Saturday
Things were 'mostly quieter' for me on May 28th, the Sunday of the conference. I had my one and only chance to run about the exhibitor areas to pick up flyers, buy shirts... and acquire a few DVD's of sessions I really wanted to see but could not due to being in demand elsewhere.
I briefly met Dr. Kistler of Rocketplane Kistler earlier but did not get a picture of him until he came by their exhibit for a photo op. I happened to be chatting with a friend who was manning their company table next to it so I joined the others. The hotel lighting in the public areas was rather problematic for my camera and few of the photos I took there were satisfactory. But hey, this is a really serious old school rocket scientist with a German accent.
Dr. Kistler, on the left, founded Kistler Aerospace. This merged with Chuck Laur's company, Rocketplane, to become Rocketplane-Kistler. They have a contract from NASA for space station cargo delivery.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Late Sunday afternoon there was a demonstration which friends had told me about: Faster Than Light signal propagation. I am rather skeptical of such things but the demonstrator was a serious research physicist from Germany, I believe, so I had to go and see for myself.
All I can say is, I think I saw FTL comms. Nothing practical in real life as the difficulty increases with distance. This rather negates the reason you would want it in the first place. But over a distance of about 3 meters the return signal with the 'barriers' in returned faster than it did with the barriers out (normal light speed) as shown on an OScope synced to the outgoing pulse. He could even modulate it.
I will not go into detail here. You can look for yourself at the photos I took of his presentation. Look for photo numbers around dsc00616. I am still skeptical... but not quite as skeptical as before the demo.
Was it or wasn't it? Demonstration of faster than light signal propagation.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Sunday night we had our closing banquet with Harrison Schmidt, the geologist who flew on Apollo 17 and one of the three Apollo guys at the conference. Actually this is not unusual as Harrison, Buzz and Rusty Schweikart are regulars and Buzz served as the Chairman of the Board through part of the nineties. Harrison has long been a promoter of human settlement and was given our O'Neill award in recognition of his efforts. Excuse the defect in the photo: I think the professional photographers flash went off just as I took this shot. She was standing right next to me.
Mark Hopkins bows in unworthiness before one of the last men to set foot on the moon.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
At the end of the banquet George Whitesides, NSS Executive Director, presented Carol Johnson and Ken Murphy with tokens of appreciation from the Society for their hard work. As the Chairman of the NSS Conferences Coordinating Committee I was sort of their 'boss' so I can publicly state they were a pleasure to work with over the last two and a half years, besides the fact that they ran a magnificent conference.
Yes, Ken really did wear a black hat. Carol got the roses since they would not have matched Ken's je ne sais quoi...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
And then we partied long into the night...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
We crawled out of bed for the Society Town Hall Meeting...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
And then, for the 26th time, it was over...
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
After the conference I spent a week in Dallas with an old friend. That will take us up to the beginning of June. So tomorrow: Aviation museums!
Or I hope so. I take a train to NYC tomorrow, repack, fly out to Denver and on to Laramie on space business Monday.
Back in college in '82 we had a lecturer with a European accent who harped on about the V2 when explaining propulsion equatoins to us.
We all thought his 'Germanic' accent and 'obsession' with the V2 very funny.
He got to hear about this.
He told us one day. He was actually Polish, and his interest with the V2 came from the fact that he had been part of the team of resistance agants who smuggled a crashed V2 out to England.
Still, when you see 30% of your countrymen exterminated to make way for the Reich, and part of the rest enslaved in brutal underground factories building the Goddamn things, you might imagine being motivated came naturally.
Also 'German' jokes wouldn't be funny.
At least the British put a satellite into orbit without Von Braun.
A good time was not had by all.
Posted by pietr at July 14, 2007 11:10 PM
Re; FTL. I heard about a similar claim years ago, but a physicist pointed out the limitations- that still nothing can go faster than light IN A VACUUM. I presume that if such waves were coming to us, and reached us, they would still be below Light's vacuum speed?
On the other hand, Bell's nonlocality theory implies instantaneous signalling between particles, so there might be some timeless dimension we can use, if we could just lift ourselves into it somehow!
Posted by nick g. at July 16, 2007 03:44 AM
So, Dale... you came to Dallas and never even dropped us a note?
Hmph.
Posted by Kim du Toit at July 16, 2007 04:58 PM
