Dragon on Falcon 9 (SpaceX): Dragon, made and launched by the private company SpaceX, will demonstrate approach to and docking with the International Space Station per their COTS contract. Currently the target launch date is 7 February, but this may be pushed back by a few days (the launch window each day is pretty small). Upon launch, the unmanned capsule will synchronize orbit with Station, practice maneuvers at a safe distance, and finally approach for docking. Astronauts aboard the station will grab Dragon with the Canadarm2 (eh!), and guide it to the PMA-2 dock on Node 2, between the European and Japanese lab modules (at least, that’s what the SpaceX pictures show). This will be the first time a privately-owned spacecraft has docked with Station.

The Falcon 9 rocket is also made by SpaceX; it is a two-stage rocket with nine LOX/kerosene engines in the first stage,  and one LOX/kerosene engine in the second. Both Dragon and Falcon 9 are currently at Cape Canaveral in preparation for the launch.

Vega (ESA/Arianespace): Vega, a new rocket manufactured by Arianespace, will see its first flight within the next two months (hopefully). Its target launch date is currently 9 February. Slightly smaller than a Shuttle booster rocket (SRB), it is a four-stage rocket designed to carry payloads up to 1500 kg (3300 lbs) into polar and low-earth orbits. The first three stages are solid rockets, burning an AP/Al/HTPB composite (HTPB 1912). The last stage, to maneuver the payload, has a liquid UDMH/NTO engine. Currently due to be fired in late January/early February, Vega will carry two satellites and nine CubeSats into orbit from ESA’s launch site in French Guiana.

Antares (Orbital): Orbital’s vehicle for their COTS contract is the Antares rocket. A two-stage rocket, its first test flight is currently set for sometime during the first quarter of 2012, probably in February or March; it will fly from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The first stage is powered by an NK-33 (AJ-26) engine, bought and modified by Aerojet from Russia and propelled by LOX/kerosene. (I got to see a bunch of them when I was out at Aerojet.) ATK’s Castor 30 solid rocket engine will take the second stage to orbit, carrying the Cygnus spacecraft.

Less exciting: China is due to put up satellites on two Long March rockets (4B and 3A) in January; the U.S. will launch satellites on a Delta IV and Atlas V in January and February; and Japan will launch an H-2A carrying Japanese and South Korean satellites to orbit. Russia, proud provider of space access to the world, will launch three Protons and one Soyuz rocket in January and February, carrying communications and government services satellites. Its clients include Sirius XM Radio and Al Yah Satellite Communications of Abu Dhabi.

Russia’s Phobos-Grunt coming down: The failed Russian Mars probe, which never made it out of Earth’s orbit, is forecast to break up upon reentry, sometime between 10 and 20 January. Expect excited trackers on Twitter (#PhobosGrunt) and elsewhere, much like the UARS satellite reentry. Acclaimed space photographer Thierry Legault has been able to capture video of the probe in its decaying orbit.

Fortunately, the Russians say that the tanks containing the UDMH/NTO propellants, both of which are very toxic, are aluminum. They are predicted to fail as the spacecraft plummets downward, allowing the propellants to burn up in the atmosphere. (Four years ago, a US satellite carried hydrazine, similar to UDMH, in a titanium tank. Based on the predicted survival of the fuel, the satellite was shot down.)

One more thing: NASA has released a collection of high-resolution photos from the Gemini missions. Take a look at the link (Wired), they’re pretty awesome.

I hope that your Christmas season was wonderful and that your 2012 has gotten off to a roaring start! I’d love to hear what is new and exciting in your lives, so please feel free to write me a note at any time. My schedule has finally slowed down, giving me time to send you my yearly update. Highlights include research, graduating, job hunting, and a boyfriend!

The majority of my time this past year was occupied with doing propulsion research at Purdue. I was doing an experimental study of the flame structure in combusting droplets of monomethyl hydrazine (a rocket fuel), so I got to make fire and film it with a high-speed movie camera, like Mythbusters. The Mythbusters don’t have to write a Master’s thesis, though. I started writing mine in March, intending to graduate in August. However, it soon became clear that a good thesis would require that my defense date be pushed back to October.

I also wrote a paper for the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference in San Diego. I flew out there with the rest of my lab at the end of July. Besides presenting my paper, doing some networking, and going to a party on an aircraft carrier (the U.S.S. Midway), I got to visit SpaceX and see some friends and my aunt’s family! The academic side of my life concluded with my defense in mid-October, a frantic all-nighter making the corrections that my committee wanted, and finally the depositing of my thesis.

A quick glance at my non-academic activities at Purdue: February’s much-anticipated Snowpocalyse didn’t really materialize, but did dump enough snow in Indiana to go sledding and birth The Rocket Sled, which produced some great stories. Ask me about it, or see my photo album on Facebook. For spring break in March, I organized a backpacking trip with a few friends in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio. It was cold. And awesome.

My sister graduated from the Rice University astrophysics program in May, so I had a wonderful weekend down in Houston catching up with old friends. Also, by Easter, I had been on 1.5 dates with a friend from the Mechanical Engineering department, Andy. He came down to Texas with me in July to meet my parents. We also visited Houston; I gave him the VIP tour of Rice and downtown. Just recently, we took a ski trip. It was an amazing time – I’d never been skiing before, though, so I had a lot of “oh-no-I’m-going-to-die” moments.

Every year, my church in Indiana hosts a Vacation Bible School for elementary-aged children. I got to help on the drama team this year. Singing and jumping up and down for ten minutes straight are both super fun and exhausting! The Intervarsity Christian Fellowship Graduate chapter was again a big part of my life this year; we were praying that God would help us develop a real sense of community, and it’s been wonderful to see how the group has grown both larger and closer.

From mid-November to mid-December, I headed southeast to Wycliffe Bible Translator’s JAARS center near Charlotte, North Carolina. Searching for a job includes a lot of waiting, so I figured that I might as well do something useful in that time. I applied for jobs in the evenings, and volunteered during day. The JAARS center supports, among other things, mission aviation. Light aircraft and helicopters are used to deliver supplies and support Bible translators in extremely remote areas, such as the mountains of Indonesia. I divided my time between programming modifications to a pilot recruiting database and doing high-level concept work on things such as autonomously controlled parachutes.

Currently, I’m still looking for a job. I’ve had a few site interviews, one of which allowed me to see my uncle and his family in December. Shameless plug: If you know of anybody that needs an aerospace engineer/rocket scientist, send them my way!

I wish you the very best in the coming year. Let me know what is new in your lives! As always, if you’d like to glance at what I’m doing, my blog is at http://aglassdarkly.wordpress.com

Stay in touch!

“It was after the end of the rainy season, about November, and we were going to land in this game preserve in Burkina Faso. I knew approximately where the runway was, but the grass had grown tall with the rain, and completely covered it. I made a pass over the field, trying to see where the runway might be. I found it – at least I think I did; it was hard to tell – and circled around to land. After I touched down and cut the throttle, one of the front wheels (it was a taildragger aircraft) dropped into a deep hole that had been rooted out by a warthog – remember, everything was overgrown with grass. I looked over at the wing, and the impact had shoved a spar from the landing gear up through the wing. It was a mess, and I was not going to be able to fly that plane out of there. I taxied it in to the airfield and tied it down for storage. We’d have to get a new wing built.

“A message that the plane was damaged was sent back to the SIM base [Jim's mission]. We couldn’t get through to Niamey [in Niger] directly, so it had to be sent by way of Air Maroc and a few other airfield towers. I had just met my future wife, too – she had come out to Niger for short-term service. She said that the girl who delivered the final message to her was as white as a sheet; the word that had come through to Niamey was that my plane was down, with no news of any survivors. At a small operation like ours, the loss of a pilot and plane would be devastating.” Jim laughed. “My wife must have thought, shoot, I just met this guy, and I kind of liked him, too! But we got that cleared up.

“Our base director drove down the next day to get us. It was a short flight, but a long drive – eleven hours over really terrible roads. To make matters worse, a military coup had just happened in Burkina Faso, so the borders were completely closed. However, he was a French speaker, so he managed to get through the border and pick us up. We left the plane there and drove back to Niamey.

“We didn’t get the new wing built and crated for transport until February. After dealing with all of the paperwork, we finally drove back down, another eleven hours, to airfield at the game preserve. When we saw it, our hearts just sank. The airfield was completely burned over, black with ash.

“The guy at the airfield came out to meet us. He looked at us and said, ‘It was the strangest thing. We had a fire out here. It went straight down the airfield, but when it got to your plane -’” Jim made a diverging motion with his hands “‘- it just went around it and kept going.’”

I stared at Jim. “So there was a circle of unburned grass around the airplane?”

“Yup. It wasn’t big, just enough to clear the wingtips – it was the freakiest thing. We got the wing on and flew the plane out, but God … God protected that plane.”

* * * * *

This will be my last half-week here at JAARS; I’m heading home for Christmas! Please pray for my travels as I wrap up and drive my car up to Indiana. I also had a site interview with Aerojet this past week, so please pray for that process as well.

“When I was based out of Niamey, Niger,” he started, (things in quotes are more paraphrase than direct quotation) “there was a little boy, about three years old, who loved airplanes. His parents were with World Vision, working up in the desert with the Tuareg people, and every time they came to Niamey he would run around the hangar and look at all the airplanes.

“The World Vision base was out in the desert about two hundred miles north of Niamey. One evening, they had a party or celebration there, and all of the kids were playing around outside. Well, in the dark, this little boy ran across the cover of a dry well – it was rotted through, and gave way. He fell thirty feet, straight down. When the adults lowered someone down on a rope to pull him out, the three-year-old was completely unconscious, and his head was starting to swell. They sent a radio call out to Niamey for Jim to take him to the clinic, and for a plane to be ready to take him to Europe for treatment, if needed.

“I had gone home for the evening, but I had left my phone number for the radio operator. He could have looked it up, but it was a lot quicker when he saw a piece of paper on his desk with ‘JIM’ in big letters and a contact number.

“I was in my plane within ten minutes. The radio contact with World Vision was really bad; there was a lot of dust in the air. I turned on the radio and asked the operator how many cars they had out there in the desert. The answer came back eventually: three. I told the operator, ‘Have them drive the cars out to the runway with their headlights on – put one at the end of the runway, and put the other two at the touchdown point, at 45-degree angles with their lights intersecting.’ It was dark, and dusty, and there was no other way I was going to find their runway.

“Our radio navigation systems were preprogrammed with some of the locations we flew to, but it was an old system and only provided an approximate location. When I got to the place the World Vison base was supposed to be, I couldn’t see anything. I circled around and finally saw three little lights off in the distance. I couldn’t think of anything else those lights would be, so I headed for those and came down on the runway.

“The little boy was unconscious, with a bunch of bruises. His head had a big lump on the side of it. As they brought him on board, I told him, ‘Uncle Jim’s here to give you an airplane ride!’ and he opened his eyes a little. His mother started crying. It was the first response anyone had been able to get out of him.

“They took care of him at the Niamey clinic; he didn’t have to be flown to Europe. He actually recovered in just a few weeks – he had no memory of what had happened, of course. But that little guy loved airplanes.”

Here are some prayer requests:
1. One of the guys in the hangar has cancer and is being treated with chemotherapy. He had a bad reaction to one of the treatments and has been hospitalized – please pray for his healing!
2. The Wanca (I believe) Quechua New Testament was published last year (printed and audio), and now the churches are standing-room-only! There have been many requests for the Old Testament, and a workshop will be held for potential national/indigeneous translators on 9 December. Please pray for this and for a group of women who are writing simple versions of Old Testament stories (which involves a lot of cross-cultural interpretation).

I heard a number of stories last week, so I’ll spread them out over the next few days. I also met some people:

Ray is a pilot-mechanic serving in Cameroon. I’d guess he’s in his mid-thirties; he and his family are at the JAARS center to do his recertifications. (Most of the pilots that JAARS picks to serve overseas have to have extensive flying hours, as well as the FAA Airframe and Powerplant mechanic certifications.) He’s pretty tall, and nearly bald, and when I met him near my apartment on Tuesday he was taking out the trash. He recognized me from the aviation department meeting on Monday, and stopped to say hello. We got to talking, and it turns out that his father is a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, so he knows some people at Purdue. The base in Cameroon, he told me, has a Robinson R44 helicopter and three light aircraft, including a Cessna 206. (We’ve got a PC-6 in the hangar that will be ready to go back there soon.) They had been working out of a really old, small hangar until recently, when they finished work on a new hangar. However, they’re still pretty understaffed. Cameroon is the only base that Wycliffe/JAARS has in Africa, although the different mission aviation organizations do work together.

I had dinner that evening with Tammy and Brian, who are an outdoorsy young couple with two little sons. They only arrived here a few months ago, so they’re still getting settled into one of the apartments on Center. Brian is from Illinois; he’s working in the Language Software Department here. The department (with its unfortunate acronym) has people at JAARS and at Dallas, which also includes my Dad. Their software tools help to organize cultural data, create dictionaries, and do the actual work of Bible translation.

On Tuesday, I was working to dig up some old documentation about using our landing gear strut alignment jig. One of the Helio Couriers in the hangar is from the Indonesia base; it’s being refitted and generally checked out. (I took a picture of it; it’s the one at the beginning of this post.) Helio stopped making these planes in 1974, so JAARS  has had to learn to machine what components are no longer available (which means: almost all of them). They’re tailwheel aircraft, so they have two landing gear under the cockpit, and one wheel under the tail. We had one of the front gear off to check for alignment, and Don, one of the mechanics, wanted to get it back on the plane, so he didn’t have to leave it propped up on wooden crates overnight. We got the strut checked, and it was okay, so he reinstalled it. In the process, he told me why the Helio had gotten bashed up.

There were three valleys leading into the base, and the pilot, on this particular day, went down the wrong one. Hemmed in by mountains on both sides, he didn’t realize that the airstrip at the end of the valley was too short until it was too late. By “too short”, I mean that there was a mountain at the end of the airstrip (this is pretty common in jungle pilot stories). There was also a brick wall in the side of the mountain at the end of the airstrip, possibly a retaining wall – and the Helio was headed straight for it. It was touching down, but there was still no way to bleed off the speed quickly enough.

“The pilot wanted to save the the propeller,” Don told me – understandable, since propellers can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and having a brick wall push an engine into your lap does not make for a good day. “So he pulled a ground loop and ran the tail into the wall. Quick thinking.” (Ground loops are when the plane is spun around, while still on the ground; they usually are caused by, or end up with, things breaking.) A tail is easier to replace than an engine.

While you’re thinking about Cameroon and Indonesia, here’s some ways to pray for them (the links go to information pages on the JAARS website):

1. Central Africa and Nigeria are home to more than 20% of the languages without the Bible. In March, the Chrambo translation of Luke was released in the Bambalang language – pray for the continuing work as the rest of the New Testament is translated.
2. There are more than 700 languages in the Indonesia region! In addition to the needs there, please keep the family of Paul Westlund in your prayers. Paul is a pilot who was killed in an airplane crash on September 22; this has impacted both his family, the missionaries in Indonesia, and the larger JAARS family.

Probably 50% or so of the people you meet on Center are volunteers, and most of those are retirement age. These are folks who are not content to sit by the pool with a beer and enjoy their money.

I went for a bike ride yesterday – the road here are neither straight nor flat, but they’re very well maintained. Well, either that, or the temperatures don’t get too extreme here. As the crow flies, the border with South Carolina is about two miles away, both to the south and to the west. So I rode into the next state. At the top of one of the steeper hills, the local bike shop has spray painted “OUCH!!” on the asphalt. Personally, I would have written “pant” or “burn” instead – it’s more descriptive of the post-climb feeling.

Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle. It’s just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes. – Airplane, 1980

The morning’s speaker was Dr. Jim Garlow, who pastors a church in San Diego. His doctorate is in historical theology, and he’s written several books, with Cracking the Da Vinci Code among them. His primary topic was “The American National Condition”, describing the establishment, domination, and then marginalization of the church in the United States; he described the three primary assaults on the church as being against procreation, marriage, and gender specificity. This leads to the question – what is a Christian to do about this?

The answer, he teaches, is to be “in the world, but not of it”. Christians are obligated to learn the language of secular culture and form relationships with the people in it. He gave a few examples of how he had done this, and challenged us to form a friendship with the person (that we know) who was most directly opposed to the Christian viewpoint. He also reminded us that the Bible gives us moral authority, as long as we stick to it and not our own opinions.

He also pointed out that, often, the desire to please or not offend people makes Christians shy away from political issues. Unfortunately, the issues of gender identity, gay marriage, and abortion are now politicizing what were once strictly Biblical issues. He is adamant that one should “render to Caesar only that which is Caesar’s”,  and that these (now political) issues should be addressed from the pulpit. I asked him, during the break, about his views on separation of church and state. In our democracy, he responded, civil, church, and family government all have the Scriptures as their foundation; however, their jurisdictions are different. Civil government is the only body that may take life. I think I agree with this, but I also don’t think that this viewpoint (Scriptural foundation) would make much sense to an atheist, so it comes down to a fundamental clash of worldviews.

Over the course of the morning, I met Dee, a grandmother who’s volunteered with Wycliffe for 19 years, and Vic. Vic is a former pilot who now works in the aviation and transportation departments; if you’re trying to picture him, think Sarek from the new Star Trek movie, but without Ben Cross’s cheekbones. One of the projects that he’s working on is a biofuel still. In Guinea Bissau especially, he told me, cashew nuts are a huge export, but their fruit is largely thrown away and wasted. There’s not much electricity or clean water, so they’re working on a simple, sustainable method of taking the cashew fruit and turning it into ethanol to run internal combustion engines for ground transportation. It sounds pretty cool, and he said he let me know the next time they did an experimental run.

I had a center tour in the afternoon, which I may elaborate more on later, and then I met Terry at the hangar. I’ll be working with/for him – as long as we’re sticking with the pop culture references, think Gibbs from NCIS. He himself has done a lot of sweet design work – more on that later. They have five light aircraft in the hangar right now, mostly destined for Africa. There’s a machine shop, engine shop, sheet metal shop, paint room, and avionics shop. I get the idea that about every other person I run into is a former pilot – it’s apparently common for them, instead of saying “Could you repeat that?” or “Sorry?” to respond, “Say again, over?” It made me laugh when that happened between Terry and a mechanic.

I obviously have plenty to write about, over the next few days!

“The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.“  -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Yesterday I made the drive from WL to Cleveland to see my former roommate, who had spent the day freezing in an icing wind tunnel – good times and good conversation, even if it was just for the evening! We were discussing Romans 14 a little bit, and the extent to which it condemns denominational divides. There are some issues that I haven’t fully thought through yet, such as infant and/or adult baptism, so I won’t really go into that here.

The drive itself was fairly uneventful. Last night it was pouring as I was coming into Cleveland, and visibility was so poor that I stopped under an overpass to wait it out. My boyfriend told me over the phone that there was a severe thunderstorm warning for the area; I was just glad that another car pulled in behind me, so my bike (on the back of my car) had a smaller chance of getting hit by passing vehicles. When I started driving again, I passed two sets of cars that had either run into each other or into the guardrail.

Today it rained for most of the day again, but the terrain gradually changed from foothills to mountains, and then back into hills. The Appalachians, being shorter than the Rockies, are less stark and more fuzzy. Well, okay, not fuzzy. They have trees on their tops. If you squint, or there are rain and clouds on top, they kind of look fuzzy. The roads were fun, but wet. I stopped every two or three hours, so the drive took about ten hours, I think.

My apartment is one of the furnished apartments they keep for volunteers and folks passing through. It’s very small and very cute. I admit I was expecting something darker and mustier, based on the one my family lived in for a few months in Dallas, but it’s quite light and cozy. The main room has a couch, table, chairs, and a tiny television (!) and a kitchen on one wall, and the bedroom has two twin beds and a nice bathroom. Half of my stuff is currently strewn all over, and the other half is in my car, but I’ll get everything shipshape tomorrow. When I walk outside, I can smell trees. It makes me happy.

Good night, world!

So what am I doing, exactly?

I’ve known for awhile that I’d like to take this time in between school and a “real job” to make an impact on present-day issues. I tossed around the idea of going to Afghanistan to work with women, realized that I’d be really bored if I weren’t around engineering or machines, and applied for a Fall 2011 internship with Engineering Ministries International. I was disappointed when that didn’t work out, but in hindsight it was actually good, as I didn’t finish my graduate work at the end of the summer. Right now, I have a nice little gap between finishing school and January, when I would expect a job to start. Adventure time!

Wycliffe Bible Translators currently works in more than 90 countries to translate the Bible into trade and indigenous languages. For cultures and tribes which have no written form of communication, their linguists and translators produce an alphabet and literacy materials. In addition, they also do very basic medical work and culture documentation. My parents have served with Wycliffe in computer programming and support for over 15 years.

Their Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, now know as just JAARS, provides support for translators and linguists “in the field” through the operation of light- and rotor-wing aircraft. They provide transportation for people, supplies, and medicine. Every kid in Wycliffe has probably wanted to be a jungle pilot at some point … because they’re the coolest people ever. These are the guys who land float planes on jungle rivers that are basically rapids, slaloming around rocks as they come in.

I’ll be helping out on the engineering and logistics side in North Carolina (that’s pretty much all I know; I’ll find out more when I get there). Unofficially, I’ll be hunting for stories that I can pass on to you on this blog, for both your entertainment and awareness. Currently, the plan is to set out on 14 November.

A few prayer requests, while I still have your attention:

• Traveling safety, of course
• Doing this long-distance relationship thing – both I and my boyfriend will find this difficult, I expect
• A good transition into a new life and schedule
• God’s continued work through Wycliffe and JAARS

And certainly praise for job interviews and the volunteer opportunity and housing being available! I think I’m okay financially, but please remember me in your prayers – it’s the greatest thing you can do for me.

I’d love to stay in touch with everyone at Purdue, so leave a comment or send me an email if you can!

“Christianity is like a nail. The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.” – Yemelian Yaroslavsky, chairman of Stalin’s League of the Militant Godless

So what am I doing, exactly?

I’ve known for awhile that I’d like to take this time in between school and a “real job” to make an impact on present-day issues. I tossed around the idea of going to Afghanistan to work with women, realized that I’d be really bored if I weren’t around engineering or machines, and applied for a Fall 2011 internship with Engineering Ministries International. I was disappointed when that didn’t work out, but in hindsight it was actually good, as I didn’t finish my graduate work at the end of the summer. Right now, I have a nice little gap between finishing school and January, when I would expect a job to start. Adventure time!

Wycliffe Bible Translators currently works in more than 90 countries to translate the Bible into trade and indigenous languages. For cultures and tribes which have no written form of communication, their linguists and translators produce an alphabet and literacy materials. In addition, they also do very basic medical work and culture documentation. My parents have served with Wycliffe in computer programming and support for over 15 years.

Their Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, now know as just JAARS, provides support for translators and linguists “in the field” through the operation of light- and rotor-wing aircraft. They provide transportation for people, supplies, and medicine. Every kid in Wycliffe has probably wanted to be a jungle pilot at some point … because they’re the coolest people ever. These are the guys who land float planes on jungle rivers that are basically rapids, slaloming around rocks as they come in.

I’ll be helping out on the engineering and logistics side in North Carolina (that’s pretty much all I know; I’ll find out more when I get there). Unofficially, I’ll be hunting for stories that I can pass on to you on this blog, for both your entertainment and awareness. Currently, the plan is to set out on 14 November.

A few prayer requests, while I still have your attention:

• Traveling safety, of course
• Doing this long-distance relationship thing – both I and my boyfriend will find this difficult, I expect
• A good transition into a new life and schedule
• God’s continued work through Wycliffe and JAARS

And certainly praise for job interviews and the volunteer opportunity and housing being available! I think I’m okay financially, but please remember me in your prayers – it’s the greatest thing you can do for me.

I’d love to stay in touch with everyone at Purdue, so leave a comment or send me an email if you can!

“Christianity is like a nail. The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.” – Yemelian Yaroslavsky, chairman of Stalin’s League of the Militant Godless