Rocket Man.*

"I really think this concert will be out of this world."

Victoria Symphony Orchestra conductor Guiseppe Pietraroia

"And then I left earth.  I like saying that.  Because I can."

Colonel Chris Hadfield

Saturday night in Victoria, and we're ready for our night out at the Symphony with ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield.  After a quick but delicious dinner at Foo Asian Street Food, Karli and I cross the street and pick up our Rocket Man tickets from the box office at the Royal Theatre.

The attendees waiting in the lobby represent the full range of clothing options, from suit and tie to jeans and a Mouseketeer t-shirt.  The audience also includes one person actually dressed as Colonel Hadfield, complete with pompadour, fake moustache and NASA jacket - a sort of hipster Hadfield, if you will.**  My lovely companion is attractively (and thematically) clad in nebula-patterned pants and spiral galaxy earrings - I've broken under the pressure of conformity and opted for blazer and jeans.

Our seats are a bit back from the stage - the consequence of waiting a little too long to decide to make the trip to Vancouver Island to see Commander Hadfield.  Regardless, they're centrally placed and we have a good field of view, so no real reason to complain.

The programme for the evening is very much in the line that I expected:  movie themes mixed with selections from Hadfield's album, Space Sessions: Songs from a Tin Can. The orchestra opens with Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra - better known to most people as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, followed by the Mars movement from Gustav Holst's Planets suite, after which the guest of honour steps onto the stage.

Hadfield is no Beyoncé, but he's an experienced performer and story-teller, and his style lends itself well to his folk-influenced songs. And, to be honest, I didn't expect his show to be quite so funny.  In fact, I find myself wondering if he had hired professional help to massage his delivery, but finally decided that it was just natural talent coming to the forefront.  After all, his guitar has a Space Invaders strap, which indicates to me that he's not taking things too seriously.

His description of the process behind his recording of David Bowie's Space Oddity and the video which he shot on the International Space Station is hilarious - and, frankly, quite a bit different than the way it's described in his book.

 

There is also a very effective bit of business where the conductor announces that the orchestra will be performing excerpts from the various Star Trek themes next, and expresses his regrets that there is no one there who could deliver the iconic opening voiceover...perhaps someone who had commanded in space...maybe a Canadian...at which point Hadfield pops out from stage left and waves his hand to get the conductor's attention. 

His reading of "Space...the final frontier..." is impressive, and afterwards he talks about his affection for the series, commenting that "...Star Trek gave me permission to imagine things that didn't exist."  I hope that the producers of the new Star Trek series were paying attention, having Chris Hadfield make an appearance would be a great idea, as well as continuing the tradition of astronaut cameos in the franchise.

However, there are serious moments to the show. During an unexpected question period, Hadfield delivers an impassioned speech regarding the evolution of space exploration, from its roots as an expression of political power to the collaborative process that led to the International Space Station: 

"It took a long time to evolve past planting a flag, into what we should be doing as a species...the greatest legacy of space travel is that it brought us together...the ISS is irrevocable evidence of what we can do when we do things right."

The show ends with an unscripted moment.  An audience member interrupts Hadfield's closing speech by shouting that there is a five year old astronaut there with a question.  The commander acknowledges that a five year old astronaut deserves to be answered, and asks what the young explorer's question is.

A tremulous voice replies, "Will you sign my book?" ***

A  wave of laughter sweeps over the audience, and the boy is escorted backstage and then brought out onto the stage, where Hadfield signs his book, after wryly observing, "Step one of becoming an astronaut - having the guts."

If you'd like to see Commander Hadfield yourself - and I strongly recommend that you do - look for him in his upcoming Canada 150 tour in May.  He'll also be returning to Vancouver to perform with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on October 6th and 7th of this year.  Look for us there - space pants may well make a followup appearance.

- Sid

* It's taken over ten years, but I knew I would eventually use this as the title to a blog posting.

** Credit where credit is due - the term "hipster Hadfield" was contributed by Karli Thomas.

*** Hadfield is somewhat of a Renaissance man. In addition to his autobiographical An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth and You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes, his collected photos of Earth from the ISS, Hadfield has also published a children's book, The Darkest Dark. 

Exploration: Part Two

(This posting is the second of two on Chris Hadfield's Exploration talk at the Orpheum Theatre - Part One can be read here.)

After a brief intermission, Chris Hadfield returns to the stage to continue his look at the future of space exploration.

What does he see as the most important factor in the exploration of our solar system? Water. It's the key element of life on Earth, and an equally key element of space exploration. "With enough water, we can survive anywhere."

He then asks the question, "Where should we explore in our own solar system if water is the key to survival?"

One place to start is Mars. The Martian polar ice caps are an obvious resource for extended stays on Mars, and satellite images have shown sublimating water, places where water ice* has evaporated and recondensed. The Opportunity probe discovered examples of sedimentary rock, evidence that Mars used to have oceans and lakes.

"InSight is a rectal probe for Mars."

NASA's current mission, the Martian InSight lander, is drilling into the surface of Mars in order to taking temperature readings to determine how deep the ground is frozen and where liquid water might be found.

The Commander points out that there is water all through our solar system. Comets are primarily water, a building block for water in the solar system. "We're trying to understand what are asteroids made of - the Japanese Space Agency recently sent a little probe to an asteroid called Ryugu." The Hayabusa 2 probe successfully landed on the surface of Ryugu and conducted experiments to examine the asteroid's interior.

Jupiter's moon Europa was examined by the Galileo probe, which discovered that the surface of Europa is covered with cracks that appear to be healing over time, a process consistent with ice and liquid water.

"Europa is a water world - in fact, there's more water under the ice cover than there is water on Earth."

The combination of heat and liquid water leads to the possibility of life - "the same processes that produced life on Earth four billion years ago could be happening on Europa." Hadfield mentions the Europa Clipper probe under construction by NASA, with a planned launch date sometime in the 2020s, which will take a closer look at the moon.

Saturn is also a hotbed of possibilities. NASA's Cassini probe revealed in 2017 that the moon Enceladus is covered with deep crevices, and is spewing plumes of water into space, water which ends up becoming part of Saturn's ring structure. As Cassini neared the end of its lifespan, NASA flew the probe through the plumes to confirm their content.

As with Europa, the combination of heat and liquid water creates the possibility of life on Enceladus.

"These are all definite destinations for exploration."

However, to reach these destinations, Hadfield sees the need for innovation and invention.

"Who is Henry the Navigator now? Who is the inventor of the wheel? Who is trying to come up with better ideas so that we can explore further?"

Hadfield cites the three billionaire tech entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk as frontrunners in innovative and creative thinking in the area of space travel.

"All three of them think that this is the time in history to design a new ship...maybe this is the time in history when we're able to leave the earth like we've never done it before."

He focuses on Elon Musk's SpaceX company and its innovative plan to reuse the first stage boosters from its Falcon 9 rockets by landing them on floating platforms, thereby creating a more economically sustainable model for orbital launches.

SpaceX conducted its first test launch in in April of 2015, making an unsuccessful attempt to land on a barge near Florida, which, interestingly, Hadfield doesn't view as a negative outcome.

"They learned a lot - it's really good to fail early - if they'd gotten away with it the first time, they wouldn't have learned anything. Through failure comes rapid learning."

One year later, SpaceX successfully completed a booster landing on a floating drone ship. SpaceX has flown 70 missions using this system, and "now owns the world's launch market".

Musk has upped the ante by taking three of SpaceX's used Falcon 9 boosters - "...that didn't used to be a thing, used rockets" - and combining them to create "the biggest rocket that exists", the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, which Musk views as a potential platform for a mission to Mars. Hadfield sees this as "opening up opportunities in exploration that we've never seen before, taking the next level in invention."

However, at this point in time he sees the Moon as the next immediate destination - "not just to visit, not to just go camping, to permanently live there."

He points out that as part of the Chinese moon landing at the start of this year, one experiment grew cotton, the first time any sort of cultivation has taken place anywhere other than Earth. "It's just a first step, but it's a pretty interesting step."

"Everywhere you see light blue, those are glaciers."

The discovery last year of underground glaciers on the Moon "almost changes the game completely" in Hadfield's opinion.

"By our best estimation, there are 600 billion liters of water on the Moon, a huge amount of water. A natural place for us to go next. Water to drink, oxygen to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen for fuel.

"So now, everyone's thinking about going to the Moon."

NASA, in cooperation with Canada and its other international partners, has already announced its plans to construct a permanent orbiting space station around the Moon. "And of course, Elon is thinking of going there as well. He's building this great big rocket, the BFR: the Big...ah...Flying...Rocket - and then just landing it on the Moon.

"We'd have a whole new place that humans can go."

Hadfield considers the International Space Station to have been a pivotal element in advancements in space exploration. "The Space Station has taught us so much about our planet - living there continuously for nineteen and a half years. The ISS is the great exploration vessel of our generation," helping us to understand our planet and develop the technologies to go further, as well as learn what happens to the human body during extended periods of time in space.

This knowledge is a crucial element as we move forward in the exploration of our solar system.

"It's not far away that our technology will be good enough to live on Mars. The amount of water trapped in the polar ice caps of mars is immense. If you could somehow melt all the water on Mars, it would cover the planet ten meters deep."

In summarizing, he takes a philosophical look at what exploration means to us as a species:

"These things are possible. We only think they're impossible because we haven't done them yet. To be able to harness the energy, to be able to go further out, with higher speeds, to make it easier to explore, to be able to live in other places, to get our eggs out of one basket - we're on that edge of exploration right now, just limited by our own imaginations.

"We need to solve the problems on Earth first, we need to think about who we are, but it really comes first circle. What we can do in one lifetime is just amazing, to push ourselves, where we learn to walk, and we learn to walk in places we've never been.

"The human brain is the greatest exploration engine, to be able to imagine things that don't exist, and to be able to understand the problems we're facing. We are an incredibly clever species, we just have to see the world as one place, and see our place in it.

"We have to solve these problems, for the next generation. What is going to be normal for them that wasn't for us? We need to put examples in front of our kids of opportunities that exist. You limit most of your choices in life because of the example of the people around you."

"We need people like Joshua, and Jenni, and David, and Jeremy."

For Hadfield, the positive results of putting the right examples in front of the next generation is typified by Jenni Sidey-Gibbons, one of the new astronauts selected in 2017. "She saw Roberta Bondar fly in 1992, and thought, 'Wow, that's something I can do? I want to do that.'

"It's very close to a Canadian flying in space and going to the Moon, and there's a very good chance that it will be Jenni."

He ends with a quick version of his well-known cover version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, then actually looks a bit embarrassed as we give him another standing ovation, waving goodbye and bowing repeatedly as he makes his way off stage.

Thanks for your commitment and your passion, Commander - and thanks for being so Canadian. You make us proud.

- Sid

* This is not a casual distinction. The Martian polar ice caps are covered with a layer of frozen carbon dioxide - more commonly known as dry ice. The northern ice cap has a layer of approximately one meter, and the south pole is covered with a permanent layer eight meters in thickness.

"If you believed, they put a man on the moon, man on the moon".

It's not always easy to be in a relationship with a geek, but I have to say that Karli has been an accommodating and flexible partner, one who has been more than willing to participate in things like visits to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle or side trips to photograph giant robots in Japan.

However, I was a little apprehensive when I suggested that I was interested in going to see ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield perform with the Victoria Symphony at the end of March. It somehow struck me as being above and beyond the call of duty to expect that she would be interested in joining me.  To my extreme pleasure, she instantly expressed her eagerness for a weekend away on Vancouver Island that would culminate in attending Commander Hadfield's symphonic performance.  Tickets have been purchased, hotel reservations made, and we're looking forward to a fun little getaway next month.

All that being said, I'm a little curious as to the actual content of the show.  Presumably it will highlight songs from his 12-cut album, Songs from a Tin Can, but even with an orchestral backup, that's only about 40 minutes, and the performance is slated to run from 8-10 pm.

The description of the event says that Commander Hadfield "will be singing, playing his guitar and telling stories about his time as an astronaut and is joined by the VS performing space-themed music."  "Space-themed music" certainly opens the door to a wide variety of fairly epic Hollywood movie scores for the orchestra - John Williams' Star Wars theme, Thus Spake Zarathustra from 2001, and so on - but I wonder if Chris Hadfield covers any pop songs other than the well-known version of David Bowie's Space Oddity that he recorded on the International Space Station?

Even if the show is called Rocket Man, it would be a very confident person* who would perform that particular Elton John hit with the spectre of William Shatner's version looming in the background.  Deep Purple's Space Truckin' really isn't Hadfield's style, and Peter Schilling's Major Tom seems a bit derivative after covering Bowie.  Bif Naked's Spaceman?  Cygnus X-1 by Rush?**  I think I've seen a video of a Hadfield version of the Beatles' Across the Universe, so that's probably part of his non-album repertoire.

Probably not Man on the Moon by REM, though - I don't think that a retired astronaut would approve of the chorus.

- Sid
 

* On the other hand, based on all evidence I think it's safe to say that Chris Hadfield would classify as a very confident person, so who knows.

** Do people actually cover Rush? I'm sure that there are several tribute bands working their way through small town bars in Northern Ontario, but it's difficult to imagine, say, Adele deciding to reinterpret Spirit of Radio for her next album.

Murder on the Lunar Express.

The Apollo Murders was one of the first things that I put on my 2021 Geekmas list - how could I not want to read an alternate history space program murder mystery suspense novel written by an ex-astronaut and set against the backdrop of a final Moon landing made by Apollo 18, not 17?

That being said, I'm sorry to say that I didn't completely love Chris Hadfield's first foray into fiction, although I also have to say that it's not bad, I simply had extremely high hopes for this book that it didn't manage to achieve.  It's certainly competently written, Hadfield obviously knows how to put words on paper - I particularly liked the first-person prologue in which the protagonist, Kaz Zemeckis, loses his eye in a flying accident - but for me it didn't quite succeed as a suspense novel.  

As you would expect, the technical aspects of preparing and launching a mission to the Moon are impeccably detailed and accurate, to the point where I have to wonder if less dedicated fans of the space program might lose interest.*  There's a strong flavour of Tom Clancy in the late Cold War period storyline - not quite with the same degree of conflict that Clancy brought to his novels, but plausibly dramatic in its motivations and machinations.  

Much of the action in the second half of the novel involves the villain of the story, and whereas I appreciate the importance of what's going on during that part of the book, I wish that Hadfield had found a way to better combine that action with the hero of the piece.  Zemeckis, the one-eyed guitar-playing ex-pilot turned slightly reluctant government operative, just isn't on the centre stage as much as I wanted him to be, and I would also have liked to have seen him more involved in the process of discovering the identity of the traitor in the astronaut program.  Zemeckis does make some deductions on his own, but overall the path from suspicion to suspect is more circumstantial than definitive.

I don't for a moment want to suggest that Hadfield should abandon his new niche as a writer of astronaut suspense novels, given his undeniable writing skills and his uniquely comprehensive and personal knowledge of the hardware and processes involved.  I view The Apollo Murders as an acceptable and well-executed freshman piece, and I have no doubt that the Commander will only improve as he continues his new career.

With the possibility of a second novel on the table, I have a modest suggestion for Mr. Hadfield.  NASA has announced that the International Space Station is going to be retired in 2030 by having it leave orbit and make a fiery descent into the Pacific Ocean, far from land.  Chris, in the unlikely event that you're reading this, how about setting a climactic struggle in the abandoned ISS as it begins its return to Earth?  I suspect that NASA has thoroughly modelled the phases of the space station's destruction as it plunges toward the ocean, and with that information I think it's safe to say that you have the required amount of insider knowledge to make the scene work, and for the hero to make a plausible escape at the last possible minute.  Now all we need is a reason for them being there - which I am happy to leave in Hadfield's capable and creative hands.

- Sid

* On the other hand, if you're not a fan of the space program, why are you reading something called The Apollo Murders written by an ex-astronaut?

Chris Hadfield, King of Space.

As it turns out, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wasn't actually proclaimed King of Space in Kazakhstan, in spite of what Reddit would like you to think, but maybe he should have been.

Chris Hadfield has probably done more to raise the profile of space exploration than anyone since Neil Armstrong. (Or perhaps William Shatner.) His Twitter™ feed, loaded with incredible photos from his 146 day tour of duty on the International Space Station, has close to a million followers, and the video for his cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity has been viewed 13,479,763* times in the seven days since it was posted on YouTube™, making it the most popular video of the last week by about 12 million views.

Unfortunately, there's an odd dichotomy regarding space exploration.  On one hand, both NASA and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency, for you international visitors) are facing reduced programs and budget cuts right across the board as governments struggle with widespread economic problems.  Up against that, there's an undeniable interest on the part of the general population:  early videos of the Curiosity Rover on Mars were so popular that the volume of viewers crashed the NASA server, and Chris Hadfield's musical efforts have pulled in more Twitter™ followers than Avril Lavigne's.

The interesting thing about the massive popularity of Hadfield's orbital updates is that there wasn't an engineered publicity process behind them. It wasn't the result of a structured media blitz, or orchestrated by some kind of agency, it was one guy talking it over with his family and taking it from there.**  On that basis, it has to be one of the greatest single-handed viral promotional events of all time.  Hopefully someone in a position of authority will take note of what he's accomplished, and realize what it means as an indicator of interest in outer space.

All hail King Christopher.

- Sid 

*And counting - up to 13,523,098 since I started writing this posting.  It's actually about 14 million - Larrivee, who made the guitar featured in the zero-g performance, has nabbed another 500,000 views of Hadfield's video on their own channel.

** Is it just me or does that sound like a really Canadian approach?


UPDATE: 14,103,113 views, Monday May 20th.

UPDATE: 15,036,588 views, Sunday May 26th. 

 
UPDATE: 50,764,341 views, Saturday January 23, 2022 - gosh, it's been a while since I've visited this post.
 

Exploration: Part One

A spotlight illuminates a spare, unadorned stage, empty except for a guitar and its case, a microphone, and a black-draped table with a bottle of water and a glass.  Then an exuberant Chris Hadfield makes his entrance, greeted with an enthusiastic standing ovation from the audience.

He responds with equal enthusiasm: "I'm excited too! We've got so much to talk about," and proceeds to deliver a passionate, dynamic and inspirational three hour talk* on his topic of choice: exploration.

He starts with the analogy of the single step that is at the beginning of all exploration, comparing it to the first uncertain steps of a baby, then progressing to learning to ride a bicycle, the first machine that we use to increase our speed and distance, culminating in the Eagle Moon Lander, "one of the best bicycles we have ever built."

"Michael Collins took this picture of the Eagle in 1969.  Every human being that has ever lived in in that picture - except for Mike."

Looking at the background of the Apollo program that produced the Eagle, Hadfield quotes the famous 1962 speech by John F. Kennedy in which he announced, "We choose to go to the Moon" commenting that “JFK was challenging us to do something we had never done before, to use this new technology and have it take us somewhere we'd never been before. Seven years later, we took our first step onto the Moon."

"Our imprint, our visible exploration of someplace other than our own planet."

He goes on to speak about the effect that watching the first moon landing had on him, on how it changed the course of his entire life: "The moon landing did something for me - it gave me permission to imagine myself as someone completely different. What might I be able to do? What are the limits in my world? Where can we go in a lifetime?"

Some people would ask why would you explore?  For the Commander, exploration puts the world in perspective - "It's so tiny by the standards of the universe. The better our machines get the better we can understand the perspective of where we are."

"That bright dot at the lower right is Earth from 1.5 billion kilometers, shot by the Cassini probe in 2013."

"The best exploration machine we've come up with is Voyager, which left in 1977.  There's actually two of them, Voyager I and II.  They went beyond Pluto and now out beyond the influence of our sun, the Voyager probes are 22 billion kilometers away.

”Through Voyager, we have left our solar system. If you stuck your hand out the window of Voyager - which would be a bad idea - you would no longer be able to feel the solar wind from our sun.

"How did we do that? How did we explore that far away?"

To look at how we’ve reached so far, the Commander first takes a look at where we started, detailing the history of exploration and technology here on Earth. To Hadfield, it's all about speed, starting with the six kilometer per hour walking speed of homo sapiens that spread humanity around the planet, and working up through the domestication of the camel and the horse, the invention of the wheel in the Ukraine, then the development of boats and sailing and early exploratory trips by the Vikings around the year 1000.

500 years after that, humanity needed “a better spaceship”, leading to the development of the caravel in Portugal, “the great exploration vehicle of its time”, capable of 15 kilometers an hour.  The Cape of Good Hope was transitioned in 1487, and Columbus travels across the Atlantic to North America five years later. These voyages needed more than just improved ships, they required improved mathematical and navigational tools, technology like the sextant and astrolabe: “…the computers of the time for navigation, a tremendous technical achievement.“

The steam engine catapults humanity into the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, followed fast by the airplane, the jet, the Saturn V rocket, which reaches a speed of 9,920 kilometers per hour, the 60,000 kilometer an hour speed of the Voyager I and II probes as they passed Pluto on their way out of our solar system, and the planned Solar Probe, which will need to reach a speed of 700,000 km per hour to successfully pass within 6 million kilometers of the Sun.

He also looks at some of the people who helped to explore our world and increase our understanding of it, early explorers like Jeanne Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the world in the 1760s – “tough and self-reliant”, and the Montgolfier brothers and the first manned balloon flight by Étienne Montgolfier in 1783.  He also notes Charles Darwin’s voyage of exploration, circumnavigating the world in the Beagle in the 1830s, visiting the Galapagos Islands, and eventually publishing The Origin of the Species in 1859, his groundbreaking work about the fundamental nature of life.

1911 sees the first real exploration of Antarctica by Roald Amundsen, American test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in 1947, and 14 years later, five foot two Yuri Gargarin is the first man in space, “opening the door”. Eight years later, Apollo 11 puts the first man on the Moon.

Hadfield then speaks to the immensity of space, and the challenges of finding a way to cross the vast distances involved in the exploration of space, illustrating the point by comparing our solar system to the recently discovered M87 black hole.

From XKCD

"Our galaxy is vast. Our best telescopes show us that the Milky Way*** is 200,000 light years across - it's huge. If you start counting stars, there are about 400 billion stars just in our galaxy, and we've discovered in the last ten years that each of those stars has, on average, has one planet, and one in ten is like Earth.  So about 40 billion potential earthlike worlds in our galaxy."

He pauses for a moment then makes a deadpan observation: "That's pretty intriguing..."

"Then there are other galaxies, the scale is incredible, the number of stars, the number of things that exist - all the possibilities that exist, the unimagineably huge number of possibilities!

"How can we understand it?"

He takes a moment to look at the work of Vera Rubin, the first woman astronomer to work at the famous Palomar Observatory in California, who looked at the Andromeda Galaxy and realized that there were too many stars.

"There isn't enough gravity to hold all those stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, and from that she theorized the existence of dark matter - she could have called it Ralph - everything we know about only accounts for six percent of the universe.  The other 94 percent is unknown."

"Can we even explore these places - what is the fastest ship we can imagine?  There's the Enterprise - Kirk was always calling on Scotty for more speed, faster, Scotty."

Using Star Trek's USS Enterprise and its faster than light warp drive as an example, he first explains that the warp drive system is based on the cube of the warp number****, which makes Warp 9 equal to 729 times the speed of light.

At that speed, he calculates that it would take Starfleet's proudest ship 274 years to cross the Milky Way Galaxy, adding, "They were only on a five year mission!! They didn't go anywhere! They were just driving around the neighbourhood!!"

More seriously, he looks at the practicalities of how we are going to explore the universe.

"Maybe we're going to have to get into the very essence of not huge but small, maybe that's the only way that we'll be able to do it - to accelerate very small particles to speeds that will push us to unimaginable velocities."

As an example, he cites Costa Rican ex-astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz, a PhD in applied plasma physics who visited space seven times.  After leaving NASA in 2005, Chang Díaz started the Ad Astra rocket company, which is researching plasma-based propulsion systems for space exploration.

But propulsion is not the only issue - Hadfield contends that new sources of power will also be a crucial aspect of future exploration.

"We need the power of the atom to make it work. We need not just fission, but fusion, to understand how the atom works In order to break the bounds of our own solar system let alone our galaxy."   He points out that many people are working on fusion reactor research, with General Fusion, one of the key players, located nearby in the Fraser Valley.

“They hope to create enough pressure inside this device to fuse two light atoms into one heavier atom which would release an enormous amount of energy - maybe that's the right idea. That's how the sun does it."

Other crucial research is underway at CERN, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire.   "The underground CERN particle accelerator accelerates individual bits of matter and slams them into each other not only to understand what an atom is, but what makes up neutrons:  subatomic particles, quarks, muons, bosons, trying to understand the very nature of matter itself.  

"If we truly want to explore, we can't just rely on horse power or cannon power or steam power. Being relentless inventors is the only way to travel even further and to understand even more.  We need a better power source, better than burning oil and coal and wood, and maybe the answer will come from deep underground."

At this point, the Commander took a break - and, based on the length of this post, we're going to do the same thing. In the second half of his talk, Hadfield looks at the crucial role played by water in exploration, and where we may go next.

- Sid

* I have to give the Commander** full points - unless there's a really well concealed teleprompter somewhere in the theatre, he speaks unaided for the entire three hours.

** I know that he's actually a Colonel, but really, I think he'll always be Commander Hadfield to the general population. And it's also his Twitter hashtag - @Cmdr_Hadfield - although it's colchrishadfield on Instagram.

*** I'm never sure about things like this - does everyone know that our solar system is in the Milky Way Galaxy? I've known for as long as I can remember, but not everyone has the advantage of being a science fiction fan.

**** Again, you all knew that already, right?

The Birthday Trilogy, Part 4.

Photo courtesy of MasterClass

Through the combination of a real sense of purpose and an enormous amount of work on behalf of a lot of people, we can make impossible things happen.

Chris Hadfield, Masterclass

Dear Colin:

Hello again!  Sorry to hear about your cold - I hope that you can take some time off over the holidays to recover.  Also sorry to hear about the Ralph and wine disaster, which, somehow, sounds like another typical episode from the Campbell Brothers Chronicles.

It's been a few months since my thank-you note regarding your birthday gift, so I thought I should take a few minutes to bring you up to speed on progress.

I'm a little behind on the schedule that I laid out at the time, but, as John Lennon points out, life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I strongly needed a break from scholastic activity after my online safety course*, and as such didn't sign up for the Chris Hadfield Masterclass on Space Exploration until just Thursday of this last week.  However, I'm now part of Commander Hadfield's virtual classroom, and I have to say that I have absolutely no regrets about my purchase.

The course is made up of just over seven and a half hours of video**, a downloadable 97 page PDF workbook which also links the student to a wide variety of pertinent content, an online discussion group, and an Office Hours module for submitting questions to the Commander.

(And, to be honest, it's the last two that really make the investment worthwhile - I'm more than confident that a quick search through the shadier parts of the Internet would have revealed an archive containing downloadable copies of both the videos and the workbook.)

I'm quite impressed by both the quality and the quantity of the course material, and as you know, I set high standards for this sort of thing. The production values for the videos are superb, and with over seven and a half hours of content, I'm looking forward to hearing the Commander's experienced and anecdotal viewpoint on being an astronaut and space exploration in general.  At this point in his career, Hadfield is a seasoned professional speaker, and his manner in front of the camera is natural and sincere - he's the perfect instructor for a course like this.

The accompanying workbook is well laid out, and the photos are an excellent bonus.  I don't think that any of the linked content is unique to the course, but the manner in which it's tied into the lesson structure gives it more relevancy than it would have as the results of a random Web search.

It's obvious that I'm not going to walk away from the last lesson and expect that NASA will add me to the next mission to the ISS, but I don't think anyone would expect that - the course is intended to offer some privileged insight into the process from the viewpoint of someone with a lot of experience from a wide variety of involvement, and as such, it's exactly what it should be.

In the case of my planned swordplay class at Vancouver's Academie Duello, procrastination actually ended up working well for me.  The centre is having a Christmas sale on their classes, and I was able to purchase a gift coupon for a Longsword Fundamentals course that brought the normal $135 fee down to $99 plus tax.  As you know, I was originally going to sign up for a January course, but the last couple of months have not been terribly cooperative in terms of gym attendance, so my new plan is to take January for a month of preparatory workouts, and then switch to longsword in February.

And that's the news, my friend.  Take care of yourself, and happy holidays to you and Jennifer!

- Sid

* Just for the record, I managed an A, with an average mark of 92%.  I might have done better if it hadn't had so much overlap with my honeymoon.

** A total which I added up on my own for 29 videos ranging in length from just under three minutes to almost 30 - and honestly, base 60 math is a nuisance.

"Endlessly entertaining."

“I think one reason people like hearing about these sorts of things is that it helps them see the world slightly differently, perhaps even with a sense of wonder. On Earth, it's just a given that if you put a fork on the table, it will stay there. But remove that one variable, gravity, and everything changes. Forks waft away; people sleep on air. Eating, jumping, drinking from a cup – things you've known how to do since you were a toddler suddenly become magical or tricky or endlessly entertaining, and sometimes all three at once. People like being reminded that the impossible really is possible, I think, and I was happy to be able to remind them.”

Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

Okay, full disclosure - my workplace lost about 30 minutes of my time this morning:  off task, mission abandoned, KRIs ignored, complete dereliction of duty.  Now, admittedly, there was almost no one in the office, Vancouver got hit by a substantial winter storm last night, most of the city was shut down, the only deadline-specific item on my desk was the bi-weekly newsletter, but even so, I feel an apology of some sort is in order.

But you have to understand the circumstances.  As part of the process of building our newsletter, I spend a certain amount of time every morning doing research online: looking for articles of interest, checking in on professional news, and watching for upcoming events.

Part of this process involves sifting through Twitter for useful links - I follow a wide range of industry accounts, with only two personal exceptions:  the Canadian Space Agency and Chris Hadfield.  And that's where the train left the tracks...

Normally I just glance at those accounts as I scroll through the latest tweets  - Chris Hadfield's wry wit makes for a nice break - but today, the CSA was retweeting a live feed from NASA featuring two astronauts doing a spacewalk in order to do some upgrades to the International Space Station.  Astronauts Christina Koch and and Jessica Meir were replacing nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries, taking the new batteries from a pallet attached to the Canadarm2.

 

It was a struggle to close the low-res video window and return to work.  Which is funny, because it was admittedly the most mundane thing in the world, I might as well have been watching a mechanic change tires, except for the fact that it was two people in spacesuits, working in zero gravity on a space station orbiting the planet at 7.66 kilometers a second.  To make it even better, part of the feed involved POV from helmet-mounted cameras, so we could see exactly what the astronaut saw.

 

I was simply fascinated. The process itself was a clumsy one, but then, imagine doing something as simple as changing a light bulb while wearing heavy gauntlets, a helmet, and 280 lbs of airtight insulated fabric and associated mechanisms.  Admittedly, a spacesuit weighs nothing in zero gravity, but it's still a restrictive and cumbersome barrier to easy movement.

That being said, they have to take those factors into account when designing the access points, fasteners, required tools and operating procedures for work on the surface of the ISS.  For example, I had no idea that the ISS was equipped with a system of safety bars to which the astronauts attached themselves with snap locks when working or moving from place to place - certainly a good idea, at least based on my recollection of countless science fiction stories where astronauts lose their tethers and come to a bad end.

 

After doing a handful of screen grabs, I finally closed the video window and returned to Earth, reminded, as Mr. Hadfield points out, that the impossible really is possible - a good lesson to take with me for the rest of the day.

- Sid

Honeymoon 5: Sidebar

The Birthday Trilogy, Part I

Dear Colin:

Hello, my friend!  It’s been a while since I’ve put pen to digital paper with you in mind, but I felt that your generous gift for my birthday deserved a longer response than just a thank-you text.

I’ve always felt that a birthday gift should involve something that, for whatever reason, the person wouldn’t buy for themselves, but might want to if they could - which is why I earmarked my gift to you as part of your guitar replacement fund.  However, I freely admit that I'm a tougher crowd in that sense, I don't even play the guitar, let alone have the need to replace a broken one.

Regardless, I do have a short list of extravagances that I might indulge in given the opportunity, starting with the Chris Hadfield MasterClass on Space Exploration.

 

The MasterClass program showcases an unbelievable list of instructors, featuring chess lessons from Garry Kasparov, Bob Woodward on journalism, Jane Goodall teaching conservation, Annie Leibovitz for photography, film making from Spike Lee, and a much longer list of luminaries from a wide range of specialties. Commander Hadfield is an obvious choice for Space Exploration, with a class that features 29 video sessions dealing with a fascinating range of topics that includes Astronaut Training, Orbital Mechanics, Capsule Design, the exploration of Mars,  and concludes with an overview of Chris’ journey to becoming an astronaut and the lessons he learned on his way.

The $120 MasterClass fee would still leave part of your gift - what to do with the rest?

It seems obvious to me that a visit to the past would be a suitable compliment for a visit to the future – as such, the balance of your present will go towards four weeks of training in swordplay at Vancouver's Academie Duello, conveniently located about eight blocks from my workplace.  The school offers a choice between rapier and broadsword, and given that the latter features two-handed broadsword, sword and shield, and poleaxe, that may well be my class of choice.

Don’t be surprised if this doesn’t happen right away.  We’re currently on our honeymoon, and I’m also in the middle of a 12-week introductory continuing education course in Occupational Health and Safety, so I won’t have free time to dedicate to other pursuits until December.  My current plan is to sign up for Commander Hadfield’s class at the start of the month, and then take a four week break from my regular gym schedule in January for longsword classes at Academie Duello – the beginner’s course runs two nights a week for a month, which would make for an interesting start to the new year.

And that's the plan!  Thank you again, and my best to Jennifer!

Cheers,
Sid

“There’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.”

 “What’s the most dangerous thing that you’ve ever done?  And why did you do it?”

Chris Hadfield, TED 2014

If you want to get a really good idea of what’s it’s like to climb into a rocket and leave the planet, I strongly recommend that you watch Chris Hadfield’s TED Talk from TED 2014, held here in Vancouver.

Commander Hadfield evocatively describes watching the Earth “roaring silently with colour and texture as it pours by...” while holding onto the outside of the International Space Station with one hand – and then going blind during his spacewalk. It’s an intimate window into the experience of being in space, and into the relationship between danger, fear and preparation.

For viewers who can’t imagine watching something as long as 18 minutes on the internet, you may prefer to read his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. It’s a readable combination of autobiography, motivation, and insight into the nuts and bolts of space exploration.

- Sid

Geekmas 2021: Books, mostly.

Greeting card by KENZIECARDS

It seems early to be posting my annual gift list, but Karli's mother has put up her Christmas tree, and my workplace has picked names for Secret Santa, which would seem to indicate that it is in fact time for the annual Geekmas posting.  Generous gift givers covered off virtually everything from last year's list, so this year I'm pretty much starting from scratch.

A lot of my past preferences for seasonal gifts aren't really a thing anymore - the switch to digital media and streaming has pretty much taken Blu-rays off my list of gift options.  Sad to say, my initial attempts to break new ground this year weren't productive.  Big Finish Productions, the home of Doctor Who audio plays, doesn't have a gift card system, and it looks like the only way you can give someone an Oculus virtual reality game or experience is if you already have an Oculus account, which seems like a lot of work if you don't own a VR headset yourself. 

So, as in past years, I went with the basics, and hopefully I've ended up with a reasonable range of options and price points. 

Books

 

After introducing his son to comic books, Douglas Wolk decided to undertake the monumental task of reading the entire modern Marvel Comics print run* since its inception with Issue #1 of The Fantastic Four in  November of 1961 - over 27,000 comics, and more than half a million pages. The result is All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told, a thematic examination of the Marvel Comics universe as a single extended narrative.  As someone who has been reading Marvel comics on and off for over 50 years, I'm very curious about this book, and frankly, if no one buys it for me, I'll be getting it for myself on Boxing Day.

 

Doctor Who: The Vault:  Also a little spendy, but from the sound of the descriptions and reviews that I've read, a comprehensive and detailed history of the series, at least up to the show's 50th anniversary.

The Apollo Murders, by ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield.  It's his first foray into fiction**, but reviews have been positive, and it sounds like an interesting read.  

2020 Hugo Award Winner A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine. I recommend that you get this one from Indigo, I got some very odd results from Amazon.ca - $134.29 seems a bit steep for a used paperback.

One graphic novel:  Hellboy: Strange Places - which, to be completely accurate, is actually the second omnibus edition of the Hellboy comics rather than a graphic novel. Tomato, tomahto - the nature of HB's comic book adventures is such that the omnibus editions read quite well as a collective narrative.

However, most of those options are a bit pricey, although the Chris Hadfield book is actually on sale as I type this.  If you're here looking for the literary equivalent of stocking stuffers or an affordable Secret Santa selections, here are some books that are available on Amazon.ca as standard mass market paperbacks for less than ten bucks:

The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. I was surprised by the realization that my little library was missing both of Bradbury's seminal short story collections, which collect the stories that established him as an author. 

A Journal of the Plague Years, by Norman Spinrad.  Although the Plague in Spinrad's episodic story is sexually transmitted rather than through aerosol droplets, it still seems like an appropriate cautionary tale for the current global situation.  Spinrad is a brilliant author whose work is virtually unknown outside of the science fiction genre, which is a shame - if you're looking for a place to start, I strongly recommend his 1969 novel Bug Jack Barron (which I already own, don't buy me a copy for Christmas.)

Finally, as I was shelving back issues of vintage science fiction magazines in the wake of our recent move,  I was reminded of how much I had enjoyed receiving a monthly selection of short fiction, reviews and commentary when I subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction*** back in the 70s. A little research confirmed that they apparently still sell physical subscriptions, six issues a year for $55.97 USD - which feels a bit expensive, so this one is reserved for the generous of heart (and wallet).

Clothing

Just as a change, a couple of clothing requests: a Doctor Who hoodie, and a Star Wars Millennium Falcon schematic t-shirt.  As with the previous Doctor Who item on this list, the hoodie**** is a bit more expensive - this may just be an ineluctable truth when it comes to Doctor-related merch, as per my initial Doctor Who gift search last year.  The Star Wars t-shirt is a more affordable option - I like the grey one, but maybe let's go with the pale blue option to match the AT-AT t-shirt that I already own.  XL for both, please!

And that wraps it up (no pun intended) for this year's gift list.  As always, almost all of the items are on Amazon™ , and I've linked to them - my only advice is to make sure that you don't select an overpriced third party seller by accident, as with the Arkady Martine book I mentioned above.

Oh, what the heck - if someone wants to get me a Blu-ray copy of The Force Awakens, I wouldn't say no, and I'll certainly find a place for it with the other optical discs that I still have tucked away in the living room.

 UPDATE: I'd like to thank my workplace Secret Santa for the Prepaid Mastercard - I appreciate the thought, and obviously I need to advertise this list a bit more.

- Sid

* He admits to skipping the romance comics and some of the Westerns that weren't part of the shared superhero universe.

** From what I've read, technically speaking it's actually science fiction - the story is an alternate history what-if from the era of the Moon landings.

*** I've always appreciated the nose-on-your-face directness of F&SF's chosen title - I mean, really, could there be any less ambiguity about what they are?

**** I keep wanting to call it a Whodie.