I had every intention of going back to bed after the four-minute flyover, but of course, I had to tweet about it and so got sucked into watching NASA’s coverage of the Dragon fly-under of the ISS.

Dragon capsule as viewed from the International Space Station, May 24, 2012.

That little gray dot at vertical center, left of horizontal center, is Dragon, just making its presence known. Just after I clicked the button to capture this screen shot, I saw a Dragon flare. Flares are fairly common with iridium satellites (you can use Heavens Above to track them), but I wasn’t expecting to see one this morning, even via the computer screen. You can see my excitement on twitter:

What happens when I try to type at stupid o'clock in the morning.

I snapped a photo of the bumblebee, but it’s even more apparent in NASA’s video of this morning’s ISS fly under. I wish they would’ve picked up the video earlier so you could hear Astronaut Don Petit’s call: “I’m looking at Dragon right now.”

Dragon's Solar Array.

Today was about testing the system. While the fly-under brought Dragon within 2.5 km of the ISS—in other words, exactly where it was supposed to be at the time—more exciting was the moment the capsule’s strobe light powered on in response to a command issued from the ISS. This confirms that the ISS astronauts can communicate with the capsule, a necessity when guiding it into its dock on Friday, May 25, 2012.

There was a lot of downtime in this morning’s broadcast. As you can see by my twitter feed, the images from the ISS were soothing and soporific. Initially, so were the images of Mission Control, but the longer I watched, the more fascinating those silent rooms seemed to me. Take a look at this screen capture of Mission Control at Houston:

International Space Station Mission Control, Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

A bunch of guys in long-sleeved dress shirts and ties, staring a very large arrays of computer monitors. From the above vantage point, those desks look completely useless, all that dead space behind the monitors. But when you look backward across the room…

ISS Mission Control, Houston, TX

…you can see that the desks operate as shelves for the people sitting in the rows just in front of them. Nice adaptation. Still, Mission Control looks like what you’d expect: desks, ties but no suit jackets (except that one guy!), staring at screens, looking as if they’re hidden in a bunker. The women in the room are the exception to the dress code. Today, the voice of Mission Control was wearing red:

Voice of ISS Mission Control, Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, May 24, 2012

You might also have noticed that NASA has tossed a few toy dragons around the room. Even so, nothing in this room really leaps out as “Not NASA.” NASA tends to update, never fully overhaul, their aesthetics and spatial arrangements. This point became very clear whenever SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, came on the screen.

SpaceX Mission Control, Hawthorne, California, May 24, 2012

That is not a room put together by NASA. That looks like every IT conference or training program I’ve ever attended, and I’ve attended a lot. I see a suit, but I also see the ubiquitous polo shirt and button-up short-sleeve dress shirt. And I swear that’s a baseball cap down front. I see light coming in through floor-to-ceiling glazing (check out Ian O’Neill’s launch day photo of the same space). No rigid rows—hierarchy is subtly undermined by those bent tables. We’re looking at an entirely different space culture than the one cultivated by NASA. A quick-and-dirty reading of the two Mission Controls could lead to the conclusion that private industry embraces transparent operations, while the NASA (the U.S. Government) still operates in Cold War super secrecy. I know this isn’t exactly true, but that’s the message the architecture is sending out. If I was NASA, and I wanted to be part of the future of space exploration, I’d do something about the contrast between the two images.

Dragon Fire. Image Credit: NASA/Alan Ault

You know how to tell you’re getting old? If you wake up at 3 a.m., realize a Falcon 9 rocket will be going up in 44 minutes, but don’t reach for the iPhone next to the bed because you’re too tired to watch a livestream of the launch, you might as well check yourself into the old folks home ’cause life is all downhill from there.

In my defense, I did stay up all night to watch SpaceX’s first launch attempt at 04:55 a.m. EDT on May 19, 2012. The launch scrubbed at T-0.5 because of a high combustion pressure reading (faulty check valve) on Engine 5. Lift off didn’t happen and I instantly fell asleep. Because the launch window was only one second long, SpaceX was forced to wait until May 22, 2012 for the next attempt. Remind me never to get involved in an operation that depends on a one-second launch window. That’s insane, really.

Today’s wallpaper shows the successful SpaceX launch from LC-40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 03:44 EDT yesterday (Tuesday, May 22, 2012). If you’re lucky and don’t need much sleep, you may be able to catch a glimpse of the Dragon capsule orbiting together with the International Space Station. Just pop over to the Heavens Above site, configure it for your current location, and follow the SpaceX/Dragon and ISS links in the “Satellites” category. The site will provide you with everything you need to know for a successful observation of an ISS/Dragon pass over: date, time, altitude-azimuth, and magnitude. We’re setting an alarm for tomorrow’s 03:59:59 EDT pass, when the Dragon capsule and the ISS will be only one degree apart.

Click on the image above to download standard sizes of wallpaper.

ETA: As Danny Sussman (@TheSuss) points out, if the times on Heavens Above seem wrong (the site isn’t recognizing Daylight Saving Time for my current location, for some reason), you can bring up flyover times on the NASA app if you have an iPhone or Android. NASA updated the iPhone version earlier this week. The update stalled out on my phone for a frighteningly long time, but once it went through, all was good and accurate.

26m Radio Telescope, Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory, Tasmania, Australia

Because you can never have too many radio telescopes, today’s wallpaper features the Hobart 26m antenna at Mount Pleasant Observatory.

Click on the image to go to the download page. Once on the download page, click the button “Give me the matching wallpaper” and follow the provided directions.

Rad Lab and Building 20 Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

In addition to trying to wrap up the typical end-of-the-semester tasks last week, I also made a quick trip to MIT (Cambridge, MA). I had a few hours to myself on either side of my meetings and I put those hours to good use by walking as much of campus as possible. Needless to say, MIT sits at the intersection of my primary research foci, architecture and science. Perhaps also needless to say, my first stop was the Stata Center, the most controversial building on campus (still, even though it opened in 2004).

Early dissent over the Stata Center had little to do with the design itself and a lot to do with emotional and intellectual attachment to the building it was slated to replace, Building 20. For the purposes of this site, the most notable thing about Building 20 was the fact that it once housed the Radiation Laboratory funded by the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). Although MIT’s involvement with military research was always seen as problematic by some (and those sentiments would increase during the Vietnam era), during World War II, Rad Lab became the control center for a global research network centered on applied microwave physics.[1] Most of the radar and microwave communication technologies developed during the war came out of the Rad Lab; the British military developed the rest.

Rad Lab Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

SCR-615B Radar Antenna, Stata Center, MIT

Signage, Building 20 Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

Signage, Building 20 Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

The photos above show the homage to Rad Lab in one of the hallways of the Stata Center. The radar antenna stands on top of a wooden crate that holds a Building 20 time capsule. Kudos to the person who chose this particular antenna as representative of MIT’s research. As the accompanying signage explains, the SCR-615 radar system was “not one of the best” (possibly explaining why there was a spare dish sitting around the MIT Museum). You know you’ve got confidence when your celebratory display highlights not just your research successes, but your research disappointments.

Sign attached to time capsule, Stata Center, MIT

Julian Schwinger has great style, makes war look like an intellectual exercise. Building 20 Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

Non Staff? Building 20 Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

Mixed message, Building 20 Exhibit, Stata Center, MIT

With the end of WWII came the end of Rad Lab, but not Building 20. Research in microwave physics was absorbed into the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), housed in the A wing of the building. The Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS) took up another good chunk of the space. The military maintained a presence in Building 20 in the form of ROTC headquarters as well as a few U.S. Navy offices. More famously, the building also became home to MIT’s linguistics department. One wonders how different Noam Chomsky’s ideas about the military and U.S. foreign policy would have been had the department been housed in Kresge Auditorium (probably not THAT much different, but still).

Time Capsule, Stata Center, MIT

Building 20 is no more, of course. In its place stands the Stata Center, a 3-dimensional wonderland of space designed by Gehry Partners LLP.[2] The controversy comes from the multitude of problems reported by users of the building. MIT eventually sued (and then settled with) Gehry.

I have much to say about the Stata Center, so feel free to contact me if you’re interested in my analysis. My photos of the building are available on flickr, as are my photos of other parts of the MIT campus.

If you’d like to read a warm and fuzzy article about Building 20 and its role in MIT’s campus culture, see ”A Last, Loving Look at an MIT Landmark—Building 20,” RLE undercurrents Vol. 9, No. 2 (Fall 1997). [download .pdf].

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[1] If you’re interested in campus tensions during the Vietnam War (MIT was the largest defense contractor in the U.S. at the time), read Stuart Leslie, “‘Time of Troubles’ for the Special Laboratories,” in Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision, ed. David Kaiser (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), 123-43.

[2] More confidence: Frank Gehry’s firm doesn’t even have a real website. Gehry Partners LLP has zero information about the firm and its projects. Gehry and partners don’t really need to invest time and money in their own advertising—trade and academic publications do all their publicity for them.

This wallpaper represents my feelings at the end of the semester:

We’ll return to our regular Observatories & Instruments programming next week.

Shuttle Discovery is Demated. Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

What a beautiful photograph.

I’m buried up to my ears in end-of-the-semester grading right now. I’ve been feeling so pressed for time that I almost broke the only rule I set for myself when I created this site last year: never post about my own research. It’s precisely days like these that tempt me to dig into my own photo archives: a stack of papers to grade with more on the way, final exams just around the corner, two conference paper proposals due next week, and so on. But the moment I start talking about my own research is the moment this site because more of a chore and less of a pleasure, so even though it would be easier to upload something from my hard drive, I took some time to look at the latest NASA releases instead. It’s better for you and me both this way, trust me.

The photo above shows Space Shuttle Discovery suspended from a crane boom, shortly after it was lifted off the back of the NASA 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) that carried it to Dulles International last week. In composition, the shot resembles the one Bill Ingalls took of Atlantis on the launch pad last July. He certainly knows how to take advantage of reflective surfaces.

As always, click on the image to download the wallpaper.

Space Shuttle Discovery Flown Over the U.S. Capitol. Image Credit: NASA/Smithsonian Institution/Harold Dorwin

Really, was there any doubt about today’s image? Click on the Capitol Building to download.

Wheels down at Dulles International, OV-103 (Discovery), April 17, 2012. Image Credit: NASA

The Internet can be an amazing place, or an amazing tool, however you want to conceptualize it. Yesterday, instead of working on an article I really need to finish, I spent two hours watching the transfer of the Space Shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center to Dulles International Airport, courtesy of NASA TV. During the two hours I was glued to NASA’s live stream, I serial tweeted, carried on several fragmented but enthusiastic online conversations about the landing, updated my fb status, took dozens of screenshots just for the hell of it, and did some preliminary research on the terminal at Dulles. I eventually connected with my partner via cellphone, and we watched the landing together (along with one or two of her co-workers who wandered into her office during our phone call).

NASA 905 SCA (Pluto 95 Heavy) & OV-103 flyover Washington, D.C., April 17, 2012. Image Credit: NASA

Boy, I burned through a lot of nervous energy yesterday, worrying that something would go wrong. It’s a good thing launch control had their emotions under control, if only because they had to land the T-38 escort (Pluto 98) in a fuel critical situation. While it’s not particularly unusual for me to grow sentimental when engaging with space science, it is atypical of me to confess to those sentiments to everyone following me on twitter. Unquestionably, the Shuttle program has shaped the course of my life and, to be honest, that hasn’t always been a good thing. So, while part of me was sad yesterday as Discovery disappeared behind the terminal at Dulles, a greater part of me was relieved to see it all finally come to an end.

If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen  my serial tweets as the SCA taxied to the terminal. If you’re my facebook friend, you probably saw the conversation about wood-fired propulsion systems. If you’re one of my architecture students, you’d better have been in class this morning to see me use the following image as a transition between Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn.

Passenger Terminal, Dulles International Airport. Image Credit: NASA

That’s Eero Saarinen & Associate’s passenger terminal (1958-62) in the background. As as I said in class today—this was one of the first American airports built specifically for jet traffic. It’s a gateway to the deeply symbolic political landscape of the nation’s capital. But it’s not just a gateway, it’s a Modern gateway, in terms of program, structure, and function. The caternary curve of the cable-reinforced concrete roof simultaneously implies the rest and motion experienced by the world traveler. The splay of the massive columns that anchor the steel cables on either side of the terminal provides both formal and structural tension. Passenger circulation paths are controlled through the use of “mobile lounges.” That they function as spaces of surveillance is all but masked by their efficient use as people movers.

Saarinen’s design marks the moment the federal government committed itself to international air travel. Discovery’s retirement to the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly marks the moment the government decided to stop investing in space exploration, the logical outcome of all that travel through the atmosphere in 747s. More importantly, yesterday’s landing marked the end of (one version of) the Modernist project, the progressive, curious, optimistic one that put us into rapid motion at mid-century. If we’ve given up on looking at the universe around us, and it seems we have, I’m afraid we’ve pretty much given up on humanity.

p.s. Of all the videos I’ve showed my students, the BIG model construction was the only one that  made them clap afterward.

Yuri Gagarin, "I Saw How Beautiful Our Planet Is..."

In addition to a 6′ x 6′ Russian star chart, I bought this poster of Yuri Gagarin during my first trip to the Soviet Union in 1988.[1] It was the tail end of the Cold War, but glasnost’ hadn’t quite taken hold; nobody was quite sure it was safe to talk to the Americans, and for our part, we never used names when talking about Russian acquaintances because of the listening devices embedded in the walls. Although at least one woman from our group ended up marrying a fellow she met in Leningrad, I wasn’t so lucky.[2] Few people were overtly hostile, but I had more than one stranger on the streetcar ask me to explain why Americans hated Russians so much. Why did we want to kill them? I was shocked at the time, but in retrospect, why wouldn’t they think that? Back home, Reagan was doing a good job of threatening to annihilate them.

Our cultural excursions were mostly benign (our leaders dragged us to see the attic garret where Raskolnikov would have lived if he’d been a real person). If the outings were meant to demonstrate the advanced development of the Soviet state, they backfired (really? It’s 1988 and you’re still spitting water and blood into a bucket at the dentist’s office?). There was no clear message that the USSR was winning the Cold War. At the same time, daily life was enveloped in both pro-Soviet and anti-American rhetoric, from the monumental Communist slogans on the top of buildings to the posters in the doctor’s office blaming the spread of AIDS on foreigners. While Kristine and Sergei may have ended up a happy couple, the rest of us weren’t going to be friends. Ever.

And so I spent a lot of time wandering around the streets of Leningrad—Riga—Odessa—Tblisi—Moscow—by myself, looking awkward and suspicious, I’m sure. I bought my star charts and my Gagarin posters and my Soviet Workers Unite! poster (an ironic purchase, to be sure) and my space pins [значки] and my lacquer boxes in all but complete silence. I spoke enough to buy my bread rolls [бублик] and pies [пирожки] on the street, but never so much that you could call it a conversation. When I was in Moscow, I spent all day at the VDNKh space pavilion, hanging around the Lunokhod, but made contact with no one. And it wasn’t just my natural reticence. When I returned two years later, people were still reluctant to speak to foreigners because although it appeared glasnost’ was going to be a long-term government policy, no one could be sure. What if someone spoke frankly to an outsider or to the press? Dramatic policy shift wasn’t exactly an uncommon practice in the Soviet Union.

There’s a point to all this and here it is: if you had told me in 1988 or even 1990 that one day the U.S. would be looking to Russia for transportation to an international space station, or that our governments were actually considering collaborating on space science projects, I would have laughed you out of the room. The U.S. was too overtly hostile to the USSR; the USSR had no working technology outside of the military. Working together? Not possible. I knew what I was talking about—most of my predictions about the Russian future were right on the money. Yet here we are in 2012, on the 51st anniversary of Gagarin’s launch into orbit, and I’m not laughing anymore. It’s not the best of relationships between the two nations, it’s not without problems. But I’m about to post links to a photo history of the Soviet space program, a recording of the radio communications during Gagarin’s launch, and a Soviet documentary about Gagarin (1969), and I can still go to bed without worrying about the NSA showing up on my front porch in the  morning. In 1988, I would have stopped to wonder how thick my CIA and KGB files were getting to be. Today, of course, hitting the “publish” button on this post won’t even disturb my sleep.

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[1] The words beneath the image were not actually Gagarin’s; rather, they have been attributed to A. Lozenko. It reads, “While I was flying round the Earth in a space-ship [korabl-sputnik], I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it! Gagarin.”

[2] The one woman who hit on me seemed more interested in using me to defect than anything else. At the time, I suspected she was with the KGB because 1) she was persistent in her interest to go to America; and 2) who else would have the guts to walk up to an American woman and express that kind of interest under Soviet rule? In retrospect, I think she was a private citizen who was relieved to see someone else, from somewhere else, who looked like her (i.e. like a 12-year-old boy).