Tag Archives: space

Sparta, Wisconsin

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After leaving La Crosse on September 6, we spent time driving some picturesque Driftless Area roads, but soon we were feeling the pull of lunch. That is, we wanted to find a place to eat. We arrived in Sparta, Wisconsin, and started looking around. Doing it the old fashioned way — not with a search engine or an electronic map, but by keeping our eyes peeled as we drove.

Sometimes you get lucky. Right in the middle of town, on W. Wisconsin St., we found Ruby’s. We stopped right away.Ruby's Sparta Wisconsin

Ruby’s has a most traditional drive-in menu, with one exception.
Ruby's Sparta WisconsinBetween the three of us, we ate a satisfying drive-in lunch: a chili cheese & onion dog, a grilled cheese sandwich, onion rings, cheese curds (this is Wisconsin, after all) and the unusual item: a walnut burger.

As the menu explains, it’s “seasoned walnut & cheese patty with lettuce, tomato, pickle & honey mustard on a whole wheat kaiser bun.” I had a bite. It was tasty. The menu also notes “the Historic Trempealeau Hotel” above the Walnut Burger description, presumably as its provenance. Naturally, I looked it up. The boutique hotel, dating from the late 19th century, is still around, on the Mississippi upriver some distance from La Crosse in a burg called Trempealeau.

Rudy’s also sports a fiberglass statue. A bear on roller skates.
Ruby's Sparta WisconsinUnlike Gambrinus, I suspect the bear is holding a mug of root beer. Rudy’s has a special section for that on the menu, including a root beer float, but not beer.

While we ate, I noticed another statue, much larger — or at least taller — than the bear. It was across the street catercorner from Ruby’s, in a park.

Of course I had to go see that, after we ate. The Sparta Downtown River Trail runs through the park.
river trail Sparta WisconsinAt this point, a footbridge crosses the small La Crosse River, which eventually empties into the Mississippi in the city of that name.
river trail Sparta WisconsinOn the other side of the bridge is the statue I saw from across the street.Ben Bikin' Sparta Wisconsin

Ben Bikin' Sparta WisconsinIt has a name: Ben Bikin’. Sparta, pop. just shy of 10,000, is the self-proclaimed Bicycling Capital of America. A nice local distinction. I imagined that Sparta might have been a bicycle manufacturing town at one time, maybe as long ago as the bicycle craze of the ’90s that popularized the modern bike. The 1890s, that is.

But no. “Sparta’s claim as the ‘Bicycling Capital of America’ is based upon the first rail bed in Wisconsin to be converted to bike trails between Sparta and Elroy,” says the city’s web site. That trail was completed in 1967, so fanciful penny-farthing statues aside, the town sobriquet isn’t that old.

In fact, I don’t remember seeing any more bicycles in Sparta, or dedicated bike lanes, than in any other small town. That is to say, not many. There is, however, a bicycle museum in town.

More than that: the Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bicycle Museum. I knew it was closed, but we drove by before leaving town anyway.
Deke Slayton, Sparta WisconsinSlayton, the only Mercury astronaut who never flew in a Mercury capsule, grew up on a farm near Sparta. So he’s the town’s other attenuated claim to fame. The thinking must have been, best to combine the two into one (slightly) larger museum. Well, why not?

Thursday Mishmash

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Warm and dry lately. Very warm sometimes. Luckily, our deck has an umbrella for shade.

Spring on Jupiter or Mars? Never mind, here’s summer on Saturn. At least in its northern hemisphere. Seasons are long there are probably don’t involve relaxing moments on back yard decks. Anyway, a thing of great beauty.“This image is taken as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project,” the NASA text says. “OPAL is helping scientists understand the atmospheric dynamics and evolution of our solar system’s gas giant planets. In Saturn’s case, astronomers continue tracking shifting weather patterns and storms.”

For contrast, an older observation of Saturn. Another thing of beauty.
Plate X from The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings 1881-1882, these days posted at Wikimedia.

Closer to home, at Schaumburg Town Square.
Schaumburg Town SquareRubber-Tipped CraneThe sculpture is “Rubber Tipped Crane,” by Christine Rojek. Installed in 2012. Lilly said she hadn’t remembered seeing it before, but I did. Rojek also did “Ecce Hora” not far away.

Our latest Star Trek episode — we’re still watching about one a week — was “Squire of Gothos,” an early example of kidnap Kirk (and maybe Spock and others) and make him (them) outfight or outwit some adversary. This was a particularly good example of that kind of plot, including a deus ex machina ending that actually worked pretty well.

Our latest movie: The Shining. I hadn’t seen it since it was new. I remember it drew in some crowds in the summer of ’80, because when we got to the theater, only front-row seats were available. So I got to experience the Overlook Hotel in all its surreal, horror-infused glory as an enormous wall of light towering over me.

Always good to watch Jack Nicholson do what he does, in this case descend into homicidal madness. I also thought Shelley Duvall’s parallel track — her increasing freaked-out-ness, you might say — was on target. Her character has been mocked as whiny and weak, but she and her son survived.

So the movie holds up fairly well (and I don’t care at all what Stephen King thought of it). Still, not Kubrick’s best. What could possibly top Dr. Strangelove or 2001? But worth watching again after 40 years.

SAC Planetarium 1970

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Previously, I wrote: “In the second grade, I got an assignment to write a report about the planet Jupiter. I expanded it into an entire ‘book,’ Dees’s Book of the Solar System. Of course, I copied almost everything from the Junior Britannica entry on the Solar System, but I suppose it was impressive for a second grader.

“Anyway, from about 1970 to 1974 [my mother] took me to the planetarium at San Antonio College nearly once a month (these days, it’s the Scobee Planetarium, named after the commander of the last flight of Challenger). Instead of a taped presentation, those shows were narrated live — all sorts of space subjects…”

The planetarium is still around, though naturally closed right now. Its web site notes: “Since 1961, two million San Antonio school children and community members have learned about stars, planets, black holes and distant galaxies at the Scobee Planetarium. With the extensive renovation completed in 2014, the Scobee Planetarium now offers a more dynamic experience to even more visitors. Planetarium renovations include 100 individual reclined seats, a new light and sound system and the most advanced digital projection system.”

Fifty years ago, SAC gave me this certificate, acknowledging that I’d gone to eight shows — “lecture-demonstrations,” that is. I still go to planetariums now and then, though the truth is that many shows aren’t just for children, but for not-very-bright children.

At some point, my mother — who also received a certificate — put mine in an inexpensive frame. It hung on the wall in my bedroom in San Antonio until it didn’t. A few years ago, after having forgotten about the certificate for 40-odd years, I chanced on it again. That made me smile, so I brought it back with me and hung it in my current office.

Thursday Bits

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I’ve heard of other large models of the Solar System, but not about the one in Sweden. There’s one much closer at hand, whose Sun and inner planets are in Peoria, but I’ve never gotten around to seeing it.

A recommended YouTube series: Lessons from the Screenplay. Ann introduced me to it by suggesting one comparing the character arcs of Parasite and Sunset Boulevard, something I would never have thought of. The narrator, who introduces himself as Michael, makes a novel and compelling case for the comparison.

I watched a couple more over the last few days, one about The Shinning — which I haven’t seen in about 30 years, and probably should again, same as Sunset Boulevard — and another about No Country for Old Men. Both videos were thoughtful and interesting, and not too long, which all I ask from YouTube movie criticism.

Looks like SOB lowlifes have co-opted a perfectly good nonsense word that’s been around for years and years. That’s the vagaries of language for you.

It’s time. I’m a little surprised it’s going to happen so soon, but not sorry to see it go. With any luck, the striking Belle Époque pedestal will be repurposed, rather than torn down.

Thursday Things

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I don’t drive around that much these days, but every time I do the signs of the times are out for me to see. Literal signs.
During a walk this week, a common area closed.
At least the walk around the small lake was open.

The latest movies in the stay-at-home-on-demand-movie-watching-extravaganza: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Ann’s suggestion) and Goldfinger (mine).

I’d never seen the former all the way through. I remember first seeing part of it in the common room of some cheap accommodations in Pusan. Watching it now, I’m willing to argue that there’s a touch — just a touch — of magical realism to the thing. I may be the only one to think that.

As for Goldfinger, I told Ann that if she watched only one Bond movie, that should be it.

Our latest Star Trek episode was “Amok Time,” the one in which Spock goes all funny in the groin because hyperrational Vulcans have to mate like salmon every seven years or something. Ann was much amused by the Vulcan costumes. Yes, I said, the costume designers must have had a grand old time working for Star Trek.

This can be found in our back yard. A retired inflatable yoga ball, you might call it, but I think of it as our model Neptune.model Neptune

Also, an image to play around with, applying the PhotoScape Bokeh function that I didn’t know I had until now.

The dog in a favorite position.
I believe she’s officially an old dog now, though I don’t know which office determines that. Anyway, no new tricks for her. She never was one for them even as a younger dog, though we didn’t try to train her all that hard.

Apollo 12 & Artemis 3 & Europa Clipper

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Just today I thought, it’s almost the 50th anniversary of Apollo 12, isn’t it? So I checked. Yes. The launch, best known for lightning striking the Saturn V seconds into the flight, was 50 years ago today. It was fitting to celebrate Apollo 11 this year, but the other missions deserve a mention (and yet, I forgot Apollo 10).

It was a Saturday morning, so instead of cartoons — which is what I usually watched — I watched the launch. I didn’t think it was any less great simply for being the second try at a manned landing on the Moon. This video is roughly what I would have seen — minus any color at all — on our black-and-white TV, though it’s the raw feed to London. T-minus zero is at nearly 22 minutes into the video.

I remember the primitive animation that kicked in during all of the launches when the rocket was high enough. In the case of Apollo 12, that was after the rocket disappeared into the clouds, which was pretty soon. I also remember thinking about the fate of the cameras positioned right under the rocket during the launch. Were they completely destroyed, as you’d think, or shielded in some clever way?

Now I know: “The challenge of placing cameras under the F-1 engines was a team effort,” Space News says about the Apollo 8 launch, but the cameras — 37 and 39 — were there for each later launch.

“It included special help from Corning Glass to produce a port that would survive conditions worse than being on the sun. A thick cylinder of steel bolted into the Pad A concrete reinforcement was also built to hold the cameras.

“The project was accomplished successfully in a few weeks with only one problem: the ports had to be replaced for every launch. The black ceramic on the adjacent flame deflector vaporized and coated the surface – after they had done their job of providing a view like no other.”

Apollo 12 was eventful besides being hit by lightning — for the flawless LM landing on the Moon, the examination of Surveyor 3 by the moonwalkers, the reported camaraderie of the crew (as ably dramatized in From the Earth to the Moon) and the long-lasting package of experiments left behind.

A short video history of the flight by NASA.

Naturally, all this reading about space led me to recent news about the Artemis program. I hadn’t heard that NASA actually has a year in mind for a manned — make that woman- and manned — Artemis 3 landing near the south pole of the Moon, namely 2024.

Oh, really? The excited eight-year-old that watched the Apollo 12 launch wants it to be so. The late middle-aged man I am now is a little more skeptical. Has full funding for such a venture even been appropriated?

Besides, as I understand it, two missions on an as-yet unflown giant rocket — the dully named Space Launch System — have to go perfectly before a Moon landing: one without a crew, one with a crew, but not to the surface of the Moon. Well, maybe, is all I can say.

Except I can also say that Artemis is a good solid name for it. Sister of Apollo. None of this focus-group-style naming, which produces namby-pamby names like New Horizons or InSight. Orion is likewise a good choice for the capsule, since he hunted with Artemis — both were hunters — in Crete.

More likely to launch in the mid-2020s is Europa Clipper. That’s a good name, too. It has a very specific mission: find out more about the watery world of Europa.

“Scientists are almost certain that hidden beneath the icy surface of Europa is a saltwater ocean thought to contain about twice as much water as Earth’s global ocean,” NASA says. “It may be the most promising place in our solar system to find present-day environments suitable for some form of life beyond Earth.

“Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa’s water-ice surface is crisscrossed by long, linear fractures, cracks, ridges and bands. The moon’s ice shell is probably 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 kilometers) thick, beneath which the ocean is estimated to be 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep. Like Earth, Europa is thought to also contain a rocky mantle and iron core.”

The Ocean of Europa. Sounds like the title of story in a SF pulp from a bygone period. The 21st-century reality of exploring Europa is cooler by far.

Thursday Whatnots

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News I missed, and I miss a fair amount, which I figure is actually healthy: “For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars,” a NASA press release from December says.

“NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere — the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun…

“Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.”

Voyager 2 is now slightly more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth. Or 16.5 light hours. That’s still in the Solar System, though. “It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it,” NASA says.

Not long ago, the original Godzilla — Gojira, to be pedantic — appeared on TV, in Japanese with subtitles. Not that the famed atomic beast needs any subtitles. I had my camera handy.
I didn’t watch it all, but that’s one way to approach televised movies. Not long ago, I watched the first 15 minutes or so of The Sting, a fine movie I’ve seen a few times all the way through. But other tasks were at hand, so I quit after Luther is murdered.

Later, I had the presence of mind to turn the TV back on and watch the last 10 minutes or so, when the sting is put on gangster Doyle Lonnegan. It’s a satisfying ending, but it got me to thinking.

A con with that many people would surely generate rumors. Just as surely, the rumors would make their way to the murderous Lonnegan, who wouldn’t rest until Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker were dead. But that’s overthinking things.

Here’s another example of a dim algorithm. Just about every time I use YouTube, I see anti-teen smoking PSAs. Or maybe they’re blanketing the medium, regardless of audience. Still, if I didn’t take up smoking 45 years ago, I’m not going to now.

That brings to mind the first time I remember seeing one of my contemporaries with a cigarette. That was about 45 years ago at a place called the Mule Stall.

The Mule Stall was a student space on the campus of my high school with a few rooms, chairs, a pool table and I don’t remember what else. It was tucked away about as far as you could get from the rest of the school, opening up to the street behind the school.

High schoolers used it, but junior high kids from the district had gatherings there occasionally as well. The event I remember might have been the wrap party for one of the plays I was in. Besides not acquiring a taste for smoking back then, I also discovered the theater wasn’t for me, except as an audience member. But ca. 1974, as a junior high school student, I did a few plays.

There we were, hanging out at the Mule Stall, when we noticed a girl named Debbie, who was in our class, pass by with a cigarette between her fingers. I didn’t know her that well, and I don’t remember much about her now, though she had curly hair, glasses and the sort of development adolescent boys pay attention to. At that moment, I guess she was on her way out to smoke the thing, though we didn’t see that.

I don’t know anything about her later life. She attended high school with us for a while, but either moved away or dropped out before the Class of ’79 graduated. I wonder if even now, she holds her cigs in yellow-stained fingers and spends part of the night coughing.

As for the Mule Stall, we had occasional high school band parties there later. One in particular involved almost everyone lining up to dance to the “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” That was fun. As Wiki accurately says, the dance was very much alive in Texas in the 1970s.

In fact, the Wiki entry has a description of the style of dance we did. Someone who did the dance seems to have written it, because this is exactly right.

“This dance was adapted into a simplified version as a nonpartner waist-hold, spoke line routine. Heel and toe polka steps were replaced with a cross-lift followed by a kick with two-steps. The lift and kick are sometimes accompanied by shouts of ‘whoops, whoops,’ or the barnyard term ‘bull s–t.’… The practice continues to this day.”

We used the barnyard term. An administration with no sense of history apparently razed the Mule Stall in the 1990s. Now the site is parking.

Various Spacewalkers

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The daylight around the spring equinox around here stretched from an overcast sunrise to an overcast sunset. But at least it wasn’t especially cold. Hints of spring are around, such as croci peeking out of the earth and robins bob-bob-bobbing.

For the equinox, time to list to “Equinox” by Coltrain.

Or, more obscurely, “E.V.A.” by Public Service Broadcasting. After all, a few days ago was the anniversary of the first spacewalk, undertaken by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. He very nearly bought the farm there in orbit in 1965, but survives to this day at age 84.

He didn’t get a Google doodle this year. You’d think it would be a good one to illustrate, with “Google” standing in for the Voskhod 2 spacecraft, and Leonov floating nearby.

Interestingly, looking at this table, I see that there were long gaps between Soviet spacewalkers in the early days. After Leonov, no cosmonaut did so again until 1969, when two did; and then not again until 1977, after which red spacewalking became more regular.

The first non-American, non-Soviet spacewalker? One Jean-Loup Jacques Marie Chrétien, who also happened to be the first Frenchman in space in 1988.

The first woman? That would be Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya in 1984. Bet neither she nor Chrétien ever got a Google doodle.

Once the Rockets Go Up…

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I’m much of the way through Von Braun by Michael Neufeld (2008), aptly subtitled “Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War.” Overall, a solid biography, though the chapters I’ve just finished bog down a bit in all the mid-50s interservice rivalry and the fog of uncertainty about who would get to launch the first U.S. satellite. It’s hard to keep track of all the bureaucrats, official acronyms and other long-forgotten missile minutiae.

In the end, the answer of who would get to launch for the Americans came after Sputnik was up and beeping. Namely, whatever’s ready, launch it now! Which of course led to flopnik, since the Navy’s Vanguard rocket wasn’t quite up to snuff.

Rather, it was the Army’s Redstone, a design overseen by von Braun, that put Explorer 1 into orbit (to be fair, the Navy launched a Vanguard satellite successfully on March 17, 1958, the second U.S. satellite, and it’s still in orbit). I didn’t realize it until now, but the Explorer Program is ongoing after six decades, with over 90 missions to its credit.

Granted, we’ve been sluggish about getting around to the big-deal missions like sending astronauts to Mars, but by no stretch of the imagination has humanity turned its back on space exploration during any of the last 60-odd years.

As for von Braun, the bio doesn’t shy away from his early employment history and the various Nazi bureaucracies that facilitated development of the V-2, often using slave labor. He was a rocket engineer to his core, and happy to work for whomever would facilitate rocket development — hideously expensive when you get beyond fireworks — up to and including membership in the SS.

One of these days, I’ll have to return to Huntsville, Ala., to see what NASA has done with its rocket displays at the Marshall Space Flight Center (the haus that Wernher built). I remember seeing some of them in 1984, but I suspect the museum’s been expanded since then.

Also, I was only vaguely aware of how well known von Braun was to the American public, even in his pre-Saturn V days, what with his collaborations with Collier’s and especially Disney in the 1950s. Von Braun was famed as a space-flight evangelist at a time when a lot of people probably considered it a not-in-my-lifetime sort of proposition. Lehrer was making fun of a celebrity.

Remarkably, PDFs of “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” and the other Collier’s articles are available here, complete with the magnificent Chesley Bonestell illustrations.

Digression: there’s a Bonestell Crater on Mars (42.37° North, 30.57° West). An image is downloadable, in this case from NASA. Which I did.

One more thing about von Braun. I don’t have to go very far to find a small tribute to him.

That’s Von Braun Trail in Elk Grove Village, here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. The neighborhood dates from ca. 1970, and some of the nearby streets honor other space pioneers: Aldrin Trail, Armstrong Ln., Cernan Ct., Conrad Ct., W. Glenn Trail, Haise Ln., Lovell Ct., Roosa Ln. and Worden Way, and probably others I haven’t spotted.

Apollo 9

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Now I’ve seen everything. An ad for something called “Crop Preserver Deodorant Anti-Chafing Ball Deodorant” popped up on YouTube the other day. Ball deodorant?

The ad is here. It is as ridiculous as you’d expect. So is the price: $20 for 3 fl. oz. Someone is guffawing on the entire route to his financial service provider.

This year, as NASA is eager to point out, marks the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing. I’m glad to point that out too, but it’s more than just Apollo 11.

Fifty years ago this week, Apollo 9 orbited the Earth, its main mission to test the lunar module. The flight was an unqualified success.
Gumdrop Meets SpiderApollo 9 is a special one for me. Odd, considering that Apollo 8’s trailblazing journey to the Moon was so much bolder. It was, and that caught my attention, but it wasn’t until Apollo 9 that my full attention — as much as a near eight-year-old can muster — was on the space program.

By then, I’d realized that something very special was going on. Apollo 9 was part of something big. From then on, I followed all of the missions closely, down to the bittersweet Apollo 17 and its glorious night launch, when I was an older and wiser 11-year-old wishing that the rest of the missions hadn’t been cancelled.

NASA created an Apollo 9 video for the anniversary. The dance of Spider and Gumdrop in orbit. Remarkably, all of the crew are still alive.

It’s pretty rare that you can, as a late middle-aged person, look back on an opinion you had as a child and say, I was right. Something very special indeed was going on.