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The Flight of the Dragon
Last week, SpaceX conducted a successful pad abort test of its innovative Crew Dragon spacecraft. Powered by hypergolic monomethylhydrazine CH3(NH)NH2 fuel and nitrogen tetroxide N2O2 oxidizer, which ignite on contact, the Super Draco engines accelerated Dragon from 0 to 100 mph in 1.2 seconds — that’s faster than a Tesla (the electric cars made by Elon Musk’s…
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The Unveiling of Pluto
As a kid, I poured over diagrams in Popular Science magazine describing possible Grand Tours of the outer solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) made possible by a rare alignment of the planets. Unfortunately, budget cuts reduced the Grand Tour to the Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn. While Voyager 2’s mission was ultimately…
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Strange Nonchaotic Stars
On the second day of my University of Hawai’i sabbatical, I began to work with space telescope data that would invigorate the study of variable stars and justify my NASA T-shirts. While the brightness of stars like the sun is nearly constant, the brightness of other stars changes with time. Exploiting the unprecedented capabilities of the planet-hunting Kepler space…
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Wooster Physics in Hawai’i!
Aloha! Thanks to Wooster’s generous sabbatical program, I’m spending the 2014-2015 academic year at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa on the island of O’ahu in Honolulu, and I’m learning my Hawaiian accents. I live in a very small studio apartment with spectacular views of the ocean, Diamond Head or Lē’ahi (which I call Lily Crater), and…
Author: John F. Lindner
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Nice post, John! Thanks for writing these. I always enjoy them.
David Smith’s ein stein is an awesome shape!
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Thanks, Mark! I enjoy reading your posts as well.