Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds

Michael Carroll

Feb 2011 · Springer Science & Business Media

About this ebook

Ever since the Montgolfier's hot air balloon carried a chicken, a goat, and a duck into the Parisian skies, scientists have dreamed of contraptions to explore the atmosphere. With the advent of the space age, new airborne inventions were needed. From the Soviet Venus balloons to advanced studies of blimps and airplanes for use in Mars' and Titan's atmospheres, Drifting on Alien Winds surveys the many creative and often wacky ideas astronautical engineers and space scientists have had for exploring alien skies. Through historical photographs and stunning original paintings by the author, readers also explore the weather on various planets and moons, from the simmering acid-laden winds of Venus to the liquid methane-soaked skies of Titan.

Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society and Jacques Blamont of CNES (both involved in Mars and Venus balloon projects) are both interviewed, along with Victor Kerzhanovich of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (planetary balloon systems), Julian Nott (balloonist adventurer and Titan balloon enthusiast), Ralph Lorenz (John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab, team member of the proposed Montgolfier balloon on NASA's flagship mission to Titan), Lockheed Martin's Ben Clark (early atmospheric probe designer), Joe Palaia (UAV tests to Devon Island, Canadian Arctic), Joel Levine, Langley Research Center's principal investigator for the Mars ARES (Aerial Regional Environmental Survey), and Andrew Ingersoll, planetary atmospheres expert at California Institute of Technology, among others.

About the author

Science journalist, writer, and artist Michael Carroll has been looking at the clouds for half a century. His 25 years as a science writer have afforded him the opportunity to work with many in the planetary science community, with contacts spanning from government research facilities to universities to aerospace corporations. Aerospace runs in his family; his father was an aerodynamic engineer for Martin Marietta, and his grandfather was both a general in the U. S. Air Force and a personal friend of Orville Wright. Carroll is a Fellow of the International Association for the Astronomical Arts, and has written articles and books on topics ranging from space to archaeology. His articles have appeared in Popular Science, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy Now (UK), and a host of children’s magazines. His earlier book for Springer is The Seventh Landing, an exploration of our plans to return to the Moon. Carroll's twenty-some titles also include Alien Volcanoes (Johns Hopkins University Press), Space Art (Watson Guptill/Random House), and the children's book I Love God's Green Earth(Tyndale). Carroll has done commissioned artwork for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His art has appeared in several hundred magazines throughout the world, including National Geographic, Time, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Ciel et Espace, and others. One of his paintings is on the surface of Mars – in digital form – on the deck of the Phoenix Lander, and another was flown aboard Russia’s MIR space station. Carroll is the 2006 recipient of the Lucien Rudaux Award for lifetime achievement in the Astronomical Arts. He lives with his artist/sometimes-coauthor wife, Caroline, in Littleton, Colorado.