Drew Ex Machina 5th Anniversary: Top Ten Posts

I find it difficult to believe but, it was five years ago today that I posted the first article on my then-new web site, Drew Ex Machina. In that first article, “A Europa-Io Sample Return Mission”, I outlined how the hardware for the Discovery-class LIFE (Life Investigation For Enceladus) sample return mission proposed by a group headed by Peter Tsou (JPL) could be adapted for a mission to return samples from the purported plumes of Europa as well as the ever-present volcanic fountains of Io. Since then, I have published another 267 articles on space history, my remote sensing work on the ISS, potentially habitable exoplanets as well as many other space-related topics. To mark this anniversary, I wanted to share the ten most popular posts published during the first five years of Drew Ex Machina based on a raw tally of their page views. If you are interested in checking out any of these articles for yourself, they can be accessed by clicking on the titles or the feature images in the reviews that follow.

 

Apollo 6 shown during its ascent as debris is seen coming off of its spacecraft launch adapter (SLA). (NASA)

#10 Apollo 6: The Saturn V That Almost Failed (2018)

Space enthusiasts fondly remember the Saturn V rocket which sent nine Apollo crews to the Moon including a dozen astronauts who actually landed on the lunar surface between July 1969 and December 1972. Retired after thirteen flights when it launched NASA’s Skylab space station into Earth orbit on May 14, 1973, it is frequently claimed that the Saturn V had a perfect flight record – an unequaled achievement for what was the largest launch vehicle of its day (see “The Largest Launch Vehicles Through History“). While it is certainly true that no Saturn V suffered a catastrophic failure which resulted in the total loss of a mission, NASA’s famous Moon rocket did experience its share of problems.

The most popular article on Drew Ex Machina for 2018 (and the 10th most popular over the last five years) related the details of the unmanned Apollo 6 mission. Launched on April  4, 1968, the second Saturn V to fly experienced more than its share of problems during its flight culminating with the failure of the S-IVB third stage to reignite to send the spacecraft on a simulated trajectory to the Moon. Fortunately, the causes of the problems were quickly assessed and fixes confidently identified eliminating the need for a third unmanned test flight of the Saturn V and keeping NASA’s schedule on track to land on the Moon before the end of 1969.

 

Artist conception of a red dwarf. (NASA)

#9 The Real Wolf 359 (2015)

For many fans of science fiction like myself, the mention of Wolf 359 immediately brings to mind the famous battle between the Borg and the Federation in the Star Trek universe. But what is Wolf 359 really like? This 2015 post on Drew Ex Machina reviewed the latest scientific findings relating to the real Wolf 359 including the results from searches for orbiting planets and brown dwarfs. Located only 7.8 light years away, Wolf 359 is the fifth closest star system to our own and is a fairly typical red dwarf. Although nothing like that described in the numerous science fiction stories set in this system has been found, it continues to be a target of study by the astronomical community (for more posts about our neighbors, see the Nearby Stars page).

 

A still from a video showing the Soyuz T-10-1 being engulfed in flames on the pad seconds before its LES was activated pulling the crew to safety.

#8 A Brief History of Launch Aborts (2014)

One of the most dangerous phases in any space mission is launch. With rockets assembled from thousands of precisely engineered components filled with hundreds of tons of volatile propellants, even the slightest problem can end in disaster. It is for this reason that all crewed spacecraft have launch abort options for most if not all phases of ascent into space. This need was dramatically demonstrated most recently by the Soyuz MS-10 flight launched on October 11, 2018 which was aborted during ascent when a problem was encountered with its launch vehicle. The #8 article on Drew Ex Machina, published in November 2014, took a close the previous two Soyuz launch aborts where the crews left the pad but failed to achieve orbit. In both cases, the crews involved in the launch aborts of “Soyuz 18A” in 1975 and “Soyuz T-10A” in 1983 survived because of the various safeguards built into their Soyuz spacecraft and its launch vehicle.

 

This artist’s impression shows the view from the surface of one of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. (ESO/N. Bartmann/spaceengine.org)

#7 Habitable Planet Reality Check: The Seven Planets of TRAPPIST-1 (2017)

Among the most exciting astronomical discoveries of 2017 was the detection of seven exoplanets orbiting the nearby ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, named after the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope which spotted the transits of these exoplanets. Most exciting of all was that as many as three of these exoplanets have some genuine prospects of being potentially habitable. The #1 ranked article in Drew Ex Machina for 2017 took a close look into the details of the discovery of this system of planets as well as an initial assessment of the habitability prospects for TRAPPIST-1e, f and g. This system, along with other nearby transiting exoplanetary systems, should provide scientists with their best near-term prospects for probing the limits of Earth-like habitability using a new generation of astronomical instruments which are beginning to come online. Another, more recent popular article on Drew Ex Machina which did not quite make the cut for this Top Ten list took a detailed look at how the exoplanets in this miniature planetary system would look from the surface of TRAPPIST-1e (see “Alien Skies: The View from TRAPPIST-1e”).

 

The launch of SA-5 from LC-37 on January 29, 1964. (NASA)

#6 The Coolest Rocket Ever (2014)

Like a lot of space enthusiasts, my interest in spaceflight stretches back to when I was a child (see “When I Thought My Dad Was an Astronaut”). In this post, I tell the story about what I think is the coolest looking rocket in history: the Saturn I SA-5. This one-of-a-kind configuration of the Saturn I Block II rocket was the first orbital test flight of America’s first heavy lift launch vehicle launched on January 29, 1964. I have had a keen interest in this rocket ever since I first stumbled upon an old Newsweek article about its launch at my grandparent’s lakeside cabin over four decades ago.

 

A vies of Saturn 500F at Pad A at dawn on June 22, 1966. (NASA/KSC)

#5 The Saturn 500F: The Moon Rocket That Couldn’t Fly (2016)

A half century ago, NASA was gearing up for the final push to land astronauts on the Moon. One of the key milestones to reach that goal was the completion of the facilities at Launch Complex 39 where the Apollo-Saturn V would be assembled, checked out and launched. On May 25, 1966 NASA rolled out a non-flight model of their Moon rocket, designated Saturn 500F, to checkout the newly completed VAB and Pad A at LC-39. This 2016 post on Drew Ex Machina tells the story of the Saturn 500F and the various tests that were performed during the summer of 1966. Immediately following the disassembly of Saturn 500F, work began on the first Saturn V flight article for the Apollo 4 test flight of November 1967 (see “Apollo 4: The First Flight of the Saturn V”).

 

This image shows the solar system’s eight recognized planets in order of increasing distance from the Sun to a common size scale. (Lunar and Planetary Institute)

#4 Practical Limits of Trip Times to the Planets (2016)

Back in March of 2016, the space-related media was filled with headlines about a new laser-based propulsion technology which could allow trips to Mars in as little as a half an hour. Of course, such sensational claims deserved a sober review which was the purpose of this top ranked article on Drew Ex Machina for 2016. Dusting off some calculations I did as a physics undergrad over three decades earlier, I demonstrated that any conventional cargo would be destroyed by the huge g-forces experienced during a putative half-hour trip to Mars. In fact, barring any unforeseen breakthroughs in physics which allows us to invent scifi tech such as “inertial dampers” or the like, we are not likely to ever see trip times to Mars for human passengers of less than a day. Still, if a propulsion technology is developed that permits the construction of my hypothetical “1-g ship”, calculations show that it would be possible to reach any point in the inner solar system in less than a week or any planet in the outer reaches of our solar system in just a couple of weeks – far faster than our current technology allows but still fast enough to open a whole universe of possibilities for the exploration (and exploitation!) of the solar system.

 

A picture of a lunar railroad diorama designed by Alan Cerny and built by Bob Hayden that appeared in the April 1978 issue of Model Railroader. (MRR/Kalmbach Publishing)

#3 A Lunar (Model) Railroad (2015)

Sometimes magazine articles can have a bigger influence than their authors ever intended and one of those has got to be an article on modelling a lunar railroad which was published 41 years ago in the April 1978 issue of Model Railroader. Originally meant as an April Fool’s joke which played off of the public’s keen interest in space at the time, this article is still remembered by many even to this very day. The #3 ranked post during the first five years of Drew Ex Machina was a piece I wrote about this old “joke” which influenced a lot of would-be modelers over the decades including myself.

 

Engine used in Saturn launch vehicles (NASA)

#2 A History of American Rocket Engine Development (2014)

It is not too surprising that the #2 spot for the Top Ten posts of the last five year was also the most popular post on Drew Ex Machina in 2014 and 2015. With the ongoing issues of the Russian-built RD-180 engines used by ULA’s Atlas V and efforts to develop engines for new families of American launch vehicles, the state of rocket engine development in the US has been a subject of much interest in recent years. This essay recounts the origins of the most important large rocket engines of the early Space Age developed during the 1950s and 1960s. After the development of the Space Shuttle SSME in the 1970s (also known today as the RS-25), most rocket engines used on American launch vehicles had been just incrementally upgraded and modernized versions of the earliest rocket engine designs. Until recently, only two totally new engines have been developed in the US for satellite launch vehicles over the past couple of decades and actually flown: the RS-68 used on ULA’s Delta IV and the Merlin-series engine for the Falcon built by SpaceX.

 

Artist’s depiction of an Earth-like Kepler 186f. (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech)

#1 Habitable Planet Reality Check: Kepler 186f Revisited (2016)

In response to what I perceived to have been an unhealthy trend in the scientific community and especially the media overstating the potential habitability of newly discovered exoplanets, I started the popular “Habitable Planet Reality Check” series of articles on Drew Ex Machina shortly after the web site was established five years ago (see this site’s Planetary Habitability page for a complete listing of these and related articles). In these articles I have attempted to cut through the hype to give an honest assessment on the potential habitability of various exoplanets based on the best available analysis of the observations and the current scientific understanding of planetary habitability. For the first in this series of articles, I examined the case of Kepler 186f whose discovery was announced April 17, 2014 – just three weeks after Drew Ex Machina came online (see “Habitable Planet Reality Check: Kepler 186f“).

While I originally started out in my first review in 2014 with the intent of debunking the claim, it turned out that Kepler 186f appears to have among the better chances of being potentially habitable of all exoplanets currently known. In the most popular essay on Drew Ex Machina during its first five years, I revisited the case for Kepler 186f in this top-rated essay and reassessed its potential habitability given what we had learned about it and other exoplanets over the intervening two years. The new data presented in the updated assessment published on the second anniversary of this world’s discovery only strengthens the case for this distant exoplanet’s promising prospects

 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the over 361,000 people from around the globe who have taken time to read these Top Ten as well as the other 258 essays on Drew Ex Machina during the past five years. The many comments and feedback on this site as well as in other forums have also been greatly appreciated. I intend to continue posting interesting essays on space-related topics during (what will hopefully be) the next five years and hope that all of you continue reading and enjoying them. I would also like to extend special thanks to my good friend Kristen Petrie of Mellarium who created this web site for me back in 2014 and continues to help maintain it. If it were not for her pestering me through most of 2013 to set up the Drew Ex Machina site to share my work, we would not be here today celebrating its fifth anniversary.

Thanks!

Drew LePage

 

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