Beyond: Our Future in Space (36 page)

Notes

1: Dreaming of Beyond

  
1
. The Genographic Project, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, has used DNA from nearly a million people to map out human migration. See https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/about/.

  
2
. Darwin speculated about a tree of life and a last common ancestor based on morphological similarities between species. The size and shape of an organism can be misleading, however, and bacteria are all the same shape, so modern phylogeny uses measures of overlap in the base pair sequences of DNA or RNA. It’s hard to reconstruct linear time using genetic distance, and gene transfer and convergent evolution can cause confusion. When there are many species being compared, more than one tree may fit the data.

  
3
. “Resolving the Paradox of Sex and Recombination” by S. P. Otto and T. Lenormand 2002.
Nature Reviews Genetics
, vol. 78, pp. 737–56.

  
4
. The Geno 2.0 testing kit costs $200 online. After someone sends in a cheek swab, individual results are returned showing the broad pattern of ancestry and degree of genetic overlap with different native populations. The research results are in “The Genographic Project Public Participation Mitochondrial DNA Database” by D. M. Behar et al. 2007.
PLoS Genetics
, vol. 3, no. 6, p. e104.

  
5
. “The Arrival of Humans in Australia” by P. Hiscock 2012.
Agora
, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 19–22.

  
6
. “How Babies Think” by A. Gopnik 2010.
Scientific American
, July, pp. 76–81. See also
The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn
by A. Gopnik, A. N. Meltzoff, and P. K. Kuhl 1999. New York: William Morrow and Company.

  
7
. The characterization of some DNA as junk is likely to reflect our ignorance in recognizing the way DNA triggers genes into expression in the organism. In 2008, a study led by James Noonan of Yale University found that a small region of noncoding or “junk” DNA was responsible for developments in the ankle, foot, thumb, and wrist that were key evolutionary changes, allowing us to walk upright and use tools.

  
8
. “Population Migration and the Variation of Dopamine D
₄
Receptor (DRD
₄
) Allele Frequencies Around the Globe” by C. Chen, M. Burton, E. Greenberger, and J. Dmitrieva 1999.
Evolution and Human Behavior
, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 309–24.

  
9
. “Cognitive and Emotional Processing in High Novelty Seeking Associated with the L-DRD
₄
Genotype” by P. Roussos, S. G. Giakoumaki, and P. Bitsios 2009.
Neuropsychologia
, vol. 47, no. 7, pp. 1654–59.

10
. “Learning about the Mind from Evidence: Children’s Development of Intuitive Theories of Perception and Personality” by A. N. Meltzoff and A. Gopnik 2013, in
Understanding Other Minds
:
Perspectives from Developmental Social Neuroscience
, ed. by S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, and M. Lombardo 2013. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–34.

11
. “Causality and Imagination” by C. M. Walker and A. Gopnik, in
The Development of the Imagination
, ed. by M. Taylor 2011. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also “Mental Models and Human Reasoning” by P. N. Johnson-Laird 2010.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, doi/10.1073/pnas.1012933107.

12
.
A Brief History of the Mind
by William Calvin 2004. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13
. “The Cognitive Niche: Coevolution of Intelligence, Sociality, and Language” by S. Pinker 2010.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, doi/10.1073/pnas.0914630107.

14
. “The Human Socio-cognitive Niche and Its Evolutionary Origins” by A. Whiten and D. Erdal 2012.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
[Biological Sciences], vol. 367, pp. 2119–29.

15
. “Plurality of Worlds” by F. Bertola, in
First Steps in the Origin of Life in the Universe
, ed. by J. Chela-Flores et al. 2001. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 401–7.

16
. “Anaxagoras and the Atomists” by C. C. W. Taylor, in
From the Beginning to Plato: Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. 1
, ed. by C. C. W. Taylor 1997. New York: Routledge, pp. 208–43. See also “The Postulates of Anaxagoras” by D. Graham 1994.
Apeiron
, vol. 27, pp. 77–121.

17
.
On the Nature of Things
by Lucretius Carus, trans. by F. O. Copley 1977. New York: W. W. Norton.

18
. For an overview of the conceptual leaps made by a small number of bold thinkers 2,500 years ago, see
The Presocratic Philosophers
by J. Barnes 1996. New York: Routledge.

19
. It would be inappropriate to infer a modern cosmological context from the pluralism of world religions. For example, the “many worlds” in Buddhist texts are part of a geocentric cosmology with Mount Mehru as the central feature, and no distances are assigned to these remote regions, which are constantly coming into and out of existence.

20
. “The True, the False, and the Truly False: Lucian’s Philosophical Science Fiction” by R. A. Swanson 1976.
Science Fiction Studies
, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 227–39.

2: Rockets and Bombs

  
1
. Humans are built for throwing a projectile forward rather than upward, given our origins as hunters. The fastest pitch in baseball is around 105 mph. If directed upward, that would reach a height of 70 meters. The British javelin thrower Roald Bradstock holds many official and unofficial world records for throwing items as diverse as a dead fish and a kitchen sink. His horizontal record is 130 meters for a cricket ball and 160 meters for a golf ball; the latter would be equivalent to 80 meters if thrown vertically. If you want to try your hand at a vertical toss, you can use your smart phone, after you install an app called “Send Me to Heaven.”

  
2
. “The History of Rocketry, Chapter 1” by C. Lethbridge, hosted by the History Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, online at http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/rocketry/.

  
3
.
Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History
by A. W. Crosby 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 100–103.

  
4
. Gunpowder has a rich and complex history. It’s characterized as a “low” explosive that deflagrates, as opposed to a “high” explosive like TNT that detonates. Gunpowder was invented by Chinese alchemists who were trying to create a potion for eternal life. Saltpeter or potassium nitrate had been used by the Chinese for medicine since the first century AD, and in gunpowder it acts as an oxidizer. Sulfur and charcoal act as fuel.

  
5
.
Science and Civilization in China: Vol. 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth
by J. Needham 1986. Taipei: Cave Books Ltd., p. 104.

  
6
. The “bible” of rocketry for more than two hundred years, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, was
The Great Art of Artillery
by Kazimierz Siemienowicz. It contained an array of designs, including multistage rockets and rockets with stabilizing delta wings.

  
7
. It was a brilliant realization of Isaac Newton that an object falling due to gravity is undergoing the same motion as an object in Earth orbit. He had formulated gravity as an inverse square law and the Moon is sixty times farther from the center of the Earth than someone standing on the Earth’s surface, so the gravitational acceleration will be 3,600 times smaller for the Moon than for a cannonball. The deviations of the Moon and the cannonball in their trajectories are related in exactly the way expected for an inverse square force law.

  
8
. It’s called the “ideal” rocket equation because it only holds true for reaction-engine vehicles where the exhaust velocity is constant or can be effectively averaged. No aerodynamic or gravitational effects are included, and it only applies under the assumption that propellant is discharged and the delta-v applied instantly. For a multistage rocket, the equation applies separately for each stage.

  
9
. Tsiolkovsky is rightly famous for his pivotal role in the theory of spaceflight. However, his equation was actually first derived and published in a pamphlet more than a century earlier by British mathematician William Moore, working at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. See
A Treatise on the Motion of Rockets
by W. Moore 1813. London: G. and S. Robinson.

10
.
The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination
,
1857–1957
by A. A. Siddiqi 2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 62–69.

11
.
Investigations of Outer Space by Rocket Devices
by K. Tsiolkovsky 1911, quoted in
Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space
by W. Ley 1968. New York: Signet/Viking.

12
.
The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers
by G. M. Young 2012. New York: Oxford University Press.

13
. As a young man, Oberth was a consultant on
Woman in the Moon
, the first film ever to have scenes set in outer space, directed and produced by the great Fritz Lang. Oberth built rocket models for the film and launched a rocket as a publicity stunt for the film’s opening. Decades later, he was given a nod in the
Star Trek
films and TV series, which named a class of starships after him.

14
. “Hermann Oberth: Father of Space Travel,” online at http://www.kiosek.com/oberth/.

15
.
The Autobiography of Robert Hutchings Goddard, Father of the Space Age: Early Years to 1927
by R. H. Goddard 1966. Worcester, MA: A. J. St. Onge.

16
. Lindbergh and Goddard formed a lifelong alliance and friendship because they shared a dream of travel beyond the Earth. The famous aviator helped Goddard to get funding when no government agency would support him and few were taking his work seriously. He eventually received long-term support from the financier and philanthropist Daniel Guggenheim. After Goddard’s death, his estate and the Guggenheim Foundation successfully sued the US Government for patent infringement. At the time, the award of $1 million was the largest settlement ever in a patent case.

17
.
New York Times
, “Topics of the Times,” January 13, 1920, p. 12.

18
.
New York Times
, “A Correction,” July 17, 1969, p. 43.

19
.
Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age
by D. A. Clary 2004. New York: Hyperion, p. 110.

20
. Quoted in “Rocket Man: The Life and Times of Dr. Wernher von Braun” by K. Baxter 2006.
Boss
magazine, Spring, pp. 18–21.

21
. “Recollections,” early experiences in rocketry as told by Wernher von Braun 1963, hosted by the History Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, online at http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/recollect-childhood.html.

22
. Von Braun admitted in 1952 that he “fared relatively rather well under totalitarianism.” This and further analysis of his ambiguous relationship to the Nazi regime and weapons of mass destruction are reviewed in “Space Superiority: Wernher von Braun’s Campaign for a Nuclear-Armed Space Station, 1946–1956” by M. J. Neufeld 2006.
Space Policy
, vol. 22, pp. 52–62.

23
.
Wernher von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War
by M. J. Neufeld 2007. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

24
.
This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age
by W. E. Burrows 1998. New York: Random House, p. 147.

25
.
Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974
by A. A. Siddiqi 2000. Washington, DC: NASA.

26
. Johnson was a power player in the Senate and a vigorous proponent of the newly formed space agency. Of course, he also made sure that the biggest new NASA center was located in his home state. Johnson Space Center near Houston is the place where astronauts are trained; its moniker—Mission Control—alludes to its central role in space missions.

27
.
NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age
by D. S. F. Portree 1998. Monographs in Aerospace History #10, NASA History Division, Washington, DC.

28
. The Space Act and its history of legislative amendments since 1958 can be found at the NASA History Office website, online at http://history.nasa.gov/spaceact-legishistory.pdf.

3: Send In the Robots

  
1
.
The Race: The Uncensored Story of How America Beat Russia to the Moon
by J. Schefter 1999. New York: Doubleday. It was by no means smooth sailing initially. In the year after Sputnik, the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika aboard but failed twice to launch Sputnik 3, while the Americans launched their first satellite, Explorer 1, and also launched Vanguard 1, but they failed with five other Vanguard launches.

  
2
.
The Rocket Men: Vostok and Voskhod, the First Soviet Manned Spaceflights
by R. Hall and D. J. Shayler 2001. New York: Springer-Praxis Books, pp. 149–55.

  
3
. Gagarin attained worldwide celebrity after his feat, although he never flew in space again. With a warm personality and a megawatt smile, he attracted crowds wherever he went. But fame took its toll on him and he became an alcoholic. Conspiracy theories swirled around his death in a routine training flight in 1968, but it seems to have been caused when he was flying at low altitude and his fighter jet was caught in the wake of another fighter jet. “Yuri’s Night” is celebrated in hundreds of cities around the world every year on April 12, the anniversary of his flight and of the first Space Shuttle mission.