UK Space Conference part 5
Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html
The sixth talk was the British Interplanetary Society session. I went to their talk on Spaceplanes by Alan Bond, then moved half-way through to George Abbey's talk next door.
Alan Bond told us about propulsion research at Reaction Engines (a small company). They are building the Sabre engine, designed to be used in the reusable launch vehicle Skylon. They use a glass ceramic shell for reentry. They had a stand at the last Farnborough Air Show, and are based on a site in Oxfordshire. They have plan for the "Troy" Mars mission in 2028, assembled in orbit.
George Abbey was at NASA. He told us that Apollo took a grand total of 8 years from JFK's announcement to their first landing. You need to keep the Shuttle running to take full advantage of the ISS. Restrictions on exports (ITAR) are a big challenge for international cooperation, and the lack of science and engineering graduates is also a problem. NASA needs a more balance programme - they've lost the aeronautics, robotic and environmental stuff they used to do, and are too focused on manned missions to the Moon and Mars. They need a better propulsion system, and they need to invest in universities. China have collaborated with ESA and Russia and are interested in joining the ISS programme, but NASA aren't keen to let them in. Under the current immigration rules, Einstein would not have been able to enter the US.
The seventh talk was the Leicester University session.
The first speaker was Jonathan Tedds, who told us about AstroGrid. This is a project to put astronomical data online in a standard format. Nowadays we get about 20 TB/year of data. When VISTA (a new telescope) starts running later this year, we'll get 100 TB/year. By 2015, there'll be about 5 PB/year, once the LSST and others have been opened. This is a lot of data! The IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance) have set up standards for database formats and query formats. AstroGrid is about to be launched (it's currently in beta). You can download a Java front-end (so it works on Windows, Mac or Linux) or access the data using Python. See www.astrogrid.org for more information.
Julian Osborne told us about the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer. Gamma-ray bursts were first seen in 1969, and last a couple of seconds on average. In 1997 they first saw the x-ray afterglow, which lasts about a day. It was a very interesting talk, on the different types of bursts (short and long) and their causes (neutron stars colliding, neutron star colliding with black hole, black holes colliding). Swift has an instrument to spot bursts and then it turns very quickly to spot the afterglow with the rest of its instruments.
David Boyce is a PhD student at Leicester. He told us about the UltraViolet astronomy he does. UV is classified into Near UV (0.3 micrometres), Far UV and Extreme UV (30 nm). The aurorae of Earth, Saturn and Jupiter are surprisingly visible in UV. He told us lots more interesting stuff, but it appears I failed to write it down.
Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/175324.html
The sixth talk was the British Interplanetary Society session. I went to their talk on Spaceplanes by Alan Bond, then moved half-way through to George Abbey's talk next door.
Alan Bond told us about propulsion research at Reaction Engines (a small company). They are building the Sabre engine, designed to be used in the reusable launch vehicle Skylon. They use a glass ceramic shell for reentry. They had a stand at the last Farnborough Air Show, and are based on a site in Oxfordshire. They have plan for the "Troy" Mars mission in 2028, assembled in orbit.
George Abbey was at NASA. He told us that Apollo took a grand total of 8 years from JFK's announcement to their first landing. You need to keep the Shuttle running to take full advantage of the ISS. Restrictions on exports (ITAR) are a big challenge for international cooperation, and the lack of science and engineering graduates is also a problem. NASA needs a more balance programme - they've lost the aeronautics, robotic and environmental stuff they used to do, and are too focused on manned missions to the Moon and Mars. They need a better propulsion system, and they need to invest in universities. China have collaborated with ESA and Russia and are interested in joining the ISS programme, but NASA aren't keen to let them in. Under the current immigration rules, Einstein would not have been able to enter the US.
The seventh talk was the Leicester University session.
The first speaker was Jonathan Tedds, who told us about AstroGrid. This is a project to put astronomical data online in a standard format. Nowadays we get about 20 TB/year of data. When VISTA (a new telescope) starts running later this year, we'll get 100 TB/year. By 2015, there'll be about 5 PB/year, once the LSST and others have been opened. This is a lot of data! The IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance) have set up standards for database formats and query formats. AstroGrid is about to be launched (it's currently in beta). You can download a Java front-end (so it works on Windows, Mac or Linux) or access the data using Python. See www.astrogrid.org for more information.
Julian Osborne told us about the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer. Gamma-ray bursts were first seen in 1969, and last a couple of seconds on average. In 1997 they first saw the x-ray afterglow, which lasts about a day. It was a very interesting talk, on the different types of bursts (short and long) and their causes (neutron stars colliding, neutron star colliding with black hole, black holes colliding). Swift has an instrument to spot bursts and then it turns very quickly to spot the afterglow with the rest of its instruments.
David Boyce is a PhD student at Leicester. He told us about the UltraViolet astronomy he does. UV is classified into Near UV (0.3 micrometres), Far UV and Extreme UV (30 nm). The aurorae of Earth, Saturn and Jupiter are surprisingly visible in UV. He told us lots more interesting stuff, but it appears I failed to write it down.
Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/175324.html