Merry Christmas from Apollo 8

We are so going into space today

50 years ago, we sent Apollo 8 to the moon.  It wasn't originally planned as a moon mission, but rumor had it, the Soviets were going to send someone to the moon by the end of the year, and we had to beat them.  The Saturn V rocket had only been used once before in Apollo 7.  The newly redesigned crew capsule had never been tested in flight before.  Nor had the guidance computer.

(Full disclosure:  the human works for the company that designed the original Apollo guidance system.)  

And they made it to the moon.  It's not a mission you hear about a lot, but it's the mission that paved the way for Apollo 11.  Apollo 8 showed that we could get someone to the moon and back.

The place the human works had a wonderful tribute night to the engineers and scientists behind Apollo 8 at a special event to preview the new PBS NOVA episode on Apollo 8 (broadcast at 12/26 9pm EST, on PBS.  You should go watch it, because it is has all the fun stories behind the scenes on what the scientists and engineers were up to.)  The human also got to meet people like John Aaron (the original steely-eyed missile man), Jerry Boswick (CAPCOM for Apollo 8), Poppy Northcutt (Return to Earth specialist for Apollo 8.  Whoever thinks there weren't women in mission control is LYING), and Margaret Hamilton (who designed the Apollo Guidance Computer.  Now (in)famous because she has been immortalized by LEGO as a minifig.  So of course the human had the minifig on hand when she met Margaret Hamilton and showed her the minifig...)

There was a panel discussion at the event, and someone from the audience asked John Aaron, Jerry Boswick, and Poppy Northcutt what the most terrifying thing about Apollo 8 was for them.

John Aaron:  We had 55 days between Apollo 7 splashdown and Apollo 8 countdown.

Jerry Boswick:  I was told on a Friday afternoon to give an answer by Monday if Apollo 8 could go to the moon or not.

Poppy Northcutt:  The return to earth system didn't work.  I heard rumors that Apollo 8 was going to the moon, but that I thought that was *&^%$^ because we couldn't be sending anyone up when we couldn't get them back.  We were doing bug fixes a few days before launch.

(Keep in mind 'bugfix' in those days involved wrapping wires around magnets to change values in computer memory...)

Our favorite story involves the Apollo Guidance Computer.
The lead engineer of the Apollo Guidance Computer, Margaret Hamilton, let her daughter play with the simulator for the guidance computer.  And one day, her daughter managed to crash the guidance computer by giving it a command of 'change to program 01' when it was in flight mode.  Program 01 is a test program for use before launch, so the guidance computer thought it was back on the launchpad when it was supposed to be in space.  

And Margaret Hamilton, being a good engineer, brought this fact up to her bosses, and said 'We should make it so someone can't accidentally change the computer to Program 01 during flight.'

And her bosses, being men in the 1960s, said 'This can't possibly happen.  Our astronauts are some of the most highly trained men we have.  They can't possibly make a silly mistake like this.'

And on the way back from the moon, astronaut Bill Anders was making a star sighting (to give the guidance computer a stable reference point to work with).  He was supposed to type VERB 37 NOUN 23, VERB 5 NOUN 01 (in English, that means 'Change program to star sighting, use star 01 as a reference').  What he actually typed was VERB 37 NOUN 01 ('Change program to program 01'), the exact thing that triggered a crash in the simulation...
So the capsule started going crazy, because the guidance computer thought it was back on the launchpad...

A frantic call to Houston, and a computer reset later...they were back on course and Bill Anders was no longer allowed to touch the computer...

The crew of Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, and, in a live TV broadcast, read from the Book of Genesis.  Here's the transcript, directly from the mission control log files:

We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth.  And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said "let there be light." And there was. And God saw the light and that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called light Day and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said "let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament and divided-the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said "let the waters under the Heavens be gathered together into one place. And let the dry land appear." And it was so.  And God called the dry land Earth. And the gathering together of the waters called the seas. And God saw that it was good. 

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.

(https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/apollo-8-earthrise)

We'll go back to the moon some day...

Science Fun (part 2), now with poster printables

There's nothing quite like playing with legos indoors while waiting for the next Nor'easter to hit.  Hardly any snow in February, and now 4 blizzards in March.  But we don't mind.  It gives us more time to work on our personal projects.

The human and her male counterpart did their best to raid the AG store back in January, and we're still reaping the benefits.  Lily has claimed the new dinosaur t-shirt.  We have all learned from past experience that we do not ask about what exactly Lily is making in the lab.  It's better for everyone that way.

Human interjection:

A quick review of some of the new clothes (the t-shirt from the NASA souvenir set, and the dinosaur t-shirt):  they run small.  Sized for dolls with a 10.25" waist and 10.75" chest small.  Only the dolls made after 2015 could wear them.  Also, the sleeves on the dinosaur shirt barely go over the hands.  I like the shirts, but the issue of fit is definitely making me not want to buy new doll clothes from AG unless I take a doll to the store, try it on the doll in-store after purchase, and return what doesn't fit immediately.  Luckily, I can also just sew my own.

And now back to the dolls...

Sam is working on ...something... involving programing a tiny microcontroller.  Turns out, if you have a tiny Adafruit Gemma microcontroller board, you can kind-of-sort-of attach it to an AG laptop.  And Sam has her programming buddy, LEGO Margaret Hamilton, to help her debug.  We do not yet have a doll-sized stack of Apollo guidance module control code.  The human might have balked at printing out 4500 sheets of doll-sized paper for it (and that's the doll-scale model).

Nellie and Cauth have done that thing of making LEGO landmines all over the floor.  They'll finish the Women of NASA LEGO set eventually, we think.  And then it will be time to start the LEGO BB8.  We desperately need to go along with our R2 unit.  It's smaller, so we're sure we can find a place for it here somewhere.

Yes, that is a sonic screwdriver.  No, you may not have it.

And finally, a cute little craft for those last minute Easter baskets or because someone needs more posters in their room:  the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's vintage space tourism posters.  The Mars poster is the same one in Luciana's Mars Habitat.  There's 20 different posters in all.  Print them on lightweight cardstock for the best effect.

JPL Space Tourism Posters

Science Fun (part 1)

It's not every day that the human gets a day off from work, and definitely not every day that the science lab is set up for business.  And, if you haven't met me yet (don't worry, the human has been really really slow about introducing me to the world), I'm Vega.  Jaime Luciana Vega.

And we (meaning Shep, myself, and the human), have been planning space adventures.  Hence Shep's new stash of space toys, and my stash of activity books.  Now for the human to get logistics under control.  Maybe start the Space Tourism Bureau?

I'm not the only new inhabitant of (well, I want to call it the SR2 Normandy.  Raise your hand if you get the reference), but I'll go with 'The Presidium' because it sounds better than 'The Madhouse with a giant cat'.  Meet Liz, the lizard, current perching on Nora.  Next thing you know, there'll be an octopus in the neighborhood.

My new activity books are mostly made from official NASA printables, shrunk down to 1/3 scale.  All except the 'My First Outer Space' coloring book.  That one was made from Dover free samples.  We've got a nifty little 'Space Tech' activity pad, and a little 'What we need to colonize Mars' activity book.  And then we've got some color books on the latest and greatest NASA gear:  the Space Launch System and ORION.

Doll Sized:

Outer Space coloring book

NASA activity books and Assembly instructions

Orion and Space Launch System coloring books

Human Sized:

NASA Space Tech Fun Pad

NASA Surviving and Thriving on Mars

and other coloring books from NASA

Lily at iGEM

Lily here.  I didn't go to Vermont last fall, but I got to have my own science adventure with the human.  You see, the human was a judge at the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition, better known as iGEM, and I came along as her mascot.  I did not have a biology themed dress, but no one minded.  Except the human.

Ready for judging, with all the resources and references

So what happens at iGEM?  Well, first off, schools (high schools, colleges, and universities from around the world) form teams of students.  Then each team gets a box of various bits of DNA and are told to make a critter (usually a bacteria or yeast, but sometimes algae) do something cool.  And if they don't have the right DNA in the kit for what they want to do, well, they can give a company like IDT (Integrated DNA Technologies) the sequence of DNA they want, and IDT gives them back the physical bit of DNA.

Someone had made bacteria eat crude oil.  They won best high school poster.

They have one summer to do this.  Then, in the fall, usually in late October/early November, all those teams meet up in Boston and have a Giant Jamboree.  Over 300 teams, thousands of students.
It was great fun.  Also pandemonium.  But great fun.

DIY microfluidics for bio experiments

So what counts as 'something cool'?  Well, anything really.  Biofilms that suck up nanoparticles.  Eating crude oil.  Checking antibiotic resistance.  Curing cancer.  Advancing the basic science behind genetic engineering.  It's really the best.  I can't wait to go back again this year.

Playing with a 3D printed hand held centrifuge

The Science Library

A science classroom/laboratory

Kana here.  By now you must be wondering what we did with all those science books.

Lily generally behaved like a normal person and used the books for her research projects.  Even if she does complain on a daily basis that there's not enough magical theory in science books.

Shep and I, on the other hand, only have so much patience.  There's the obligatory science fair projects, to be sure.  And making fancy models...

But we have so many of these books...

Lily:  Guys, whatever you're planning, stop it.

And that is what we do with 101 science books.  Dominos.

As an aside, the human's husband walked in while this was being set up.  He stared at us and walked back out without saying anything.

You have to admit, it's pretty impressive.

Utter chaos

Not even caused by the furry menace this time.

The Science Library: Electricity, Energy, and Technology

And last but not least we're covering electromagnetism.  Well, not in quite so many words, and certainly not with Maxwell's equations.  Just the basics of voltages and currents and resistances.  Nary a word on capacitors or inductors or transformers or how electricity and magnetism are really just the same thing and electric currents can induce magnetic fields and vice versa.  The human may have spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME in school learning about this.  Or at least she has a piece of paper that says she did.

And that leads us to other forms of energy and how energy can be transformed from one type into another, and really, everything is just waves and radiation.  We're not going to go into photons and how light is a particle and wave at the same time because that's really weird and mind-boggling but it works somehow.

And finally finally, the technology of the future.  Sadly, we do not get a detailed set of textbooks on computer science and computational theory and computer architecture and compilers and all that stuff that tells you how those magic chunks of metal and plastic really work and how to break them.

So one hundred and one science books will have to do.

The Science Library: Physics

We're finally covering Newtonian physics now (also known as the human's least favorite area of science), with the three laws of motion and simple machines and gravity and forces acting on objects.  No theory of general relativity or quantum mechanics for us.  Just good old f=ma, objects in motion that stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, and actions that have equal and opposite reactions.

Hint:  the Higgs Boson is much more interesting.