To the Moooooon! // Buffet! // Childhood memories of East Hamilton!

[pyat]

The SpaceShipOne guys have broken the civilian altitude record, and flown their sub-orbital rocket to a height of 42 miles. At that height, the sky is black, you can see the curvature of the Earth, and you’re in freefall. It’s not quite “space,” but I think it’s close enough for horseshoes.

More below the cut - Childhood memories! Pyat stuffs his face!


The US Air Force considers anything above 50 miles to be orbital space, and the X-Prize people have established an equally arbitrary altitude of 100 kms (62 miles) as the dividing line between “flying” and “orbiting.”

Still, it seems likely they’ll be able to break that barrier quite handily, and at an incredibly low cost. I’ve always thought that the cost of space flight was unreasonably high, considering the technology involved to shoot a rocket into orbit now more than 60 years old. It costs $60 million for the US to send a single astronaut into space. The Russians can do it for well under $20 million. That’s the price they charge tourists, and it covers the cost of constructing an entire Soyuz capsule, launch vehicle, training, and a healthy profit for the Russian space agency.

The folks behind SpaceShipOne will do it for a hundred-grand, and even that is likely a gross inflation of their actual costs.

National pride causes me to hope that the two Canadian teams get their acts together. The team in London is building a rocket based largely on the plans for the Nazi V2, which… well, I guess it’s not any worse than driving a Volkswagen, eh buran? ;0)

However, the American team has a much more advanced vehicle, and one that will be useful for safe jaunts into low orbit. The Canadian teams are designing the sort of vehicles that even I, one who regularly experiences ye old rêve d'etoile would hesitate to set foot in, assuming I were offered a free ride.

I just want a Canadian team to break the 100 km barrier – the US can win the prize, if they like, but it would be nice for the home team to get there first.

* * *

It’s payday, so I went to the Chinese buffet… which for some reason also has a pizza bar and extensive sushi selection.

There’s a quote from an old Dutch merchant, about how Holland was the centre of the world, the place to which all riches and good things came. I think you see where I’m going, here.

Mmm. Buffet.

Vast repositories of chicken and beef and pork. Vegetables galore. Soups and salads, constantly replenished. Twenty kinds of dessert. Fresh slices of pineapple from the Dominican. Chocolate from Switzerland. All for the price of paperback.

At the end of the meal, they bring you a steaming hot towel, infused with lemon. Was Rome this decadent? Or glorious?

God Bless Capitalism and Globalism, and may market forces continue to fetch me spices from furthest Cathay, at rock-bottom prices!

* * *

I was thinking about my childhood, earlier.

Specifically, about riding my bicycle along the Pipeline, a scar of city owned land which runs diagonally through several neighborhoods from Ottawa and Main to Kenilworth Public Library. I passed by the Pipeline last night, and remembered what it used to be like. The Pipeline is now a pleasant green space, with sufficient lighting, shady trees, benches, and a path.

In 1982 it was a muddy dumping ground, with no grass. caiteag might remember it this way, too. Angry dogs on ropes barked as I passed. Local bullies from alien neighborhoods, dressed in shabby clothes, would sometimes try to block my path. Once, they tried to steal my bike. I’d ride through mud puddles, and get my jeans dirty. Nails and broken boards threatened to spear my tires. It was a gauntlet, really. It took the better part of an hour to ride from my neighborhood near Gage Park to the library, but it was well worth it.

I used to imagine it as a passage through the Mutara Nebula. My BMX knock-off (and later, my sister’s red three-speed) was a scout ship, sent to bring back information from the distant repository of antiquity. Asphalt represented clear space. Gravel was asteroid fields. Dirt was a nebula – especially on dry, dusty days. Mud puddles were black holes, and grass was a weird, energy draining field that required me to dismount (“drop out of warp”) and push the bike forward… impulse drive.

In 1982, my family didn’t have cable. We didn’t have air conditioning. We didn’t have a computer. We didn’t even have a car.

I had no friends, at least not in the summer time. So, what was there for a fellow to do except read?

I’d spend hours in the library, which was air conditioned and dim. I’d pretend to read advanced physics texts (which I’m sure were actually just high-school math books). I’d think of questions, and look them up in the Encyclopedias. I checked out pretty much every book in the SF section over the course of three summers – 1982-1985.

Then we got cable, I made some friends I could visit in the summer, the family got a car, and I no longer biked anywhere I could hitch a ride to.

I still have my original library card, repaired with tape. My mother’s signature is still barely visible, under about five different versions of my own signature.

Comments

Re:

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, the teams kept saying "We're going to launch any day now!"

But it's now, finally, all coming together. Three teams are in the forefront - one US and two Canadian, thouugh the Canadian Da Vinci team doesn't look like they'll pull it off.

The Canadian Arrow teams says they can launch in August. We'll see. :)