John Bellingham

Political assassinations are thankfully uncommon here in the UK. Aside from the tragic murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016, there have been precious few attacks on our MPs.

Before Jo Cox's tragic death, the IRA and their predecessors had done their best to kill MPs, succeeding on six occasions. Despite the list of sitting MPs who have been murdered is thankfully low.

But these are just the successful attempts; there have been other, unsuccessful ones. Labour MP Stephen Timms was attacked by an Islamic extremist, whilst a tragic machete attack on Nigel Jones killed his researcher, Andrew Pennington. It is clear that MPs can make an attractive target.

A simple plaque on a building in St Neots tells the story of John Bellingham, the only person to successfully murder a sitting Prime Minister.

An event to have civic pride in?

By all accounts (mostly, it should be said, written after his crime), Bellingham was not a success in  life. Born in St Neots in 1776, he set himself up in business and travelled the world, including to Russia, where he ended up in jail in 1804 over bad debts. It took him five years to finally make it home, and he seems to have spent that time getting increasingly annoyed.

For some reason, he believed the British government owed him compensation for his imprisonment in Russia. After his pleas to the government failed, he travelled on the 11th May 1812 to the Houses of Parliament, where he waited in a lobby. As Prime Minister Spencer Perceval (apparently not 'Percival' as on the plaque) appeared at about 5.15 in the afternoon, Bellingham shot him in the chest.

Bellingham made no attempt to escape, and in fact sat down on a bench. He therefore cannot have been very surprised when he was swiftly arrested, tried and executed within a week - despite people attempting to help him escape!

There was a surprising amount of public sympathy for him, partly due to Spencer Perceval's unpopularity, and a subscription ensured that the success he had missed in life was partly gained in death.

As for Perceval? He is a forgotten Prime Minister. Few remember him, and when they do, it is for the nature of his death that any of his many achievements in life.

Starhopper

I have a love-hate relationship with Elon Musk. I love much of what he is trying to do, and his grand aims. I hate much of the way he goes about it, and in particular how he communicates. These latter feelings are not helped by the Musk fanbois online.

But he aims high, and when he delivers, he can really deliver. His company SpaceX have already revolutionised transport into space with their semi-reusable rocket system, Falcon 9. Not willing to rest on his laurels, for the last three years he has been heavily trailing a new fully-reusable rocket/spacecraft duo designed, so he claims, to take up to 100 people to Mars.

Yes, that is two Mars-related posts in a row.

The system has changed over the years, with the system downscaling to 9 meters diameter (probably from 12 metres) and, most recently, from carbon-fibre to stainless steel - a change that is probably worth a post of its own. It has also changed names several times, from ITS (Interplanetary Transport System), to BFR (Big F***ing Rocket), and now to the (IMO lame) 'Starship'. The initial launch site was announced as being a new site they were developing at Boca Chica in Texas, just a few miles from the Mexico border.

In December, keen-eyed observers noticed some unusual activity at Boca Chica. Engineers (allegedly agricultural ones) were building some tank-like structure that many thought might be a water tower.

Obviously a water tank
(from twitter.com/CowboyDanPaasch)

Spacecraft are built inside buildings by highly-skilled aerospace engineers. They are not built outside, exposed to the elements - and certainly not by agricultural engineers. There's no way this could be a spacecraft ...

Right?

As the structure grew and more parts became visible, it soon became clear that a real vehicle was being built. Later on, Musk announced this is actually a development version of the new BFR (I refuse to call it 'Starship') spacecraft that will be used to test systems. It is not the first time they have done this: a few years ago they developed a testbed for Falcon 9 landings called Grasshopper, as shown below. This new rocket will be performing a similar role for the Falcon 9's much larger sibling, and has already been named 'Starhopper' by fans.

And now, in what is an incredibly fast time, assembly has finished on the test BFR. And it is ... remarkable.

This is not a render.
(From twitter.com/elonmusk/)

I think this looks truly stupendous. And for scale, that is a human standing underneath it. Yet at about 30-40 metres, this behemoth is shorter than the 55-metre actual rocket, and has three rather than seven engines. And this is only the second stage: the first stage booster that will loft this high up into the atmosphere before returning to land will be much larger (63 metres high with 31 engines).

I wish SpaceX all the best with this. If function follows form, then this will do well. I can't wait to see it do its first hop in a few months time.

Book review: Mars, by Ben Bova.

The Red Planet is hotter than ever. With Andy Weir's excellent 'The Martian' being a hit in both book and film forms, NASA's landers and rovers toiling on the surface, and Elon Musk's SpaceX working towards a rocket that may enable Mars colonisation, Earth's neighbour is getting a great deal of deserved attention.

Mars has featured in literature many times over the years. An example of this is Ben Bova's 1992 book 'Mars', about an international mission to Mars. The book is part of his 'Grand Tour' series around the planets.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The book's protagonist, Jamie Waterman, is a Navajo geologist on the ground team. His character felt particularly weak, and the plotline revolving around his ancestry was poorly developed and perhaps even stereotyped. Likewise, many of his compatriots are poorly written in my view - Anthony Reid, the doctor, is a snivelling Englishman with severe daddy issues.

To make things worse, the characters all act unprofessionally - behaving more like bunnies on Viagra than serious scientists in a dangerous environment, and letting international rivalries get in the way of their mission.

All of this made the first half of the book tough going, with a boring plot and very unsympathetic characters. However, the last third of the book has a very different feel - when the mission flirts with disaster, the plot takes off, and most of the characters develop another much-needed dimension. It was worth reading for this part of the book alone.

It is a far inferior book to others about Mars, for instance Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Red Mars', or Andy Weir's 'The Martian'. But it is probably still worth a read if you want to see the way a mission to Mars might look like - at least from a 1990s perspective.

2 out of 5.

(An old version of this was accidentally published earlier. Apologies. I shall go and sit in a corner for five minutes and mutter 'don't press the publish button until you're ready'.)

Book review: "The Planet Factory", by Elizabeth Tasker

It is unusual for a popular science book to start by saying that what you are reading will probably be proved wrong in a very short period. Yet that is exactly what astrophysicist Elizabeth Tasker states in this excellent book about how planets and moons form.

There is a good reason for this: twenty-five years ago we did not know of any planets outside our solar system, and some people claimed that our planetary system might be unique. All our models on how planets formed had to be based on what we could see in our own system. Yet by mid-2018 we knew of 3,700 planetary systems, and virtually every one has posed more questions than it has answered. Together, they have caused us to question our assumptions on how all planets - including the Earth - formed.

Ms Tasker details how primordial clouds of dust and gas collapses to form full solar systems with stars and planets, and how much we still have to learn about this most fundamental of processes.

She examines the weird planets that may exist: such as ones that orbit within their star, ones with seas of tar, or ones made of lava or others where it rains diamonds. Truly alien worlds that belong in science fiction - and indeed, science fiction worlds may not be as fictional as we once thought. Want a planet with two suns, such as Star Wars' Tatoooine? They exist. Want an ice world? Take your pick.

The reason many people are interested in planets is the possibility they may harbour life. In reality this is the only time when the media pays attention to the discovery of a new planet, usually with headlines such as "Most Earth-like planet could harbour life." Ms Tasker dives behind the headlines and looks at why they are often misleading, and how life might occur on planets that might be very different from the Earth. Finally, she examines how in the future we might be able to detect life on a distant planet, if not the form of the life, even from tremendous distances.

Planetary formation can be a very dry subject, and Ms Tasker does a good job in explaining the terminology in a light and accessible manner. Even so, this is not a children's book, and in places will require a little perseverance to understand the concepts, and some thumbing back through the pages to find definitions. But the perseverance certainly pays off.

The biggest issue I found with this book is how the uncertainty of how things happen and the resultant speculation can make things confusing as temporary theories conflict. An enhancement of the glossary at the end of the book for commonly-used terms would also be helpful.

If you have any interest in how the Earth formed, or in whether there is life elsewhere in the universe, then this book in an invaluable primer.

4 out of 5.

Scarpa Trek boots

I have used Scarpa boots as my main walking boots for well over fifteen years. I have probably worn a dozen pairs, and they have given sterling service. I can put on a new pair and walk for twenty miles with scarcely any breaking in.

Buying any new shoes can be problematic for me. I have metal in my ankle, which means that many shoes and boots cripple me within a few miles, if not steps. Our understairs cupboard contains three or four pairs of trainers which seemed fine in the shop and for the first few days, but once broken in caused me crippling pain as the fabric breaks in and pushes against the metal. This always seems to happen after they're too worn to take back for a refund. Yet the fit of Scarpa Trek boots have always worked for me out of the box.

Over those years Scarpa have changed the design: My first pair were vanilla Trek boots, which I think then became Trek 2, then Trek GTX. Each model had changes, some fairly large (for instance the removal of the protection on the toe box that I always quite liked). But throughout these changes, I found they boots just worked for me, more or less out of the box - I assume that they've always used the same last so the overall shape remains the same despite detail differences.

This means that once I am sure a pair fits me, I purchase three or four pairs, much to the amusement of the staff in the shop!

I am not complaining about Scarpa changing the design, nor do I expect them to keep the design static for a couple of decades just to help people like myself. In fact, it's great that there are boots that work so well for me.

If I have one complaint, it is that the upper eventually fails behind the toe box, where creases form with use. These eventually cracks and leak well before the soles wear out. I also need a pair of Sorbothane insoles, instead of the thin insoles that come with the boots. However since I get well over a thousand miles out of each pair of boots, sometimes with minimal maintenance and cleaning, these are very minor criticisms.

I last bought three pairs of boots seven or eight years ago, and my last pair are getting a little worn. I have looked online to order a new pair, and it looks as though they have been redesigned again - they're still called Trek GTX, but from the pictures it appear there are detail differences.

Hopefully they will be fine. At £170 a pair, it is going to be an interesting test!

Exploring versus adventuring.

I had a quick look on t'Internet to see how many self-styled explorers were currently on their travels.

There are an awful lot of them.

I do not want to denigrate their achievements; indeed, I am full of admiration for what they are doing, and wish I had the money / time / physicality / insanity to do it myself. But few are really exploring, because they are all travelling where people have been before and know well.

There are only two areas on Earth that still remain to be explored, where we can have a 'wow!' feeling that Admunsen or Scott must have felt, of being somewhere that no human has seen before. They are the polar regions and the deep sea.

Someone hoping to climb Everest one stated that he is an explorer. In my view he is not. 3,500 people have climbed the mountain, a number that will continue to increase. Even if you decide to do it wearing a dress, or waking backwards without oxygen, or up the East Face, or hang-glide part of the way up and cook a five-course meal ever 500 feet - you are not exploring. The high risk of the activity does not make it exploration.

It is adventuring.

I think I prefer adventuring to exploring anyway. Adventuring is something we can all do - whether it is pushing our limits by running a marathon, or by going sky-diving, or by taking holidays off the tourist map. Adventuring involves risk, but that risk can be manages to suit your personal level.

So this weekend, try to go adventuring. Push your limits; live your life.

Just don't call it exploring.

Suburban wildlife

I did a walk on Saturday. During it, I saw two foxes (one of which seemed as large as a large dog), a herd of wild deer (one with massive antlers), and loads of squirrels, ducks, geese etc. All were fairly unflustered by my presence - the deer allowed me to get within about thirty metres of them before they ambled into the trees.

I wouldn't mention this, except the entire walk was well within the borders of the M25. London can be surprisingly rural.

I'm afraid these are not the best photos, and have been heavily cropped, but at least show I'm not suffering from some strange form of walker's madness ...

An urban fox.

Geese and swans on a lake in Hainault Country Park. 

A suburban deer.

Whatch'ya looking at ?