Michael West’s Blog

Last Friday a film crew and reporter from ABC’s science show, Catalyst, visited our lab to do a story on the Helicon Double Layer Thruster. They interviewed my supervisors, Prof Rod Boswell and Dr Christine Charles, and filmed my experiment in operation. I disconnected the thruster so they could also take some shots of it on a bench while the reporter, Graeme Phillips, explained the components and how it worked. It is unlikely I will feature in the story and if I do it will just be footage of me carrying and installing the thruster in the vacuum chamber. I took a few photos of the film crew doing there stuff, which are below. When we know when the story will air on the ABC I will let people know.

Remember the story of Chicken Little? Well, something like that was probably going through the mind of the pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340, which was travelling between Santiago, Chile, and Auckland, New Zealand the other night. He notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane about 10pm. It was loud enough that it could be heard over the sound of the A340’s engines so it was obviously going supersonic which is not uncommon for material re-entering the atmosphere. The inital reports from the SMH suggested that it was the remains of an unmanned Russian Progress 23P craft that had been docked at the International Space Station since October to supply fuel, oxygen and repair parts. However, AP reports that the Russian Space Agency have since confirmed that the Progress spacecraft was still docked to the ISS at the time and completed a controlled de-orbit and burn up over the region some 12 hours after the reported incident. So what it actually was remains to be determined but given several tonnes of meteoritic material hit Earth every day, mostly landing in the sea, it is likely to be a meteorite of some description.
Just for the record, Lottie Williams is on record as the first and only (as of September 2006) person ever to be hit by space debris created by humans. While walking in a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on January 22, 1997 at 3:30 am, she noticed a light in the sky that she said looked like a meteor. Minutes later, Williams was hit in the shoulder by a 6-inch blackened metal object that was later confirmed to be part of the fuel tank of a Delta II rocket which had launched a U.S. Air Force satellite in 1996. Ms. Williams was not injured. On October 10, 2006, a cottage in Germany was burned down by a fire that was believed to be started by a small explosion (no more than 10mm) from a meteorite exploding upon impact. A 77 year old man was badly injured by the fire. The only reported fatality from meteorite impacts is an Egyptian dog who was killed in 1911, although this report is disputed. The first known modern case of a human hit by a space rock occurred on November 30, 1954 in Sylacauga, Alabama. There a 4 kg stone chondrite crashed through a roof and hit Ann Hodges in her living room after it bounced off her radio. She was badly bruised. Several persons have since claimed to have been struck by ‘meteorites’ but no verifiable meteorites have resulted.

I have been living in Canberra for a little over a year now and every time I head back to Sydney and catch up with friends I’m always asked something along the lines of “so are you surviving Canberra” almost as if I’m inflicted with some terrible terminal disease! This is just an extension of the comments I got prior to moving here, some of which included:

“Canberra is full of politicans and public servants - how boring!”

“Canberra has no night life and there is nothing to do!”

“Canberra is such a hole!”

“Canberra - why on Earth would you want to go there!”

Well, in 14 months I am yet to meet a politican here, thankfully, and the closest I have come is seeing the Chief of Army’s car drive down my street complete with ARMY 1 number plates. As far as night life is concerned I have been to more pubs in Canberra than I ever went to in Sydney and I can confidently say that if I wanted to I would have at least two invitations to do things every night of the week. Yes, geographically, Canberra is a hole - a beautiful valley just east of the magnificent Brindabella ranges. And why would I want to move here? Well, there were lots of reasons but I think the following article from the Sydney Morning Herald sums a lot of it up…

A Capital Idea For Getting Out Of The Rat Race

by Kerry Palmer - March 23, 2007

“WHAT do you think about moving to Canberra?” my husband asked. I looked at him as if someone had died.” Yeah, right. Over my dead body.”

(more…)

Today is Christina’s 24th birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTINA! I wish I could be with you in Brisbane today to celebrate.

Apologies for the photo. It was taken at the wedding of some friends of ours (Cameron & Tamira) while we were being attacked by bubbles. Photos both of us with our eyes open and smiling at the same time are very rare. Its not that we don’t smile when we are together, its more that I squint heaps and Christina doesn’t like being photographed. If anyone has photos of us together please send them my way as I have a lot less than I should.

Well that just about sums up my morning of tutoring!

On this day 24 years ago in Hornsby Hospital, Sydney I was born! Mum tells me that it was raining when I entered the world just after midnight on March 16th, so I guess it was fitting that it was raining this morning when I looked out the window. Lets hope the rain sticks around for a while and helps to ease the drought. Thank you to those of you who have called and emailed me today. Your kind wishes are appreciated.

Does anyone know of anything particularly interesting that happened on this day in history, aside from my birth ? Please post a comment if you do.

A German aviator has designed a set of jet powered wings for personal flight! The specs are pretty impressive. They have an endurance of 5 minutes, a speed range of 120 - 300 km/hr and a climb rate of 10000 ft/min at 100 knots. Check out this amazing video of Jetman! I’ll try and find some more details on the web over the weekend. Enjoy!

Thanks to Devin for lettting me know about this.

Last night was the annual SkyFire fireworks display over Lake Burley Griffin. It is run by FM 104.7 and this year featured an F111-C doing its trademark dump and burn trick over the lake. I went up to Mt Pleasant and joined a few hundred other people to watch the fireworks. Fireworks are nortoriously difficult to photograph but I did manage to get a few good photos. Sadly, none of the shots of the F111 were all that good. It was a bit too bright for the camera to cope with. Very spectacular though!

(more…)

One of the joys of living in Canberra is that every few months a bunch of aircraft do fly overs of the city. Today was the Open Day for the Australian War Memorial and so we were treated to fly overs by several Navy helicopters, a RAAF C-130 Hercules and F/A-18 Hornet (shown above) and several historical aircraft from the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society, which are based in Albion Park near Wollongong. So I headed up to Mount Ainslie which is directly behind the War Memorial and took a few photos which are below. It was a spectacular display!

(more…)