Mark Shuttleworth | here be dragons

As widely reported, Russia has closed commercial public access to Soyuz seats for flights after the US shuttle is retired.

Now that the ISS has the capacity for a larger full-time crew, the seats are more likely to be devoted to long-duration ISS crew rotation than short-term ISS visits, whether visits by professional EU / US astronauts or folks flying privately. I’ve no doubt that there are economics attached to the Russian seats that are similar for both cases – the EU and US have to pay for the lift just like us ordinary folks.

There are a couple of interesting twists to the story.

One is that, when the Shuttle is retired, the Russians will have the only manned access to orbital flight in the ISS partnership. Russia and China will be the only nations with manned orbital capabilities, and the US huffishly refuses to welcome China into the ISS club. Expect the price of a seat to rise substantially while that’s the case.

Another is the EU’s plan to evolve their autonomous cargo vessel (ATV) into a manned capability, something that’s perfectly feasible and quite sensible IMO.

And the third twist is that the Russians have long been open to commercial offers for a long-duration flight (six month ISS crew rotation). That woudl require substantially more training (12-18 months minimum depending on who you ask) but would certainly include the Soyuz lift to get there and back.

Read on for something that’s either hilarious or baffling, depending on which IRC channels you’ve been hanging out in. 5 hit die Lich indeed. And that’s just the left hand.

One of the experiments I was a guinea-pig for on the space station was a study into the correlation of heart rate and metabolism (energy expenditure) in space.

I didn’t have to do much – drink some amazingly expensive water (isotopically distinctive so it would make a good marker) and keep track of everything I ate. And wear a heart monitor, which recorded every beat for much of the flight. Apart from the irritation associated with the wiring of the heart monitor it was straightforward, all the hard work was done on the ground at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa, at UCT.

This was an extension of research they had been doing into the correlation of heart rate and metabolic activity in athletes, and they wanted to see if the same rules apply to astronauts in flight. Conclusions:

1. Yes, they do.
2. Astronauts don’t burn a lot of energy in space. Floating around is the ultimate couch potato profession, except for interesting events like EVA’s and decompression scenarios where every movement is against the pressurization of your suit.

I was reminded of all of this yesterday when I took a look at the readings of my heart rate monitor – just a low-end Polar heart strap and watch that I’ve been wearing out on the slopes for interest’s sake. The dear thing thinks I’ve been doing AMAZING amounts of exercise while snowboarding. In one day, apparently, I burned off 6,000 kcal, which is hardly likely given my very relaxed (“Sunday tripper”) approach to exercise in general.

I think the issue is that my heart rate is generally elevated when at altitude. The watch doesn’t know anything about altitude, though, so it thinks that I’m tearing up some imaginary track when really I’m enjoying a cup of vin chaud ^* at 3,000m.

So, does anybody know how to recalibrate one of these things, for a more realistic result? I’m guessing somebody has a data set which would allow one to normalize heart rate for altitude and body mass, and get better results. Or is there a monitor out there which senses altitude and takes it into account automatically?

^* thanks to Pierre for pointing out that I’m not, in fact, drinking “lime wine”. What a limey I am.

I’m working out of Verbier, Switzerland, during February and March this year. No sympathy expected. Hopefully, the miracle of broadband will make it possible for me to work a full day and enjoy the slopes too!

Last week was my first here, and a bit of a holiday – I had 12 boisterous guys sharing the chalet and things got a little rowdy. Photos are, alas, NSFW. Not safe for pretty much anything, actually, other than sending us all tumbling from our respective slender grasps on respectability. ‘Nuff said.

Anyhow, the week finished with the most amazing day snowboarding I’ve ever been lucky enough to enjoy. Four of us and a guide went exploring off the back of Mont Fort, which is the highest peak you can get to without hiking, and did some back country touring. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Fields of virgin powder, steep climbs up snow staircases that seem to spell instant terminal velocity for anyone who places a foot wrong, nerve-wracking traverses.

We survived, it was glorious, and of course the more we retold the stories to the rest of the group, the better it all seemed. There’s a sign in one of the pubs here that says, very wisely, “The older I get the better I was”.

Today of course all of that cock-sure confidence went out the window after a huge overnight dump and wind that concentrated the snow into nice deep drifts. I couldn’t tell my arse from my elbow, could barely keep the nose of the board on top of the powder, crashed into walls of snow that were totally not there a second before (they jumped out at me, I swear) and ended up falling into a tree-well and landing on a series of strategically placed rocks.

I’m sure the rocks are not regretting the encounter, but I am this evening!

Anyhow, tomorrow morning am lined up for another lesson and am hoping that a little more caution, along with my trusty old ass-guards (“does this make my bum look fat?”) will make for a better day.
More to come.

You know, some days London just isn’t so bad after all.

Update: Of course. The fact that I am not actually allowed INTO that lovely garden is another matter altogether.

I’ve had the huge privilege over the past two days to be on the panel helping select this year’s Rolex Awards for Enterprise.

It’s inspiring to see the diversity of amazing projects that were shortlisted – on the one hand that made the debate all the more difficult, on the other hand I felt that each project had much to recommend itself. You’ll have to wait till October to find out the winners! Anyhow, for the record, it’s fantastic to see individuals with courage and vision getting the chance to pursue their dreams with the support of an award like that. If you know someone – anyone – doing original and visionary things with whatever time and resources they have to hand in the fields of exploration, heritage, the environment… urge them to apply for the next round.

Perhaps the best bit for me was the panel itself. Most often when I have the pleasure of meeting someone I really admire the meeting is necessarily short – we’ve both got to run to the next meeting, and the next time we’re likely to be able to coordinate a meeting in person is months away. Here we had long, intense discussions about the projects, which become a proxy for the challenges facing the world at large. And so you really get to see what people think are important, and why. A great two days. Tomorrow, I’m off to San Fran for the MySQL user conference, then NYC for the weekend and on home to London to get ready for The Drake.

For the snowboarder in all of us, I’ve been working on the ultimate ski/snowboard personal voice communications system.

The idea is to get hifi music, handsfree cellphone conversations, and walkie-talkie radio access all neatly integrated. I would like to be able to go boarding, listening to my music, and receive a call without fumbling for the phone (of course, the phone is optional for those days when silence is golden). Then I would like to be able to talk to my buddies on the other side of the valley without reaching into a pocket for the walkie-talkie.

I looked around on the net and found a partial solution: The Giro Fuse helmets with what they call “TuneUps”. This fits my standard Fuse helmet and does allow for music and a walkie-talkie OR cellphone, but won’t handle all three at the same time. Also, it has one of those tiny little microphones-on-the-string that will produce verage sound and be a pain to activate in thick gloves. I need something a little more industrial. Maybe not throat-mic industrial, but something tougher definitely.

A little more research took me into the motorcycle world, I thought perhaps something like this might exist for bikers. And that led me to the StarCom1, a cool little device that does almost exactly what I need. It supports two headsets (one for the driver and one for a passenger) which is a bit of a waste in my case, but everything else is perfect.

Placing the order was a little confusing. Their site could be better laid out in terms of the kits and the options. But the company was really responsive and both sets arrived promptly. We need to do some custom installation magic, fitting this gear to skiing helmets rather than the usual biking kit for which it is designed, and we will need to setup a special box for the comms unit, the battery pack (I still don’t know how I’m going to create a 12V battery).

This evening Marianne and I got the first part of it done. We had to slice open the neck and ear padding on the helmet. The microphone is on a flexible boom, so the tricky part was figuring how to attach that to something that is basically made of sponge. I was going to try to superglue a piece of rigid plastic to the frame of the ear padding, but Marianne suggested just stitching the boom straight to the fabric. That seemed to work fine. The earpieces fit in nicely, and I glued the PTT (“push-to-talk”) button to the outside of the right ear cover. Doh, I glued in the place where the chinstrap comes down from the helmet, but it’s fine and the helmet fits snugly.

So now we have one modded helmet with the microphone and speakers in place and two cables hanging out the back. So far, I’ve tested the cellphone connection and music interface and it works perfectly. The walkie-talkie isn’t, yet, perhaps there’s some incompatibility between the cable and the radio. Will look into that next week.

The big issue right now is power. The device needs a 12V supply. I have the connector cable, I just don’t have anything to connect it to. On a bike, there would be a 12V supply handy, but I guess I will need to make up some sort of battery pack. Anybody know how to do that? Where can I get a battery pack into which I can plug 4 normal 1.5V batteries in series to make up 12V, and get a simple cable out? Any and all suggestions welcome.

Sunrise and the music beckons, thunder in the mist with horns of heaven blaring across a sleepy valley. We arrive at the farm and walk through orange groves to find a cacophony of trance devotees, each disconnected but somehow acting as one frenzied crowd, dancing under a pale blue dawn.

The music reminds me of John Hine’s wife’s description: units of monotony. But there’s something infectious, something vital and energising about the disharmony. We’re swept up in the crowd and find ourselves becoming part of the greater animal. The dust of the dancing makes patters of light stand out as te sun starts to filter through the trees. I can feel other thoughts slipping away as the shaman’s trance sets in, a general unwinding of everything Launchpad in favour of the primal focal points of movement, sex and rhythm.
I don’t know how long we stay in the mix, hours perhaps, but at some stage the spell is broken and I find myself drifting away from the jangle, looking for something different. Exploring the rest of the farm is surreal, with the thump of the music reaching out into farmish places full of farmish animals that seem utterly unmoved by the dancing imperative. Cows chew, donkeys wander. I find a bamboo thicket that seems otherwordly, an ancient copse of thought groaning slightly in the breezy, a grinding bark-on-bark sound that seems timelessly patient, bamboo copses have been groaning forever. There’s a tangerine tree that’s growing accidentally in the midst of it all and I carry the scent of it’s fruit back with me to the crowd.

As we gather forces to move on from the party, we find a clump of sugar cane and take one section with us to the car – it makes a delicious diversion as we head to the waterfall for the afternoon.