Picture of a Picture

The International Space Station in all its glory. Since I have been posting pictures of it lately I figured that I could not hurt to post a picture of what it actually looks like. Since I have never actually been to space to take a picture of it, this will have to do. This is a mural/picture of it on a wall at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Below the mural are the flags of all the contributing nations. Quite the cooperative effort considering the past century of international relations...

To get an idea of the scale of the station, each of the bronze colored solar arrays is 39 feet wide and 115 feet long. They are huge. Interestingly, since there is still just a little bit of atmosphere at the altitude of the space station there is a tiny amount of atmospheric drag. This is what slows satellites down and the reason why they need to be boosted every so often to maintain their proper orbit. The solar arrays on the ISS are huge and produce a huge amount of drag. 

They can be rotated around to change their orientation, and this is used by NASA to manage these effects. Often the station uses the night glider mode of operation whereby they orient the arrays in the direction of flight whenever they are in the earths shadow. This reduces the drag by a lot. They can also do that for entire orbits, but that reduces the amount of power they produce. Another use for them is to intentionally slow the station. This was used primarily for shuttle missions to reduce the altitude of the station to make it easier for the shuttle to reach. 

Finally they can also be used as solar sails. They are all double sided. One is shiny and the other is not. The not shiny side can be turned toward the sun and just absorbs all the photons. If the shiny side is turned toward the sun, all the photons bounce off and transfer some of their momentum to the station, helping it maintain it speed and therefore altitude. 

All of these effects are tiny, but they have a huge impact over months and years. Given that the cost of lifting a single kilogram of fuel to orbit runs at about $20,000, any reduction however small in the amount of fuel needed has a huge impact on the financial impact of the station.

An Atlas

At first glance, this might seem like it does not belong in this blog. It does however. This is a picture of much of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. From right to left there is a big building that is important for something, I am just not sure what, then there are four masts things with white bits on top. Those surround launch pad 40. The white bits at the top of the masts are the lightning rod type things which try to attract lightning away from a rocket if one is sitting on the pad. Next are the two tall buildings, each used for vertical assembly of the rockets. To the far left there is another tall building, I think used for keeping rockets in while launch conditions are unfavorable, and finally there is launch pad 41.

At first glance it is much the same as launch pad 40, but this one has a rocket on it. If you click on the picture it gets bigger, so you can see it a little better. At this point it was about 8.3km away from where I was taking the picture. The rocket in the picture is and Atlas 5. The payload it was carrying was the MUOS 1 satellite of the US Navy. It was supposed to launch the day after I took this photo, but the launch ended up being scrubbed a few times for weather, and ended up lifting off about a week and a half later.

I think rockets are really cool, and it was amazing to actually see a real one sitting on the launch pad. Watching the launch online later was even cooler because I had actually seen the exact rocket that was blasting itself into space.