The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 Read Online Free PDF

, which in 39 missions has spent a total of 365 days in space and travelled more than 238 million kilometres orbiting the planet.
    Takeoff was scheduled for 4.50pm, but with nine minutes to launch, the clock suddenly froze. The Air Force’s range safety computer – which monitors data from sensors dotted along the coastline – indicated a problem, and put the launch in doubt. Discovery had a razor-thin three minute launch window before the attempt had to be postponed till the following day, and tension mounted as NASA engineers scrambled to determine the cause. Taking a gamble, they restarted the clock in the hope that the Air Force would uncover a false alarm and the launch could proceed.
    But as no word came, the countdown was again stopped, at the T minus five minute mark. There it held. Finally, with time running out, NASA engineers received a call saying the glitch was resolved. They resumed the countdown, and at exactly 4.53:24 pm – with just three seconds to spare – Discovery blasted off.
    When the engines ignited, there was a blinding flash and the whole structure began edging upwards. At first it seemed to gently hover above the launch pad. This was an illusion; it was actually rapidly accelerating, and within a split second was punching through the air, riding an eye-searing waterfall of white-hot flame as it tore into the clear blue sky.
    I’d waited for decades to see it, and had watched countless shuttle launches on TV, but still, my mind found it hard to acceptwhat I was seeing. A building 19 storeys high was rising effortlessly into the air, trailed by billowing clouds of superheated steam that raced away in all directions. The plume of flame spewing from the solid rocket boosters was incredibly bright – almost like looking at the Sun. Nothing had prepared me for that.
    And the sound. It’s hard to describe: a rumbling growl so low it reaches into your stomach, with a resonant thundering of pops and bangs that quickly overwhelms the cheering, whooping and rapid-fire camera shutters going off around you. There is a moment – 50 or so seconds in – when the sound is completely overwhelming, seemingly on top of you, and silence descends on the crowd.
    My pulse was racing and I found myself watching openmouthed. It did not close again until two minutes into the flight, when the shuttle had ditched its twin solid rocket boosters 48.7km above us. Curling clouds of steam marked its trajectory, and the orbiter – its engines now burning fuel from the attached external tank – was a tiny white speck in the deep blue sky that, eventually, vanished. My senses told me something very large and very powerful had growled to life nearby, done something incredible, and all I could do was stare after it, transfixed.
    It had been a remarkable show. Discovery was on its way, and its engines would continue firing for another six minutes before the tank was drained and fell away, to burn up on re-entry. It would loop the Earth several times over the next two days, working its way through complicated orbital dynamics, before gently docking with the International Space Station.
    â€˜The shuttle program … has given us a lot … and it has taught us what is needed for the routine access to space,’ Andy Thomas, the Australian-born NASA astronaut who flew aboard Discovery in three of his five flights, told me in an email. ‘But that has come at a significant cost, both financial and human.
    â€˜We now recognise that the shuttle technology, while brilliantin what it can do, is very fragile, costly to maintain and unforgiving to mistakes. So it is time to retire it and move on.’

    History
    Relics

Neutrinos and the speed of light … not so fast
    Jonathan Carroll
    The bartender says, ‘We don’t serve your kind in here’ …
    A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar.
    * * * * *
    The media is champing at the bit to proclaim a discovery of