www.intermod.org

SETI@home and distributed computing

When I was sophomore in high school I got my first computer, a Commodore 64.   It had a laughable amount of processing power by today's standards, but as my first computer that wasn't really an issue.  Here I had a machine that would do what I told it, constantly, 24-7.  After learning basic programming, I figured out an algorithm to brute force prime number calculations and set it to work.  I'd watch it race through the early numbers 1 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 23 29 31 37 ... 41 ......43 ......... 47 ........... and then slowly be brought to its knees.

About 5 years later I bought my second computer, a very nice 286 (12 MHz with "zero wait state").  Probably within the first day I had it crunching prime numbers.  There's something satisfying about telling a computer to go do something and then watching it work furiously on that task.  I remember being in college and instead of shutting it down at the end of the night , I would run the prime numbers program (say, starting at 1,000,000) and see what it had found in the morning.

Another 5-6 years and another computer ... but by then it was 1993 and the internet was starting to crash through the doors.  But in due time the internet and brute force mathematics would combine in a new way.

In 1997 the distributed.net organization (just a bunch of computer nerds) started to think seriously about distributed computing.  Their idea was to take a very very large task, split it up into digestable pieces, assign those pieces to many computers (using the internet), and then watch the results come in.  The very very large task they were tackling was codebreaking.

Important and sensitive data, such as in finance transactions or military communications, is encrypted using encryption algorithms.  The distributed.net guys were trying to make the point that computers had gotten so fast that the old encryption algorithms were quickly becoming worthless.  What good is a password if your computer can figure it out in 30 seconds?

Looking at d.net's own history page I think I got involved in summer 1997.  At that point they had started a serious attack on the RC5 algorithm, again just to show how quickly it could be broken.  A few thousand people, myself included, ran software on their computers that basically crunched numbers while the computers were idle.  Like a screensaver, it just kicked in when you weren't using the computer.  I definitely remember being involved in this by the summer of 1997, because I remember showing it to an engineer in Saudi Arabia, and I was there in June 1997.

As the months wore on, the project got more popular, got more participants, got more press, and eventually they partnered with the EFF and cracked a 3DES message in 22 hours, putting the nail in the coffin of the U.S. government's venerable Data Encryption Standard and paving the way for wider acceptance of the Advanced Encryption Standard.  D.net moved on to the search for Golomb rulers, Mersenne primes,and other mathematical endeavors, but I lost interest.

By that time the nerd news vine was chattering about the upcoming SETI@home effort.  Berkeley scientists were going to take radio noise collected from space and see if anything interesting could be heard in that noise.  They had received seed funding from The Planetary Society and Paramount Pictures, who were about to release the movie treatment of Carl Sagan's Contact (the one with Jodie Foster).  In which, by the way, prime numbers feature prominently!

And so, much like with my more recent Tesla obsession, in early 1999 I began regularly checking for word about the software release.  Every day I'd check the SETI@home website to see if they'd released their software to the public yet.  And so it was one day, as I was having lunch in my office, that I idly went to the SETI@home website to check on it, and they had publicly launched their software that morning!

Within minutes I had it running and was starting to benchmark the speed of my computer.  It was sobering to see what a massive task each SETI@home work unit entailed.  I watched the percent-complete number tick up from 0.000%, 0.001%, 0.002% ... Gulp.  This was going to take a looooong time.

And so the search was on for other computers to run it on.  I ran a small tech demo room that had a couple terribly under-utilized Sun workstations, and within days (perhaps hours) I had them running the software too.

That was May 17th 1999, ten years ago today.

The guys at SETI@home (and they remain a very small team) are this week celebrating their decade of work.  Despite their towering profile in the nerd community, they have minimal funding and it has been a constant struggle for them to keep up with the demand, especially as computers have gotten faster and faster and have placed more demands on the infrastructure they maintain to keep handing out chunks of radio noise.  Recently they released software (called CUDA) that takes advantage of the graphics processor in your computer.  Pretty much every computer today ships with a extremely fast graphics engine, designed for the purpose of rendering fancy 3D graphics on your screen, but which only a small percentage of people actually use  The SETI@home guys are figuring out how to tap into that wasted computing power.

So this Thursday I will be watching as the SETI@home guys celebrate their 10 years of work, and look forward to their reports and presentations on their progress:

• SETI@home website
• anniversary background info
• May 21st 2009 program agenda
• May 21st 2009 program streamed online

And, of course, I wait for the day that they find little green men!

120 seconds that could kill the space program

On Monday, space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch STS-125, a mission to the Hubble space telescope.  This is the fifth and final mission to Hubble, and is a mission that almost didn't happen.  After the Columbia accident in 2003, NASA's top management decided it was too risky (no ISS lifeboat capability) and canceled it.  That produced an uproar in the scientific community, and after a couple more years of study and contingency planning, the mission was resurrected, and here we are just hours from liftoff.

This mission is incredibly important, but just as much for the entire space program as for Hubble.  This mission has been driving the space shuttle program's planning for 5 years now.  They worked to reduce the foam shedding off the tank (which is what doomed Columbia).  They created new inspection techniques to be carried out in orbit, using the robot arm, so that they'd know if they'd damaged the protective skin of the shuttle during ascent.  They added sensors to the wings so they could "feel" the impact of any debris during ascent.  They upgraded all of their ground cameras for launch views.  They developed and tested repair techniques, to be executed by spacewalking astronauts.  And they figured out a way to rescue this Atlantis crew from orbit if they deemed that it was damaged beyond repair.

Which is why space shuttle Endeavor is now sitting on the other launchpad, ready to go within a few days.  It's going to sit there while Atlantis is up, and once they deem Atlantis in good shape and able to survive the fiery re-entry from orbit, Endeavor's emergency mission (officially called STS-400) will stand down and they will resume preps for what Endeavor really has next on its plate -- a mission to ISS in June.

The first 120 seconds of launch are going to be critical.  During those first two minutes, any debris (such as foam coming off the tank) could hit the shuttle and punch a hole in the skin.  After the first two minutes, any debris shedding doesn't matter because they are up out of the atmosphere and there's literally no air rushing by to slam the debris into the shuttle.

Now, the thing is, we won't know right away.  Atlantis will probably get through those 120 seconds just fine and continue all the way to main engine cut off (MECO) 8.5 minutes after liftoff.  But that's when the imagery analysis begins.  Here's what to look for in the news:

1.  Immediately after the shuttle reaches orbit, amateurs on the net will start looking at the footage and pointing out possible debris events.  In the first two flights after Columbia (in 2005 and 2006), there was quite a bit of debris so there was a lot to talk about.  But in the past 2-3 years it's been very good.  We'll have this amateur data within 30 minutes after launch.  Update 2:45pm: launch looked good!  No debris events noted in camera replays.  The first 10 seconds were exciting through when a transducer (pressure gauge) failed, creating some spurious alarms.

2.  About an hour after launch there will be the post-launch news briefing, and the reporters will ask the managers what they saw.  I gaurantee that the managers will say make an empty statement like "we're going to go take a look at all the data and see what we see", but you will get a sense from them whether anything jumped out at them as a problem.  Update 3:21pm:  managers in press briefing also saw no debris events of note!

3.  The day after launch, aka Flight Day 2, the crew on orbit will do the inspections with the robot arm and will be able to see if there's any obvious damage.  We'll see that inspection video coming down live so we'll see anything when they do.   Update 12-May:  looking good!  There are some nicks in the tile but they don't think it's serious enough to trigger any actions.  However, an important part of the flight control electronics failed during the launch, and while they can continue the mission for now, if they take another failure while in orbit the flight rules dictate that they must come down immediately -- like within hours.  So everyone has their fingers crossed that nothing further will fail.

4.  On Flight Day 3 or 4 we'll start to hear officially about any serious problems.  And that is when they make the decision whether to proceed normally with the mission (capture Hubble and get to work) or whether they literally shut down the lights and start saving power so that they can survive long enough for Endeavor to get up there.  Update 17-May:  the "Thermal Protection System" has been officially declared fit for entry; they still have to do late inspection at the end of the mission but it's looking very good.  Meanwhile there's been day after day of nail-biter spacewalks and I'm exhausted just from watching :)

I will update this post with the status of each of the 4 stages above as they are cleared.

If they end up having to rescue Atlantis, that means we will be down to just two shuttles, and NASA has said that they can't run the program with just two.  They certainly wouldn't build another one, as these orbiters are 30+ year old designs and about to be retired anyway.  So triggering the rescue would be the implied end of the shuttle program, forever.

Regarding the actual mission, I wrote back in September about the mission and pointed to Dr. Heidi Hammel's speech in particular.  Of course, this was 7 months ago, just before the anomaly on Hubble that forced them to scrub the Oct 10th launch.  The equipment to repair that latest failure is now on the shuttle and they're ready to go up and fix that too.

As I said back in September, I would encourage anyone with even a fleeting interest in science or astronomy to take the time to download and watch the entire briefing, as it is truly fantastic stuff they're talking about, and these guys do a great job of explaining it to regular people.  If you don't have time to watch the entire 90-minute briefing, at least watch her 10 minutes.  Links are in the post I made back in September.

Update 13-May-2009: Sadly, I see that the links to the Hammel speech in the old post no longer work. I have not been able to find the briefing on Youtube, and the repeat briefings from a couple weeks ago did not include Dr. Hammel. FORTUNATELY, I did find most of Dr. Hammel's speech incorporated into a nice 5 minute video right here. Please check it out!

Update 16-Jun-2009:  And with the "Houston, wheels stop" call from the commander on May 24th, Atlantic completed her mission and everyone involved breathed a huge sigh of relief.  And later that week, a Soyuz launched three men to ISS, finally bringing the space station crew up to 6 people for the first time ever.  We've been anticipating the Hubble mission for 5 years, but the 6-man crew on ISS has been anticipated for nearly two decades! It didn't make headlines, because it all went so smoothly, but this is the heyday of space flight, RIGHT NOW. That last week in May, with the completion of the Hubble servicing mission and the beginning of serious science operations on the space station, represents perhaps the biggest milestone in the US manned space program since the first launch of the space shuttle in 1981. Congratulations NASA!

Cheap High-Def TV

or

Chris's Guide To Getting Free Digital TV

or

How To Flip Off The Cable Company

This guide is intended primarily for people I know who are having to tighten their belts, and are looking at that big expensive cable bill every month and wondering ... do we really need this?

It really comes down to this:  do you really care about all the basic cable stations (like Bravo, USA, ESPN, TNT) and their crappy programming to pay all that money?  Do you really need access to 50 different mind-numbing reality shows or 30 channels of procedural drama repeats?  Because if you think you'll be happy with about 15 stations (the 4 major networks plus your local independents), I can show you how to get them all in high definition for free.  HIGH DEFINITION FOR FREE.

If this sounds intriguing to you, then by all means read the rest of this guide, but please do the first step right away.  Do not delay one day -- do it right now.

Here's how to cut the cable, save a ton of money, and get gorgeous digital television.

Step 1:  Get your $40 DTV coupon.  By act of Congress 3 years ago, every household in the country is entitled to two $40 coupons to pay for a little converter box.  Don't worry about what the box does (I'll explain later).  Don't wonder if you really need it (you might, might not).  Don't worry about getting on some mailing list (you won't).  DO GET IT RIGHT NOW, because the deadline is approaching and there's going to be a mad crush for them again.  You may have heard about a June 12th deadline; well, if you wait until then, you're too late.  Go to www.dtv2009.gov right now and take 60 seconds to fill out the form.

Update June 13th: Well, the analog shutdown happened yesterday and now you're really going to be in a crush of procrastinators who are trying to get their coupon and converter box.  The funding for this program isn't going to last long, so you still need to get your request in ASAP.  Next week might be too late!

Step 2:  Evaluate your existing TV.  If you have a newer "digital" TV, the kind that's big and flat and probably expensive, then you do not actually need the converter box, and you could skip the next step but you shouldn't.   If you have an older "analog" TV, the kind with a big glass curved front surface, then it will work fine but you will need a converter box, per the next step.

Step 3:  Get a converter box.  These are officially called "coupon eligible converter boxes", and what they do is convert the new digital signals that are now on the air into the old analog signal that your old TV understands.  Even if you have a digital TV and shouldn't need a converter box, you should go ahead and get at least one coupon and buy a converter box, because you might find out later that you need one.  And you won't be able to buy them later -- the $40 coupon program is only available this year.  So, apply for the coupon, receive it in the mail in a week or two, and go to any electronics store and buy a converter box.  It's OK to buy this online, but not the antenna (more on this below).  Which one?  Eh, it doesn't matter much.  Look for a feature called "analog bypass", but I think they all pretty much have that now.  If you really want to get the best one, ask me and I'll explain about analog bypass, AFD, smart antenna control and EPG passthrough (or plow through the data yourself).

Step 4:  Get an antenna.  This is going to be the trickiest part, but hang in there.  Most likely you will be able to get by with just a simple indoor antenna near your TV, like the old rabbit ears.  But it's not quite rabbit ears you need -- those work best in VHF, and you need an antenna that works in UHF.  The big metal loop part of most indoor antennas is what's actually important for digital TV.  So go to any electronics store and look for a small TV antenna.  Don't buy a big one yet -- you probably won't need it!  A couple examples are the RCA ANT111 and the Zenith Silver Sensor.  DO NOT buy online, because you might need to return it if it doesn't work for you, and doing that by mail sucks.  Just go to a real brick-and-mortar store and buy whatever small TV antenna they have.

Step 5:  Set up the antenna and connect it to the converter box per the instructions that came with the box.  Connect it to your TV.  Follow the instructions to do a "scan" of the airwaves.  This means the box finds the stations that are on the air.  In the new digital TV world, it's not as simple as just going to Channel 2 and watching -- the first time you set this up, you have to let it scan and find what channels are out there.

Step 6:  Enjoy free digital television!  You'll quickly discover that there's a lot more on the air than just the big networks that you expect.  Most stations have their primary channel and then also have subchannels.  So for example, WXIA/11 has their NBC programming on 11.1, but a weather forecast channel on 11.2 and a sports channel on 11.3!  WGTV/8, one of the two PBS stations in Atlanta, has three simultaneous programs running, including GPB Knowledge on 8.3 which runs documentary-style material 24-7.  Nerd heaven!

And that's it!  You're now set up with a free digital TV signal.  If you're not able to get all of the local stations, DON'T GIVE UP.  You just need to be patient and fiddle with the antenna a bit.

But you've got to do the first step right away.  Scroll up to Step 1 and do it, even if you're not sure.  Time's running out.

Here are a few more things you can do:

Optional Step 7:  Get a better antenna.  The new digital picture should be absolutely perfect, even when it's raining or windy.  If the picture is breaking up at all, then you need to get a better antenna than the cheap little guy that I had you buy in Step 4.  So return that one to the store, and step up to an attic-mounted panel antenna like the Antennas Direct DB2 or the ChannelMaster 4220; two places to find these in Atlanta are Fry's Electronics and Dow Electronics, both in Duluth.  If you don't have an attic to put these in, or don't want to run the cable, try getting a "smart antenna", like the Apex SM550 or the RCA ANT2000; however for these you will need a TV or converter box that has smart antenna capability.  Ask me about that if you get this far.

Optional Step 8:  Get your VCR working again.  Got a VCR for taping shows off the air?  It won't work after June 12th.  If you want to keep using it, you'll need a converter box for it.  Now you see why I said get the box even if you didn't need it?  You might need TWO!  But the truth is that setting this up to work with your VCR is going to be a monster pain in the ass.  You really should just upgrade to a DVR ...

Optional Step 9:  Get a Digital Video Recorder (DVR).  And this is where you reach Free TV Nirvana.  If you've got some money to spend, please do spend it on a Tivo HD ($250) and the service ($12/month); you won't regret it and in the end it's still far cheaper than cable.  The only other device on the market worth considering is Echostar's DTVpal DVR; it has no monthly cost but is much more expensive, and further is actually buggy and compares horribly with a real Tivo.  And a real Tivo will quickly learn what kinds of things you like, and start recording shows that you'll probably enjoy -- and suddenly it's like you've got an On Demand system, with a box full of shows at your fingertips, ready to play at any time.  Oh, and Tivo's do Netflix and Youtube too.  All in HD.

Optional Step 10:  Change your internet service to DSL.  If you're doing all this to be able cancel your cable bill, but you've also been getting your internet service via cable, then you're going to have to change that too before you can completely cut the cable service.  DSL via your phone line works great, but there will definitely be a hassle in store for you as you migrate from one ISP to the other (e.g. new email address, if been using a comcast.net address or similar).  Just something to brace for if you're getting your internet via cable.

Electric Vehicles, part 2

In September 2008 I first wrote here about electric vehicles and my plans to make my next car an EV.  After over a decade of pining for one that was good enough, the market is finally coming around and within a year or two there should be lots of choices.

The 800-pound gorilla is Tesla Motors.  They are a pure EV company, which really isn't quite what I'm looking for -- the systems engineer in me really likes the redundancy aspect of having a gasoline generator in a hybrid vehicle (aka an REEV), so that I can plug-in normally but in a pinch I can gas up.  Especially for long trips.  On the other hand, it's kind of silly to make a purchasing decision based on the 2% usage scenario.  For long trips, rent a car!  Anyway, this is all kind of pointless handwringing right now.

The Tesla Roadster is a slick, beautiful machine, and after 3+ years of salivating it is f i n a l l y reaching the streets.  In the last few months they've finally started delivering units to their long-suffering customers, and they're now up to about a 100 deliveries per month.  With each unit getting them over $100K in revenue when they deliver, that's going to very quickly get them in the black, and suddenly Detroit will have a real problem developing for them in sunny California.

Earlier this month I visited family in the San Francisco area and I decided to try to get down to the Tesla dealership (in Menlo Park) to get a look in person.  Actually I wanted to see the Model S (more on that below) but I knew they wouldn't have any so I settled on just looking at a Roadster.  Since they've finally cranked up the volume on production, they have more units to set aside for sales ops so there was a chance I'd be able to actually sit in one and maybe drive it around the block.

So I gave them a call and made an appointment.  We showed up (thank you family :) )  right on time, the salesman had me sign a waiver, gave me a map and the keys, and said "have fun".  Wait, what?  Yes, he was letting me just take it out on the road by myself.  Uhhhhhh ... OK!

I quickly snagged my brother-in-law for passenger seat ballast (kidding!) and we got familiar with the vehicle.  You can read all about it everywhere else, but it definitely is a pocket rocket.  Bolting from 0 to 60 MPH in four seconds, it's like acceleration isn't an issue anymore -- you just decide on a speed and BOOM you are there.  One thing I had wondered was how annoying the braking feel woiuld be, since it uses regenerative braking for light to medium braking effort, and it was suprisingly unobtrusive.  It just didn't bug me.  What was noticeable was the coasting behavioir, because they have it dialed in to brake slightly when you take your foot off the accelerator.

I actually fit in it, too, (I'm 6' 2") which was a nice surprise.  But visibility was pretty rotten -- I kept having to duck to see traffic lights.  Anyway, at $109K it's not like I am seriously considering one of these, but it was really nice to get actual experience.  Because I am quite serious now about making my next car an EV.

Which Tesla will be happy to supply.  On March 26th they announced their second design, the Model S.  Instead of a tiny sports car, this will be a sports sedan that can carry 4-5 adults, basically competing with luxury sports sedans like the BMW 5-series.  It's also priced in that category at $57K, a number which will certainly get "refined" as they get closer to production.  It got lots of attention:

on LeftLaneNews

on Jalopnik

on Metafilter

on Slashdot

But what was unveiled was just a prototype -- literally, there is ONE of these on the planet.  Really what they are doing is getting the prototype out there so that the federal government will be unable to ignore it and will have to release some funds from the advanced car tech program that Congress approved last fall.  I mean, if Tesla doesn't qualify for this, I don't know what does.  Update 23-Jun-2009:  Tesla has indeed today received the ATVM funding, all of the funding they requested!  See press releases from DOE and Tesla.  I love Steven Chu.

New Roadster owner Scott Painter wrote recently about Tesla's distribution model:

"[Tesla] also shirks all the traditional industry baggage by deciding to sell directly to buyers, rather than through independent dealers. Tesla owns its stores in Menlo Park and West Los Angeles, and everyone who works in the stores is a Tesla employee – no one works on commission. Although this doesn’t allow Tesla to open locations as fast as through a franchise dealership, it does allow Tesla to own 100 percent of the customer experience. This is one of the biggest frustration of traditional auto industry executives – they can build great products, but if customers have a bad experience at their local dealer, they often blame the automaker."

Very true! This is the #1 reason why I've ignored GM/Ford/Chrysler for all of my car purchases up to now. No matter how good the car is, I'm still going to have to deal with the local dealership, at least through the warranty period, and that's a deal breaker right there.

And it'll be a major hurdle for me to get over if I'm faced with choosing a domestic model (e.g. the Volt). I wonder if GM might try to handle the Volt at the corporate level like they did with the EV1 a decade ago, bypassing the dealers ...

Here's an interesting blog post by a Tesla VP summarizing all of the tax incentives in place (from both the federal and state governments) for people considering purchase of EV/hybrid vehicles.  And here's a Georgia EPD page detailing one particular tax credit for ZEV's, including contact info for the guy at EPD who probably knows the most about that and any other tax credits available.

This past weekend the very first public charging station for Tesla opened up in Northern California. Here's a local newpaper article about it.  It's probably going to take a decade before this is widespread, but it's a start.

If anyone here lives in the New York area, the Model S prototype is debuting in Manhattan on Thursday morning April 30th at the Plaza hotel (5th Ave and Central Park South).  And Elon Musk is appearing on David Letterman on Wednesday night!

In the end, though, I'm still not sure if I want to go with a pure EV.  I really wanted my next car to be a hybrid, so that I can gas up if needed and won't have problems with a long road trip a couple times a year.  In another few years I think the technology will be there to support pure EV for long haul trips (better battery tech, battery swapout standards and stations, public charging stations, high voltage fast charging, etc.) but we're far from that right now.  So I'm still going to be looking at the other hybrid options that start coming to market late this year and next.  But I'll probably continue to spend far too much time keeping up with the news at the TeslaMotorsClub forum.

I leave you with two entertaining little nuggets:

Tesla vanity plate ideas

Hitler gets angry about his Tesla Roadster order

Space Links

Here's my master collection of space links. You wouldn't believe how often I refer back to this page.

NASA TV and TV schedules

NASA TV direct links for online viewing: Windows Media / Real Media / Quicktime

NASA TV breaking news schedule and the TV schedule during shuttle missions

NASA TV Media Channel -- caters towards the media, so it contains more video "packages" and less fluffy historical programs. During missions it's the same as the public channel. Rarely it'll have exclusive live coverage of something because there's two things happening at the same time. (Windows Media only, NASA drank the Microsoft Kool Aid)

Alternative feeds of NASA TV if NASA/Yahoo goes down.

Here's NASA's collection of HD videos for download.   An HD version of NASA TV's live 24-7 channel is occasionally active but it's not available on cable or satellite, only to media organizations.

Countdown clocks

Flight Data Files (e.g. checklists for ascent, entry, EVAs, etc.)

NASA's online countdown clock (Java) and another, better clock for ELV rockets

NASA's countdown clock in simple flash form

All of these clocks from NASA automatically transition to mission elapsed time (MET) after launch. A guy in the Czech Republic also runs this cool 9-pane configurable status page that is great for monitoring several sources at once during critical periods, like a launch attempt.

Space Shuttle reference:

• typical launch sequence
• shuttle MCC layout
• press materials including ground tracks
• all possible ground tracks
• entry altitude profile

International Space Station links:

• ISS assembly sequence,
• ISS truss overview,
• ISS daily status reports from NASA,
• the Russian tracking page, useful for seeing Progress status,
• ISS-to-ground audio loop (the best times to listen are 2am - 5pm EDT)
• ISS webcam
• ISS timelines

Trackers / Overflight Visibility:

• Heavens Above , enter your location and be amazed
• Sat Tracker using Google Maps
• Another tracking page, this one using Google Maps and showing live position and visibility stats
• shuttle sighting Java app (incl during atmospheric glide)

This space.com article from 2006 had a nice graphic showing the visibility of each launch all the way up the east coast of the US.  But it's really only visible for nighttime or dusk launches.  If you're in the NY/NJ area, you'll need to look towards the south/southeast starting around 6 minutes after launch.

Status and discussion

SpaceFlightNow is good for getting basic news and status; they have the best launch calendar on the web.  They have a premium service that I used to subscribe to for downloable video packages, but they pissed me off with their retarded billing so I stopped renewing. John44's Netherlands site (link below) satisfies the video requirement.

NASAspaceflight.com's front page and discussion forums are for serious fans; for each shuttle mission, the respective Discovery / Atlantis / Endeavor forum will be of most interest and will include daily threads with minute by minute updates of the mission.  Truly hardcore fans pay for NSF's Level2 premium service, which apparently offers an insane amount of information.  I don't subscribe to L2 for the same reason I don't have cable TV:  I would never stop looking at it.

The NSF forums led me to an incredible resource for catching NASA TV events after the fact:  www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org is a site in the Netherlands apparently run by one guy (John44 on the NSF forums).  He captures the NASA TV events and makes them available for download.  For free!

Bill Harwood is a reporter at CBS who has been covering the space program for years, and whose website provides a tres aure trove of rapid-access information, including launch windows, mission timelines, historical events (e.g. launch abort history) and even some killer Excel spreadsheets that further collate all this data.

CollectSpace and Unmanned Spaceflight are two excellent sites that serve respective niche audiences.  Actually, UMSF isn't really a niche audience, as it covers all of the unmanned probes currently (or soon to be) zipping around the solar system, including Cassini, New Horizons, Messenger and the fleet of Mars probes.

Watching a launch at Kennedy Space Center

Photographer Ben Cooper has a great writeup about what your viewing options are, both paid and free.

If you're making the trip, consider staying at the Surf Studio in Cocoa Beach. It's a nice little beach front motel, owned and operated by the Greenwald family since 1948. It's down at the south end of Cocoa Beach, thus a little bit further from Kennedy, but it's only a 5 minute extra drive and gets you down to a more quiet stretch of beach.

WMMB is a local AM station (AM 1240 and AM 1350) that has launch coverage starting at about 3 hours before launch, and supposedly does not talk over the NASA commentary once the countdown gets close and then during the 8 minute launch phase.

SCANNER INFO

If you have a radio scanner (i.e. for police radio), here are some frequencies of interest:
NASA TV audio on 146.94 MHz (from ~3 hours before liftoff to landing)
NASA (TV?) audio on 442.6 MHz
Both (?) operated by local ham club http://www.lisats.org

http://www.milaircomms.com/uhf_ksc.html
Some highlights:
121.750 KSC NASA Ground
126.650 KSC Weather / STA
128.550 KSC NASA Tower

Here are the really good frequencies, but you need a scanner that can pick up the military bands:
296.800 MHz - Air-to-ground, or orbiter-to-suit
259.700 MHz - Air-to-ground, or suit-to-orbiter
279.000 MHz - Suit-to-orbiter, or suit-to-suit
243.000 MHz - Standard military aircraft emergency frequency

http://home.cfl.rr.com/scanner/launch.htm

Ham radio repeaters all over the country that "carry shuttle audio during missions":
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sarex/shutfreq.html (probably outdated)
http://shuttleaudio.info/ (somewhat more up to date)

NASA press release from 2000 detailing how to listen

Space Shuttle launch

I'm down in Florida at Kennedy Space Center to see a space shuttle launch.  In all the years of following space activities, I've never actually seen a launch.  We tried back in December 2007, but that trip was foiled by problems that it eventually took them 6 weeks to fix.

So, it's another winter later and I'm trying again.  I only try to do this in winter because the weather tends to be drier and more stable (e.g. no scrubs due to thunderstorms).   This is the STS-119 mission, which has the Discovery taking the last truss (backbone) segment up to the space station.  There's only 9 shuttle missions left, and so the chance of seeing a launch is rapidly dwindling.  By 2010 or 2011 it'll all be over.

By way of work, I have a press pass that gets me into the press site at Kennedy, right next to the VAB and as close to the launch as any human being is allowed to be -- except for the 7 people strapped into the shuttle itself.

Try #1

On the day before the scheduled launch, I went in to look around and check things out.  After a few hours of lounging around the press building and getting lunch in the cafeteria, I set up the new telescope (which I'll write about soon) at the edge of the turning basin.  This first picture shows it with the large countdown clock in the field in the background, and the large silver boat is the covered barge that they used to transport the large orange fuel tank from the factory in New Orleans.

All afternoon the STA was doing landing simulations, probably with the two pilots of the space shuttle, practicing for the next day's launch.  It would coming roaring down at a steep angle, with the engines in reverse, simulating the space shuttle's aggressive glideslope, touch down, and then roar right back up to 40,000 feet to go do another pass.  I was able to follow it with the scope and manual slewing.

At one point a bird fight erupted over the water.  About a half-dozen ospreys were quite upset with a bald eagle.  Eventually one of the ospreys got a good dig into the eagle's back and he hauled ass out of there.  I attempted to take pictures, but my camera only got one picture before declaring that it had weak batteries, oops it meant dead batteries, and quickly going dead.  Thanks Canon!  In this one picture, you can see the eagle at the left, turning hard just below the tree line, but you can't see any ospreys (the bird on the buoy is just a heron or something watching the show).

As dusk fell, feral pigs came out of the brush to sniff around on the grass.  One of the reporters here said he's seen bobcats, and once almost stepped on a rattlesnake.

On Wednesday, I arrived at midday ready for a long day of countdown and launch monitoring.  However at around 2:30pm (well into the countdown but still 7 hours to go) the scrubbed due to a fuel leak.  After moping around the press site for a while I pulled out of there and went to dinner with some work folks.  As of right now the word is that they will try again on Sunday.  I was planning on driving back home on Saturday, but I'm going to tough it out and stay until this launches.  Yes, extending my vacation in Florida, it's rough!

Killing Time

Methods for killing three days in Florida:

Struggle with decisions like A) go to beach, B) get lunch or C) read book.

Work on a tan.

Read Mike Mullane's book; much of the first part is grating because he's such a sexist asshole, but he freely admits it and even laments it at times. That aside, this book is an unfliching look inside the world of shuttle astronauts, with everything laid bare including marital tension, office politics, space toiletry, grieving over lost comrades, selfish ambition.

Go on the "Now and Then" bus tour of the old Cape Canaveral launch pads. Ending up at the Saturn V site, which by the end of the day was largely empty, allowing me to get a nice quiet look at the business end.

Visit the Astronaut Hall Of Fame, which is interesting enough once you get inside, but the outside entrance and the entrance lobby staff are quite creepy.

Stumble across an air show (e.g. fighter jets) at the Titusville airport.

Troll around the press site, hoping they'll do a "VIP" tour of the OPF or VAB, like they've done in the past in case of scrubs. Alas, not happening, but not for lack of trying (I asked them about 5 times).

Keep up with news of the Atlas launch, which I was hoping they'd fit in before the shuttle launch. Alas, not happening. Reminded once again of how, during the Dec 2007 trip, I completely forgot about the Atlas launch happening then (after the shuttle scrubbed) and it launched as we were sitting in a theater taking in a movie.

One day to go!

Try #2

Sunday March 15th.  Tanking took place between 10am and 1pm; by 1:30pm we knew they'd gotten past the problem that caused the scrub last Wednesday.

To the right, here are three screenshots from NASA TV:

1.  Astrovan driving past the VAB, with me on the sidewalk waving at it (circled in photo, click to enlarge).  I knew that they would stop around there some place to drop someone off, so I was ready to take pictures and wave at astronauts.  Unfortunately, I was standing in the wrong place and the convoy flew right by me!

2.  View from the press site just before launch, with me standing to the right of the countdown clock.  There was a staffer shooing people away from in front of the clock.  About 10 feet in front of me was the water's edge, and that's where most people were standing and setting up their camera tripods (news photographers).

3.  View from the press site seconds after launch, with me throwing my arms in the air.  20+ years!

I didn't distract myself with taking pictures of the actual launch, since there are lots of people already doing that better than I ever could.  Ben Cooper always has the best pictures, so go check out his pictures.

Here's what two of the rock stars of NASA said at the press briefing after the launch (which I snuck into):

"I can never say enough about these launches. This launch was really special. If you saw it and you saw the clouds and you saw the SRB separation, I don't think I've seen a launch that was as pretty as this one." -- Bill Gerstenmaier

"For the folks who watched this on TV, I really wish you could have been here in Florida. I've seen a lot of launches, either as the Test Director or as the Launch Director, and this was the most visually beautiful launch I've ever seen. It was just spectacular. When the orbiter and the tank and the boosters got up into the sunlight, the sun had just set about 10 minutes prior, it was just gorgeous. And then at separation we could see the boosters coming back down to earth ... We could see the orbiter, from the firing room, 7 minutes into flight. At that point in time the orbiter was somewhere off the New Jersey / New York coast. Just a spectacular night." -- Mike Leinbach

With the dusky post-sunset sky, we had some of the turn-night-into-day effect of a night launch, but then as the shuttle gained altitude it climbed into sunlight again which made for a beautiful grey-to-white-to-orange transition in the plume.  The skies were crystal clear and we could see the shuttle out to +7m:30s, which was aaaaalmost all the way to MECO, when I could finally relax.  All systems nominal all the way up -- a perfect launch.

It's sad that there's only 8 more of these left, maybe 9 or 10 if they throw money at NASA to extend the shuttle program a little bit more.  It's a beautiful thing to see on the pad and provided us with such gorgeous launches.  In 2015 we should start to see Ares I launches, and then in about a decade we may start to see the bigger Ares V launches, which will be similar (two SRBs plus liquid engine stages) but lacking a shuttle on the side.

After spending a week here, and straining at my leash hoping for a launch, it was sad to be leaving.  I don't know if I'll ever be back.

On the drive back to Cocoa Beach, Route 528 was a river of light from all the cars slowly making their way back from the viewing sites along that causeway and Port Canaveral and Cocoa Beach.  Thousands and thousands of people all come here to see these launches -- perhaps hundreds of thousands!  It's nice to see so much support for space flight.

Epilogue

The next morning I checked out of the motel, got in the car, and drove the 500 miles / 8 hours back home.  The car didn't break down on this trip!

On the way I stopped by the Ponce de Leon tracking station.  Wayne Hale wrote about this little site in his blog once, and I figured I might as well nerd it up completely and stop by.  It's in the middle of a beachfront state park called Smyrna Dunes, and would make a nice day trip if you live in the area.

The Houston Chronicle has let veteran space reporter Mark Carreau go as part of a layoff there. I met him during my trip to KSC and thanked him for his reliable presence at the briefings and his always good questions (although it's funny how he always frames them in "I'm just confused" :) ). He did seem concerned about cutbacks -- in space/science coverage, at other orgs; he didn't mention the Chronicle.

And now, two weeks later, the shuttle and her crew have returned to Earth after a successful mission.  On paper this wasn't a particularly exciting mission to the layman, but it represented a milestone that hundreds and thousands (if not millions) of people have been working towards for many many years:  a functionally complete space station.  Discovery carried up the last of the 4 power generator segments, and that last part makes all the difference in the world, because the excess power now triples the amount of power available for research use (literally, powering more research equipment and supporting more astronauts on orbit doing research).  Further, Discovery brought up an absolutely critical piece of equipment (the distillation assembly) that was going to fix the last piece of the new water system, also needed to support a full crew of 6 astronauts including more researchers.  And so, in May of this year, a Russian rocket will carry 3 more astronauts up to ISS, and we will finally have the ISS fully staffed for research.  Discovery's STS-119 mission was the final step in 20 years of work to make that a reality.

Telescope v1

In late 1997, Sharon and I visited my sister Jen and her boyfriend Chris (now husband) in San Francisco.  She lived in SF proper, in the Noe Valley neighborhood which is near the Castro.  One evening while we were out for a walk, we came across some amateur astronomers who had set up their telescopes on the sidewalk, for anybody to peer into.  I took a look and decided right there that I really needed to get a telescope.

Turns out that they were part of a group called the Sidewalk Astronomers.  They have free plans for a telescope that you can build, called a dobsonian, designed by John Dobson.  You just need to mailorder the glass parts (about $200) and spend about $40 at the hardware store.  So a couple months later, in Spring 1998, I gathered the parts and spent a month of weekends building the thing.  This telescope design (a Newtonian) is simple but big, so I sized it to just barely fit in the back seat of my car.

The detail pictures here show how, uh, low budget this is.  Note the fancy bearing made of plywood, although I'll admit that there's a couple small pieces of teflon in there (that was a later upgrade, actually).  See the secondary mirror suspended in the top end of the tube -- I think those three legs are made of paint stirring sticks.  It certainly looked pretty good after I got around to painting it.  And note the bungie cord holding the mirror in place!  The big primary mirror is supposed to just lay on the bottom of the tube, but when transporting the tube horizontally, or aiming at something very low, the mirror tends to flop around, which can damage it.  The bungie cord simply keeps the mirror from flopping forward, and doesn't really degrade the image so I just left it there.

We don't have much to see from intown Atlanta due to light pollution, but I've taken the scope on a few trips out of town (camping and the like) and have been able to use it a bit.  Frankly, though, it's been a pain because A) it's really hard to find the object you're looking for, because manually moving the scope is so crude, and B) once you've found the object, the rotation of the earth under you causes the object to quickly drift out of view.

Last summer we went to a family get-together in West Virginia (right in the middle of the NRQZ), so I was really looking forward to the dark skies there.  Alas, a full moon was up (washing out the dimmer night sky objects), and there was patchy cloud cover.  And this was on top of the frustrations I've already mentioned.  So, after 11 years of using the home-built scope, I decided that it was time to invest in a real telescope.

Modern commercial telescopes come with motorized electronic controllers that A) zip you right to the desired object (pick from a list) and B) slowly turn the scope to compensate for the earth's rotation. However, in doing research, I saw that I didn't know nearly enough to be able to make an educated decision on my purchase.  And we're talking about a significant amount of money here ($1000-$1500), so as an interim step I decided to buy a smaller scope used.  More about that in the next blog post ...

For now, this is my testimonial on my first telescope.  After today, it's going to see service a lot less often.  I'll still bring it out occasionally when I've got people around and multiple scopes will be useful, but for the most part it is now retired.  Thanks go to John Dobson and the Sidewalk Astronomers for getting me started!

word: cannoli

cannoli: Sicilian pastry desserts; the singular is meaning “little tube”, with the etymology stemming from the Latin "canna", or reed. Cannoli originated in Sicily and are an essential part of Sicilian cuisine. They are also popular in Italian American cuisine and in America are known as a general Italian pastry, while they are specifically Sicilian in origin. (from Wikipedia)

Last Saturday was the annual Atlanta Open Orthographic Meet (aka spelling bee), held at Manuel's Tavern every year on the first Saturday after Valentine's Day.  As I've written before (in 2008 and 2007), this is probably not what you expect when you hear "spelling bee".  For one, nobody is getting up to a microphone to attempt to spell a word; for two, there's beer.

I am a pretty good speller but clearly out of my league in this crowd.  I used to make it out of Round 1 and try to get through Round 2, but the last two years I haven't even made it past Round 1.  This year you needed a perfect first round to advance, and I made my one mistake with "cannoli".  It was the one word I struggled with so I knew I was looking at a 19 or a 20, but this was the first time that a perfect 20 was necessary to advance.

Here's a sampling of this year's words:

Round 1:  stimulus(!), glacier, conch, carafe

Round 2:  colloquy, acetaminophen, lachrymose, aril

Round 3:  graupel, vicereine, bulbul, capsaicin

Round 4:  hyetal, echard, johnin, secesh

Obviously, by Round 3 and 4 you are dealing with words that few people have even heard of, and are nearly impossible to spell.  So you have to start winging it.  This year, after Round 4 there were still two people tied and so it moved into one-word-at-a-time sudden death rounds.  Six of them.

It's a lot of fun, especially after you're eliminated and can focus your energies on drinking in earnest!

Smoke and Buzz Hungry on WREK's Underground Recordings

WREK's Underground Recordings is one of the handful of radio shows that I keep up with every week. They air old recordings of live band performances in WREK's studio. Some of the stuff they have from the 80's and 90's is incredible! Check out the website linked above for a schedule of past and upcoming episodes.

This past Tuesday (Feb 10th) they aired a Nov 1993 performance by Smoke, which was fronted by the now-departed Benjamin. This was actually the second appearance of Smoke on UR; they aired a May 1994 performance about six months ago. This one is a full hour of Benjamin and Bill Taft et al. I'm not sure if Coleman Lewis and Tim Campion had joined at this point.  This was right around the time that they came out with their first single, on Colossal Records.  One of my brushes with greatness is that I got a credit on the back of that seven inch, as one of the 3-4 guys that helped Arthur Davis fund the pressing of that single.

Listen now via mp3 streaming:
http://www.wrek.org/stream/meta/week/wrek_live-128kb/The_Underground_Recordings.m3u

Download the mp3 files now (27 MB each):
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Tue1800.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Tue1830.mp3

It gets better! Last week's show (Feb 3rd) featured Buzz Hungry from Oct 1995, David Barbe's band after he parted ways with Bob Mould and Sugar. You'll hear clear echos of Barbe's earlier band Mercyland, as they tear through a set in the old coliseum studio.   Like nearly all Live @ WREK shows for a long run from the mid-80's to the late 90s, this was engineered by Joe Whitaker, WREK's chief engineer and world class crank. Joe used to tell me that really good bands made mixing sound easy, and Buzz Hungry proves it here.  Barbe is now a co-owner and engineer at Athens GA's Chase Park Transduction studio, birthplace of many great recordings.

Alas, the show gets cut off after about 45 minutes by Georgia Tech sports coverage, whoo. Oh well, we got most of it.

Listen now via mp3 streaming:
http://www.wrek.org/stream/meta/week/wrek_live-128kb/The_Underground_RecordingsO.m3u

Download the mp3 files now (27 MB each):
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Tue1800_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Tue1830_old.mp3

WARNING: the mp3 audio links above will only work until Tuesday Feb 17th 6pm! After that, the Buzz Hungry recording is gone, but you can still get to the Smoke recording by using the Buzz Hungry links. A little confusing but that's how it works. After another week (Feb 24th) the Smoke recording will be gone too.

One final note: a few weeks ago, UR aired a 1995 performance by a band called Tennessee Williamson. Fantastic! They were a lean three piece that reminded me of the Minutemen and the Meat Puppets. Does anyone know anything about them? I have the recording if anyone wants to hear it.

WREK Sunday Specials

On Sunday January 4th, I welcomed the New Year with a Sunday Special on WREK. Keith Lee, a local musician, contacts me occasionally with ideas for shows, and I basically help make it happen. People more pompous than me claim "producer" credit for the role.  Keith and his wife Lynn always do a great job of putting together a tight show.

So this past show was to showcase the year of 1969, forty years later. Many landmark records were released that year, and there were many significant changes in American politics and culture. We had music as well as sound bites, exploring 1969 through the music of John Lennon, King Crimson, Sly and the Family Stone, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, Isaac Hayes, Can, The Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, Merle Haggard, Serge Gainsbourg, Frank Zappa and many many more.

Direct link to STREAM of archived show:

http://www.wrek.org/stream/meta/week/wrek_live-128kb/Sunday_SpecialO.m3u

Direct links for DOWNLOADING the show (e.g. to your iPod / mp3 player, or to burn to CD), 27 MB each:

http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun1900_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun1930_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun2000_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun2030_old.mp3
http://www.wrek.org/streamripper/wrek_live-128kb/Sun2100_old.mp3

All of the links above will work until the evening of Sunday the 18th, when they will get overwritten with the next Sunday Special. Update: it's now too late to download these; contact me if you want the show and I'll make a CD for you.

---

For the past 6 years, I've also been doing a regular monthly show on WREK called the "Eyedrum Archive Sunday Special". Starting in August 2002, on the first Sunday of every month I would host a two-hour show playing material recorded live at Eyedrum, and would frequently have guests in the studio to talk about past and upcoming events. It was a great way to keep up with what was going on at Eyedrum and in the city in general. While I do a lot of things for Eyedrum, I don't actually get out to see actual events there too often, so this was another way for me to stay plugged in. Alas, over the past year I kind of got tired of it and decided to wrap it up. The last show was in October 2008, so it had a good 6-year run.

While I was at the WREK studio finishing up that last Eyedrum show, I took a look at the old Sunday Special binder, in which are recorded the playlists of every single SS show that's been on WREK over the past 20+ years! Hundreds and hundreds of fascinating shows on every conceivable musical topic, as diverse as WREK itself. I had done a bunch of shows over the years, so I flipped through the binder and wrote them down.

21-Jul-1991 -- Gang Of Four

16-Feb-1992 -- My Bloody Valentine

15-Mar-1992 -- Savage Republic

13-Mar-1993 -- Jawbreaker

09-Apr-1995 -- The Replacements (early 81-85)

01-Jul-2001 -- King Crimson (with Keith Lee and Doug Hughes)

14-Jul-2002 -- Sonny Sharrock (with Jim Moran)

04-Aug-2002 -- first Eyedrum Archive Sunday Special (monthly for 6+ years); appearances by Jeff Rackley, Robert Cheatham, Nisa Asokan.

18-Aug-2002 -- Umm Kulthum

13-Jul-2003 -- 7-inch Sunday Special (Jim Moran dumpster diving)

14-Dec-2003 -- Civilization, Phaze III; synclavier with Jeff Rackley (R.I.P. Frank Zappa 1940-1993)

15-Feb-2004 -- Late 60's Psychedelic (with Doug Hughes and Gene Thompson)

06-Jun-2004 -- John Cage

04-Sep-2005 -- tribute to Robert Moog (RIP 1934-2005)

16-Jul-2006 -- tribute to Syd Barrett (RIP 1946-2006) with Keith and Lynn Lee

30-Sep-2007 -- Arthur Lee / Lee Hazlewood tributes (with Keith and Lynn Lee)

06-Jan-2008 -- Stockhausen tribute (with Stewart Gerber and Chris Swartz)

27-Apr-2008 -- Atlanta Electronic Music (with Kevin Haller and Jim Combs and other guests, promoting City Skies festival)

I also put a note in that binder to not throw it out! I want that thing if they ever decide they don't need it anymore. I mean, just the shows and playlists by Thomas Peake alone would be worth the effort to salvage it.