Filming a fireside chat in my office and a little tour of the space artifacts all around — video.
In our discussion, Andy & I have a “Bill & Ted moment” when we realized that both of us have a passion for astronaut John Young. And although my verbose ramblings had to be edited for brevity, the discussion led me to believe that humanity will create a rich ecosystem on Mars; we will not import it. Each planet can serve a genetic data vault backup for the other, but we will only share humanity and a few special species (cats perhaps) across the worlds. It is much more likely that we will direct the rapid of evolution of microbes and plants in-situ, and consider “invasive species” imports after a terraformed ecosystem is well underway.
This sparked a Reddit discussion on Martian life forms, remote syn bio, and possible panspermia.
OUr discussion was also summarized in a Space,com article.
It was a special honor to hand Andy his first rock from Mars. Subsequently, I helped him get one of his own.
The latest arrival, in the red frame, is a production engine from the Mars Viking spacecraft program used for the first landing on Mars. Seemed topical! His book is in production to be a movie by Ridley Scott with Matt Damon as the Martian.
Constructed from Beryllium, Columbium, and stainless steel by North American Rockwell/Rocketdyne, the engine provided propulsion to take the Mars bound orbiter with its attached lander to Mars and an orbital insertion around the planet. The engine was produced by Rocketdyne for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and includes gimbal attachments which allowed the engine to be adjusted on a rotational axis for in-flight course corrections. It’s beryllium thrust chamber was derived from the Minuteman ballistic missile program.
NASA sent two Viking spacecraft to Mars in the summer of 1976, and each comprised of an orbiter, which photographed the surface, and a lander, which studied the surface and conducted several experiments. The whole spacecraft orbited the planet for approximately one month, using the images relayed back to mission control to identify a landing site. The landers then separated and soft landed on the Martian surface, touching down in July and September of 1976.
(full size)
The engine was utilized to provide midcourse trajectory corrections while the Viking was enroute to Mars and executed the orbital insertion and orbit trim maneuvers of the Orbiter/Lander spacecraft upon arrival at the red planet. Orbital insertion of Viking 1 required a long engine burn-38 minutes of thrust, which consumed 1063 kilograms of propellant, slowing the spacecraft from its initial approach speed of 14400 kilometers per hour (8948 MPH) to 10400 kilometers per hour (6462 MPH). To bring the spacecraft to the proper point at periapsis (1511 Kilometers/939 miles above the planets surface), the spacecraft was placed in a long, looping 42.6-hour revolution of the planet, reaching first periapsis; orbital apoapsis was ultimately trimmed to 32800 Kilometers (20,381 Miles above the Martian surface).
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