I lay in my bed and dreamed I walked
On the Sea of Tranquility
I knew that someday soon we'd all sail to the moon… https://t.co/RJmTRSIWYR— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 15, 2017
Late-night nostalgia, from the Washington Post:
PASADENA, Calif. — Linda Spilker checks the clock: 12:04 p.m. As the NASA scientist sits in this crowded conference room on the Caltech campus, the aging Saturn orbiter Cassini is flying past the moon Titan for a final time. The maneuver on Monday will give Cassini the gravitational tug needed to sling it straight into Saturn’s atmosphere, where it will vaporize above roiling clouds of dust and gas.
There’s no turning back now. Spilker’s life’s work is officially doomed.
That is the nature of being a planetary scientist. No mission lasts forever. Every spacecraft eventually runs out of fuel. Spilker knew this when she joined the Cassini team half a lifetime ago. Later, as head scientist, she was part of the group that devised the mission’s “grand finale,” which has sent Cassini on dizzying dives between Saturn and its rings and ends Friday with the fatal plunge.…
The assembled researchers lift their glasses of juice and chorus their appreciation. A few are close to tears. After Cassini disintegrates, this team will be disbanded, and NASA’s view of Saturn will go dark. For the moment, the space agency has no plans to return to the ringed planet.
But Spilker and a young protegee have submitted a proposal for a new mission to the Saturnian system, which would investigate one of Cassini’s most significant finds: jets of water on the moon Enceladus that could contain traces of alien life…
Only peripherally related, but somehow appropriate:
Viva BrisVegas
Lets take the long view.
In a couple of hundred years, when history books record the Trump presidency as a forgotten name with an asterisk next to it, there will likely be a full chapter devoted to the Cassini, Galileo, Pioneer and Voyager space missions.
That’s the relative importance of things.
Fair Economist
I think a good goal for NASA would be to have permanent observers in orbit around all the planets. If something happens (like Shoemaker-Levy hitting Jupiter) it would be nice to have something there to make observations. Also, some of these places seem rather variable over time and it would be good to observe that.
Ole Phat Stu
Here’s my contribution http://www.savory.de/blog_sep_17.htm#20170915
J R in WV
Cassini was a great and successful experiment.. the scientists who developed it were brilliant and should be proud of their work.
The photos are both science and art!
Kristine
The tweetsteam from Bobak Ferdowsi is just a little wrenching. “Fault detected; attempting recovery. Changing to backup systems”
It was just a machine….
Adam L Silverman
@Fair Economist: You mean these guys?
efgoldman
I got home from my first Army reserve summer camp just in time to see the first moon landing on streaky, grainy, ghosty black and white TV.
I think our kids take this stuff for granted, the same way we took air travel and submarines for granted. Which, considering the rudimentary state of data processing in the late 1960s, and the fact that most calculations were done manually on slide rules [look it up] is fucking amazing
efgoldman
@Kristine:
I can’t do that… Dave.
Fair Economist
@Adam L Silverman: They probably exceed a reasonable budget for NASA.
Dnfree
https://xkcd.com/695/
Adam L Silverman
@Fair Economist: It’s the requirements for extra large hats and lots of sunscreen, isn’t it?
Shalimar
@Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman: Uatu is dead now, killed and replaced by Nick Fury, victim of the quest for ever more shocking stories.
Adam L Silverman
@Dnfree: That’s the saddest Pixar movie yet.
Adam L Silverman
@Shalimar: Actually Kevin Feige just came out and announced that Stan Lee has been playing a Watcher through his cameos in every Marvel movie.
Mike J
Kuiper belt object flyby scheduled for 2019.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-files-flight-plan-for-2019-flyby
hehe, MU69. heh
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
You might like that my sister worked the night shift at JPL recording telemetry data four decades ago. She told me about it once upon a time but I can’t remember any more details and both she and her better half at the time have passed away so there is no one left to ask actual dates and mission details. It seemed way past cool to me. But then I wanted to be a astronaut when I was 7. Damn, that’s over 60 yrs ago.
Fair Economist
@Adam L Silverman: I’m thinking pensions for immortals would be rather problematic. Imagine what McConnell would say about future government pension liabilities becoming infinite.
Adam L Silverman
@Fair Economist: But what do Chuck and Nancy think?
danielx
I dunno about Chuck, but Nancy probably viewed this sequence as a metaphor for the regime of Lord Shortfingers, minus the parts about the greater good etc.
Major Major Major Major
In 1.3 million years, a star is gonna do a flyby that might fling a bunch of comets at us, speaking of space.
Bruuuuce
Ah, space songs, especially with regard to satellites. Here’s the granddaddy of satellite songs.
Bruuuuce
Here’s a pair of songs, that, IMO, should always be sung together.
Hope Eyrie and We’re Going Back
Bruuuuce
And, so as not to hog the thread, one more classic, by the late Jordin Kare, an actual rocket scientist, celebrating the late, great Space Shuttle: Fire in the Sky
Repatriated
@Bruuuuce: I was expecting this: “Telstar”
Bruuuuce
@Repatriated: That one, too. Beep, beep!
Repatriated
@Repatriated: and I still can’t close a link properly. *sigh*
Steeplejack
@Repatriated:
Just paste in the naked hyperlink. That works.
Your link ate the Reply button probably because you didn’t close the link after you pasted the hyperlink in the box. When you get out of that you have to position the cursor at the end of the text that you want to be the label for the hyperlink and then press the “link” button again, which appears as “/link” when the link has not been closed yet.
Bruuuuce
@Repatriated: Looks good now. And, to be fair, one of the few things that DOES work in FYWP is the “link” link. I’ve gotten lazy and use it in preference to writing the HTML
Repatriated
Hmmn.
Let’s try this:
Satellite – Above and Beyond
NotMax
See someone already got there with Telstar.
So-o-o. reaching deep into the bodacious bag o’ back-ups, a more obscure satellite-themed record, this one from the fabulous Fifties.
Repatriated
Link target wasn’t precisely what I wanted (youtube on mobile does weird things) but otherwise it worked the way it was supposed to.
Thank you both for your help!
ETA: Right video, wrong page format. It’s all good.
NotMax
@NotMax
Also too, Rockin’ Satellite.
I’m gonna build me a satellite
And rock around the Moon
Tell the chicks on Mars
I’m comin’ to see them soon
Repatriated
@NotMax:That one’s new to me — I recall a few songs of that genre (one was an “interview” with the shark from Jaws, again with the “answers” being snippets of popular songs). Didn’t know they’d been done that far back.
NotMax
@Repatriated
A less grating concoction peripherally along the same vein.
“Although this piece, the Quodlibet, is a full three movement piece, there is not a single original theme in it.”
Peter Schickele, Quodlibet
opiejeanne
@NotMax: Well, that is the definition of a quodlibet.
Repatriated
@NotMax: I have just enough familiarity with classical and early-20th-century music to realize that I’m missing most of the references… it’s funny regardless!
?BillinGlendaleCA
Went on a photoshoot in Little Tokyo tonight and I’m going though my pics. I seem to have shot an inordinate number of shots of young Asian women. Also, another funny thing about infrared pics is that if you have dyed your hair it shows up as orange.
Luthe
You have a music thread about Cassini and don’t include The Cassini Opera (as sung by Robert Picardo aka the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager)?
*dramatic sigh*
Rand Careaga
I might have enjoyed the “Farewell to Tarwaithe” clip more but for the fucking autoplay advert that came on every twenty-five seconds. Geez, Cole, I know you have to pay the mortgage, but is that really necessary?