 miles or 80 kilometers to be the limit of space. However, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world governing body of aviation records, set the limit of space at 62 miles or 100 kilometers; by that criterion, only one Air Force pilot was truly an astronaut.

  14. American X-Vehicles: An Inventory from X-1 to X-50 by D. R. Jenkins, T. Landis, and J. Miller 2003, Monographs in Space History (Centennial of Flight), NASA Special Publication Number 31, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.

  15. Space poetry is a small niche. Several collections of poetry about science include poems inspired by the space program, particularly Apollo and journeys to the Moon, most notably Songs from Unsung Worlds: Science in Poetry 1988, ed. by Bonnie Gordon. London: Birkhäuser; and Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science 2006, ed. by Robert Crawford. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Amazingly, it wasn’t until 2009 that an astronaut penned a poem while in orbit. The honor went to American Don Pettit for “Halfway to Pluto.” Also in that year, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata wrote a stanza as part of a free-association chain poem based on venerable Japanese renga and renku forms.

  16. Astronaut Fact Book 2013, NASA Publication NP-2013-04-003-JSC, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC.

  17. The Colbert Report, Episode 1012, broadcast on November 3, 2005, on Comedy Central. See episodes online at http://www.thecolbertreport.cc.com.

  18. “Prospects of Space Tourism” by S. Abitzsch 1996, presented at the Ninth European Aerospace Congress, hosted by Space Future.

  19. Space Tourism: Do You Want to Go? by J. Spencer 2004. Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books.

  20. The swift death of the program at the hands of the US House of Representatives is recounted on the NASA Watch website: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2005/06/nasas-first-and-last-artist-in-residence.html.

  21. Inventing the Internet by J. Abbate 1999. Cambridge: MIT Press. Also see: “The Internet: On its International Origins and Collaborative Vision” by R. Hauben 2004. Amateur Computerist, vol. 2, no. 2, and “A Brief History of the Internet” by B. M. Leiner et al. 2009, online at http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet.

  22. “Eisenhower’s Warning: The Military-Industrial Complex Forty Years Later” by W. D. Hartung 2001. World Policy Journal, vol. 18, no. 1.

  23. Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex by J. Ledbetter 2011. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  5: Meet the Entrepreneurs

  1. “Private Space Exploration a Long and Thriving Tradition” by M. Burgan 2012. In Bloomberg View, online at http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-07-18/private-space-exploration-a-long-and-thriving-tradition.

  2. “The Wit and Wisdom of Burt Rutan” by E. R. Hedman 2011. In The Space Review, online at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1910/1.

  3. Rutan—The Canard Guru by M. S. Rajamurthy 2009. India: National Aerospace Laboratories.

  4. Voyager by J. Yeager and D. Rutan 1988. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Also: Voyager: The World Flight: The Official Log, Flight Analysis and Narrative Explanation by J. Norris 1988. Northridge, CA: Jack Norris.

  5. “Burt Rutan—Aerospace Engineer,” interview on March 3, 2012, on BigThink website, http://bigthink.com/users/burtrutan.

  6. The excitement of winning the X Prize was captured in the documentary Mojave Magic: A Turtle’s Eye View of SpaceShipOne. This 2005 short film was directed and written by Jim Sayers, produced by Dag Gano and Jim Sayers, and distributed by Desert Turtle Productions.

  7. Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by R. Branson 2002. London: Virgin Books Limited. See also Screw Business As Usual by R. Branson 2011. London: Penguin Group.

  8. “Richard Branson: Virgin Entrepreneur” by M. Vinnedge 2009. Success magazine, online at http://www.success.com/article/richard-branson-virgin-entrepreneur.

  9. Dirty Tricks: The Inside Story of British Airways’ Secret War Against Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic by M. Gregory 1994. London: Little, Brown.

  10. “Up: The Story Behind Richard Branson’s Goal to Make Virgin a Galactic Success” by A. Higginbotham 2013. Wired magazine, online at http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/03/features/up.

  11. From a Reddit discussion on October 17, 2013, online at http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1onkop/i_am_peter_diamandis_founder_of_xprize/.

  12. We by C. Lindbergh 1927. New York: Putnam and Sons. The title refers to the fact that Lindbergh never referred to himself in making his historic flight—he always twinned himself with his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis.

  13. “The Dream of the Medical Tricorder” 2012. The Economist, online at http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567208-medical-technology-hand-held-diagnostic-devices-seen-star-trek-are-inspiring.

  14. “Peter Diamandis: Rocket Man” by B. Caulfield 2012. Forbes magazine, February 13, online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/01/26/peter-diamandis-rocket-man/2/.

  15. Diamandis recounts the story of Hawking’s zero-gravity ride in his blog entry for February 15, 2013, in the Huffington Post, online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-diamandis/prof-hawking-goes-weightl_b_2696167.html.

  16. “Robert Goddard: A Man and His Rocket,” online at http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/f_goddard.html.

  17. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by P. Diamandis and S. Kotler 2012. New York: Free Press.

  18. Quoted in “The New Space Race: Complicating the Rush to the Stars” by D. Bennett for the Tufts Observer, online at http://tuftsobserver.org/2013/11/the-new-space-race-complicating-the-rush-to-the-stars/.

  19. “At Home with Elon Musk: The (Soon-to-Be) Bachelor Billionaire” by H. Elliott in Forbes Life, online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2012/03/26/at-home-with-elon-musk-the-soon-to-be-bachelor-billionaire/.

  20. The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs by D. Kidder 2013. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

  21. See The Economist, online at http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603238-bill-stone-cave-explorer-who-has-discovered-new-things-about-earth-now-he.

  22. Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life by S. Shane 2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also the technical article “Is the Tendency to Engage in Entrepreneurship Genetic?” by N. Nicolaou, S. Shane, L. Cherkas, J. Hunkin, and T. D. Spector 2008. Management Science, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 167–79.

  23. “The Innovative Brain” by A. Lawrence, L. Clark, J. N. Labuzetta, B. Sahakian, and S. Vyakarnum 2008. Nature, vol. 456, pp. 168–69.

  6: Beyond the Horizon

  1. The Heavens and the Earth:
A Political History of the Space Age by W. MacDougall 1985. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  2. Quoted in “Private Dragon Capsule Arrives at Space Station in Historic First” by C. Moskowitz. Space.com, online at http://www.space.com/15874-private-dragon-capsule-space-station-arrival.html.

  3. There was a sobering reminder of the difficulties of spaceflight when an Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences exploded seconds after launch on October 28, 2014. The rocket was on a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

  4. Quoted in “SpaceX Successfully Launches Its Next Generation Rocket” by A. Knapp. Forbes magazine, online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/30/spacex-successfully-launches-its-next-generation-rocket/.

  5. Paris Hilton, quoted in Britain’s Daily Express, online at http://www.express.co.uk/news/science-technology/431046/Hollywood-stars-in-space-as-Richard-Branson-s-Earth-orbiting-flight-is-months-away.

  6. Space Adventures was one of the first players in the commercial space sector. Eric Anderson founded the company in 1998; since 2001, he’s sent seven clients on eight successful trips to the International Space Station. Among those who have placed $5 million deposits on future orbital spaceflights is Sergey Brin, the cofounder of Google. The company plans to start offering flybys of the Moon in 2017, at a cost of $150 million per trip.

  7. Quoted in “Amazon.com’s Bezos Invests in Space Travel, Time” by Amy Martinez, in Seattle Times, online at http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017883721_amazonbezos25.html.

  8. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program was NASA’s effort to develop America’s capacity to resupply the International Space Station. The program ran from January 2006 to September 2013 and awarded $500 million to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation. This is less than the cost of a single Space Shuttle flight, so NASA considers the program a great success. See Commercial Orbital Transportation Services: A New Era in Spaceflight by R. Hackler and R. Wright 2014, NASA Special Publication 2014-017, NASA, Washington, DC.

  9. NASA hosts information online at http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/#.U5Ot13JdWSo.

  10. For a transcript of the president’s speech: http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/trans/obama_ksc_trans.html.

  11. The asteroid initiative was originally dressed up with the idea of helping to protect the Earth from future impacts, but the rock that can be captured is far too small to be relevant to that problem. There are a lot of unknowns in the mission concept, and that typically translates into a great deal of unplanned time and money. See NASA’s web page on the concept at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/initiative/.

  12. “So You Want to Launch a Rocket? An Analysis of FAA Licensing Requirements with a Focus on the Legal and Regulatory Issues Created by the New Generation of Launch Vehicles,” unpublished paper by Nathanael Horsley.

  13. “Stuck to the Ground by Red Tape” 2013. The Economist, online at http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21578517-space-technology-dozens-firms-want-commercialise-space-various-ways.

  14. Burt Rutan testimony to the House Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, hearing entitled “Future Markets for Commercial Space,” April 20, 2005.

  15. The entire 2003 report is online at http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html.

  16. “Weighing the Risks of Space Travel” by J. Foust 2013. The Space Review, online at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/36/1.

  17. As reported in an article on the 2001 book Almost History by R. Bruns, online at http://www.space.com/7011-president-nixon-prepared-apollo-disaster.html.

  18. The Evolution of Rocket Technology (e-book) by M. D. Black 2012. Payloadz.com.

  19. China has progressed rapidly in science and technology because of a buoyant economy and strong investment. But a less noble reason is a shameless willingness to plagiarize intellectual property and to reverse engineer cutting-edge technologies. They have done this with fighter aircraft and supercomputers and they are now doing it with space technology.

  20. “Space Transportation Costs: Trends in Price Per Pound to Orbit 1990–2000,” a 2002 report developed by the Futron Corporation in Bethesda, Maryland.

  21. “The Effects of Long-Duration Space Flight on Eye, Head, and Trunk Coordination During Locomotion” by I. B. Kozlovskaya et al. 2004. Unpublished report by Life Sciences Group, Johnson Space Center. Also, the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a report on adaptation to space, “Human Factors in Long-Duration Spaceflight,” by the Space Sciences Board of the National Research Council 1972. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

  22. From the Johnson Space Center’s oral history project, as interviewed in 1999 by Carol Butler, online at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/StevensonRE/RES_5-13-99.pdf.

  23. “Why Do Astronauts Suffer from Space Sickness?” An article on research by S. Nooij of Delft University of Technology, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080521112119.htm.

  24. Space Physiology and Medicine by A. E. Nicogossian, C. L. Huntoon, and S. L. Pool 1993. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger. See also “Beings Not Made for Space” by K. Chang, New York Times, January 27, 2014, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/science/bodies-not-made-for-space.html.

  25. “Living and Working in Space,” NASA Report FS-2006-11-030-JSC, produced by Johnson Space Center.

  26. See the video segment from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report at http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-collections/307748/colbert-s-best-space-moments/168719.

  7: A Plethora of Planets

  1. Information about the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe can be found at the Death Valley National Park page of the National Park Service website, online at http://www.nps.gov/deva/parkmgmt/tribal_homeland.htm.

  2. See the travelogue “Life in the Past Tense: Chile’s Atacama Desert” by S. Beale, at the Perceptive Travel website: http://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/1211/chile.html.

  3. “Life Is a Chilling Challenge in Subzero Siberia” by B. Trivedi, from a National Geographic Channel TV show, online at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0512_040512_tvoymyakon.html.

  4. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by C. Sagan 1994. New York: Random House, pp. xv–xvi.

  5. “Extremophiles 2002” by M. Rossi et al. 2003. Journal of Bacteriology, vol. 185, no. 13, pp. 3683–89. See also Polyextremophiles: Life Under Multiple Forms of Stress, ed. by J. Seckbach et al. 2013. Dordrecht: Springer; and Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own by D. Toomey 2014. New York: W. W. Norton.

  6. “Quick Guide: Tardigrades” by B. Goldstein and M. Baxter 2002. Current Biology, vol. 12, no. 14, R475; and “Radiation Tolerance in the Tardigrade” by D. D. Horikawa et al. 2006. International Journal of Radiation Biology, vol. 82, no. 12, pp. 843–48.

  7. “The Role of Vitrification in Anhydrobiosis” by J. H. Crowe, J. F. Carpenter, and L. M. Crowe 1998. Annual Review of Physiology, vol. 60, pp. 73–103.

  8. The simple calculation of the equilibrium temperature at the surface of a terrestrial planet depends only on the luminosity of the star and the distance to the planet. If the orbit is too eccentric or elliptical, a planet may move in and out of the habitable zone over the course of its year. Atmospheric gases raise the surface temperature—strongly in the case of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane—and that shifts the habitable zone out to larger distances.

  9. “A Possible Biogeochemical Model for Mars” by A. De Morais 2012. 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, vol. 43, p. 2943.

  10. Abel Mendez at the University of Puerto Rico has used quantitative measures of planetary habitability to evaluate locations in the Solar System. The measures are keyed to the survival of primary producers like plants, phytoplankton, and microbes in general. Habitability can and will evolve as the atmospheric and geological conditions change. In the Solar System, Mendez found Enceladus to have the best sub
surface habitability, followed by Mars, Europa, and Titan. For a summary, see the Astrobiology magazine article online at http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/3270/islands-of-life-across-space-and-time.

  11. “A Jupiter-Mass Companion to a Solar-Type Star” by M. Mayor and D. Queloz 1995. Nature, vol. 378, pp. 355–59.

  12. The Exoplanet Handbook by M. A. C. Perryman 2011. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  13. “The HARPS Search for Earth-like Planets in the Habitable Zone” by F. Pepe et al. 2011. Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 534, p. A58.

  14. “One or More Bound Planets per Milky Way Star from Microlensing Observations” by A. Cassan et al. 2012. Nature, vol. 481, pp. 167–69; and “Prevalence of Earth-Size Planets Orbiting Sun-like Stars” by E. A. Petigura, A. W. Howard, and G. W. Marcy 2013. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 48, p. 19273.

  15. A large amount of technical and scientific information about the Kepler mission and its goals is on the NASA website: http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/.

  16. In 2014, Kepler got a new lease on life when engineers figured out how to use the pressure of starlight and tiny thruster burns to maintain the spacecraft orientation. It’s not as precise as the original pointing, so Kepler can no longer detect Earths, but it can find planets around a wide range of star types over a wide swath of sky. The so-called K2 mission will last about two years.

  17. “Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler, III. Analysis of the First 16 Months of Data” by N. Batalha et al. 2013. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement, vol. 204, pp. 24–45.

  18. “The Occurrence Rate of Small Planets Around Small Stars” by C. D. Dressing and D. Charbonneau 2013. The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 767, pp. 95–105.

  19. “Space Oddities: 8 of the Strangest Exoplanets” by D. Orf 2013. Popular Mechanics magazine, online at http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/deep/space-oddities-8-of-the-strangest-exoplanets#slide-1.

  20. “An Earth Mass Planet Orbiting Alpha Centauri B” by X. Dumusque et al. 2012. Nature, vol. 491, pp. 207–11.