Random Thoughts Bumping Around

From time to time a few musings will escape consideration and find their way to this blog.  For instance:

Saviour of the Whales

 This month's unsung hero for Planet Earth is John D. Rockefeller.  His entry into the Hero hall of fame is due, in no small part, to his saving countless whales.  Although many forces were in play during the mid Nineteenth century regarding illumination, one of the most profound was Standard Oil's refining of Kerosene from oil as a superior lamp fuel to light houses and factories.  It was  much better and less costly than the whale oil currently in fashion.  By providing Americans a better way to light homes and business, and directly reducing the demand for whale oil (and thus allowing to live countless thousands of great mammals) we applaud Mr. Rockefeller.

Spared by American innovation and marketing

 What if...

A generation of space exploration launched thousands of powerful rockets.  Keeping in mind the action - reaction nature of force, each launch, such as the Saturn 5 here, not only pushed the payload into orbit (or beyond for many Saturn 5 launcheds) but each launch also pushed away from it, Earth.  The Earth is very big, comparatively, and over decades such pushing migh disturb or realign the orbital position of our planet a teeny-tiney bit.  Oh, and add a Japanese earthquake to the mix.

Who knows?  Maybe the Mayans were astronologically on target regarding the end of their calendar (and presumably the world) around the winter solstice 2012?  Mere weeks later a rogue asteroid  zipped closer to Earth than many of our communication satellites.  If that rock had but a slightly different trajectory (or if the Earth were in a slightly altered position) a huge portion of the surface would have been anihilated.

Meteor dust and dawn in Russia

As if to illustrate, on February 15, 2013, as the asteroid sped away from us, a meteor plunged into the atmosphere over Russia and exploded in its upper reaches.  The angle of attack for this rock was slight enough that it skipped through the atmosphere rather than plunding downward - where it would have been much closer to the surface when it exploded.

So, I'll add all of Mankind's rocketry of the 20th Century and 21st Century to date as a possible Hero of the environment.

And the Chelaybinsk meteor made for some wonderful sunrises.  It could have made something else...