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| This color image captured hours prior to the second Full Moon of August, through "clear skies over Nottingham," UK [Simon Smith / WordlessTech]. |
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Saturday, September 1, 2012
"Blue Moon over Nottingham"
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Foster and Partners bid for lunar construction
This is Money.uk
It is one of the world's most distinguished architecture firms, the design brains behind London's Gherkin, Millennium Bridge and Wembley Stadium.
But Foster and Partners has been hit hard by the global slump in construction on Earth and is hoping for better luck on the Moon.
It is part of a group hoping to win a contract from the European Space Agency to test materials for building settlements on the lunar surface.
The mission, to develop a 'more permanent presence on the Moon', is part of the Aurora space program.
Foster and Partners, founded by Lord Foster 40 years ago, is now backed by private equity firm 3i and has been having a tough time of late.
It posted an £18m loss in its latest accounts and axed 300 of its now 1,000-strong work force after building work dried up. So the lunar project will be a key contract.
Experts at Building magazine say Foster's consortium has a good chance of winning, partly due to the expertise of the team which includes Alta SpA, a space technology specialist.
ESA invited bids from firms willing to progress research initiated by the Apollo astronauts in the late Sixties.
The project is to adapt materials found in space to be used for building. Earth materials cannot be used because of the huge transport costs.
A spokesman for Foster declined to comment.
But Foster and Partners has been hit hard by the global slump in construction on Earth and is hoping for better luck on the Moon.
It is part of a group hoping to win a contract from the European Space Agency to test materials for building settlements on the lunar surface.
The mission, to develop a 'more permanent presence on the Moon', is part of the Aurora space program.
Foster and Partners, founded by Lord Foster 40 years ago, is now backed by private equity firm 3i and has been having a tough time of late.
It posted an £18m loss in its latest accounts and axed 300 of its now 1,000-strong work force after building work dried up. So the lunar project will be a key contract.
Experts at Building magazine say Foster's consortium has a good chance of winning, partly due to the expertise of the team which includes Alta SpA, a space technology specialist.
ESA invited bids from firms willing to progress research initiated by the Apollo astronauts in the late Sixties.
The project is to adapt materials found in space to be used for building. Earth materials cannot be used because of the huge transport costs.
A spokesman for Foster declined to comment.
Monday, August 17, 2009
UK laser locates LRO within 10 cm
As spotlighted on August 12 ("Laser ranging and LRO") NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter laser altimeter ("LOLA") for more than just determining the distance and anatomy of the lunar surface. Routed through the vehicle's high-gain antenna, LOLA is also being used to make more accurate measurements of the distance between its transient location in lunar orbit and fixed points on Earth. The method used for "reflecting" laser light pulses from Earth is not passive, as with decades of counting photons being reflected back to Earth by the laser "retro-reflector" mirror arrays left on the Moon by Apollo. Instead, LRO collects photons after a one-way trip, at the vehicle, and then tags the data before returning detailed information back to Earth. Eventually, this method may aid in resolving some hairy cosmic questions, such as whether expansion of the Cosmos varies locally from what is observed at great distances. On July 12, the United Kingdom's Space Geodesy Facility located LRO within 10 centimeters, using a 13 Hz timed laser pulse from its SLR . The UK's SGF is managed by the National Environmental Research Council, which announced the results on their website "Planet Earth."Tuesday, July 7, 2009
A giant leap for Britain, too
Doug Millard
Daily-Telegraph
The success of Project Apollo in landing a man on the Moon, 40 years ago this month, has become an emblem of American might and know-how: a vast technical and organisational undertaking, involving 400,000 people, to demonstrate the superiority of America over the Soviet Union.
Yet what is overlooked is that while the great bulk of those involved were indeed American citizens, there was also a significant foreign contribution, in particular from Britain. One engineer was so important that President Nixon would later admit that without his work, the Moon landing of July 21, 1969 would have been impossible.
Daily-Telegraph
The success of Project Apollo in landing a man on the Moon, 40 years ago this month, has become an emblem of American might and know-how: a vast technical and organisational undertaking, involving 400,000 people, to demonstrate the superiority of America over the Soviet Union.
Yet what is overlooked is that while the great bulk of those involved were indeed American citizens, there was also a significant foreign contribution, in particular from Britain. One engineer was so important that President Nixon would later admit that without his work, the Moon landing of July 21, 1969 would have been impossible.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Reaching for the stars … from a humble spare room in Bearsden
TORCUIL CRICHTON: on space
Glasgow Daily Herald
DAVID WOODS does this wee space trick with a mini football, about eight inches in diameter, and a two-inch sponge ball, which, by happy coincidence, are the proportional size of planet Earth compared to our moon.
He asks you to take the small, tennis-ball-sized moon and guess how far it should be from the football Earth. About the length of a desk you might guess, maybe six feet? He keeps asking you to walk backwards until you are a good 20ft away. That, he says (and he's almost shouting), is the relative distance of the moon from Earth, on average about 238,000 of our human miles.
It's a demonstration that works at two levels - showing how incredible the solar system and our place in it are and displaying the staggering achievement of the Apollo space mission in getting men on to our nearest celestial satellite.
Woods uses the analogy and many others in what is simply a good book that does what it says on the cover - How Apollo Flew To The Moon. During the day Woods is a post-production editor at BBC Scotland, a kind of mission control that rescues TV directors from themselves, and that's how I first met him. But at night, his head is in the stars.
David has written a book in his spare time, compiled from his extensive research into the manned space missions. The book he's produced is a composite mission that follows a virtual flight to the moon from launch to splashdown. There's a human dimension, the day-to-day concerns of how you go the toilet or shave while in space, with stories that capture, like the tennis ball at the end of the room, the sheer audacity of the achievement.
"It's the kind of book I hope the space geeks will give to the newbies to start them off," he says. "I certainly wish I'd had it when I started getting back into Apollo in a big way in 1995." Of course, David Woods's fascination with the moon flight began long before then.
Woods is of that generation of baby boomers who saw space flight move from science fiction to science fact right in front of their eyes. "It's an enchantment that happens when you're 10 years old and never goes away. Family, work and life come along but that magic never fades. I see it in the eyes of other people my own age. I feel blessed to have lived in an age when such dedication to science could do what it did."
Woods is no ordinary space geek. His enthusiasm for lunar travel transcends science and the grubby politics of the moon missions. He's managed to write a scientific book about the moon that is science-packed, but actually very easy to read. He may not be Tom Wolfe, but when it comes to typing words in order, a fair definition of journalism, he has the right stuff.
In 1997 Nasa gave him a medal for the work he'd done on archiving Apollo missions on the internet, and when you go to see the documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon, you'll find his name is in the credits. He supplied the production with sound archive of the Apollo 11 mission that he had stored on an MP3. I know, most people his age have Spiders From Mars on their MP3 players; David has the audio track of the Apollo 11 mission.
Along with other space enthusiasts, like Glasgow's David Harland, he can't wait for man to go back to the moon. It's just a pity that there won't be any Britons aboard future space missions. The government's space strategy, drawn up recently by the British National Space Centre, sets out to double the number of UK companies involved in the space business but it doesn't aim to put one British astronaut on the moon. There was a historic decision in the 1960s to opt out of manned space flight, but several key groups, the Commons Science Committee among them, have urged the government to think again, not least because Britain will miss the opportunity to inspire a whole other generation of scientists.
Meanwhile it's left to authors such as Woods to re-ignite our fascination with moon travel. His book has been well received among the international space community but it deserves to be a cross-over success. A BBC colleague managed to slip a copy into Tom Hanks's hands after interview in London. The star of Apollo 13 didn't take his nose out of the book from the moment he was handed it. "I'm going to read this for pleasure, this book," said Hanks, walking out of the room still leafing through the pages.
After an endorsement from an A-list Hollywood celebrity, how much higher could an author's star rise? Well, about as far as a book signing in Milngavie Book Shop tomorrow evening and a small launch party at his house in T- minus six days from now.
Woods is fittingly modest about his achievement - yet there he is, published author, consultant to space documentaries, honoured by Nasa, and shaken hands, actually shaken hands, with men who've walked on the moon. And he arranged it all from his spare room in Bearsden. He's quite an inspiration.
"You just go on with your dreams and those things you are passionate about and they kind of come true, it's a very strange but very wonderful thing," says Woods. Spoken like a true spaceman.
David Woods will splash down at Milngavie Book Shop on Monday, February 25 at 7pm to talk about the Apollo missions.
Glasgow Daily Herald
DAVID WOODS does this wee space trick with a mini football, about eight inches in diameter, and a two-inch sponge ball, which, by happy coincidence, are the proportional size of planet Earth compared to our moon.
He asks you to take the small, tennis-ball-sized moon and guess how far it should be from the football Earth. About the length of a desk you might guess, maybe six feet? He keeps asking you to walk backwards until you are a good 20ft away. That, he says (and he's almost shouting), is the relative distance of the moon from Earth, on average about 238,000 of our human miles.
It's a demonstration that works at two levels - showing how incredible the solar system and our place in it are and displaying the staggering achievement of the Apollo space mission in getting men on to our nearest celestial satellite.
Woods uses the analogy and many others in what is simply a good book that does what it says on the cover - How Apollo Flew To The Moon. During the day Woods is a post-production editor at BBC Scotland, a kind of mission control that rescues TV directors from themselves, and that's how I first met him. But at night, his head is in the stars.
David has written a book in his spare time, compiled from his extensive research into the manned space missions. The book he's produced is a composite mission that follows a virtual flight to the moon from launch to splashdown. There's a human dimension, the day-to-day concerns of how you go the toilet or shave while in space, with stories that capture, like the tennis ball at the end of the room, the sheer audacity of the achievement.
"It's the kind of book I hope the space geeks will give to the newbies to start them off," he says. "I certainly wish I'd had it when I started getting back into Apollo in a big way in 1995." Of course, David Woods's fascination with the moon flight began long before then.
Woods is of that generation of baby boomers who saw space flight move from science fiction to science fact right in front of their eyes. "It's an enchantment that happens when you're 10 years old and never goes away. Family, work and life come along but that magic never fades. I see it in the eyes of other people my own age. I feel blessed to have lived in an age when such dedication to science could do what it did."
Woods is no ordinary space geek. His enthusiasm for lunar travel transcends science and the grubby politics of the moon missions. He's managed to write a scientific book about the moon that is science-packed, but actually very easy to read. He may not be Tom Wolfe, but when it comes to typing words in order, a fair definition of journalism, he has the right stuff.
In 1997 Nasa gave him a medal for the work he'd done on archiving Apollo missions on the internet, and when you go to see the documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon, you'll find his name is in the credits. He supplied the production with sound archive of the Apollo 11 mission that he had stored on an MP3. I know, most people his age have Spiders From Mars on their MP3 players; David has the audio track of the Apollo 11 mission.
Along with other space enthusiasts, like Glasgow's David Harland, he can't wait for man to go back to the moon. It's just a pity that there won't be any Britons aboard future space missions. The government's space strategy, drawn up recently by the British National Space Centre, sets out to double the number of UK companies involved in the space business but it doesn't aim to put one British astronaut on the moon. There was a historic decision in the 1960s to opt out of manned space flight, but several key groups, the Commons Science Committee among them, have urged the government to think again, not least because Britain will miss the opportunity to inspire a whole other generation of scientists.
Meanwhile it's left to authors such as Woods to re-ignite our fascination with moon travel. His book has been well received among the international space community but it deserves to be a cross-over success. A BBC colleague managed to slip a copy into Tom Hanks's hands after interview in London. The star of Apollo 13 didn't take his nose out of the book from the moment he was handed it. "I'm going to read this for pleasure, this book," said Hanks, walking out of the room still leafing through the pages.
After an endorsement from an A-list Hollywood celebrity, how much higher could an author's star rise? Well, about as far as a book signing in Milngavie Book Shop tomorrow evening and a small launch party at his house in T- minus six days from now.
Woods is fittingly modest about his achievement - yet there he is, published author, consultant to space documentaries, honoured by Nasa, and shaken hands, actually shaken hands, with men who've walked on the moon. And he arranged it all from his spare room in Bearsden. He's quite an inspiration.
"You just go on with your dreams and those things you are passionate about and they kind of come true, it's a very strange but very wonderful thing," says Woods. Spoken like a true spaceman.
David Woods will splash down at Milngavie Book Shop on Monday, February 25 at 7pm to talk about the Apollo missions.
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