By Kate Woods, Galactic Sandbox Writer-At-Large and Agnett Bonwit, Galactic Sandbox Managing Editor

January 20, 2016

It’s 2016, and what a year this past one has been for space endeavors!  If we are to learn anything from 2015, we can expect the political tenor this year to be, once again, bat crap crazy, punctuated with a noisy boom in space privatization.

Space-X’s Falcon 9 rocket rolling out for launch last week.

The most prominent among those in the space enterprise scramble, at the moment, is Space X.  Elon Musk’s rocket company keeps making headlines: it had a big finale flourish last year with the first successful launch and landing of the Falcon 9 rocket from, and back to, Cape Canaveral. Musk’s firm then jumped right out of the gate in the new year with a fat contract to resupply the space station with their Dragon cargo capsule (along with Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser and Orbital ATK’s Cygnus), and for a brief moment on Sunday, January 17, the firm was poised to add an additional feather in its cap as the Falcon 9 touched down on an ocean barge 200 miles west of San Diego after successfully launching and depositing

Sierra Nevada’s proposed Dream Chaser space taxi.

into orbit an ocean surveillance satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA,

Unfortunately, the Falcon 9 rocket narrowly missed its mark, and during the wobbly touchdown the $60 million-rocket broke one of its landing legs and the craft toppled over on the deck of the barge instead of resting upright, and then kablooyed into a fiery explosion.

Still, launching vehicles into orbit to deliver payloads, guiding them back to a specific point on Earth, and landing them safely and reusing them is a tremendous victory only Space X has accomplished so far.  It’s a major advancement that will cut costs in space exploration.

Continuing to look on the bright side, the successfully-launched Jason-3 sat, a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency, will take measurements of ocean wave heights using radar altimetry, tracking essential information about rising sea levels encroaching coastal communities.

And as we know, that’s sure to make Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and his climate-change denying Baby Hermans on the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee go ape.  Perhaps the committee will try to subpoena ESA’s emails and phone calls – as they tried to with NOAA and NASA Earth scientists, an intrusive unreasonable demand to which the agencies refused.  Whaaahh!

H a t t e r B u z z

That provides a nice segue to our next announcement….Drum roll / fingernails running across blackboard, please!…. Introducing a very special Galactic Sandbox first:

Ta Da!

The 2015 Tin Foil Hatter’s Contest!

Awards season is upon us, so we’ve decided to join the pomp and splendor, and conduct our own “people’s choice” extravaganza in which our intrepid readers get to pick which headline grabbing entity in space news gets to wear the dubious crown of being the biggest, greediest, galactically destructive moron of all time (at least for 2015).

The Galactic Sandbox team at one time reserved its special Tin Foil Hatter of the Week award to “true believers” of very refutable UFO assertions.  Then we realized that certain political factions and corporations were operating on far far worse assumptions that outdid anything a harmless typical Tin Foil Hatter could come up with.  With that in mind, here are 2015’s three top contenders:

Hatter #1:  Greedy asteroid miners, in particular, Chris Lewicki, the CEO of Planetary Resources, for defying the U.N. Outer Space Treaty of 1986.

Deep Space Industries’ proposed asteroid harvester

By the end of the year, Congress deregulated any obstacles for corporations to mine objects in space with abandon.  A few legal scholars have tried to remind lawmakers that this flies in the face of the U.N. Outer Space Peace Treaty of 1986, which precludes any nation or entity from “owning” heavenly bodies – to no avail.  The Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act passed in November paves the way for companies to demolish any asteroids they can get their hands on, and last one there is a rotten egg.

And if you think this is going to be an orderly, responsible manifest destiny romp to infinity and beyond, one should chew on the following quip from Lewicki:

“You look at the Old West, and it wasn’t just miners that had success going out to pan for gold,” he says. “You had saloon operators popping up because there was an opportunity to serve those miners, and towns expanding. And you have to think of it that way that the expansion of an economic industry in space is going to support a lot more than just us. There are going to be people capitalizing and thriving off of what the industry will create.”

YEE HAW!  Let the plundering begin.

Aerial shot of Southern California catastrophic methane leak.

Hatter #2:  Southern California Gas, for telling the L.A. Basin and thousands of residents of Porter Ranch, CA to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  When families complained of constant migraines, nose bleeds and dire sickness, the energy conglomerate insisted a tiny gas leak could not be causing the problems.  Then it was discovered that a ruptured casing in a gas well was letting loose massive amounts of the gas methane and cancer-causing benzene and toluene into the atmosphere, 24-7, since at least October – some residents say much longer, making it the second largest environmental disaster since the 2010 BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Porter Ranch resident’s simple plea.

And the greenhouse gas is still pouring out, causing schools to close down and the evacuation of 30,000 people in the Porter Ranch area – turning the community into a virtual ghost town.  The leak has taken up one-fourth of California’s greenhouse emissions cap, the equivalent of 7 million more cars on L.A.s freeways or six coal-burning plants.  The company says the well cannot be fixed until April at the earliest (now it’s saying late February, but unlike Porter Ranch residents, I wouldn’t hold your breath).  NASA had to get special permission from the FAA to fly over the mess to assess the catastrophe, since the area was declared a no-fly zone!

The topper to it all is that we all know no one in Southern California Gas (or its parent company Sempra Energy) will be held accountable for destroying a sizable chunk of the state’s environment.  Putrid.

Hatter #3:  Congressman Lamar Smith and his House Committee on Space, Science and Technology, for their witch-hunting against Earth climatologists at NOAA and NASA for allowing the public to see their data affirming that global warming is real.

Lamar Smith and U.S. House Committee on Space, Science and Technology perform witch hunt on environmental scientists.

Smith and his Republican-heavy Committee (which oversees the budgets for both NASA and NOAA) has long been beating the drum against scientists who monitor the planet’s atmosphere and environments for several years, but 2015 saw an out and out war waged when Smith attempted to subpoena emails and internal documents of Earth scientists in both agencies.  Smith held special closed-door hearings against the heads of Earth monitoring divisions, and so far, the agency heads have told Smith to go stuff it, refusing to comply with the demands.  Smith is threatening to withhold federal funds for Earth monitoring, and has gone so far as to say that NASA and NOAA  have “doctored” their climate warming findings.

One question we have about this cauldron of bile:  When are Smith and the Committee going to be sued for libel?

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And there you have the top contenders for the Galactic Sandbox Tin Foil Hatter Contest of 2015.  We know it’s a tough, agonizing decision choosing between such heavyweights, all of who righteously deserve the honor of wearing the tin foil crown with pride!  But please folks, make your voices heard and VOTE (or at least write in your personal favorite). Our poll below will be open 11:59 pm EST on February 5th! (Poll closed)

I know whom I’m voting for…

H i t  o r  M i s s

I assume you all paused to cast your vote in the Tin Foil Hatter of the Year Contest, so you can now don your titanium-encrusted hard hat as we celebrate the fact that NASA has finally created a formal office where the sole mission is to protect Earth from incoming asteroids.  It’s called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and the head of this effort, the “planetary defense director,” will basically manage the traffic of info between government agencies to determine where, when and how big the threat may be, and will have the power to call in FEMA if need be.

No, the office will not prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth, which is scary when one ponders the 1,500 near-Earth objects that are detected, mostly by NASA, each year.  Surprisingly, NASA did manage to get $50 million dedicated for the detection and observation of such space chunks for fiscal year 2016 – up tenfold since 2010.  (How that escaped Lamar Smith’s Eye of Sauron gaze is another wonder.)

NASA’s envisioned Asteroid Redirect Mission.

The real hero that will probably end up saving this planet is NASA’s proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission, which will use a gravity tractor method by placing a big boulder in front of an asteroid to pull it slightly off trajectory.  Unfortunately, there is no launch date yet and estimates for that is perhaps “several decades.”

By then we may all be fried like the dinosaurs, with the Earth sporting a Montana-sized hole in it.

N e w  K i d  O n  t h e  B l o c k?

Two Caltech astronomers announced Wednesday in The Astronomical Journal they have the strongest evidence yet that an elusive “Planet X” resides in the boondocks of our Solar System far beyond Neptune. According to Science, planetary scientists Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown were ready to deflect the inevitable ridicule for championing the existence a ninth planet orbiting the Sun (Pluto debate aside). “If you say, ‘We have evidence for Planet X,’ almost any astronomer will say, ‘This again? These guys are clearly crazy.’ I would, too,” Brown says. “Why is this different? This is different because this time we’re right.”

According to Batygin and Brown, the yet unseen planet is nearly as large as Neptune, and orbits the Sun every 15,000 years. Ironically, Brown is infamously known as the “Planet Slayer” and author of the book, How I Killed Pluto, discovered the planetoid Eris in 2005, which led to Pluto’s demotion to a dwarf planet. “Killing Pluto was fun, but this is head and shoulders above everything else,” Brown quipped.

C a t c h i n g  S o m e  R a y s

Jupiter-bound solar-powered Juno probe.

NASA’s Juno probe broke a record last week in becoming the farthest traveled solar-powered craft when it surpassed the space agency’s Rosetta craft’s odometer of 493 million miles, as Juno “putts” it’s way on to Jupiter.

Launched in 2011, Juno is slated to arrive at the gas giant on July 4th, where it will go on to orbit the planet 33 times and gather data about Jupiter’s origins and atmosphere.  The craft is equipped with three 30-foot-long solar arrays and 18,696 solar cells.

W a k e – u p  C a l l

NASA’s Philae craft beached on comet.

Speaking of the Rosetta spacecraft, NASA made a final attempt to revive its Philae lander – which is not responding, and is currently stuck on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

JPL operators tried to send commands to Philae to spin its internal flywheel, hoping to dislodge the gizmo, which has been marooned on the same spot, apparently dead, since November.

B l o o m i n g  P r o b l e m

Lake Erie toxic algae bloom shot by NASA.

People living in Ohio should be glad to hear that NASA is stepping up to save their drinking water from a massive and toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie.  The NASA Glenn Research Center – known for tackling aquatic problems with new water technologies – will not only monitor the bloom closely but also propose specific methods to actually fix the poisonous problem.  After the Erie Lake turned bright green in the summer of 2014, Toledo had to issue a ban on drinking water for two days, and the crisis is far from over. The poison is caused by phosphorus run-off from Big Ag fields during heavy rains.

NASA Glenn has already equipped a plane to assess the water quality of the great lake – or lake thereof – which has the advantage of flying under cloud cover, unlike Earth monitoring satellites.The center has already built a portable device that can kill micro-organisms by injecting plasma into the water with bursts of electricity. NASA is also looking into biological methods such as planting prairie grass in strips on the edges of farm fields.  Prairie grass likes to eat phosphorus, and can cut the phosphorus run-off by 90 percent.

C e l e s t i a l  L i n e – u p

Grab your Newtonian, Dobsonian, opera glasses, etc, because beginning today, the brightest planets from Earth’s perspective will be be visible in the night sky at the same time for the next month. The best view of the fab five (Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter) is expected to occur on the morning of February 5 (see below).

Z i n n i a n a u t

And to end on a sweet note, we take you to the International Space Station, where it was announced that the first flower has been grown in outer space: a zinnia.  It hasn’t been easy, according to the ISS astronauts.  Zero gravity is hard on plant growth, and the flower crops were over-saturated with water and then dried out too fast with fans.

First flower bloom in space.

But the third flower attempt was the charm, and astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted a photo of the bloom to the world on Monday.