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Chapter 2
A few days later, Natty and Mariba stood on the southern outskirts of Neldane, beside the road leading out of town. Natty gently scratched Bello’s shoulder, in the pre-dawn light of a crisp spring morning, as gentle breezes wafted through the leafy branches overhead. She gave a firm rub to the bend of his neck, appreciating – as she often did – his fine musculature and development. The loyal…
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NASA’s Orion Spacecraft
On NASA’s Artemis missions, a unique spacecraft will take flight. Orion, NASA’s newest spacecraft built for humans, is developed to be capable of sending astronauts to the Moon and is a key part of eventually sending them on to Mars.
An uncrewed Orion will be tested on Artemis I and travel 40,000 miles past the Moon, farther than any spacecraft built for humans has gone before. This mission will prepare for a crewed Artemis II mission and subsequent missions that will deliver astronauts to the surface of the Moon and to the lunar Gateway.
Orion’s crew and service module will carry astronauts to deep space. The launch abort system, positioned at the top of the spacecraft, is only used to pull the crew module and the astronauts inside it safely away from the rocket in the event of an emergency, and will be jettisoned after a successful launch and ascent atop the Space Launch System rocket.
Crew Module
Orion’s crew module, sometimes referred to as the capsule, capitalizes on more than 60 years of NASA space exploration experience. Built by main contractor Lockheed Martin, it can provide living space on missions for four astronauts for up to 21 days without docking to another spacecraft. Advances in technology for deep space travel such as life support, avionics, power systems, and state-of-the-art thermal protection will support the crew during launch, landing, and recovery. Pressure vessel
The underlying structure of the crew module is called the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel consists of seven large aluminum alloy pieces that are joined together using friction-stir welding at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The process produces a strong, yet lightweight, airtight capsule.
Backshell
Covering the pressure vessel is the protective cover on the cone-shaped sides of the crew module known as the backshell, made up of 1,300 thermal protection system tiles. The tiles are made of a silica fiber material similar to those used for more than 30 years on the space shuttle, and will protect the spacecraft from both the cold of space and the extreme heat of re-entry.
Heat shield
The bottom of the capsule, which will experience the hottest temperatures as Orion returns to Earth, is covered by the world’s largest ablative heat shield, measuring 16.5 feet in diameter. The heat shield will protect Orion as it enters Earth’s atmosphere initially travelling about 25,000 mph and endure temperatures of nearly 5,000°F — about half as hot as the Sun.
The outer surface of the heat shield is made of blocks of a material called Avcoat, a reformulated version of the material used on the Apollo capsules. During descent, the Avcoat ablates, or burns off in a controlled fashion, transporting heat away from Orion.
Forward Bay Cover
The forward bay cover at the top of the crew module protects the top portion of the capsule and Orion’s parachutes during launch, orbital flight, and re-entry. It is covered with the same thermal protection tiles as the backshell. After the spacecraft re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, it is jettisoned at an altitude of approximately 23,000 feet to allow for deployment of the parachute system.
Reaction Control System Thrusters
The crew module has a propulsion system composed of 12 small engines called reaction control system thrusters. When the crew module separates from the service module for re-entry, the 12 thrusters are used to guide the crew module, ensure that it’s properly oriented with the heat shield facing downward, and keep the spacecraft stable during its descent.
Interior
Inside Orion, an aluminum structure of crisscrossing beams called the backbone assembly provides the floor structure where the crew seats will be attached and is where the crew stowage lockers will be located. Most of the equipment the crew will need to live in space on future missions will be stored here.
The four seats in the crew module are designed to accommodate nearly 99% of the human population. The seats are adjustable to ensure that astronauts can reach all the controls while in their pressure suits.
Crew Accommodations
A number of accommodations will help astronauts feel at home. Tanks and a dispenser provide drinking water and a simple way to rehydrate and warm food. Orion’s hygiene bay will have a new compact toilet, with a design that makes use in space easier for both men and women. A built-in exercise device provides both aerobic and strength training for astronauts. In case of a radiation event, such as a solar flare, crew members will shelter themselves in two large stowage lockers on the floor of the capsule, using the dense materials on board as shielding. Displays and Controls
Astronauts will operate Orion using a sophisticated display and control system that uses advanced software to aid the crew. The crew will be able to command the spacecraft using just three display screens, about 60 physical switches, two rotational hand controllers, two translational hand controllers, and two cursor control devices. Electronic procedures are also programmed into the system to aid the crew in daily and emergency processes, saving the crew time and space and making large paper manuals of system operations obsolete.
Environmental Control and Life Support Systems
Environmental control and life support systems will make the crew module a habitable place for astronauts. A new regenerable system removes carbon dioxide and humidity and keeps the cabin air clean. The system also maintains the spacecraft’s temperature and pressure and detects if the internal environment becomes unsafe. Orion’s Crew Survival System spacesuits interface with life support to keep astronauts alive for up to six days to allow them to return home in the event of cabin depressurization.
Parachutes
The crew module houses Orion’s parachute system. The parachutes ensure a safe landing for astronauts returning to Earth at high speeds in the spacecraft. Earth’s atmosphere acting as a brake on Orion will initially slow the spacecraft down from about 25,000 mph to 325 mph. Then, the system of 11 parachutes must deploy in precise sequence to slow Orion to a relatively gentle 20 mph for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
European Service Module
Below the crew module is Orion’s European Service Module, provided by ESA (European Space Agency) and built by lead contrac¬tor Airbus. The service module is the spacecraft’s powerhouse: supplying it with electricity, propulsion, thermal control, air, and water.
Propulsion
Orion’s service module provides propulsion capabilities that enable Orion to go around the Moon and back on its missions. The service module has 33 engines of various sizes. The main engine will provide major maneuvering capabilities while in space, including inserting Orion into distant retrograde orbit and leaving the orbit to return to Earth. The 24 reaction control thrusters are used to steer and control Orion while in orbit. Eight auxiliary engines are also used for translational maneuvers, essentially acting as a backup to the main engine. The propulsion system also has the ability to bring the crew home in a variety of emergency situations, including abort scenarios after the launch abort system has already been jettisoned.
Power
The service module’s electrical power system provides power for the entire Orion spacecraft. The system manages the power generated by the module’s four solar array wings, which provide enough electricity to power two three-bedroom homes. A total of 15,000 solar cells on the four arrays are used to convert light into electricity, and the arrays can turn to remain aligned with the Sun for maximum power.
Thermal Control
The thermal control system includes radiators and heat exchangers to keep the astronauts and equipment at a comfortable temperature. The thermal control system includes an active portion, which transfers the heat of the entire spacecraft to the service module radiators, and a passive portion, which protects the service module from internal and external thermal environments.
Consumable Storage
The consumable storage system of the service module provides potable water, nitrogen, and oxygen to the crew module, stored in tanks.
Potable water is provided by the water delivery system, covering usable water needs of the crew for the duration of the mission. Oxygen and nitrogen are provided by the gas delivery system, with the amount of gases in each tank adjustable based on the mission profile.
Orion’s crew module will separate from the service module shortly before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. The crew module is the only portion of Orion that will return to Earth at the end of each mission. On early flights, high-value crew module components such as avionics, and environmental control and life support systems will be reused, with plans to reuse more components on later missions.
Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term, sustainable lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone for future astronaut missions to Mars.
It’s a little bit ironic, dontcha think?🎶🎶
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered the first pulsar at the age of 24. Her PHD supervisor would later get the Nobel price for physics, for her discovery. Northern Ireland 1967
John Paton, Son & Co. Advertisement unknown artist Clackmannanshire Council Museum and Heritage Service
Rachel McLish
p1868
The picture above is a vintage photograph of an onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of the upper social classes in feudal Japan.
Often mistakenly referred to as “female samurai”, female warriors have a long history in Japan, beginning long before samurai emerged as a warrior class. However, they did fight alongside of samurai warriors. They were wives, widows and daughters who answered the call of duty to protect their families, households and honor in times of war.
Onna Bugeisha were the exception, rather than the rule, but they still played an important role nonetheless. One famous example is empress Jingu, who reportedly lead a successful conquest against Korea in 200 AD without shedding a single drop of blood (or so the legends say).
This is the second time this photo has gone around, and it is still not an image of an Onna Bugeisha, but rather was a photograph from a set of photos of Kabuki actors and Geisha in costume.
The original caption read:
Portraits of Japanese Kabuki actors and geisha. Unknown photographer, 1870s.
It went on auction, which you can see listed here, and there were 34 prints total, but none of them were of Onna Bugeisha. Just a heads up! There are images of Onna Bugeisha on this blog here.
Felt the need to reblog it because I encountered this picture listed as “Onna bugeisha” like a thousand time during my research for my thesis (it even appears when you search “Nakano Takeko” on Google which is just…no). It was even used on the cover of a French book about warrior women in history. So I think some help with spreading the word is necessary here.
This is, according to Wikipedia, a replica of the armor that would have been worn by Tachibana Ginchiyo (1569-1602). Ginchiyo was for a time the head of her clan during the Sengoku period.
Here are some extracts from her wikipedia page:
“She led the clan in a period of difficulty at only 6 years old. She inherited her father’s all interest such as the status of castellan, territory, belongings and the famous sword Raikiri (雷切, Lightning Cutter). She recruited women to become her elite guard and trained all the maidens of the castle in warfare skills to intimidate visitors and to prevent it if other clans attack her domain.
(….)
In 1592 Hideyoshi ordered that Tachibana Muneshige and Tachibana Naotsugu participate of the Invasion to the Korea under the command of Kobayakawa Takakage. Hideyoshi built Nagoya castle as a base to launch attacks on Korea. The castle was relatively close to Ginchiyo’s residence in Hizen Province, it is said that Hideyoshi invited Ginchiyo to visit the castle several times when her husband was away. However, when Hideyoshi saw Ginchiyo with her armed women, he left fearing her personality.”
Well, she was badass.
Physicists see electron whirlpools for the first time
Though they are discrete particles, water molecules flow collectively as liquids, producing streams, waves, whirlpools, and other classic fluid phenomena.
Not so with electricity. While an electric current is also a construct of distinct particles — in this case, electrons — the particles are so small that any collective behavior among them is drowned out by larger influences as electrons pass through ordinary metals. But, in certain materials and under specific conditions, such effects fade away, and electrons can directly influence each other. In these instances, electrons can flow collectively like a fluid.
Now, physicists at MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science have observed electrons flowing in vortices, or whirlpools — a hallmark of fluid flow that theorists predicted electrons should exhibit, but that has never been seen until now.
“Electron vortices are expected in theory, but there’s been no direct proof, and seeing is believing,” says Leonid Levitov, professor of physics at MIT. “Now we’ve seen it, and it’s a clear signature of being in this new regime, where electrons behave as a fluid, not as individual particles.”
The observations, reported in the journal Nature, could inform the design of more efficient electronics.
“We know when electrons go in a fluid state, [energy] dissipation drops, and that’s of interest in trying to design low-power electronics,” Levitov says. “This new observation is another step in that direction.”
Levitov is a co-author of the new paper, along with Eli Zeldov and others at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel and the University of Colorado at Denver.
A collective squeeze
When electricity runs through most ordinary metals and semiconductors, the momenta and trajectories of electrons in the current are influenced by impurities in the material and vibrations among the material’s atoms. These processes dominate electron behavior in ordinary materials.
But theorists have predicted that in the absence of such ordinary, classical processes, quantum effects should take over. Namely, electrons should pick up on each other’s delicate quantum behavior and move collectively, as a viscous, honey-like electron fluid. This liquid-like behavior should emerge in ultraclean materials and at near-zero temperatures.
In 2017, Levitov and colleagues at the University of Manchester reported signatures of such fluid-like electron behavior in graphene, an atom-thin sheet of carbon onto which they etched a thin channel with several pinch points. They observed that a current sent through the channel could flow through the constrictions with little resistance.
This suggested that the electrons in the current were able to squeeze through the pinch points collectively, much like a fluid, rather than clogging, like individual grains of sand.
This first indication prompted Levitov to explore other electron fluid phenomena. In the new study, he and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute for Science looked to visualize electron vortices. As they write in their paper, “the most striking and ubiquitous feature in the flow of regular fluids, the formation of vortices and turbulence, has not yet been observed in electron fluids despite numerous theoretical predictions.”
Channeling flow
To visualize electron vortices, the team looked to tungsten ditelluride (WTe2), an ultraclean metallic compound that has been found to exhibit exotic electronic properties when isolated in single-atom-thin, two-dimensional form.
“Tungsten ditelluride is one of the new quantum materials where electrons are strongly interacting and behave as quantum waves rather than particles,” Levitov says. “In addition, the material is very clean, which makes the fluid-like behavior directly accessible.”
The researchers synthesized pure single crystals of tungsten ditelluride, and exfoliated thin flakes of the material. They then used e-beam lithography and plasma etching techniques to pattern each flake into a center channel connected to a circular chamber on either side. They etched the same pattern into thin flakes of gold — a standard metal with ordinary, classical electronic properties.
They then ran a current through each patterned sample at ultralow temperatures of 4.5 kelvins (about -450 degrees Fahrenheit) and measured the current flow at specific points throughout each sample, using a nanoscale scanning superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) on a tip. This device was developed in Zeldov’s lab and measures magnetic fields with extremely high precision. Using the device to scan each sample, the team was able to observe in detail how electrons flowed through the patterned channels in each material.
The researchers observed that electrons flowing through patterned channels in gold flakes did so without reversing direction, even when some of the current passed through each side chamber before joining back up with the main current. In contrast, electrons flowing through tungsten ditelluride flowed through the channel and swirled into each side chamber, much as water would do when emptying into a bowl. The electrons created small whirlpools in each chamber before flowing back out into the main channel.
“We observed a change in the flow direction in the chambers, where the flow direction reversed the direction as compared to that in the central strip,” Levitov says. “That is a very striking thing, and it is the same physics as that in ordinary fluids, but happening with electrons on the nanoscale. That’s a clear signature of electrons being in a fluid-like regime.”
The group’s observations are the first direct visualization of swirling vortices in an electric current. The findings represent an experimental confirmation of a fundamental property in electron behavior. They may also offer clues to how engineers might design low-power devices that conduct electricity in a more fluid, less resistive manner.
This research was supported, in part, by the European Research Council, the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development, and by the Israel Science Foundation.
IMAGE….Long predicted but never observed, fluid-like electron whirlpools could be leveraged for next-gen low-power electronics. Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT
