The Flight Deck for May 2002, Issue 108
From the Bridge:
There is no way it can possibly be May already. Has someone been
chucking me into a time machine while I've been sleeping? This year
is going by so fast it's frightening. There, my monthly complaint
about time's speed is out of the way.
In other news, the plane wash went well (comments about captains and
centerfolds not withstanding). Both away missions to "The Scorpion King"
and "Spider-Man" were also successful. We're in the process of figuring
out a good time for an "Attack of the Clones" away mission. Stay tuned.
Speaking of Star Wars, the Star Wars Celebration held in Indianapolis
over the 3-5 of May was an...interesting experience, to say the least.
People, costumes, people, displays, people, events, people....are we
noticing a pattern here? Lots to see and buy, but I think I still
prefer a cozy fan-run con anyday.
May's meeting will mark a return to the Dailey household in
Georgetown, IN. Festivites will start around 1pm Georgetown time
(that's 12 noon for you Indyphiles) on Saturday, May 18th. We'll be
having a cookout/picnic. Meat and some drinks will be provided by
the hosts; everyone else please bring some kind of munchies or
covered dish. And don't forget a raffle item or two!
CAPT Cathy Dailey
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Upcoming Events:
May 16th--Release of "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones"
May 18th--Halsey May meeting, 12pm (Indy time) 1pm
(Georgetown time), the Daileys' in Georgetown, IN
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Beamdown Coordinates:
The Dailey Domicile
8003 Maple Grove Drive
Georgetown, IN
1. Get on I-65 South.
2. Stay on I-65 South.
3. Continue going south on I-65.
4. Go south on I-65 some more.(hint: if you
wind up in Nashville, you've gone too far!)
5. Take exit 6A, I-265 to I-64 New Albany
6. Follow I-265 all the way around to the I-64 split.
7. Go to the right; I-64 West to St. Louis. (be careful,
both 265 and 64 are notorious for speed traps)
8. Take exit 118 Georgetown.
9. Turn right at bottom of ramp.
10. Go straight at the light.
11. Continue until you pass the drive-in on the right.
12. Immediately look for Canal Lane on the right.
13. Turn right onto Canal.
14. Go up and over several hills; look for Maple Grove on the left.
15. Turn left onto Maple Grove
16. First house on the left facing the street.
Hope to see everyone there!
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Birthdays & Anniversaries
May 20th-LTCDR Sharon Shaw
May 25th-FADM Don and CAPT Janet Dailey's Anniversary
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From the "Talk About A Magic Carpet Ride!" Desk:
Hitching a ride on a sunbeam
Tim Radford, science editor
Monday May 6, 2002
The Guardian (UK)
A spacecraft powered by a sail the size of a playground but far thinner
than a human hair could be riding on a sunbeam by 2004. A private venture,
the space yacht will carry drawings, messages, photographs and DNA
signatures from millions of earthlings. But the experiment also has backing
from US climate scientists, who believe that sail-powered satellites can
visit parts of space no rocket-driven craft can reach.
"You get the most bizarre orbits out of these things. You can have
a Saturn orbiter that was always above the rings. You could always
be looking down at the rings without ever crossing the ring plane,
"says Carl Murray, an
"I think maybe the time has come for these things."
Details of the sail - 70 metres by 70 metres in area but only one
seventysixth of a human hair in thickness - will be outlined in
London this week at an international conference led by Professor
Murray and Colin McInnes, an engineer at the University of Glasgow,
on the next great adventure in space: the space clipper.
Most of the cost of space is in getting there: in accelerating an
object to the 5 miles a second needed to escape from the well of
gravity. But once in orbit, spacecraft need fuel to manoeuvre, stay
in position or begin the voyage to distant planets. So part of the
payload must be more rocket fuel. There is another catch. Still
prisoners of planetary or solar gravity, conventional orbiters are
condemned to stay in the plane of the solar system.
But light itself is a force. Sunbeams exert pressure. For decades
theorists have dreamed of small spacecraft with huge sails, slowly
gathering speed in free fall, driven by the rays of the sun. The
Planetary Society, founded by the late Carl Sagan, hopes to launch
the tiny experimental sailor Cosmos-1 in orbit later this year.
Team Encounter of Houston, Texas, a commercial venture, hopes to launch a
packet of human memorabilia aboard a spacecraft weighing only 18kg, but
with a sail area of 1.2 acres, in perhaps two years. It could gradually get
up to 67,000 miles per hour - four times the speed of the space shuttle.
The European and German space agencies have plans for a solar sail
measuring 20 metres by 20 metres. It would weigh 35kg, and be
launched folded up into a parcel measuring 60cms by 60cms by 40cms.
Once in space, it would be unfurled like a parachute, and gently
begin to drag its payload at increasing speed under the continuous
impact of tiny packets of light from the sun.
Professor McInnes in Glasgow has been working with Nasa, the European
space agency and Lockheed Martin and others on a sail-powered
satellite that would always stay within the Earth's magnetic
field. "It is quite hard to do experiments in the Earth's magnetic
field because it always points away from the sun," he says.
Because the Earth goes round the sun, and because the magnetic
field shifts with it each day, the elliptical orbit of
conventional spacecraft would only line up with the field
once a year. But a spacecraft with a sail 40 metres across
could use the sun's "wind" to keep itself on station all the time.
"It is a very simple mission to do, but the science benefit is tremendous.
You get data all year round." He and colleagues are working with Nasa on
plans for a sail-powered mission to the planet Mercury. But Nasa has more
far-reaching ambitions. By 2010, it hopes to launch a sail-powered craft
with a "canvas" more than 400 metres across.
Each square metre would weigh about a tenth of an ounce-the
mass of a raisin Under the pressure of the sun's rays, the
spacecraft would begin accelerating at only millimetres per
second, every second. But in just a a day, an acceleration
of 1mm per second would build up to 100 metres per second.
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From the "Things You Never Really Needed To Know
But Your Captain is Obsessed With Odd Trivia" desk:
Did you know .........
It is impossible to lick your elbow.
A crocodile can't stick its tongue out.
A shrimp's heart is in their head.
People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when
you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond.
In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no
one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in
the sand (or attempted to do so -- apart from Bones ).
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
Between 1937 and 1945 Heinz produced a version
of Alphabet Spaghetti especially for the German
market that consisted solely of little pasta swastikas.
More than 50% of the people in the world have
never made or received a telephone call.
Rats and horses can't vomit.
The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to
be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib.
If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture
a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
If you keep your eyes open by force, they will pop out.
Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two
rats could have over a million descendants.
Wearing headphones for just an hour will
increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why
does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal
Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it
illegal for US citizens to have any contact with
extraterrestrial or their vehicles?
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by
people sitting on them and photocopying their buttocks.
In the course of an average lifetime you will, while
sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Cat's urine glows under a black-light.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
Elephants are the only animal that cannot jump.
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end transmission
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