Fact or Fiction - It's Still Interesting

When I was a kid, there were all manner of stories about Nazi war criminals. In some tales, they evaded capture by living in obscurity in a South American country or incognito in some out-of-the-way place, plotting to rejuvenate the Nazi dream or just rotten people leading lives of ill repute.

For example, in Marathon Man, Sir Laurence Olivier plays a former Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) dentist who tortures Dustin Hoffman’s character by yanking his teeth and tickling the exposed nerves. The Boys from Brazil tells a fictionalized account of Dr. Josef Mengele’s attempts to resurrect Adolf Hitler and establish a Fourth Reich.

In doing some research for a short story, I came across a bit of conspiracy theory from World War II regarding Nazi Germany and Antarctica. There was a belief that the Nazis had established a secret base in Antarctica and they were conducting research to develop advanced propulsions, well after WWII ended.

Scribd reports that at the end of WWII, the last two Nazi u-boats to surrender didn’t arrive in Argentina until August, 1945—the Germans had surrendered in May, 1945. Conspiracy theorists contended the u-boats had made a stop at the secret Antarctica base to offload treasure. The belief that a base existed was further bolstered when “in the southern summer of 1946-1947, the US Navy appeared to ‘invade’ Antarctica using a large force.”

I’m a fan of conspiracy theories. It’s fun to look at things from a “what if” perspective and my curiosity has been peaked regarding an Antarctic Nazi presence. I’m going to investigate these rumors some more and report back in a future blog.

What do you think? Is there a Nazi treasure lying beneath the Antarctic surface?

Automatons are Old Hat

Many of Martin Scorsese’s movies, such as Goodfellas and Taxi Driver would be deemed inappropriate for a younger audience. In an Oscar interview Scorsese said he wanted to make a movie his daughter, Francesca Scorsese, could watch. Hence, he directed the movie Hugo, based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. The movie garnered five Academy Awards in 2012.

Hugo, set in the early 1930s, is about a twelve-year-old boy, the son of a deceased watchmaker, who lives in the walls of a train station in Paris, France, maintaining the station’s clocks and struggling to repair an automaton rescued from a museum attic by Hugo’s father. WHEW!

I liked the movie. The acting and dialog was good. The cinematography was brilliant; colorful and fantasy-like. But the star of the movie for me was the automaton; a machine that looked like the bust of a young boy that drew pictures. It fascinated me because the automaton was driven by a series of cams; obviously, being the 1930s, there were no electronics available to drive the unit.

I don’t know where I’ve been but I had never heard of automatons. They are machines that perform a specific task based on a set of coded instructions and they’ve been around for centuries. The closest I may have come to an automaton might be the parks of Disney World in attractions such as The Hall of Presidents, Pirates of the Caribbean® and Country Bear Jamboree.

Automatons, or the plans for automatons, have been around for centuries. According to the World’s Strangest website Leonardo da Vinci created plans for an automaton in the 1400s but there wasn’t any proof that he had ever built the machine. At some point after 1950, someone built an automaton based on da Vinci's design and it produced a number of a humanoid movements.

The Franklin Institute reports that the automaton in Hugo was based on Henri Maillardet's automaton. The real Maillardet automaton was severely damaged and required a massive effort to rebuild it. In the movie, Hugo doesn’t know the origins of the automaton until he rebuilds the machine and it signs the name of its creator at the end of its drawing program. In reality, the origin of the Maillardet automaton was doubted until it wrote, “written by the automaton of Maillardet.”

I just think it’s cool. In 2012 we make robots that perform a variety of tasks and it seems commonplace. Yet, inventors have been creating these things for hundreds of years. Maillardet was born in 1745 and according to the Online Enyclopedia, Maillardet’s automaton, built in 1805, was believed to have “. . . the largest cam-based memory of any automaton of the era.”

More than 200 years ago an inventor created a device capable of producing these amazing drawings. I’m continually blown away by the creative genius of humans. The mind, the thought process, required to develop this piece of technology boggles my mind.

What do you think; is my awe misplaced?

Eat Your Vegetables?

Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs) or C-Rations or C-Rats, as most of us called them, were first introduced during WWII to provide our troops with a nutritional meal that was fairly easy to lug in a pack.  I got my first and only taste of C-Rats when I was in the Marine Corps.  As I remember, a meal was comprised of a can of meat, some kind of vegetable, bread of some type, crackers and a dessert.  I seem to recall some kits had a little can of sterno that you could use to heat the meal if you so desired.  I do know that I was one of the few that actually liked C-Rats; but then, no one has ever accused me of having taste.

Plus, it had this cool little John Wayne (P-38) can opener.  No idea why it was called a John Wayne, but this tiny piece of hardware had a variety of uses including can opener and screwdriver.  And tough?  I used that thing for tasks it was never designed for — it couldn’t be destroyed.  I’d still be using it if I hadn’t lost it in the move to our new house in 2001; but I managed to hang on to it for more than 20 years.

Obviously, nutrition is an important aspect of any endeavor and the MRE provides enough caloric intake to allow soldiers to perform their duties.

What do astronauts consume to maintain their vitality while on a mission?  If you asked me that question 40 years ago I’d of said Tang.  Ah, Tang.  I remember the commercials from my childhood.  I wanted to drink Tang because it’s what the astronauts drank.

Tang wasn’t invented for NASA.  According to “Today I Found Out” William A. Mitchell created  it in 1957.  NASA adopted its use in 1962 for the Mercury program to add flavor to John Glenn’s drinking water.

Astronaut meals have come a long way since the 60s.  In the early days of the space program, astronauts dined on food from squeezable aluminum tubes.  Nutritionally sound, but not very tasty.

The Lunar and Planetary Institute website details some of the dietary challenges astronauts face.  In space they lose bone mass so they need diets rich in calcium.  They might not get enough to eat because they’re just not as hungry, the food is not appetizing, or they are too busy to eat.  Most lose about 5% of their weight during a typical Space Station stay of four to six months.

NASA has a Nutritional Biochemistry lab with highly educated personnel and according to their website, they conduct a variety of studies including nutritional assessment studies, particularly in the field of bone metabolism and develop vitamins using HPLC-electrochemical detection methods.

According to Oprah.com, NASA also has a laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which is a combination kitchen/lab.  Here, they’re developing food that could be used on a three-year mission to Mars.

I’m a pretty picky eater but I’d like to be one of the guinea pigs that tries the NASA concoctions.  Anyone else feeling brave?

Living the Disney Dream

Last week, my wife and I took our first ever cruise.  It was a four-day jaunt aboard the Disney Dream with a stop in Nassau, Bahamas and Castaway Cay, the Disney island.

Our first stop was Nassau, with an excursion to the aquarium at the Atlantis Resort.  The aquarium had been designed to resemble an archeological dig, chock full of artifacts from the lost city of Atlantis.  It was cheesy.  Our guide was very knowledgeable regarding fish.  She had the fictional details of the Atlantian history committed to memory, but her delivery was very wooden and unconvincing as if she were just reading from a script.

Our second stop was Castaway Cay.  There was a ton to do there.  You could parasail, windsurf, ride a jet ski, ride in a glass-bottom boat, snorkel, swim with the manta rays, bike or just lay on the beach.  They even had an adult beach which excluded anyone under 18 to provide a break for people like me whose children were already grown.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew going in that a Disney cruise would have kids so I’m not complaining about children being around.  But, it was nice to have the option to hang out in an area that was … quieter.

The Dream was a huge ship, though I really don’t have anything to compare it to.  The last time I was aboard any type of seagoing vessel was in the early 70s.  My older brother was stationed aboard the USS Dewey DLG-14 and they did a one-day family cruise out of Newport, RI.  I thought the Dewey was big but the Dream dwarfed the destroyer.

Of course, all things are relative.  In Nassau, we were docked next to the Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas.  That’s a big ship.  It’s the largest cruise ship in the world – two inches (or so) longer then her sister ship, Oasis of the Seas.  The Allure looked to be at least 25% bigger than the Dream.

There was plenty to do aboard the Dream.  Live shows, swimming, eating and the piece de resistance, the AquaDuck water slide.  The AquaDuckwas 765 feet of water ridin’ twists and turns.  It was awesome.

For the money, I think a cruise is a great deal.  Lots of food, lots of things to do; if you walk away bored or hungry you’ve only yourself to blame.  Any dissenting opinions?

Wild Ride

When I was in grammar school I went to Riverside Park (now a Six Flags Amusement Park).  The adult who organized the trip told the older kids not to force the younger children to partake of any rides they did not want to.  My older brother, Matt, was one of the chaperones and what he heard was, “Make your little brother go on every ride until he’s so sick he throws up.”

That trip to Riverside Park was my introduction to roller coasters.  Matt and one of his high school buddies coerced me into riding the Mickey Mouse, a coaster of dubious origins.  He and his evil crony made certain I knew two little kids had perished on the ride when a car overturned and plummeted to the ground, crushing the children.  In hindsight, I’m fairly certain they were just trying to scare me … they succeeded.

Understandably, as an adult, I avoided roller coasters.  I rationalized my decision by reasoning that roller coasters were dangerous.  And you know what?  Turns out … I was right.  There is evidence that frequent riding of roller coasters causes a host of health issues.  People with heart disease run the risk of having a cardiovascular event.  According to a 2000 article on the Science Daily website, roller coaster rides may trigger blood clots on the brain.  Lastly, in April 2010, Popular Mechanics reported that a rider suffered from barotraumas, major bruising of his ear canal and ear drum as the result of a jaunt on a on roller coaster.

I didn’t ride another roller coaster until 1999 when my family and I vacationed in Orlando and Disney World.  We’ve been back several times and I discovered I like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Space Mountain®, the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster® Starring Aerosmith, Expedition Everest™ and my favorite, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror™.

But, I’m told by my children that those rides are tame.  I need to ride a “real” roller coaster like the Bizarro at Six Flags.  No thanks.  There are two reasons I find the Disney rides appealing.  They are at Disney, which automatically makes them safer (leave me my fantasies), and when you ride them you are enclosed in steel; your legs aren’t flopping in the breeze as you zoom around a track willy nilly.

There’s a coaster on the drawing board that I’m certain my kids would enjoy and I can guarantee you will never get me to ride – the zero gravity roller coaster.  BRC Imagination Arts is developing a zero gravity roller coaster, dubbed by some as a vomit coaster.  The idea is to allow the average person to experience zero gravity for about eight seconds.  Its inspiration is a NASA C-9 aircraft, the Vomit Comet, so named because many first timers lose their lunch on their initial dive.  The Vomit Comet executes steep dives which allow passengers to experience zero gravity for 23 – 30 seconds.  Not gonna happen!

I know where I stand regarding this forthcoming zero gravity coaster.  Is anyone interested in a controlled freefall?  Why?

Lake Vostok: Poland Springs – Eat Your Heart Out

There is a host of research bases located in Antarctica and they are run by a number of different countries, including the United States, China and Russia.  People at these stations study everything from weather to aeronomy, the study of the upper atmospheric regions of the Earth and other planets.  Antarctica is a chosen spot for research because the region is probably the most unspoiled area in the world with the cleanest air on earth.

The oldest station is Mawson Station.  It’s Australia’s oldest continuously inhabited Antarctic station having run since 1954.

There are hundreds of subglacial lakes of varying sizes under Antarctica’s miles-thick sheet of ice.  The Russians are the first to drill into one of those lakes.  Lake Vostok is under the Russian’s Vostok Research Station and on Sunday, 2/5/12, the Russians tapped into the lake.  There was a mixture of anticipation and trepidation within the scientific community leading up to the accomplishment.

The Russians used a combination of chemicals to prevent the five inch diameter drill hole from refreezing as they drilled.  Bear in mind, the coldest temperature ever recorded, -128.6 degree Fahrenheit below zero, was recorded at Vostok Station.  The use of the chemicals had some scientists concerned about the possibility of contaminating the lake.  To reduce the chance of contamination, the Russians completed the project, sans chemicals, by heating the drill.  The Huffington Post reported that the lake’s water pressure pushed any drilling liquids away from the lake.

Unfortunately, winter has arrived in Antarctica and the exploration of Lake Vostok has been suspended.

This is an exciting accomplishment.  The subglacial lakes are considered pristine environments because they haven’t been exposed to Earth’s atmosphere in millions of years.  Scientists wonder if life exists in any of these waters.  If so, they theorize there’s a chance that life could be present in the frigid waters of Jupiter’s moons.

I’m hopeful that life, even a single celled organism, is found in a sample from one of these lakes.  Maybe, that will help fuel some renewed interest in space.  If there’s even a remote possibility that there’s life “out there,” we need find it.

What do you think; does life in an earthly subglacial lake equate to alien life on a distant planet?

Russian Drill Penetrates 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake - Wired Science 2/6/2012

Stuck in Space

My delight with space isn’t a recent phenomenon connected solely with my employment in a space oriented business.  I’ve been enamored with space and space travel since I was a kid. 

Forty years ago, I did my 8^th grade year-long report on the history of the American space program.  I remember how jealous I was when a classmate wrote to the White House and received an invitation from President Nixon to attend the launch of Apollo 16.

I’ve made no secret of my distain for the United States’ lack of homegrown transportation to the International Space Station (ISS).  So, imagine my disgust when I saw it announced online that the Russian rocket Soyuz had another issue. 

Back in August 2011, an unmanned Russian Progress cargo craft using a Soyuz rocket, which was destined for the ISS, crashed.  It didn’t even reach orbit.  As result, we had to wait for a thorough investigation before we sent any U.S. astronauts to the station.

Now, there’s another issue.  The return capsule of the Soyuz craft failed a factory leak test; it cracked.  I’m not a rocket scientist, but even I know a crack in a spaceship is a bad thing.  This was supposed to be the vehicle that would bring the astronauts home from the ISS.  NASA says this latest setback won’t extend the current mission an inordinate amount of time, but our reliance on the Russians makes me ill.

I know American have had our share of space related problems; I get that.  But that’s not my issue.  I’m peeved that we don’t control our own destiny in regards to space travel.  The fact we don’t have our own transportation to the ISS, and won’t for a number of years is extremely shortsighted.  It’s an ongoing issue.  We’re losing our edge in space!

What do you think about this whole debacle?