Next week the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) meets in Washington, D.C. - a group that provides independent advice directly to NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, on the long-term implementation of national space policy.

One item on the NAC plate is a potential recommendation that NASA consider establishing a Thermal Protection System (TPS) Technology Consortium, meshing space agency research work in this arena with the Department of Defense and others.

Leading the look into some sort of TPS sharing of critical technology needs, ideas and programs is NAC member Neil Armstrong. He is chair of the Council’s Aeronautics Committee.

One of the questions being probed by Armstrong and fellow members of his committee is what are clear synergies between the Air Force “Operationally Responsive Space” needs and such activities as NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) heat shield program.

An early finding of Armstrong’s fact-finding group is that it was not clear the Air Force is aware of where NASA is currently going in the CEV effort. Furthermore, Air Force capabilities have synergies for NASA in the future, but they have not been harmonized as well as they could be.

OK, show of hands: who got a new HDTV-ready flat-screen this year – maybe just in time for the Big Game? Yeah, me too. Too bad. If only Santa, the FCC, you and I had done our physics homework…

High Def, it turns out, actually isn’t. It’s just a tiny bit higher than low; and, sadly, not nearly high enough at all.

As Galileo showed, nearly 300 years before the birth of television, what you see depends on entirely where you sit. I’m not referring to the saleman-celebrated off-axis viewing performance of your new electronic fireplace. This is about something bigger and deeper. As with other forms of recreation, size actually does matter – but only up to a point. And it’s not, by any stretch, the whole story.

At about the same time Robert Laird was inventing (some would say simply improving upon) television, Albert Einstein was dismantling Isaac Newton’s Universe. Einstein, you see, was anti-gravity. He cut the rotten spot out of Newton’s apple – namely, that the force of gravity should operate over large distances, but doesn’t seem to. This force, Einstein showed, is really farce. It doesn’t exist. We’re simply seeing the effect of the curvature of space around massive objects. Even to the point of gravitationally lensing the images of things on those massive objects’ far-sides (relative to you) right round to where you can see them, albeit stretched-out and broken up into bits and pieces.

That massive new flat-screen on your wall draws you near and shows you images and events from the far-side of human imagination and of the actual universe too. And it claims to do so at between two and six times the resolution of your old tube TV (if you’re looking at a true HDTV signal). Trouble is: the screen’s larger. 42 inches diagonal; maybe 50 inches… Oh no, did you go even bigger??

But dude, your couch and your recliner are still in the same place! And your room didn’t magically expand. So, instead of a better picture, you now stand a better chance of seeing individual pixels – at the expense of a cohesive image. Despite it’s supposedly higher resolution, your new magic window could actually be showing you a fragmented Universe.

The problem is the HDTV spec itself. It’s way too low. It’s not really “high definition” at all. It was conceived decades ago in the ancient, analog, Asian world of last century where apartments were petite and viewers sat right up close to their diminutive TVs. Today’s “HDTV” of 1080 viewable lines is actually a small-screen spec. Too bad yours is bigger.

Worse, most of the programming you’ll be watching isn’t even true HD. And much of it may come to you clipped, crunched and noise-ridden courtesy of your pre-HD analog coaxial cable or via badly blasted broadcast.

Despite (in fact because of) its big size, there’s a shockingly narrow window of distance at which your new monitor will be tolerable. I suggest you stay within 6 to 7 feet of a 42-incher; 7 to 9 feet of a 50-inch; no closer than 8 feet but no further than 12 feet of a 62, etc. Plot the curve for yourself to get values for larger or smaller screens. Any way you view it; it’s a damn small sweet spot.

Should old acquaintance be forgot? Maybe now you’re feeling nostalgic for the way your old 27 inch CRT’s picture took a few moments to congeal – giving your left hemisphere a chance to downshift into full couch-potato stupidity. Gonna miss the warm, cheery glow. Not to mention its actual warmth: CRTs are so bright in the infrared that they make pretty good space heaters. That oft-overstated threat of stray X-ray radiation; That always-unstated but ever-present threat of vacuum tube implosion…

Just over the event horizon – say 4 years from your electronics showroom –HDTV screen-resolution will at least double, maybe quadruple. Your computer’s monitor is halfway there already. A few high-end digital cinema cameras are as well. Gordon Moore’s Law has seen to it that the cost (so perhaps the price) will drop like a stray proton into a black hole. And energy efficiencies will improve; we’ll all be green-guilt marketed into buying them.

One likely implication of all this: both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (based on the 1080 spec) are doomed before they get off the ground. Your cable, phone, wireless and computer providers are all conspiring to kill them. Leave Earth for a few days on the Starship Einstein at close to the speed of light, and time slows down for you. Come back in a few decades Earth time and you’ll see that box-packaged, disc-delivered video became the 8-Track cartridge of the 21st century.

So it’s: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me!” Those bastards got us with a screen size that’s too big, based on a resolution that’s too low. Let’s not let them sell us the matching set of coasters, shall we?

My grandfather used to pack a silver dollar around with him all the time because, as he put it, no matter what inflation did you could always afford a good steak dinner with a silver dollar. Looks like he should have saved his pennies, too.

A Fed official now suggests “rebasing” the penny to make it worth 5 cents as a way to cut the costs of coin production (as the cost of metals rise) and to do away with the nearly worthless 1-cent coin.

It’s a common misconception that modern pennies are mostly copper, by the way. They’re not. So if you plan to start hoarding pennies, look for those made prior to 1982. [What’s in a penny?]

Some people don’t even live to 63. That’s how many years Hyman Rickover served in the US Navy (the longest stretch of active service in US military history), before retiring at the ripe old age of 81 in 1982. Saturday the 27th would have marked his 106th Birthday. So why do we toast him, besides for his incredible employee-of-the-century dedication?

Because without Mr. Rickover, there would be no Harrison Ford submarine thriller “K-19: The Widowmaker.” Rickover was the “Father of the nuclear Navy,” responsible for putting the first nuclear-powered submarines into action and scaring the pants off the Russians at the height of the Cold War. Convinced that nuclear reactors were the way of the naval future, he spearheaded the launch of the USS Nautilus in 1955 and personally oversaw the development of the US Naval reactor program, as well as the first nuclear power plants established on dry land. Rickover’s ships had an examplary safety record, unlike the Russians (see Harrison Ford reference, above) and other competitors.

Today, nuclear power generates almost 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the US Census Bureau.

NASA’s next space shuttle crew is now slated to launch one day early, on March 15, to deliver a new set of solar arrays to the International Space Station (ISS) during an 11-day mission. A March 15 launch lift off would occur at about 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT).

James Hartsfield, a NASA spokesperson at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during today’s daily ISS commentary that shuttle program managers have opted for a one-day launch advance of the STS-117 mission aboard the Atlantis orbiter. However, the new launch target will not be official until shuttle managers convene a traditional Flight Readiness Review meeting that precedes every shuttle launch, Hartsfield added.

Atlantis’ STS-117 crew, commanded by veteran shuttle astronaut Rick Sturckow, is hauling up the 17.5-ton Starboard 3/Starboard 4 (S3/S4) segment to the ISS.

The truss segment will not only serve as a new addition to the space station’s backbone-like main truss, but also contains two new solar array arrays that will be unfurled while the Atlantis astronauts are docked at the ISS [image]. The astronauts plan to stage three spacewalks to install the new truss, deploy the solar arrays and retract an older solar wing extending to starboard from the station’s mast-like Port 6 truss [image].

NASA’s STS-117 mission has a launch window that stretches from March 15 through around March 29, after which Atlantis’ crew must wait until after the planned April 9 launch a Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Expedition 15 crewmembers and U.S. entrepreneur Charles Simonyi, the next space tourist to the ISS. 

NASA mission managers are expected to decide this week whether the shuttle Atlantis can launch a day earlier than its current March 16 target to continue assembly of the International Space Station, a space agency spokesperson said. 

“We do expect, by the end of the week, that the shuttle program will get the input it requires to move the launch date up a day to March 15,” Rob Navias, a NASA spokesperson at the agency’s Houston-based Johnson Space Center, told me Monday in a phone call. Navias says there are no showstoppers currently standing in the way of an earlier launch date, and that the decision could come earlier than a Jan. 25 meeting.

Atlantis’ STS-117 astronaut crew, commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow, is due to launch towards the International Space Station in March for an 11-day mission to deliver, then install, a new pair of solar arrays to the starboard side of the orbital laboratory.

I often hear people ask, “What’s your opinion on global warming?”

Or they say, “Here’s what I believe about global warming…”

And I cringe. The extent of and causes of global warming should be about science, not about opinions or beliefs. But it seems the more scientists become convinced that humans are contributing to a warmer planet, the stronger the opposite belief becomes and the more vociferous the political debates get.

Now, if we’re lucky, it’s all moot. Because …

*** Mandatory reductions of heat-trapping emissions can be imposed without economic harm and would lead to economic opportunities if done economy-wide and with provisions to mitigate costs. ***

That’s what the CEOs of 10 major U.S. corporations said today in calling on President Bush to take action to curb pollution.

Now it’s about money. Cutting pollution would be good for the economy (according to the top dogs at General Electric, Duke Energy, PG&E, Caterpillar, etc.). I’d like to hear the argument from the president for not pursuing that goal. As for what a cut in pollution might or might not do to the environment, well, everyone is free to have their own opinion about that.

Disturbing news from the land that gave us both ABBA and The Hives and those really tasty pancakes and meatballs. According to a new study completed by the organization Vetenskap & Allmänhet (Public and Science), VA, 23 percent of the Swedish population think astrology is a science.

Ouch.

It gets worse, it seems that more Swedish women then men believe astrology is a science. This is certainly very retrograde.

Looks like worrisome news from above.

There’s a growing number of sources suggesting that China has tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) device, knocking out one of its own satellites - an old weather spacecraft. The test reportedly made use of a ballistic missile to reach the satellite, using some sort of kinetic kill device to destroy the spacecraft.

Leading the charge in reporting this January 11th event is Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, which will detail China’s possible ASAT test in its magazine next week.

Citing military and intelligence sources, AW&ST will report that the possible test took out Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C), polar orbiting weather satellite launched in 1999.

Indeed, SPACE.com sources have confirmed that that FY-1C has broken up into hundreds and hundreds of pieces, fluttering through low Earth orbit. The mess of space junk does put other satellites, including the International Space Station at some risk - although chances of this are very small.

Clearly, such a provocative act — if confirmed — will spark U.S. reaction as outlined in a newly issued Bush space policy.

Check out:

http://www.space.com/news/061007_bush_spacepolicy.html

Meanwhile, space policy wonk, Jeffrey Lewis of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland has responded to the prospective ASAT test in his online blog:

“The United States and other space-faring states should demarche the Chinese government for what is a stupid, clumsy and short-sighted decision,” Lewis wrote.

“Although this idiotic move by the Chinese government will demonstrate why we don’t want hit-to-kill ASAT testing in orbit - that will be a long-term recognition. In the short-term, the Chinese will simply not be credible partners in efforts to keep space peaceful. Moreover, other countries could follow suit with their own anti-satellite programs, including the United States.”

There was a significant increase in satellite breakups during 2006. That’s the word from orbital debris experts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Although no satellite breakups were detected for nearly a year during the period from June 2005 to the first of May 2006, the remainder of last year witnessed eight satellite breakups for a rate of one per month.

Not since 1993 had so many breakups occurred in one year.

Contributing to the peppering of space with human-made junk: one Japanese and two U.S. rocket bodies, as well as a 7 metric ton Russian spy satellite.

Surprisingly — after its remaining fuel had been vented — a U.S. Delta II second stage that had been adrift for 17 years went kaBoom! Potential reasons for the unexpected breakup, including impact by another object, are under evaluation, according to the January issue of Orbital Debris Quarterly News.