Final Update, I should think (Feb 5): The story I outline below is almost certainly false. My source, Jonathan McDowell, who runs Jonathon’s Space Report, is a noted expert on satellites, orbits, and such, and he throws the flag on this one. Here is his complete email to me:

I agree with Jonathon. This is some sort of story being spread deliberately. Some people think it has to do with the movie Iron Man, but the characters name in that flick is different. So I’m not sure what this is all about, but I am pretty sure it’s not true.

Update: My source - an expert in these things — has called this story "complete nonsense". I am posting this now to try to stop this from getting bigger; but as yet I do not have permission to use my source’s name. When my source contacts me again, I’ll post more.

There is a rumor going around that an American billionaire has built his own rocket, launched himself into space, and has apparently been lost.

I know nothing beyond the info in that linked article. It sounds ridiculous, but years ago there was a guy who was planning on doing just such a thing (though he was not a billionaire). I have serious doubts, of course, but I have some friends who may know more about this, and I’ve sent out email. When I get more info, I’ll post it here. If any BABloggees have heard anything, let me know! Leave a comment here.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that the website linked has the URL of memes.org, so I wonder if this is a fake story designed to see how rumors spread. Well, I noted above that it sounds like baloney to me, and I have feelers out to track anything down. Maybe, if this is a joke, we can staunch it quickly.

President Bush submitted his budget request today, and while you all know how I feel about him, I have to admit this looks pretty good for NASA. Of course, Congress has to screw around with the budget too, but if they go along with this NASA will actually be able to get something done. NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science, Alan Stern, sent out an email with details, which I have posted below. I won’t comment more on this, since the budget is not final, but it’s nice to see an actual increase in the budget.

In the following, SMD stands for the Science Mission Directorate, basically NASA’s science division. I’ve highlighted bits I think are really worth noting.

Alan Stern
Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD)
NASA Headquarters

04 February 2008

A month ago today I wrote you an email via NSPIRES about the work being done in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) to invigorate the flight and research programs we’re administering.

Although there was good news to talk about then, I could not discuss the content of the President’s FY09 budget request and what that budget portends for SMD.

The President’s FY09 budget was released today, so I am writing you again.

The news for NASA is good - we enjoyed a 1.8% funding increase that many other discretionary parts of the budget did not - and all of NASA’s major programs are intact. As you can learn from reading budget documentation at http://www.nasa.gov, there are a host of important initiatives within NASA’s budget request.

But in this message I want to focus on the highlights of the FY09 budget request as it affects SMD, and to be to the point: that news is also good.

To begin, the FY09 President’s request augments two areas of SMD’s budget significantly - Earth science and lunar science. More specifically, the budget request includes new initiatives to accelerate
the recommended flight missions of the Earth Science Decadal Survey (NRC, 2007), and to fly small lunar science missions that respond to goals of the 2007 NRC report, “Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon”.

Owing to budget wedges that are opening up as we launch a total of 13 orbital and planetary missions in 2008 and 2009, to some missions that we replanned to gain efficiencies, and to some cost increases that we avoided, the budget request for SMD is able to go beyond the Earth Science and lunar science initiatives I just mentioned, to also initiate missions in planetary science, in astrophysics, and in heliophysics.

In fact the President’s budget request allows SMD to initiate 7 new space missions. And it is worth pointing out that this exceeds the number of new SMD missions initiated in the past three NASA budgets combined.

The 7 new missions to be initiated by the President’s FY09 budget request span all four of SMD’s Divisions; they are:

* The Earth Science Division’s SMAP soil moisture mission for launch
in 2012 and IceSat II decadal survey mission for launch in 2015.
Three additional Earth science decadal survey missions will be
enabled by this budget request as well.
* The Heliophysics Division’s new, lower cost Solar Probe mission
for launch in 2015.
* The Planetary Science Division’s long awaited Outer Planets
Flagship for launch in 2016 or 2017, depending on the mission
target and trajectory.
* The Astrophysics Division’s highly anticipated JDEM dark energy
mission for launch by 2015.
* And two new lunar robotic missions - a small science orbiter to
launch by 2011 and a pair of mini-landers for launch by 2014;
these lunar missions are to be developed in SMD’s Planetary
Science Division.

If Congress agrees to these plans, then in FY09 (which begins in October!) you will be seeing a great deal of activity to solicit proposals to select payloads and science teams for these 7 new missions.

The President’s budget request also significantly increases R&A funding so that our program generates more discoveries and therefore provides the taxpayer with value from the missions we fly. The budget request also substantially increases funding for suborbital sounding rockets and balloon experiments in order to foster PI on-ramps, instrument technology demonstrations, and of course new science.

To learn more, you can find many details at http://www.nasa.gov. Additionally we in SMD will be talking about this new budget at the next round of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and NAC subcommittee meetings, at MOWGs, with the leadership of professional societies such as the AGU, AAS, DPS, and AMS, and at upcoming large scientific gatherings such as LPSC, AAS, and AGU.

The primary message I hope you have received from this note is that the future that the President’s FY09 budget request paints is bright for SMD.

As I said in my message of January 4th, we continue to look to the Earth and space science research communities for advice, counsel, feedback, and most importantly, new results as we go forward, so I again invite that advice through your NAC subcommittees and professional societies.

I hope to see many of you in meetings and other venues in the coming weeks. In the meantime, best wishes.

Alan Stern

So this looks pretty good. I will need to look over the details, but to be honest I’m not sure I will. The Congressional budget will be different, and that will have to be approved by the President, so it’ll change a lot between now and then. But again, it sure is nice to see some good news for NASA for a change.

There are more misconceptions about black holes than probably any other area of astronomy (though I bet cosmology would give BHs a run for their money). A lot of TV shows and movies have exacerbated this, but now a toy enters the ring. Fischer-Price has created a series of action figures (or, as I like to call them, dolls) called Planet Heroes. And what are heroes without a nemesis? So they have introduced Professor Darkness (not to be confused with Captain Harkness or Butters’ alter ego).

For some reason, they have associated Prof. Darkness with black holes, as you can see from the package:

Sure, you may ask, how hard is it to make fun of a product with the tag line, "With his corrupt little minions and negatronic cloud, he has vowed to destroy the solar system!"? Well first of all, I was considering this very line as the motto for my website, but then I realized that

1) my minions aren’t (necessarily) corrupt, and

2) "negatronic" isn’t a word. But it should be.

Also, I’ll note that they have a hole in the plastic urging tots to stick their finger in it. Need I say it? It’s a black hole! Don’t put your finger on it!

Anyway, I applaud Fisher-Price for at least trying to get their description of black holes right, I suppose, but they missed the mark a bit. Well, more than a bit.

The description (seen at the bottom of the picture) has two lines:

A black hole happens when a giant star explodes and collapses.

Can be found anywhere in the solar system.

The first part is close, but unfortunately makes things worse. A black hole can form when the core of a very massive star collapses. Complicated physics ensue (as many details as you could possibly want will be forthcoming in my book), and the utter layers of the star explode outward while the inner core collapses inward. If the core is massive enough, a black hole will result.

Many people get confused about how a star which explodes outwards can form a black hole. But only the outer layers of the star explode; the inner part is what forms the black hole. So Fisher-Price got close, but wound up only confusing things more.

The second one is a bit scary. Black holes are in the solar system! Run for your lives!

First off, I think FP made the all-too-common mistake of confusing the solar system with the Milky Way galaxy. A lot of folks do this (heck, Joss Whedon did in Firefly at least once), but it still makes things difficult for people to understand the scale of space. Our solar system is huge on human terms — it takes our probes decades to get to Pluto, for example — but it is crushed into insignificance by the size of the galaxy. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, while our solar system is charitably a light week across. That makes the galaxy five million times bigger than the solar system.

And that’s only diameter. The galaxy has depth, too. Its volumes is approximately… let’s see… carry the three… a bajillion times that of the solar system. It’s no contest.

The galaxy is filled with black holes; no doubt millions of them wander the deep black. But even so, the nearest is probably many dozens or even hundreds of light years away.

And if one were in our solar system, we’d know it. Things would be bad. Again, I give lots of nightmarish details in my book (due this fall from Viking! Order two!), but in general the planets would be out of place, comets would be screaming down from the outer reaches of the system, gamma and X-rays would be flooding out… we’d know. It’s hard to hide a black hole.

So let me wrap up by saying black holes are cool, but grossly misunderstood. Fisher-Price is also cool, and attacking it, even gently and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, may be silly. But I love taking the opportunity of someone else’s error to actually do some real astronomy education. If you want to buy those dolls action figures for someone you know, why, go ahead! But point the kid to a reputable astronomy site, too. After they’re done playing some fantasy, show them how cool the real Universe is too.

Tip o’ the ergosphere to Stanley Wen for pointing this out to me on Facebook.

I’ve been getting email about a somewhat nasty - okay, really really nasty — ad that got inserted in my feed. I’m aware of it, and have notified the authorities.

For those wondering what’s going on, there are three basic ways to read this blog: come here directly to the site, get it through email, or use a feed reader. The first is obvious enough, so ’nuff said. To get the blog through email enter your address in the text field in the right sidebar that says "Read BABlog via email", and whenever I post a new entry you’ll get it through email. The third method is to use a feed reader like BlogLines or Google Reader. If you don’t know about feed aggregators, that’s OK. Just go to those links and they’ll tell you what’s what.

Anyway, I use a service called FeedBlitz to send out the blog via email, and there are some ads inserted into the mail. There has never been a problem until yesterday, when a rather distasteful advertisement got in. I’ve looked into it, and it appears to have been a fluke. Something got past them for one email, is what it appears; I haven’t noticed it repeated since. If it happens again, please let me know and I’ll do what I can.

Ads are a necessary evil in many cases, but I try not to let them cross that particular line. Sorry about that to anyone who saw it.

Update: I heard back from FeedBlitz… this was my fault! The last time I was approving ad categories, I accidentally unchecked "Adult". Oops. It’s been fixed, and those shouldn’t show up again. So, sorry again about this!