A Time & Space Oddity: 1969 Meets 2013

In a little over an hour, International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency will undock from the station inside a Russian Soyuz capsule and return to Earth with two of his fellow ISS residents, landing on the Kazahk steppe at 7:30 pm PDT. 

During his 5-month stay as Station Commander on the orbital outpost, Chris Hadfield has given Earth-bound humans unprecedented inside looks at station life and a daily stream of breathtaking photographs from orbit, via twitter, youtube, video chats and other social media channels.

Commander Hadfield is a musician, and on May 12, 2013 he published the first music video from space, shot on the International Space Station. It is a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and I am not ashamed to admit that it brought tears to my eyes. As of this writing, the video has already been viewed 1.3 million times.

And here, from the Summer of Love Era and the year that saw the first human walk on the moon, is the original music video for "Space Oddity" featuring a 22-year-old David Bowie who had just written the song.     

 

I have always considered David Bowie an artist who symbolizes the rise of the space age, especially once I understood that "Space Oddity" pays homage to legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's 1968 rendition on the big screen of Arthur C. Clarke's novel "2001 - A Space Odyssey". Bowie's visionary artistic genius has now come full circle. Amplified by Chris Hadfield's unique creativity from the ISS, "Space Oddity" has transformed from metaphor into reality as more and more people are becoming aware, viral-video-style, that humans stand on the threshold of claiming their future among the stars. Pop culture doesn't get any better than this.

 

Grasshopper and SpaceX Showcase the Future

Multiple successful launches and exciting announcements in recent days have made for an eventful week: Mars One, a private company based in The Netherlands, announced its astronaut selection process for one-way trips to Mars to establish a permanent colony, starting in 2023. Virginia-based private space company Orbital Sciences successfully completed the maiden flight of its Antares rocket. A Russian Soyuz launched a resupply capsule to the ISS. A second Soyuz delivered a menagerie of animals into orbit to conduct research on the long-term effects of microgravity.

Still, I must present the week's Award for Most Jaw-Dropping Launch (and Landing!) Footage to SpaceX. The private company's Grasshopper vehicle underwent it's fifth test last week:

The Grasshopper rocket is a remarkable piece of engineering: A Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle designed to test the technologies involved in returning rockets to Earth intact instead of having them burn up in the atmosphere. Rapid re-usability means cost reduction - an important objective for the private company. Essentially, SpaceX is designing rocket technology that includes a return trip to the launch pad for a vertical landing. The rocket is 106 ft (32 m) tall, with a tank height of 85 ft (26 m).  

SpaceX has been testing the Grasshopper at its McGregor, TX rocket development facility since 2012 with a series of test flights that have achieved substantial successive increases in altitude:    

Sep 2012: 8 ft (2.5 m)    
Nov 2012: 18 ft (5.5 m)    
Dec 2012: 131 ft (40 m)    
Mar 2013: 263 ft (80 m)    
Apr 2013: 820 ft (250 m) - the leap shown in the video above.    

Grasshopper's components are a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank with a Merlin 1C engine that generates a maximum thrust of 122,000 pounds. The rocket sits on four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure. Nitrogen- or helium-filled carbon overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) are attached to the support structure. Propellants used in the Grasshopper VTVL vehicle include a refined kerosene fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. Grasshopper uses closed loop thrust vector and throttle control for landings.    

One of the most amazing moments in the above launch and landing video comes when Grasshopper hovers at its maximum altitude, buffeted by winds strong enough to bend the rocket flames at a significant angle while Grasshopper itself holds steady against the wind, except for one slight wobble. During a week that also showcased ambitious plans for establishing the first Mars colony I can only conclude: The future really is HERE!!  

 

e Grasshopper RLV consists of a Falcon 9 Stage 1 tank, a Merlin-1D engine, four steel landing legs, and a steel support structure. Carbon overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), which are filled with either nitrogen or helium, are attached to the support structure. The Merlin-1D engine has a maximum thrust of 122,000 pounds. The overall height of the Grasshopper RLV is 106 feet, and the tank height is 85 feet. The propellants used in the Grasshopper RLV include a highly refined kerosene fuel, called RP-1, and liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-11-spacex-story-reuseable-grasshopper-rocket.html#jCp

The Grasshopper RLV consists of a Falcon 9 Stage 1 tank, a Merlin-1D engine, four steel landing legs, and a steel support structure. Carbon overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), which are filled with either nitrogen or helium, are attached to the support structure. The Merlin-1D engine has a maximum thrust of 122,000 pounds. The overall height of the Grasshopper RLV is 106 feet, and the tank height is 85 feet. The propellants used in the Grasshopper RLV include a highly refined kerosene fuel, called RP-1, and liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-11-spacex-story-reuseable-grasshopper-rocket.html#