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Catégorie : English

  • Human flights from Kourou

    Human flights from Kourou

    During the Arianespace transmission for the Juice mission – launch cancelled because of the risk of lightening and with a new liftoff objective in 24 hours – ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, expressed his vision of human missions one day lifting off from French Guiana. It was clear that Pesquet was firmly and somewhat passionately expressing his belief. He was relaying the ambitions of the European Space Agency whose Director-general has recently expressed the same ambition. Interview in English taken from the Arianespace video.

  • Mrs Brown – 1997

    Mrs Brown – 1997

    Film directed by John Madden, Nominated for 2 Oscars in 1998 with 12 wins & 26 nominations total, including Judi Dench as best actress.

    Film seen (second time) in March 2023

    Queen Victoria: Mr Brown.

    John Brown: Yes, ma’am.

    Queen Victoria: You have been told repeatedly not to stand in the courtyard unless requested to do so.

    John Brown: Yes, ma’am.

    Queen Victoria: Then why do you persist in doing it?

    John Brown: Because I think Her Majesty is wrong. If ever there was a poor soul who needed fresh air, it is her.

    Queen Victoria: The Queen will ride out if and when she chooses.

    John Brown: And I intend to be there when she’s ready.

  • New Space hype

    New Space hype

    I have always had doubts about the term « New Space » now too often used not just by startups but also the major actors such as ESA or Ariane launcher related companies.

    In recent times it’s even been used by, for example, ESA’s Director-general Josef Aschbacher, the CNES French Space Agency’s Président Philippe Baptiste, Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël, and the Ariane Group… Their communication teams all use the term in press communiqués and on social media. They use « New Space » as a very positive, forward-looking qualification. My dislike for the term is intimately related to the hype that is made of approximations, replaces reality and often conceals falsehoods.

    So it has been a pleasure to discover an analysis of this hype in a latest publication by the Astralytical.com consultancy website, based in Atlanta Georgia since 2016. Laura Forczyk is its Executive Director. According to its website the « focus is high-quality big-picture outlook on the emerging space sector« . This enlightening article by John Holst, Editor/Analyst entitled « Ill defined Space » was published on 6 March and focuses on startup companies but must be extended to the major players. It is a must read.

    Space Startups and Hype: Finding Facts in the Flash

    As someone passionate about clear and effective communications, watching space companies move through their hype cycles is fascinating.

    Some gain traction using a critical communications channel, typically a reporter, who then keeps the cycle turning, creating a snowball of special reports, interviews, and excited forecasts about the next best thing. When that happens, the cycle is successful since hype is promotion that relies on extravagant or exaggerated claims.

    Exaggerated Importance?

    Space startups are known for their hype cycles. They often embellish and inflate their importance to the planet (and investors). They are trying to gain attention by making themselves appear more significant than the toy dogs they are.

    « New space » is a marketing term to hype space industry startups. That hype contrasts with a space industry dominated by slow-moving, entitled, legacy companies such as Boeing, ViaSat, and United Launch Alliance.

    New space is meant to differentiate those legacy space companies from new companies such as Rocket Lab, OneWeb, and Planet. Adding the words « new space » + startup ratchets up a startup’s hype. It sounds innovative, progressive, entrepreneurial, and hungry.

    In 2021, over 500 investors invested in at least 212 space startups. Not all will be successful, and despite investors’ confidence, not all space startups solve problems.

    However, space startup investors like a return on investment. Some become a part of the hype problem to get that return, promoting their latest investment. Occasionally, they hype a space startup despite the severe challenges facing it. This scenario played out when an investor constantly pushed unrealistic Virgin Galactic visions in press releases and news articles.

    Seeing Through the Hype

    Space startups that use well-grounded hype exist. So how does one identify if a space startup’s hype contains more substance versus one that is only a pile of hype? It might be tempting to follow the advice in the refrain, « Just don’t believe the hype. » However, there are some rules of thumb to avoid falling victim to predatory space startup « hypeness. »

    A simple method is to rely on the maxim, « If it is too good to be true, it probably is. »

    There are reasons why some people are bothered by a space startup’s hype. Why will an asteroid mining venture be different this time if its plans are similar to those of defunct asteroid mining startups? Those questions and others originate from a person’s experiences, providing some wisdom about life.

    It is a reason why some entrepreneurs spin stories, as they attempt to replace investors’ and customers’ critical thinking with greed. Critical thinking diminishes the desired effects of a space startup’s hype.

    A way to see a startup’s hype cycle can also be helpful. The tool at hand for determining a company’s history of hype is Google Trends. Go to the site, type in a name, and Google Trends provides a decent result. Changing the date range and selecting « News Search » yields the charts below:

    Typing in company names such as Relativity Space or Astra shows some cyclical hype attempts as their PR folks attempt to feed the news agencies the latest favorable company narrative.

    The Hype Cycle

    A tool that purportedly explores hype in-depth is the Gartner Hype Cycle, a methodology consisting of five stages: innovation trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity. While those names sound like places in the « Princess Bride » or « Labyrinth, » they should not be confused with them. The chart below displays the stages of increasing and diminishing hype over time.

    The Gartner Hype Cycle (author’s version)

     

    The cycle is supposed to help people determine not just the amount of hype surrounding a technology but also make a better guess at where it is in the cycle. According to Gartner, the company uses the method to analyze 95 different cycles. However, Gartner also notes that it takes companies between three to five years for a technology to move through those stages (and then caveats that the speed could vary).

    Gartner heavily promotes its tool, but the cycle’s defined stages remain extremely useful in visualizing the hype surrounding space startups. As it is, space industry observers likely recognize the first two stages of Gartner’s Hype Cycle from numerous space industry startup claims: the Innovation Trigger and The Peak of Inflated Expectations.

    Stage 1

    The « innovation trigger » describes when a new technology’s concept or demonstration shows the potential to be useful (Is it solving a problem?).

    However, there might not be an apparent commercial application. It may be that the technology isn’t solving a problem. Still, the mere concept gets people excited enough to spread the word. Several space industry startups have hyped innovation triggers often.

    Some offer only pretty renderings and appealing ideas. They introduce immature technologies and concepts, such as Moon bases and orbiting solar power stations. All have a common element—they are not real.

    Is it possible for them to become a reality? Yes, but startups would require much more effort, investment, and time (typically more than startups have access to) to make them real. It is all a part of the hype cycle’s first stage.

    Alternatively, Stoke Space is a recent startup in the first stage of the hype cycle. The company is developing a concept, innovative rocket engine configurations, as an approach to creating a fully reusable launch system. The concept’s promise, demonstration, and goal are appealing enough to excite people, but it is squarely in the innovation trigger stage.

    Asteroid mining companies, such as Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, are startups that never moved beyond the innovation trigger stage of the cycle.

    Stage 2

    That next stage, the peak of inflated expectations, is when the startup’s technology attracts attention and starts receiving investments for experimentation. Believe it or not, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 may still fall under this stage.

    The rocket is a proven platform that can launch spacecraft into orbit and beyond, but the Falcon 9’s reusability attracts attention. It increases exceptional hype around the company as the still unusual characteristic of reusability draws increasing attention, investor interest, and more customers.

    However, despite the company’s reusability successes, few existing rocket companies seem to see (or at least publicly admit) how a reusable rocket makes sense for them.

    Stage 3

    The cycle’s third stage, the trough of disillusionment, results from unmet inflated expectations and unforeseen challenges. Perhaps it turns out there are problems with the technology or concept. Alternatively, the space startup developing the concept may be losing money and discovering unanticipated challenges. Finally, it may be that the concept offers no solution for the target market—it is unneeded.

    If any of those descriptions sound familiar, it may be because Virgin Galactic appears to be wallowing in the trough. It validated its innovation trigger, the suborbital spaceplane concept, and technology. Following that stage was the company’s buildup to a peak of inflated expectations.

    According to Virgin Galactic, there was a market for quick suborbital rides—after all, a certain number of people put money down to get a ticket to ride. If more people ride to space, their example will excite others into doing the same.

    Nevertheless, after the first passenger ride Virgin Galactic paused its operations, and the factors leading to the trough of disillusionment set in. Investors lost money. The company is facing supply chain problems and safety challenges for its spaceplanes. A year and a half after its only passenger launch, the general excitement and hype for Virgin Galactic’s spaceplanes are fading. However, that does not mean the company is beyond redemption.

    Reaction Engines, Ltd., is another older example of a startup in the disillusionment stage. It received a lot of press and funding for demonstrating a technology that might be able to provide space launch without the use of rocket engines. However, after over a decade, the company has yet to prove that its product can be commercially viable. While it might find its way out, Reaction Engines’ hype cycle is taking much longer than other startups.

    Stage 4

    It may be that Virgin Galactic powers through to the hype cycle’s fourth stage, the slope of enlightenment. A startup or several startups have identified the need for the technology or concept at this stage.

    Perhaps a market can use it—just not the one initially identified. With the first generation left in the trough, a broader customer base might adopt newer, more reliable generations of technology.

    The concept of low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband satellites may be in that zone. It was never a question of whether it would be helpful. The question was whether it could make a profit, a valid concern considering the faltering decades-long history and the initial hype about how it would serve people in other nations without broadband access.

    At least two companies are fielding these communications constellations, both working on newer generations of their satellites. One of those companies, SpaceX, appeared surprised that its satellites work for an application it never intended and disapproved of that use.

    The surprise may be feigned, but using technology for an application other than the one the company intended is an age-old business conundrum. It is a circumstance that disapproving companies would do well to accept, move on, and learn. That attitude might help them reach the fifth stage: the plateau of productivity.

    Stage 5 (and other notes)

    The plateau is just what it says—the technology is practical enough to gain widespread adoption. People become increasingly productive using it. An example of a technology in this stage is the communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), operated by companies such as SES or Intelsat.

    For decades, consumers used those companies’ technology and services. Governments and militaries contract for their services. However, this is the boring part of the hype cycle. What is exciting about technology that works as expected?

    Although, Apple makes an art out of hyping boring technology. It generally lets others struggle through the first three stages and jumps in at the slope of enlightenment.

    As a startup progresses through the hype cycle, it will likely not remain a startup as it reaches the cycle’s end. Also, the various technologies space startups work with require different cycle timelines, as each technology has different dependencies to account for before moving on to the next stage of hype.

    For example, developing and building a communications satellite constellation might be more straightforward and take less time than building a fully reusable launch system. The former concept might complete the cycle in five years, while the other remains in the innovation trigger stage for nearly the same time. It all gets communicated on the chart like so:

    Based on the author’s guesses

    Understanding any company’s place in the hype cycle can help determine a product’s authenticity. It explains why there is discomfort with a space startup’s decision to change concepts, abandoning one somewhere in the hype cycle and starting from scratch with the next one. It means that investment allocated to the initial concept is ill-spent, as the startup’s entrepreneur tries to explain why the change is necessary.

    That type of hype was seen with Astra’s concept, as it went from inexpensive smallsat launch to constellation operator to new smallsat launch and constellation. Each time Astra changed the story, the hype cycle restarted. It is not easy to become excited about a company that does not know what it offers.

    The hype cycle can provide an understanding that a technology is at the peak of inflated expectations, ready to trip into the trough of disillusionment. Maybe it aids in realizing the technology is a dud. Alternatively, perhaps the trough is an opportunity to get in on the action before the technology moves up the slope of enlightenment.

    As annoying as hype is, it is also helpful. Perhaps, however, not as startups intended. Press release frequency, wording, emotion, and carefully worded CEO statements point towards hype cycle stages. Applying hard-won knowledge, online tools, and an alternative view of space startup hype can provide a peek into the realities behind it.  

    John Holst is the Editor/Analyst of Ill-Defined Space, dedicated to analysis of activities, policies, and businesses in the space sector.

  • Jon Snow book – The Guardian

    Jon Snow book – The Guardian

    why we’re not all in it together

    The news reader tackles privilege and politics in this personal exploration of inequality

    Written by John Harris, published Thu 2 Mar 2023 11.00 GMT

    (Read before receiving the book)

    The morning after the Grenfell Tower disaster, Jon Snow arrived at the offices of Channel 4 News, the programme he had been hosting since 1989. Initially, he and his colleagues did not have much sense of the significance of a story that was just starting to become clear. But after he arrived at the scene having impulsively cycled across London, he realised that he was about to front his channel’s coverage not just of an unimaginable tragedy, but of glaring truths about the modern United Kingdom.

    Fifty days before, Snow and the Microsoft founder Bill Gates had been the judges of a public-speaking contest organised by a charity called Debate Mate. The winner, by some distance, had been 12-year-old Firdaws Hashim, a student at the Kensington Aldridge Academy. Two days into a run of bulletins broadcast from Grenfell, he suddenly saw her image on a “Missing” notice. “This brilliant girl lived with her family on the twenty-second floor,” he writes. “I knew precisely what the poster meant … And at this moment, I burst into tears.”

    Snow’s appreciation of what all this signified was at the heart of the MacTaggart lecture he gave at the Edinburgh TV festival that August, in which he charged the media with standing “comfortably with the elite, with little awareness, contact or connection with those not of the elite”. This uneasy realisation – Snow is open about his own privilege, rooted in a private education – obviously festered. Now, just over a year after his exit from Channel 4 News, he has developed it into a 288-page exploration of inequality, and the kind of social and cultural changes that might reduce it.

    His tone is that of someone suddenly liberated from the restraints of supposed impartiality. Snow mixes autobiography with polite polemic, and tumbles through a range of subjects and locations: education, housing, the reform of parliament, apartheid South Africa, Iran, the invasion of Iraq and its long slipstream – and, in the book’s second half, the media, and the narrow range of perspectives it presents. In a ranking of the most powerful media figures published in 2019, 43% came from privately educated backgrounds: here, he rightly suggests, is a big part of the reason why so much news seems to take the people who deliver it by surprise.

    But even if he now feels unbound, some of his own arguments are proof of those same limitations. He presents the House of Lords as the embodiment of so much of what he decries, but can only propose “an independent commission to look at what would be the best solution”. His analysis of recent political history finds him being too generous to David Cameron and George Osborne, and overly kind to post-Thatcher Conservatism more broadly (is it really true that “racist language” is not “in the tradition of the party” and that Nigel Farage sits outside the parameters of Tory politics?). In general, he hangs on to a Whiggish optimism that sometimes fails to stand up to scrutiny. He also has a habit of extending his criticisms of the media’s highest-profile elements to journalism as a whole. Before the Brexit referendum, he says, “I do not believe any part of the media appreciated the scale of the citizenry’s economic woes”. Some of us did.

    The oversights are occasionally maddening, but Snow is usually redeemed by the self-awareness that underpins most of what he says. The essence of his talents as a news anchor came down not just to his unquenchable interest in his fellow humans, but an urbane, unrufflable disposition traceable to an early life spent among “giant doors, vaulted ceilings and esoteric codes of conduct”. In the future he seems to want, voices like his would recede, leaving the news to be delivered by people closer to their audiences. At that point, perhaps, the “us” in his title might at last mean what it ought to.

    The State of Us: The Good News and the Bad News About Our Society by Jon Snow is published by Bantham

  • ULA for sale ? – Ars Technica

    ULA for sale ? – Ars Technica

    Sources say prominent US rocket-maker United Launch Alliance is up for sale

    The potential sale of ULA comes with many questions for a buyer.

    Published by Eric Berger – 3/1/2023, 5:50 PM

    Two men in business suits stand next to a model spaceship.
    Enlarge/ Tory Bruno (L), CEO of United Launch Alliance, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at a news conference in 2014.Win McNamee/Getty Images

    One of the world’s most important rocket companies, United Launch Alliance, may be sold later this year.

    The potential sale has not been disclosed publicly, but three sources confirmed to Ars that potential buyers have been contacted about the opportunity. These sources said a deal is expected to be closed before the end of this year and that investment firm Morgan Stanley and consulting firm Bain & Company are managing the transaction.

    The sale of United Launch Alliance, or ULA as it is known within the industry, would mark the end of an era that has lasted for nearly two decades. The company was officially formed in 2005 as part of a deal brokered by the US government, ensuring the military had access to both Atlas and Delta rockets to put national security satellites into space. To form ULA, Lockheed Martin and Boeing merged their launch businesses into a single company, each taking a 50 percent stake.

    This union was profitable for both parent companies, as ULA held a monopoly on launching national security missions and, effectively, NASA science probes. In return for 100 percent mission success, ULA received large launch contracts and an approximately $1 billion annual subsidy from the US Department of Defense to maintain « launch readiness. »

    In response to a request for comment, Boeing released the following statement: « Consistent with our corporate practice, Boeing doesn’t comment on potential market rumors or speculation about financial activities. »

    Lockheed Martin issued a nearly identical response: « Consistent with our corporate practice, Lockheed Martin doesn’t comment on potential market rumors or speculation about financial activities.”

    The emergence of SpaceX in the early 2010s with the increasingly reliable Falcon 9 rocket started to disrupt this profitable arrangement. SpaceX sold the Falcon 9 rocket at a substantial discount to ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. The company also successfully sued the US government to allow the Falcon 9 rocket to compete for national security missions, and SpaceX launched its first one in 2017.

    In recent years, SpaceX has come to dominate United Launch Alliance in terms of cadence. By the end of 2022, the upstart was launching as many rockets each month as ULA launched during a calendar year. During the last four years, in fact, SpaceX has landed more rockets than ULA has launched during its existence.

    However, ULA still holds a prominent place in the global launch industry, and there will likely be no shortage of suitors.

    The Colorado-based company has significant assets. As early as May, ULA will debut its new heavy-lift rocket, Vulcan, which may close some of the gap in terms of price competitiveness with SpaceX. For Vulcan, ULA has an agreement with the US military to launch 60 percent of its national security payloads from 2023 to 2027, and it will likely continue to be successful in this area. ULA has also won a commercial contract to launch 38 missions for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite megaconstellation. Finally, ULA has sizable and valuable facilities in Colorado, Alabama, and Florida, and it has strong political capital in those states and others.

    The following companies may (or may not—this is a speculative list) be among the suitors for ULA as the sale proceeds later this year.

    • One of the parent companies, either Lockheed or Boeing, could buy the other out. Lockheed being on the purchasing end seems more likely, given that it has recently made strategic acquisitions in the launch industry, including taking a stake in ABL Space Systems.
    • Amazon is likely to be interested. The company owned by Jeff Bezos would have intimate knowledge of ULA’s business after signing the Project Kuiper launch agreement and may decide it’s better to purchase the company outright than buy services. This would give Amazon the priority access to Vulcan launches it needs to ensure the Kuiper constellation is launched in a timely manner. It would also strengthen Amazon’s ties to the Department of Defense.
    • Blue Origin may also be interested. This is another company owned by Jeff Bezos, but sources said there is a firewall between Blue Origin and Amazon. Blue Origin also won a share of Project Kuiper launches, 12, with its New Glenn rocket. However, there are some questions about how quickly New Glenn can be brought into commercial service, and in buying ULA, Blue Origin could consolidate its share of Kuiper missions and earn guaranteed funding from the Department of Defense. The company would also « save » money on Vulcan launches because it could provide BE-4 rocket engines at cost.
    • Other potential bidders include Northrop Grumman, which has an interest in national security and provides solid rocket motors for Vulcan; L3Harris, which is already purchasing engine-maker Aerojet Rocketdyne; a private equity firm like the industry saw with AE Industrial Partners’ investment in Firefly Aerospace; or even a technology company like Apple seeking to develop its own space constellation for communications purposes.

    The potential sale of ULA comes with many questions for a buyer. Foremost among them is likely to be the long-term viability of the traditional space company at a time when SpaceX has taken the dominant position in the global launch industry. Additionally, there are other US competitors coming up as well, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Relativity Space. None of these are a near-term threat to ULA, but in five to 10 years, one or more of those companies could have a fully reusable rocket priced substantially below that of Vulcan.

    Another important factor in ULA’s viability is its need for investment. Over the last two decades, the parent companies have tended to pull profits out of ULA rather than investing in the development of new technology. Vulcan, for example, was developed largely with money from the US military. The Department of Defense supported the development of Vulcan’s engines and solids and provided development grants worth $967 million directly to ULA. To become competitive in the new era of commercial launch, a new owner will likely need to free ULA to innovate—and provide the funding to do so.

  • Paul Easton – RIP

    Paul Easton – RIP

    Un de mes premiers collègues dans la radio commerciale en Grande Bretagne nous a quitté. C’était en 1973-1975. Il était opérateur de console à London Broadcasting Company (LBC) et la société jumelle Independant Radio News (IRN). On se voyait quotidiennement car j’y produisais la matinale « AM » de la station. Nous étions acteurs de la toute première radio d’informations en continue, première du nouveau réseau de stations locales en concurrence avec la BBC.

    Il était d’une gentillesse exceptionnelle, et devenait un ami, avec qui ont pouvait partager sur une multitude de sujets. Il est devenu par la suite un grand professionnel de la radio, un connaisseur très avisé de métier et de son histoire. Nous nous sommes retrouvés sur Facebook il y a quelques années, et jusqu’à ces derniers jours nous échangions sur de nombreux sujets.

    Il partageait avec moi l’amour des félins. « Il est toujours d’avoir un chat à ses côtés quand on travaille seul chez soi. » Il y a quelques années publiait une vidéo de son compagnon Charlie avec la remarque de son état d’âme, pleine de sensibilité:  « When all else fails, post a cat video ». La nouvelle de son décès m’a énormément surprise. Je devais le revoir à Londres en octobre pour une grande réunion d’anciens pour le 50ème anniversaire de LBC. Paul avait fêté ses 70 ans en décembre.

    Une carrière bien remplie

    Following several years volunteering in hospital radio, Paul’s professional radio career began in 1974, when he joined LBC Radio as a studio operator, working on news programmes, phone-ins and outside broadcasts. He later became a programme producer and, eventually, the station’s Head of Production, where one of his main responsibilities was LBC’s on-air ‘imaging’ and branding.

    In 1987 he spent a year with Ocean Sound, in Hampshire, as a freelance presenter, before becoming launch consultant to Contact 94, an English-language commercial station broadcasting to the Channel Islands from France. From there, Paul went to Vienna where he spent the next two years as a regular freelance presenter and newsreader with Austria’s state broadcaster, ORF, on their English-language station, Blue Danube Radio.

    Returning to London, Paul joined Melody Radio as one of its original music programmers, before, in 1991, moving to Capital Radio as Assistant to the Director of Programmes, where he worked on both Capital FM and Capital Gold. He later moved full-time to Capital Gold, where he was responsible for much of the station’s music output, as well as working with radio legends such as Kenny Everett, Alan Freeman and Tony Blackburn as a producer. In the summer of 1993 Paul was seconded to BRMB-FM and Xtra-AM in Birmingham for a couple of months as Acting Programme Controler to assist with programming and music changes prior to a relaunch of both stations following their acquisition by Capital.

    In 1994, he left Capital to take up the new post of Head of Programming at Music Choice Europe, the digital satellite music service, where he helped to develop and launch over 40 digital audio channels covering a broad range of musical formats.

    At the end of 2000, Paul joined UK Radio Developments’ ‘Infinity Media’ subsidiary as Programme Director of their new DAB digital radio station, FLIX Radio, as well as developing new digital/internet radio station formats and helping to write Radio Authority licence applications.

    Since 2002 Paul has been a freelance radio programming consultant, working with a number of clients. He has also worked on a number of applications for new FM radio station licences in both the UK and Republic of Ireland, including several winners.

    In 2007 he was part of the launch team at JACKfm Oxfordshire, with responsibility for programming – and continues to work with the team at JACK, and its sister station JACK 2, providing regular Rajar analysis as well as carrying out other research and programming-related work. He is also an ‘Associate’ of their parent company OXIS Media.

    From 2003-2009 Paul was also an ‘Associate Lecturer’ on various part-time radio production and journalism courses at the London College of Communication.

    He also contributed the fortnightly ‘Programming Points’ column in The Radio Magazine from 2003-2010 and has been a judge for the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards, the Radio Academy’s ‘Nations & Regions Awards’ and the National Hospital Radio Awards.

    Paul is also a Trustee of British Wireless for the Blind, a charity whose job is to try and supply radio and audio sets to all registered blind and partially-sighted people who are in need.

    Poem written by Paul before his passing and published by his closest after his death.

    Farewell My Friends
    It was beautiful
    As long as it lasted
    The journey of my life.
    I have no regrets
    Whatsoever said
    The pain I’ll leave behind.
    Those dear hearts
    Who love and care…
    And the strings pulling
    At the heart and soul…
    The strong arms
    That held me up
    When my own strength
    Let me down.
    At the turning of my life
    I came across
    Good friends,
    Friends who stood by me
    Even when time raced me by.
    Farewell, farewell My friends
    I smile and
    Bid you goodbye.
    No, shed no tears
    For I need them not
    All I need is your smile.
    If you feel sad
    Do think of me
    For that’s what I’ll like
    When you live in the hearts
    Of those you love
    Remember then
    You never die.
     
     

    Livre écrit par Paul, à partir de ses chroniques: From 2003-2010 UK radio consultant Paul Easton contributed the fortnightly ‘Programming Points’ column, as well as other occasional features, for The Radio Magazine.

    During that period the UK radio industry underwent a lot of changes. A new regulator, consolidation, increased networking and automation, the development of national ‘brands’…. the list goes on.

    This book is a collection of Paul’s columns, containing a mix of advice and industry commentary.

  • Pale blue dot – Carolyn Porco

    Pale blue dot – Carolyn Porco

    How the Celebrated “Pale Blue Dot” Image Came to Be

    Voyager 1’s poignant photograph of the distant Earth as the spacecraft sped toward interstellar space happened just 30 years ago. Remastered image of Earth as a pale blue dot, seemingly embedded in a ray of sunlight scattered in the optics of the camera. Credit: NASA and JPL-Caltech

    Article by Carolyn Porco published in Scientific American 13th Feb 2020

    Thirty years ago, on February 14, 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft directed its cameras to take one last historic array of planetary images. Sitting high above the ecliptic plane, nine years and three months beyond its last planetary encounter with Saturn and four billion miles from the sun, farther than the orbit of Neptune, the spacecraft intercepted and executed a set of instructions to acquire 60 individual exposures of seven of the eight planets, the sun and the vast nothingness in between. This simple sequence of commands and these last images of the of tens of thousands taken by Voyager 1 and its sister craft, Voyager 2, in their journeys across the solar system, capped a groundbreaking era in the coming of age of our species.

    A daring, endless trek to the outer planets and beyond, the Voyager mission became iconic over the years in its scope and meaning: more rite of passage than expedition, more mythic than scientific. The extraordinary images of alien worlds never before seen, and the precognitive sense of being there that they evoked, connected laypeople the world over to Voyager’s historic pilgrimage into the unknown, with eternity the final port of call. It was not folly to feel that the mission would gift us all a measure of immortality.

    The fabled Golden Record of Voyager heightened the fascination. The two Voyagers each carried a phonograph record of images, music, and sounds representative of our planet, including spoken greetings in 55 languages to any intelligent life-form that might find them. This was a message from Planet Earth vectored into the Milky Way—a hopeful call across space and time to our fellow galactic citizens. It thrilled to think that news of us and our home planet might be retrieved by some extraterrestrial civilization, somewhere and sometime, in the long future of our galaxy.

    Because of its never-ending journey, its dazzling scientific discoveries in the solar system, and its human-forward countenance, to participants and onlookers alike, Voyager became symbolic of our acute longing to understand our cosmic place and the significance of our own existence. It left no question of our status as an interplanetary species. It is, even today, the most revered and beloved interplanetary mission of them all, the Apollo 11 of robotic exploration.

    Perhaps the most poignant gesture of the Voyager mission was its final parting salute to its place of birth. The portrait of the sun’s family of planets taken in early 1990 included an image of Earth. Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team and the captain of the small team that had produced the Golden Record, had proposed this image to the Voyager project in 1981. He eventually called it, appropriately, the Pale Blue Dot. His motivation is expressed in his book of the same name, in which he describes wishing to continue in the tradition begun by the famous Earthrise images of the Apollo program, referring specifically to the one taken from the surface of the moon by Apollo 17. Then, he continues:

    It seemed to me that another picture of the Earth, this one taken from a hundred thousand times farther away, might help in the continuing process of revealing to ourselves our true circumstance and condition. It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast encompassing Cosmos, but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance.

    Though Carl had convinced a small group of Voyager project personnel, and imaging team leader Brad Smith, to provide the required technical, planning, and political support, the project leaders were not willing to spend the resources to do it. Carl’s 1981 proposal was rejected, as were his other proposals over the following seven years.

    Completely unaware that Carl had initiated such an effort, I was independently promoting the very same idea—to take an image of the Earth and the other planets—soon after I became an official imaging team member in late 1983. I had in mind the sentimental “goodbye” that would lie at the heart of any image taken of our home planet before Voyager headed out for interstellar space, and the perspective it would give us of ourselves—our small and ever-shrinking place in Voyager’s ever-widening view of our cosmic neighborhood. Also, the “cool factor” in presenting a view of our solar system as alien visitors might see it upon arrival here was another draw.

    For two years, I hawked the idea around the project and, not surprisingly, like Carl, got nowhere. But Voyager’s project scientist, Ed Stone, did his best to encourage me by advising that if there was some science to be obtained by an image of Earth, it might then be possible. As I couldn’t think of any, I gave up and began instead thinking of other scientific observations of the inner solar system that could be made from the outer solar system. The result: In 1987 we used Voyager 1 to attempt to image the asteroidal dust bands discovered by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite in 1983. Regrettably, nothing was detected.

    It wasn’t until 1988 that I finally became aware of Carl’s proposal. After telling him that I had had the same idea a few years earlier—and, like him, tried and failed to get it jump-started—he requested my help, suggesting that I compute the exposure times. (A letter I wrote to Carl after our conversation, in 1988, summarizing that conversation and reporting on my calculations, is archived in the Library of Congress.)

    It is an ironic historical footnote to this story that the most difficult calculation of the bunch was the exposure for the Earth. As no spacecraft had ever taken an image of Earth when it was smaller than a pixel, and since the cloudiness of its atmosphere is so variable that its inherent brightness is hard to calculate or predict, there was no information available then to suggest confidently how long an exposure should be. Somehow, it all worked out.

    The Pale Blue Dot image of Earth is not a stunning image. But that didn’t matter in the end, because it was the way that Carl romanced it, turning it into an allegory on the human condition, that has ever since made the phrase “Pale Blue Dot” and the image itself synonymous with an inspirational call to planetary brotherhood and protection of Earth.

    And we did all that—on July 19, 2013.

    “The Day the Earth Smiled” image, with our planet visible below Saturn’s rings. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech,  Space Science Institute and CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations).

    I called it “The Day the Earth Smiled.” It became a gorgeous image of Saturn and its rings in the foreground and our blue ocean planet, a billion miles in the distance, adrift in a sea of stars.

    The significance of images like this—our home seen at significant remove as a mere point of blue light—lies in the uncorrupted, unpoliticized view they offer us of ourselves, a view of all of us together on one tiny dot of a planet, alone in the blackness of space. Our scientific explorations, and images like this, have shown us that thereis literally no place else for us to go, to survive and flourish,without extraordinary, and I would submit, unrealizable effort.

    Science fiction aside, it may really be that humanity’s last stand is right here on Earth, right where it all began, and the lesson going forward now is: We had better make the best of it.

    Carl was right. As he wrote in 1994: [The Pale Blue Dot] underscores our responsibility … to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

    In August 2012, in another historic first, Voyager 1 escaped the magnetic bubble of the sun, becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space. That glorious historic undertaking, that redefined us every step of the way, had done it again. At that point, our species became interstellar. Thanks to Voyager, we are now card-carrying citizens of the Milky Way.

  • Valentine Project – US students

    Valentine Project – US students

    We wish all of you in Rolling Fork a fantastic Saint Valentine’s Day. May you happy, be good friends with everyone around you, teachers and parents.

    The distance between Rolling Fork, Mississipi and Hautefage la Tour, our small village in France is 7,639 km, that’s 4,747 miles. By airplane it would probably take two days to get here.

    Paulette & Martin. Both of us are retired. Paulette worked as a social assistant looking after blind children. I was a radio and TV journalist reporting on space affairs, rockets and stars.

    Nicolas, our son the right, his wife Kele (who is Brasilian), and their two daughters Taina and Chloé. They live in the city of Pau, about 2 hours drive away to the South. Taina and Chloé are very good swimmers. Nicolas, who has worked in Brasil, is a TV journalist.

    Our daughter Aurelia on the right, her husband Jerome and between them their two children, Manon and Alexander. They live to the North, near Brittany in the town of Saint Malo, about 8 hours drive away. Our daughter has worked in Japan and her children speak Japanese!

    Martin & Paulette have two cats: Tizia above and ….

    ….Shelley

    They get along together and keep us company.

    [:fr][Montrer sous forme de vignettes][:]

    Our home is in the middle of the countryside. Nearby there are farmers who have cows, grow fruit trees and grow vegetables.

    We even have five hens and a cock who wander around the house and gardens.

    We have several houses and rooms where we can welcome guests and friends. And our children and grand-children when they come for weekends and holidays.

    Our village Hautefage-la-Tour has only 1050 inhabitants. It is not far from one of France’s wine-producing regions – but we also drink milk!!

    There are two very big cities, about two hours by car: Bordeaux to the West, near the sea, and Toulouse to the East. Toulouse is where the Airbus planes are built, and also satellites.

    WE HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED THIS VISIT. IF YOU WANT TO WRITE TO US,

    PLEASE DO SO. WE AND OUR CHILDREN WOULD LOVE TO MAKE SOME NEW FRENDS IN MISSISSIPI.

    BYE FOR NOW! AUREVOIR!

  • Roadster-Starman reflexions

    Roadster-Starman reflexions

    By far the best account is by By Dr Jenifer Millard, written for the iOS application StarGuide

    https://content.fifthstarlabs.io/featuredItem?id=RoadsterRoaming&lang=fr

    Elon Musk’s ‘Starman’ in a Tesla Roadster completes five years in space

    Tuesday 7 Feb 2023 3:54 pm

    Remember when Elon Musk launched a whole Tesla into space with a dummy at the wheel? It’s been five years since then and the car is still out there.

    Now the spacefaring electric car has completed a major milestone in its infinite journey after successfully completing its first orbit around the sun.

    A website called Whereisroadster.com has been tracking Starman’s progress since 2018, tracking the car on its journey through space.

    The Roadster was set to ‘cross the orbit of Mars for the fourth time since it launched’ as the car neared its fifth anniversary in space, according to the website’s creator Ben Pearson.

    A website called WhereIsRoadster has been tracking Starman’s progress and said he’s now travelled 4,059,539,284 km, which means the 36,000-mile Tesla warranty has been well and truly exceeded.

    Currently, the vehicle is 327,198,062 km from the Earth, moving towards us at a speed of 10,593 km/h.

    If things go according to plan, the car will now orbit the sun until it crashes into something or when humans decide to finally clean up our space trash.

    The Starman has completed about 3.2793 orbits around the Sun since launch. It takes the car about 557 days to orbit around the sun. 

    Musk’s roadster has cameras mounted on the car which beamed back incredible shots of its journey around Earth and onwards to infinity.

    A sign on the dashboard read ‘Don’t panic!’, and Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ played on the car’s stereo.

    A Hot Wheels roadster toy car was also on the dashboard with a tiny spaceman on board.

    According to an orbit-modelling study, Starman will swing back past Earth in 2091, coming within a few hundred thousand kilometres of our planet.

    Considering the damage being inflicted upon it by the harshness of space, the Roadster may just be a worn aluminium shell by then.

    Starman behind the wheel of the Tesla Roadster with planet Earth in the background (Picture: SpaceX)
    ARTICLE ON CNN
    It’s now been half a decade since SpaceX turned heads around the world with its decision to launch Elon Musk’s personal Tesla roadster into outer space, sending the car on an endless journey into the cosmic wilderness where it’s expected to remain for millennia to come.

    As of Monday, February 6, the cherry-colored sports car has officially been in space for exactly five years.

    At the time of its anniversary, data estimates show that it had completed about three and one quarter loops around the sun and was positioned about 203 million miles (327 million kilometers) from Earth, according to the tracking website whereisroadster.com.

    The roadster has logged more than 2.5 billion miles in space (4 billion kilometers), mostly through a barren vacuum. Though, in 2020, the vehicle made its first close approach to Mars, passing within 5 million miles of the planet, or about 20 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

    It is difficult, however, to say where the vehicle is with absolute certainty — or to determine if it’s still in one piece, as it’s possible the car may have been dinged or obliterated by a meteoroid or eroded beyond recognition by radiation. There haven’t been any direct observations of the roadster since 2018, in the weeks just after it was blasted into orbit atop a three-million-pound Falcon Heavy rocket. Current data is based only on calculated estimates of the car’s trajectory.

    Astronomers don’t have much incentive to actively track the car, as it doesn’t offer much scientific value. The Tesla was ultimately intended to serve as a throw-away “dummy payload” for the Falcon Heavy’s first mission in February 2018, a launch that even Musk had predicted would have only a 50-50 shot at success.

    But the launch did, after all, go off without a hitch. And the car has been circling the sun ever since, taking an oblong path that swings as far out as Mars’ orbital path and as close to the sun as Earth’s orbit.

    As of Monday, it was just intersecting with Mars’ path, though the planet itself was on the opposite side of the sun.

    Before its 2018 launch, SpaceX loaded up the car with various Easter eggs. Behind the wheel was a spacesuit-clad mannequin, nicknamed Starman, and on the dashboard, a sign that read “Don’t Panic,” a reference to the famed science fiction story, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” There was also a data storage device loaded with the works of sci-fi writer Isaac Asminov and a plaque inscribed with the names of thousands of SpaceX employees.

    Musk said at the time of launch that he hoped humans will one day establish settlements on other planets in the solar system — a long-running Musk fantasy that also underpins SpaceX’s stated mission to colonize Mars. If and when that happens, Musk said he hopes his “descendants will be able to drag (the roadster) back to a museum.”

    For now, however, the roadster isn’t likely to pass near another planet until 2035 when it’ll brush by Mars again. It’ll then make two passes within a few million miles of Earth in 2047 and 2050, according to NASA data.

    One 2018 academic paper also estimated that the chances the car collides with the Earth within the next 15 million years at about 22%. The odds of it crashing into Venus or the Sun each stand at 12%.

    If the car does wind up taking a crash course with Earth, we’ll have to hope it’s ripped into pieces as it slams back into the thick atmosphere. (Spaceborne objects running into Earth are actually fairly common, and typically burn up in the atmosphere during entry. Such hits rarely impact populated areas.)

    To keep tabs on the roadster’s predicted location, it has its own entry in NASA’s Horizons database, which follows all the “bodies” of the solar system, including exploration probes, planets, moons, comets and asteroids. The Tesla is listed as object -143205, “SpaceX Roadster (spacecraft) (Tesla).”

    To view a simulation of the Tesla’s orbit (based on the data in Horizons), go to OrbitSimulator.com and search for “roadster.”

     
     
  • Joting about « News »

    Joting about « News »

    Old jotting of mine, recently found in my archives, dating from the end of my twenty years at Sud Radio Toulouse.

    At that time, I don’t think that « rolling news, 24/7 » had invaded the TV and radio media and Internet with its « Social » networks had certainly not taken a grip on the profession.