Dr. TA Heppenheimer's talk for high school kids]

Sorry about the length, but probably of interest to some...
RKH
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 11:54:20 -0800 (PST)

I have just confirmed the reservation of the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Tupper
Auditorium for Tuesday, April 4 for a 1 pm lecture by
Dr. TA Heppenheimer, oriented toward high school
students about the sciences and industries related to
space.

The auditorium holds 170 people, and there are more
schools yet to contact. This presentation would be
particularly apt for high school kids who are
relatively advanced in math or science, particularly
physics. We are working on simultaneous translation
for Spanish-speaking kids, as this presentation will
be in English.

(There will be another talk, more oriented toward
adult audiences, tentatively scheduled for the
following evening, April 5, at the Colegio de
Abogados, about the directions in which the space
industry is moving and Panama's possibilities for
participating in this developing field.)

To give you a bit of information about Dr.
Heppenheimer, who graduated from Cristobal High School
in the old Canal Zone, and the work that he's done, I
append two things: first a sneak preview of the Cool
Internet Sites feature of the next issue of The Panama
News and second a thing that Dr. Heppenheimer wrote to
describe the important points of his education and
work.

1. Cool Internet sites

This issue we are varying the format of this regular
feature a bit to expand the number of links and to tie
them all together around the subject of Dr. T.A.
Heppenheimer, the renowned science and technolgy
historian, aerospace engineer, scientist, advocate of
space colonization and writer about diverse subjects
who graduated from Cristobal High. Why this focus, and
why now? Because between this issue and the next one
Heppenheimer will be coming back to Panama for a visit
and a couple of speaking engagements, to be sponsored
by The Panama News, the Panama Historical Society et
al.

The following is an article about the business of high
tech start-ups, written in the early 90s before the
dot-com bubble expanded and burst. Whether Panama has
possibilities in the space industry as it is now
moving is not only a technological matter and an issue
closely related to the quality of Panamanian
education, but it's also very much a business
question.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/10275/

This is some later work by somebody else, on the
dynamics of binary stars. Heppenheimer made his
contribution to this part of astrophysics about three
decades ago.
http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/planetf04/kokubo/pdf/Kokubo.pdf

When a writer gets accused of fraud by convicted
credit card scammer and political cult leader Lyndon
LaRouche, that's usually a sign that she or he has hit
the nail on its head! In this case, LaRouche takes
Heppenheimer and others to task for being
insufficiently worshipful of nuclear scientist Edward
Teller:
http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2000/2750_teller.html

A 2004 article in the libertarian publication Reason
about nanotechnology and the likely ethical and
political controversies that will accompany its
development:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_10_35/ai_n6002901

This is a 2005 article about a soon to be abandoned
edifice, the support structure for the Space Shuttle.
Dr. Heppenheimer was the independent science historian
upon whom NASA called to write its two-volume history
of the shuttle at a very difficult time when any
in-house uncritical panegyric would have seriously
increased the institution's political troubles.
http://inventionandtechnology.com/xml/2005/2/it_2005_2_feat_0.xml

Space Quotes to Ponder (a collection of many, one of
which is by T.A. Heppenheimer):
http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/quotes.htm

2. Here's more about me:

Date of birth: January 1, 1947

Degrees:

B.S. and M.S., mechanical engineering, Michigan State
University, 1967 and 1968.

Ph.D, aerospace engineering, University of Michigan,
1972.

Career:

Professionally employed in engineering, 1972-74.

Fellowships: Caltech and the Humboldt Foundation
(Germany), 1974-1978.

Free-lance writer and author, since 1975.

As an author, I have written some 300 commissioned
articles along with thirteen books, twelve of them
published. Clients for free-lance articles and book
chapters include American Heritage, Air Power History,
Defense World (McGraw Hill), Discover, Forbes, High
Technology, Invention & Technology, Los Angeles Times,
Mosaic (National Science Foundation), National Academy
of Sciences, Nature, Newsweek, Omni, Science, Science
Digest, Science 86, Time-Life Books, Wall Street
Journal, and Yearbook of Science and the Future
(Encyclopedia Britannica).

Books include:

"Colonies in Space," l977. Book-of-the-Month Club and
five other bookclubs; mass paperback edition; German,
Japanese, Swedish, and Israeli translations.

"Turbulent Skies: The History of Commercial
Aviation," 1995. Sloan Technology Series, Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation. This book was the basis for
"Chasing the Sun" (200l), a four-part, four-hour
television series of the Public Broadcasting System.

"Countdown: A History of Space Flight," 1997.

"History of the Space Shuttle," l999 and 2002. NASA's
authorized history, in two volumes. Volume 1, "The
Space Shuttle Decision," was reprinted by the
Smithsonian Institution Press and was selected as a
Outstanding Academic Title.

I've never been on a university faculty, but I've
given a number of talks.

Now, achromatic trajectories. These, which I
discovered, are a class of trajectories having a
property of focusing. If you are slightly off in
launch velocity, you'll hit your target anyway. They
thus somewhat resemble light rays that pass through an
achromatic lens, which focuses rays of different
color. Achromatic trajectories, similarly, focus
trajectories with different launch velocities.

(I don't believe I mentioned them to you. How'd you
find out about them--surfing the Net?)
TAH