The Art Neuro Weblog

Soyuz Flight Scheduled
Two Russians and an American walk into a bar... scratch that. :) Two Russians and an American are going up in Soyuz today. Here's a snippet of the Soyuz program:

The first Soyuz flights were in the late 1960s, and since the mid-1970s, Soviet
and Russian space crews always have included a cosmonaut with previous pilot experience aboard a Soyuz to ensure a smooth ride. The tradition now has been broken because several veteran cosmonauts have resigned in recent years and the space agency hasn't had enough seats on recent Soyuz missions to train their replacements, said Yuri Grigoryev, a spokesman for Russia's Cosmonaut Training Center.

"It's not a problem. We simply need to adapt to new conditions," he said. Russian space officials have played down the lack of Soyuz experience, and the crew said Wednesday that thorough training had compensated for it. "We have logged many hours in a simulator and got prepared for all regular and emergency regimes," Sharipov said.

Soyuz spacecraft are guided by autopilot on their approach to the station and during the docking, but the crew is trained to operate it manually in case of computer failure.

Humans are back up systems to the computer. The Russians have clearly not read Tom Wolf or watched 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Next Up On Deck In The Mars Game
The next vehicle to be sent to Mars is currently being assembled. The operational name of the vehicle so far is MRO, stannding for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It's meant to be packed with the latest instruments, but also is going to be a crucial link in future robotic missions.

Science instruments onboard MRO emphasize the spacecraft's roster of key jobs at Mars: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), Context Camera (CTX), Mars Color Imager (MARCI), Compact Reconnaissance Imaging pectrometer
for Mars (CRISM), Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), and the Shallow Radar (SHARAD). The MRO project is managed for the NASA Science Mission Directorate
in Washington, D.C. by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is prime contractor for the project.

"MRO takes us another step forward in Mars exploration," said Kevin McNeill, Lockheed Martin's program manager for the orbiter. "It is by far the biggest thing that we will have put into orbit around Mars," he told SPACE.com. Not too far away from where MRO is being geared up, so too is its launch vehicle - an Atlas 5, also built by Lockheed Martin. Nothing like an "all in the family" Mars mission for the aerospace firm. This will be the first interplanetary mission hitched to an Atlas since 1973.

The return of the Atlas rockets as a an interplan launch rocket is a very welcome sign indeed. While other Atlas rockets have been used to launch satellites, I think NASA needs to go back to large lift-capacity rocketry more, rather than 'Shuttlery'.

ALCS Game 1
I know we bicker all the time, but the man is still a friend.
Mr. Conservative Weasel and I had a fun time yesterday on the phone chatting about the score as they came up on the net. he was watching it on the SI website, while I sat in the kitchen and listened to him describe the scorebox through the refreshes. Of course, Mr. Weasel is a big cricket fan so some of the baseball scoring seemed arcane to him, but he is more than passingly familiar with the game. Talking through what each thing meant was part of the fun.

Of course as the world now knows, the Yankees won in what should have been a tight one that turned into a 8-0 blow out at one point, but the Bosox fought back hard forcing the Yankees to summon Mariano Rivera to the mound in order to shut the door. In the end it was a 10-7 ballgame. The big hero of the game, apart from Mariano Rivera who flew straight to New York that day from a funeral in Panama and closed out the Bosox in emotionally trying circumstances, was Hideki Matsui who went 3-for-5 and tied the ALCS record of 5 RBIs. Mr. Goldman was right, he was the difference yesterday.
As predicted, Mr. Goldman's assessment that the Yankees had an edge in Left Field created a minor furore over at the Think Factory.

Today the Yankees send Jon Lieber to the mound, and face Pedro Martinez for the Bosox. Who said 'winning too much' is easy?

- Art Neuro