Category Archives: Exploration

Lisbon ’24

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Recently I took a small survey among family members about Vasco da Gama, for reasons soon to be obvious. Namely, I asked Ann whether her U.S. elementary school education, about 10 years ago now, mentioned the Portuguese explorer and his voyages. Yes, she said. I asked Yuriko whether her Japanese elementary school education an ocean away and some decades earlier did so. Yes, she said.

I should have guessed it. Da Gama didn’t go all the way to Japan himself, but paved the away – was a maritime pathfinder – for other Portuguese, who arrived in 1543, bringing firearms and Catholicism to the Japanese archipelago at a time of civil war.

Fifty years ago in South Texas, I also learned about Da Gama, the stuff of textbook paragraphs and illustrations in the chapters on the European voyages to Asia and the Americas – and in the same league as Leif Ericson and Columbus and Magellan and Drake and Hudson and Cabot. Other kids might have been uninterested, but not me. What better than accounts of exploration?

So he’s taught in American and Japanese schools across recent decades. Quite a posthumous feat.

Last week, we stood in front of Da Gama’s tomb, in the Belem district of Lisbon.Portugal

That was a moment during our recent six days in Lisbon, except for a day trip foray to Sintra, which these days seems to be a far suburb of Lisbon. We returned yesterday.

History certainly brought us to Portugal. For a smallish country, it punches above its weight in history. Including more recent history.Portugal

But that’s not all. We had some idea that the food was really good. Really, unbelievably good. It was. Pastries and pastas and seafood and sandwiches and many other true delights on our plates; coffee and tea and lemonade and beer in the glasses. We didn’t have a bad meal in Lisbon, or even mediocre.Portugal

Flour sifters decorating the ceiling of an unpretentious cafe in a mid-Lisbon hotel.Portugal

At an entire museum in Lisbon devoted to Portuguese cod fishing and cod as a staple in the Portuguese diet, you can pretend to take a small boat out on choppy waters.Portugal

I don’t know that Lisbon has the greatest parks in Europe, but it’s got swatches of greenery.Portugal

Portuguese tiles – azulejos – decorating buildings large and small, draw your attention often enough.Portugal

You look at the azulejos for their beauty. The stone sidewalks, which were extensive on the many blocks we walked, demand attention for another reason. Their surfaces are reasonably flat. Mostly. But more than occasionally there will be damaged, irregular patches just waiting to land the unwary on their bum, or worse.Portugal

With the launch of the Age of Discovery, Lisbon embarked on becoming an international city. That might mean different things in the 21st century than it did when Prince Henry the Navigator schemed to further Portuguese exploration, but so what. The world comes to Lisbon.Portugal

The world comes in the form of millions of people every year from many corners of the Earth to this distinctive, aesthetic corner of that same planet. We were glad to join them.

Monday Moonery

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Why should we start sending people back to the Moon? Because it’s still there? Besides that. Rather, because the ranks of those who have flown to the Moon are getting pretty thin – something I thought of when I learned that Tom Stafford (Apollo 10) died. Now only seven of them are left, four who landed on the surface and three who got really close without landing.

At 88, the youngest of this rarefied group is Apollo 16’s Charles Duke. Three have passed just in the last few months, including Ken Mattingly (also Apollo 16) and Frank Borman (Apollo 8) and now Stafford. It wouldn’t be right somehow to have the experience of being close to the Moon slip out of living memory. The plan is for these astronauts to go next year on Artemis 2; we shall see.

If Artemis 2 does come to pass as planned, it would include among its crew one Jeremy Hansen, who happens to be a Canadian astronaut and would be the first non-American (non-citizen of the United States, to nitpickers) to pay a visit to the Moon. Assuming a knot of taikonauts doesn’t surprise the world before Artemis’ flight by appearing on the lunar surface hoisting the flag of the PRC.

Hansen, as Wiki succinctly put it, “Canadian astronaut, fighter pilot, physicist and former aquanaut.” If that’s not an action hero’s resume, I don’t know what would be.

Lots of rabbit-hole material here: Canada currently has four active astronauts (one of whom is Hansen) and a number of retired ones, including the dude astronaut who played “Space Oddity” on the ISS about 10 years ago. They work or worked for the Canadian Space Agency, which has been around since 1989 but I’d say is fairly low profile. Canadians have been going to space since before then, since Marc Garneau went up on a 1984 Shuttle mission. He happens to be a Québécois and until recently fairly highly positioned in the current Trudeau government.

Here’s a question for Moon landing deniers: how come some other nation (say, you know, China) hasn’t faked going to the Moon by now? Certainly Xi Jinping would be able to marshal the resources, by various carrots and sticks, to get the filming and other fakery done.

If someone (say, you know, Kubrick) could fake it using late ’60s video tech, wouldn’t the vast improvements in digital image creation since then mean a higher quality fake by the Chinese government? One so good no one would question it? Except of course for brave Moon-landing deniers.

Barely Winter Thursday Assortment

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Another warmish day and a not-so-cold evening. We walked the usual path around Lake V. well after dark, taking in the Moon in the cloudless sky now and then. It’s nearly full. Then I remembered that an unmanned American spaceship was due to land near its south pole; Odysseus, which might not be the most auspicious name for a traveler, but at least a noble one from classical antiquity. Maybe the next one will be Penelope or Telemachus.

When I got home, I learned that the landing was successful. Good to know.

A leftover image from “Presidents Day.”

Recently Jay sent me two of those buttons: McGovern and Carter. The others have been hanging there a while.

The Hoover button was created for a Halloween party that a company down the hall from us in the Civic Opera Building used to throw many moons ago. The event wasn’t in that building, but rather the Rookery, whose common areas are excellent for a corporate events. The Harding one I picked up at the Harding Museum in Ohio last year, and the Grillmaster button has nothing to do with U.S. presidents. It was a souvenir of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Spotted at the Schaumburg Township Library not long ago.Schaumburg Time Capsule

It used to say 2023.

“On Saturday, Sept. 23 [2023], more than 850 people gathered at our Central Library (with another 300 joining us online) to watch as we unveiled the contents of a time capsule that was placed in the cornerstone of our Library when it was built in 1998,” the library’s web site says.

I wasn’t one of them. I went to Milwaukee that day instead for Doors Open. The  contents of the ’98 capsule are mildly interesting, but one of the Westinghouse Time Capsules, it isn’t. (And no horny toads or cartoon frogs.)

Still, I like the idea of time capsules, enough to bury a few myself once upon a time, including one late in the summer of 1974 in our back yard, which I wasn’t able to retrieve five years later as planned. I dug a few holes in an effort to do so, damaging some grass, which annoyed my mother, if I remember right.

Starship Down

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The trees are budding, flowers are emerging – including a fine crop of dandelions, suburbia’s most underappreciated blossoms – and the grass is green and long enough to merit a trim. One thing missing from this spring: about 20 degrees Fahrenheit of ambient temperature, sometimes 30. That winter clings so long into what should be spring is, I’ve long felt, worse that the actual pit of winter here in the North.

Happens every year. Then I forget about it as summer really does come.

Over the weekend I watched a clip of the flopnik launch of Starship, a few days after the event, as one does in our time. Flopnik probably isn’t a fair way to describe it, since Vanguard only got a few feet off the pad, but still: “rapid unscheduled disassembly”? That sounds like terminology made up for Space Force. Or it should have been. I only saw the first episode of that series, and found it to be lame. If it had had more jokes like rapid unscheduled disassembly, it might have been a better show.

I’d read about the launch before I watched the video, of course. Learned a few things, too. Apparently the Starship first stage has 33 engines. Sounds like a Soviet approach to clustering engines, and so it is. The N1 rocket first stage (retired in failure in 1972) had 30 engines and, like Starship, was a sumo wrestler among launch vehicles. The N1 didn’t ever propel anything to the Moon, but never mind. The Saturn V? A flawless record.

I’m no rocket engineer and so not up to the task of commenting on Starship‘s technical specs, or even whether the launch was a successful failure, but I will say this: dump that ridiculous name. Until you can build something that proceeds at some sizable fraction of the speed of light, say via sophisticated ion propulsion, and arrives at a nearby star system within a human generation, you haven’t got a starship, Mr. Musk.

Titan is taken, I guess. How about Gargantua? Behemoth? Juggernaut? Granted, all those may convey the rocket’s enormous size, but there’s also an undercurrent of threat in each of those names. Nothing a few million dollars in PR couldn’t try to change. What about Ares? The U.S. decided not to use that name for a rocket, and the thing called Starship is supposed to go to Mars someday, after all.

Something else: what’s all the cheering and applause recorded with the Starship video? A latter addition, or a capture of cheers among spectators? If the latter, were those people really cheering, or hired to cheer? If really cheering, I can understand a cheer at the successful launch, why did they continue to cheer when the rocket had obviously failed?

Carson City & The Nevada State Capitol

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When visiting a place like Carson City, Nevada, you wonder how many other places are named after Kit Carson. That’s the kind of fleeting question that occurs to me, anyway, and sometimes I remember to look it up later.

I like the conciseness of Britannica on the matter, though it’s short on facts: “Carson’s name is preserved variously throughout the Southwest, including Nevada’s capital at Carson City; Fort Carson, Colorado; and Carson Pass in California.”

The National Park Service has naught to say about the mountain man’s naming legacy, so of course the place to go is Wikipedia. All easily checked facts, grouped in one place.

“Carson National Forest in New Mexico was named for him, as well as a county and a town in Colorado. A river and valley in Nevada are named for Carson as well as the state’s capital, Carson City. The Carson Plain in southwest Arizona was named for him.

“Kit Carson Peak, Colorado in the Sangre de Cristo range, Kit Carson Mesa in Colfax County, New Mexico, and Carson Pass in Alpine county, California, were named for him.

“Fort Carson, Colorado, an army post near Colorado Springs, was named after him during World War II by the popular vote of the men training there… Innumerable streets, businesses, and lesser geographical features were given his name.”

Apparently, so was Kit Carson Park in Taos, NM, and a recent move to change it was defeated for interesting reasons.

In Carson City, you can see the bronze Kit. He passed this way in the early 1840s, when he was guiding John C. Fremont.Carson City

The inscription: 1843-44, Kit Carson by Buckeye Blake, Commissioned by Truett and Eula Loftin. The Loftins, former casino owners in Carson City, donated the work to the state in 1989.

The statue is on the grounds of the Nevada state capitol, along with an unusual plaque imparting geographic information about Carson’s visits to the future state of Nevada.Carson City

Nearby is a man without any national fame, Abraham Curry.Abe Curry

His nickname locally is the “Father of Carson City.” Kit might have passed this way, but Curry stayed. Among many other things, he gave the state the 10 acres on which the capitol stands.

The capitol is a handsome structure, and wouldn’t look out of place as a county courthouse back east. If it were behind scaffolding.Nevada State Capitol

The landscaping is unusual for a capitol, which tend to be clear of trees. Not so for Nevada.Nevada State Capitol Nevada State Capitol

Designed by Joseph Gosling of San Francisco, who is known for a scattering of works. The capitol, completed in 1871, wasn’t always surrounded by trees, such as about 150 years ago.

Inside, no metal detectors, though there is a uniformed officer at the desk. There’s also a bronze of Sara Winnemucca Hopkins.Nevada State Capitol

There are a few of the design elements you see in U.S. capitols, but on the whole the capitol is restrained.Nevada State Capitol Nevada State Capitol

One space is given over to museum exhibits.
Nevada State Capitol

Featuring a number of artifacts you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.
Nevada State Capitol

This is Guy Shipler (1913-96), once dean of the capitol press corps. Good to see a journalist honored.Nevada State Capitol

The capitol is on N. Carson St. I took a stroll down that street and a couple of connecting streets. A number of state buildings cluster around Carson St. These days, this building houses the Nevada Department of Tourism.Carson City

Dating from 1891 as a federal edifice, it has variously been home to the Carson City Post Office, Land Office, Weather Bureau and U.S. District Court.

A few other Carson City buildings pleasing to the eye.Nevada State Museum Nevada State Museum

The Nevada State Museum includes this building, the former Carson City Mint. It was closed for Monday.Nevada State Museum

It’s important (to me) to list the coin types made there from 1870 to ’93. In silver: Seated Liberty dimes, 20-cent pieces, Seated Liberty quarters, half dollars, and dollars, Trade dollars and Morgan dollars. In gold: Half Eagles, Eagles and Double Eagles.

Small Insects, Big Rocket

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A really pleasant evening to start September. I could sit out on the deck in a t-shirt and be quite comfortable late into the evening. These nights will be fewer and fewer in the weeks ahead.

Crickets are signing their little hearts out. Wait, do insects have hearts?

Insect Cop says: “Insects do have hearts, but they look very different to our own. The insect heart is a long, tubular structure that extends down the length of the insect body, and delivers nutrient-rich blood to the organs and tissues.

“Insects also have their own version of blood, called haemolymph. Unlike human blood, insect haemolymph does not carry oxygen and lacks red blood cells.”

Back to posting on September 6. It’s good to take Labor Day seriously and not work. We ought to have two labor days, come to think of it — add May 1 as a springtime holiday.

A public domain shot, lifted from NASA. Photographer: Joel Kowsky.

Hope all goes as planned. Yet I can’t help thinking — how is it so different from the Saturn V? An improvement in any way, after 50 years? Hard to say.

Why orange? Black and white were good enough for the Saturn V, after all. Turns out it’s a weight issue, and with Moon rockets, every ounce counts.

“The orange color comes from insulation that covers the vehicle’s liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks,” noted an article published by the Planetary Society about seven years ago.

“This is the same reason that the Space Shuttle’s external fuel tank was orange. The first two shuttle flights, STS-1 and STS-2, in 1981, featured tanks painted white to protect the shuttle from ultraviolet light while sitting on the launch pad. But after engineers concluded the protection was unnecessary, the white paint was discarded, freeing up 600 pounds of weight in the process.”

One more thing, NASA. Get a better name for the rocket. Artemis and Orion are good; they go together in history and lore. But Space Launch System? That just doesn’t have the panache of Saturn.

Gas Giant Thursday

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Now that’s an image. It’s been getting some attention, and for good reason. Marvel of the age. Posted here.
The entire caption, for form’s sake, since I’m not going to further investigate the technical specs of the filters:

Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter from three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan) – and alignment due to the planet’s rotation. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

I saw a video clip about these Webb images today — produced by some local news outfit — and Jupiter was called “fifth rock from the sun.” Had a nit to pick with that, right away. Pretty big nit, actually, consider that Jupiter’s equatorial diameter is about 88,900 miles. The planet isn’t called a gas giant for nothing.

The following are couple of physical leftovers from the Michigan trip, acquired at grocery stores along the way. In both cases, my friends left the unused portion behind with us, and we’ve used them up in the weeks since. Such as the ground coffee. They said it was good, and Yuriko agrees.

Superior Coffee Roasting Co. is in Sault Ste. Marie, state of Michigan side.

The coffee bag got me thinking. Just how many ore carriers are their plying the Great Lakes these days? The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum didn’t mention that, or at least that I saw. But the answer isn’t hard to find in our Internet-linked times.

More than 100 freighters transport iron ore across the Great Lakes, a combination of U.S.- and Canadian-flagged, and international carriers, according to an article published by the Great Lakes Seaway Partnership in 2019.

Citing the Iron Mining Association of Minnesota, the article also notes “more than 80 percent of the nation’s iron is mined in Minnesota, and that ore accounts for nearly 60 percent of shipments leaving the Duluth port. Iron ore led the port’s exports in the last year [2018], with 21.5 million tons shipped — the most transported from Duluth-Superior in a single season since 1995.”

Next, strawberry-rhubarb jam. Gone, as you can see. Much of it put on my breakfast breads this month. Wonderful sweetness. From Keweenaw Kitchens of Baraga, Michigan, on L’Anse Bay on Lake Superior.

Good travel writing can be hard to find. I came across this text the other day, when looking for useful information about a particular small U.S. city, Z.

Are you ready to explore some of the most AMAZING things to do in Z?

All caps doesn’t inspire confidence, but let’s carry on.

The perfect blend of unrivaled nature and diverse culture, Z is one of [state name]’s most vibrant and eclectic towns.

Interesting choice of adjective to go with “nature”: unrivaled. I’ve never been to this city, but I’m sure its “nature” is interesting enough, maybe even beautiful. Much else surely rivals it, though.

As a buzzing college town, Z offers an abundance of events and activities as well as being the perfect melting pot of different states from across America.

The only bit of useful information in that sentence is the fact that Z is a college town; but I already knew that, and so do many other people.

Not only is Z a hive of activity and excitement, the town also offers some of the most spectacular nature to be found in [state name].

This unique town is one not to be missed and with so many things to do in Z, you will certainly want to stop by.

“I’m looking for the hive of activity and excitement,” you say to the clerk at the Information booth in Z’s airport. “Could you tell me where that is?”

Well, it’s easy to mock this paint-by-numbers intro, but I might go through the slide show anyway, despite the fact that I’d support this kind of bad writing in some small way by adding to its clicks. Why? You can learn even from bad sites. I don’t know the city that well, so I’m bound to notice someplace I might want to see.

Sure enough, I did. More than one place.

Light Years Ahead

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Fifty-three years ago, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were on their way to the Moon, an occasion to recall each July, not only for those who remember, but also those who do not. Not long ago, I happened across this remarkable video about a very specific, and well known interval of only a few minutes in that mission: the Eagle’s final approach to the lunar surface.

More specifically, the video is a lecture about what the guidance computer was doing and why during those fraught minutes, including a lot of detail that isn’t that well known. Posted by the National Museum of Computing, I was skeptical I would make it all the way through. I was wrong.

One Robert Wills, a software engineer with a clear enthusiasm for the computing that made the Apollo missions possible, tells the tale in simple enough terms — but not too simple — that a non-specialist like me can understand much of it, if not everything. No mean feat, as attested by the non-trivial number of teachers and professors who cannot do so.

I knew a fair amount of the story, but hardly all of it, and the video filled in a lot that I didn’t know. That should be the goal of any video with any claims to being educational, I believe.

An Urban Ruin Explorer

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Almost a warm day. Certainly not a cold one, which felt like a relief. I didn’t have as much time outside as I wanted, though we had a good dog walk at dusk and I spent time after dark on the deck, drinking tea. Much cooler by then, but no wind at all. With a coat and cap, not bad for half an hour.

Just discovered Chris Luckhardt. A talented photographer and videographer with a specialty in urban ruins. At least, that’s my estimation of him after watching his video about looking around the abandoned City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana. Quite a wander. I plan to watch some more of his work.

Trepidation would probably keep me from going to exactly the sort of places he goes, but I understand the impulse. A healthy sense of exploration that involves the near as much as the far.

Globes on the Move

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My globes migrated upstairs the other day. Five in all, acquired over the years.

Even the newest of them isn’t so new anymore, ca. 2000, missing features such as South Sudan and East Timor. The oldest globe dates from the late 1950s, including as it does a divided Germany, independent Ghana, but also French West Africa.

Another is ca. 1970, featuring most of the newly independent states of Africa, but also the Afars and the Issas and, elsewhere, East Pakistan. Yet another is from that brief window after the reunification of Germany but before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Moon globe is special, acquired for me during the Apollo era. Many of the craters and other features are unnamed, but some craters have names informally given to them by Apollo astronauts, such as two honoring Charles Bassett and Elliot See. The International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature did not, alas, retain those two, at least according to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.