Bad Accident

What happened? What is that a picture of? How did his wife explain this to the police?

On July 30, 2011, Leroy Luetscher of Tuscon Arizona, dropped his pruning shears while gardening. The shears stuck into the ground blade first, the handle sticking up. He bent down to pick them up and slipped.

It may be a good time to have all young children leave the room - before you read the next few sentences...

Yes, he slipped, lost his balance. His head came down full force on the handle and the pruning shears handle went through his eyeball socket all the way to his neck. See the picture, the handle is inside his skull!

The doctors were able to reconstruct the eye socket and save the eye. He now has some minor eye lid swelling and a bit of double vision in he eye.

It is a miracle! Here is a joke he could tell all the neighborhood kids:

Q: What's worse that a pruning shears blade rammed into your eye socket?
A: A pruning shears handle rammed into your eye socket!

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I hope he goes out and gets a tattoo to commemorate his miracle. Maybe he should try some of these:

Get your tattoos for the elderly!

Or maybe just an Oprah Winfrey tattoo will suffice. See Oprah Winfrey Tattoos

With a tattoo like this, it would be as if Oprah was constantly reminding him:
"Hey! Don't fall on the pruning shears handle!"

SpaceX Dragon To The Rescue?

Did you know this was going on? Maybe not. For some reason it does not make the front page of too many newspapers.

The International Space Station (aka ISS) - floating several hundred miles above the earth - had a setback several weeks ago. Now that the last Space Shuttle has been retired, it is up to the Russians to bring supplies to the ISS. The Russians are using their outdated unmanned Soyuz rockets to deliver much needed supplies. The last shipment was unsuccessful, it exploded after take off. The Russians are saying they will not send up another one till they fix the problem that blew up this one. So the crew of the ISS are left without supplies, which will run out in November.

Now for the really cool part - The Dragon. The Dragon and Falcon9 are products of SpaceX - see http://www.spacex.com/ for more details. SpaceX is attempting to be the first privately funded manned spacecraft, and it plans on docking with the ISS some time in December.

PayPal co-founder Elon Musk posing with the Falcon 9 - He is backing the venture.

The Falcon 9 is the rocket that will boost the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.

Here is a great picture of the Dragon capsule:

Here are the details:

Now the bad news - The Dragon will not be ready in time to save the ISS mission. The dragon will not be ready for docking till December. The ISS crew will need to leave the ISS by November 19th if the Russians can't get their act together and deliver supplies.

But if the Russians can deliver supplies, there will be people on board the ISS able to help with the docking. So we may see the first commercial manned unmanned flight to the ISS in time for Christmas 2011. Keep your fingers crossed!

Reader "David" posted some interesting extra details in the comments. I will re-post his comment here. Thanks David!

Just a couple of corrections and some interesting details. First, last year became the first private company to launch a vehicle into orbit and renter that vehicle to a safe and successful- touchdown on Earth. Until now only the Russians The U.S. and the Chinese governments have been the only entities to do so. The Soyuz rocket did not explode during launch. It's upper stage failed to ignite and therefore could not reach orbit. The cause has been determined to be a faulty gas generator. The gas generator supplies the turbo pumps with their initial rotation until the flow of fuel or exhaust takes over the job. Also there are three other spacecraft being developed by private companies under contract with NASA in what is called the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program (COTS); Boeing has a capsule, Sierra Nevada is developing a small space-plane called Dream Chaser (way cool!) and Orbital Sciences is developing a non-reusable cargo ship. SpaceX has also entered Dragon and their rocket,the Falcon 9, into the Commercial Crew Development program (CC-Dev)which is for future manned missions.

Another couple of cool points about Dragon and the Falcon 9 are that Dragon will eventually land using it's rocket thrusters built into the side of the ship which will also be used for the emergency escape system and its main thrusters when in space and secondly, their other plan is to reuse the first stage. This will require the first stage to do a 180 degree flip after its upper stage has been separated, restart it's engines to slow down, flip again to reorient for reentry and then land in the ocean on a parachute system. Both of those things are super cool!

SpaceX is designing another rocket called the Falcon 9 Heavy which will be basically the same as Falcon 9 but with two more identical booster rockets strapped to either side of the main core stage. This will be the most powerful rocket in existence and second only to the Apollo era Saturn V. Furthermore SpaceX will have launch facilities in Cape Canaveral in Florida, Vandenburg Air Force Base in California which is currently under construction, and another facility, possibly in Texas. This is because SpaceX already has a huge number of manifested launches already on the books for satellite companies and others. They believe that they will be producing one rocket per week when they ramp everything up to full production Now for the absolute best part of all of this. They are doing everything for about 10% of what NASA would cost to do the same. They plane to achieve the Holy Grail of the space industry, launches for $1000 or less per pound. Historically the cost has been about $20,000 per pound per launch.

Photos courtesy of SpaceX/NASA

Bill Haast - Injecting Snake Venom

Warning: If you did not already know, injecting snake venom is is not something you should actually do.

Bill Haast - snake venom expert extraordinaire - died on June 15, 2011 - 100 years old. He was an expert in snakes and snake venom. He was an expert at "milking" the venom from poisonous snakes and supplying the venom to medical facilities around the world so they could make anti-venom. An amazing fellow.

In the course of his career he was bitten by poisonous snakes 173 times! I guess if you are in his field you keep accurate bite counts for posterity. Here is a 1962 interview of him recovering in the hospital after one of his bites. Pay attention to the doctor at the end - he is funny...

Bill was in the habit of injecting himself every day with a cocktail of many different snake poisons to help build up his immunity to snake venom. He claimed that the venom shots were healthy for him. Look at the following video - filmed when he was 88 years old. You have to admit that he looks pretty good for his age. Maybe he was on to something.

Luckily you can not buy snake venom anywhere. At least not easily. If you could, there would be homeopathic medicine aficionados we would all have to worry about.

Debris Missed the International Space Station

A piece of space debris missed the International Space Station by only 750 meters today (June 28, 2011). The debris was traveling thousands of miles an hour. The crew had to scramble to get into their rescue craft where they remained till it passed.

Space debris, or space junk, is becoming a big problem. There is so much of this junk orbiting the earth that it is amazing the International Space Station has not been hit already. There have been several other near misses in the past.

Even though this is a big problem, the government has yet to take it seriously. Case-in-point: The Allen Telescope Array has been proven to be a great tracker of space debris, but the government can not seem to find the $2.5M/year that it takes to run the Allen Telescope Array. You can see the program announcement here: http://www.seti.org/afspc, but the Allen Telescope Array ran out of operational funding and had to go into hibernation till the United States Air Force Space Command can release the funding. This is sad and shortsighted.

Space debris has the potential of disturbing all satellites and global communications.

A great article with more details is at Yahoo News.

Photo courtesy of NASA.

Asteroid Will Miss Earth Today

Update: June 27, 2011 - 2:25 EST - The asteroid must have passed by now. All is OK!

Asteroid 2011MD is going to pass within 7600 miles (12300 kilometers) of earth at 1pm EST today (June 27). Experts say there is no chance it will hit the earth today. It will pass nearest the southern Atlantic Ocean.

The asteroid is estimated to be 5 to 20 meters in diameter. If it actually were to hit Earth it would most likely blow up in the atmosphere. So, no worries.

NASA tracks these things. They have the Near Earth Object Program which tracks what they can and lets the public know what may hit earth. This asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team observing from Socorro, New Mexico. You can visit their site for full details.

This is another great thing NASA is doing. Who doesn't want near earth objects tracked? But their annual budget is less than the air conditioning costs for tents in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. See my previous blog complaining about this issue. http://elephanttoenailreport.blogspot.com/2011/06/iraq-and-afghanistan-cooling-more-than.html

Interstellar Travel Competition

The Pentagon's research agency DARPA is sponsoring a competition for the best idea for facilitating interstellar travel. This is a call for papers submitting ideas. The hope is that around the year 2111 the project may get off the ground. They want to start early. The prize for the best idea is $500,000 US. The entire budget for the program is $1M.

The picture above is of the Nautilus (what else would you call it?), the idea submitted by NASA. See http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/nasa-dares-to-dream-with-new-spacecraft-the-nautilus-x-mmsev/story-fn5fsgyc-1226006485082 for more details about their idea.

DARPA even has a new website www.100yss.org/ as a public interface for this competition:

A symposium? They are serious!

I am 100% in favor of such programs and think this is a great and forward thinking initiative.+1 for DARPA.

But I wonder - have the Republicans Heard About This?

As you may heard about the budget problems in the US. The US government is cutting back everywhere. I can hear it now, "The Pentagon is doing what? How much money are they spending? For this?...."

I bet Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) hasn't heard about this. Here is my prediction of what the scene will be like when someone finally tells him about this evil Democratic party backed program:

Picture 1: Oh! That is a funny one! You had me going there for a minute!
Picture 2: Wait! You are kidding - aren't you?
Picture 3: The Pentagon isn't going to spend that kind of money for something that doesn't kill people! Not on my watch!

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I really do take the US budget crisis seriously. But we need to continue funding things that help us plan for a better future. Even if that future is 100 or more years away.

Photos of Space Shuttle Docked

NASA released the first ever pictures of the Space Shuttle docked at the International Space Station. The small picture to the left does not do it justice. You have to click on it to pop up the full resolution picture. The clarity is amazing.

The pictures were taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011.

Here is an example of the clarity from the high resolution image. I cut out the part of the full resolution image that shows just the nose of the Space Shuttle.

All the NASA pictures are available at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depart.html

Massive Solar Flare

Update: June 08, 2011 - The flare was supposed to produce an aurora in the northern sky of North America. So far I can not see anything in the Northern sky. 10pm California time.

Original article:
On June 7, 2011 the sun experienced a CME, an acronym for Coronal Mass Ejection, from sunspot complex 1226-1227. The picture to the left is an actual picture from the event.

The flare's peak was at 1:41am (ET) June 8th. The blast was not pointed at the earth, but we will get a glancing blow from the blast around 6pm (ET) June 8, 2011. The effects are unknown exactly, buy there may be disruptions in GPS communication and power grids. Airports may change flight patterns near the poles.

This is the biggest flare up since 2006. The debris from the eruption fell back to the sun, covering almost one third of the surface.


What is a Coronal Mass Ejection? Here is a good explanation from NASA:

The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields. Where these fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million miles per hour in a spectacular explosion. Solar material streams out through the interplanetary medium, impacting any planet or spacecraft in its path. CMEs are sometimes associated with flares but can occur independently.

Here is a NASA video of the event:




If only this would have happened on May 21! Harold Camping would have said, "You see! You see? What did I tell you!"

See the NASA information about the CME at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News060711-blast.html. I love NASA.

Square Dancing Astronomy

Several weeks ago I went to a very good lecture given by an astronomer named Rob French. Recently he has been devoting his astronomy life to studying the F Ring of Saturn.

First, I learned that the rings of Saturn are named by letters (didn't know that). The outer ring is the F Ring (didn't know that). Also I learned that the moon Prometheus (never heard of it) sometimes gets too close to the F Ring and creates a series of wiffs, as seen in the image.

Rob's lecture was excellent. But the real story was not the F Rings. The real story is that Rob is one of the world's leading Square Dance Callers! He's already booked up for a lot of this year. See his impressive booked up schedule. In 2005 and 2009 he even had gigs in Japan!

See a You Tube video of his calling here.

Rob is a true Renaissance Man. If you are in the need of any astronomy or square dance services, Rob's contact information can be obtained at rfrench.org.

Kepler Exoplanets

Many people are not aware of the Kepler spacecraft and it's mission. This is one of the best uses for tax dollars there is. In short: It is looking for planets around stars. Hopefully it will find one that contains life, or has the right conditions for life.

Kepler is a spacecraft launched by NASA in March of 2009. It has a 0.95 meter telescope that is looking at 156,453 stars in a small 12 degree diameter patch of the sky. By measuring the brightness of a star over time the Kepler detectors can determine the details of any orbiting planets.

So far 1202 potential planets have been discovered! Here is a summary of the types already discovered:


  - 68 Earth-size exoplanets with a radius (Rp) of less than 1.25 Earth radius (Re)

  - 288 super-Earth size exoplanets with 1.25 x Re < Rp ≤ 2.0 x Re   - 662 Neptune-size exoplanets with 2.0 x Re < Rp ≤ 6.0 x Re   - 165 Jupiter-size exoplanets with 6.0 x Re < Rp ≤ 15 x Re   - 19 very-large-size with 15.0 x Re < Rp ≤ 22 x Re

The Kepler Spacecraft

Details fo the Kepler mission details can be viewed at kepler.nasa.gov. The SETI Institute has a very good article that sums up the Kepler mission discoveries and data. See this article.

The Kepler sensors are only looking at a small 12 degree patch of sky. Hopefully, in the future, more resources will be appropriated to explore more of the sky.

Victorian Robots

Mechanical Marvels of the Victorian Era

If you are old enough you may remember your grade school teacher briefly covering the topic of Victorian Robots. Until recently I had forgotten all about this, but I came across an amazing website that covers the rich history of Victorian Robots. Have a look, you'll be amazed if you've never heard of this before!

Read illustrated accounts of the world's first robot, the Steam Man, created in 1865! Subsequent automatons such as the Electric Man and the Automatic Man are also profiled. The most comprehensive section, with more than 20 pages, concerns the mechanical man known as Boilerplate--described as "deliciously detailed" by The New York Times, "charming" by U.S. News and World Report and declared "cool" by NASA!