Canadian Teens Send Lego Man into the Atmosphere, Not Space

The news is buzzing with the story of "the Lego Man in Space" launched by two Canadian teens.  I applaud their efforts in exploration and hope they can learn scientific knowledge first hand from their efforts.  (I also share the fear of many who warn about the risks to air traffic).

However, it is sad to point out the geographical fact that the the Canadian Lego Man never went into space.  The Lego Man did in fact travel far enough to see the curvature of the Earth when it reached 80,000 feet in altitude (15.2 miles or 24.4 kilometers) which is 2.75 times higher than Mount Everest, but that is not space.  The scientifically recognized boundary for where the atmosphere ends and space begins, the Kármán Line, is about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level.

There are several reason why the line was drawn at that height.  At 62 miles the atmosphere, which does not abruptly ends but fades away into space, becomes too thin to support aeronautical traffic going slower than orbital escape velocity while the temperature greatly increases and solar radiation's impact dramatically rises.

The height of the line has prevented balloons from being a means of putting astronauts and satellites into space.  Even Captain Joe Kittinger of Project Excelsior never went into space during his balloon ride to (and jump back down to Earth) 102,800 feet (19.5 miles or 31.300 kilometers).  On the plus side this means Natural Light was not the first beer in space (note that you can the balloon pop, in space there is no air to hear a popping sound).

February 2012 Travel Photo: Sierra Nevadas from the Air

The Sierra Nevada Mountain Range runs some 400 miles (about 650 kilometers) through eastern California.  The name means "snowy mountain range" in Spanish.


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The mountains began to 200 million years ago in the Triassic Period.  The subduction of the Pacific Plate underneath the North American plate helped form the mountains throughout the millions of years.  Even today the movement of the plates is causing the mountains to slowly grow. 

The mountains became critical to the development of the theory of conservation.  The California settlement rushes focused on gold and silver which were found along the flanks of the mountains while the inner parts of the mountain range were ignored.  The first exploitations of the area revealed a natural paradise just at the time the idea of a natural American paradise was being formulated.  Yosemite Valley inside the Sierra Nevadas was first declared a protected by the federal government in 1864.  This is one of the first cases of a government protecting an area for public benefit and not the pleasure of the ruler and most countries since then have made conservation parks for the public.

Best Selling Cars in 160 Countries and Territories

Sometimes random browsing of the internet can discover the neatest things.  Case in point: the well written and researched Best Selling Cars blog which documents the best selling cars in 160 countries and territories.

Some countries pages are fairly mundane.  The best selling vehicle in the United States is the Ford F-Series while the Ford F-Series and Dodge RAM share the monarchy in Canada.  However, some other countries' pages are windows into the bizzaro world:

• The Land Cruiser is the best selling car in Somalia.  I guess the vehicle is great for driving off road and for being an excellent war wagon. 
• North Korea makes their own van known as the Pyeonghwa Samchunri.
• And Cubans buy Chinese cars, basically the only car they can afford now that Cubans can buy cars.

Meanwhile other countries make geographic sense and are predictable.  SUVs are big in the cheap oil, money rich Arabian Peninsula petroleum states, Europe loves German cars, and the Hilux leads in a plurality of countries.

Oman: A Vast Geography of Former Exclaves

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The Sultanate of Oman's geography is unique.  Many geography blogs have already blogged before about its exclaves on the Musandam Peninsula.  This exclave branches off the United Arab Emirance and serves as the Arab side to the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz.  This exclave allowed Oman to monitor, and to a certain extent control, trade between Persian Gulf ports and the Indian Ocean port cities from the 1600s until European domination of Middle East trade in the 1800s.


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Many people, however, do not know about the former exclaves of Oman which made the geography of the sultanate even more extended.  The major one was Zanzibar, off the coast of present day Tanzania.  In 1698 the Portuguese were forced off of Zanzibar by Oman.  Oman used Zanzibar to act as its major spice, goods, and slave trade port for Africa.  Sultan Said bin Sultan loved Zanzibar so much that in 1837 he made Zanzibar the capital of Oman!  After his death his sons divided the empire with one brother getting Oman and a few other possessions while the other became the sultan of an independent Zanzibar.  Though the British made the sultanate a protector after the shortest war in the history of the world, the Arab descendants of Zanzibar ran the country until a revolution and ethnic cleansing led by Marxist Black Africans against the Arab rulers and Indian business class in 1964.

The Zanzibar Protectorate, then ruled by the Arab-African descandants from Oman, sits off British Tanganyika in the 1922 National Geographic Map.

The other major exclave of Oman was Gwadar in present-day Pakistan.  In the 1500s to 1800s Oman kept very close ties to the various Muslim states in the Indian subcontinent due to trade.  This links survives with Oman's food being spicy like Indian food (unlike Arab food) and with many Indian/Pakistani Muslims and even some Hindus living in Oman today.

Small Omani Gwadar is near the western edge of Baluchistan's coast in this 1946 National Geographic map.

In 1783 the exiled former Sultan of Oman, Saiad Sultan, used his personal connections to become ruler of the small port city of Gwadar.  He later retook control of Oman.  Once Saiad moved back to Oman but he continued to rule Gwadar through a governor.  Gwadar stayed under Oman's control until Pakistan bought the small port in 1958 for three million dollars.

Oman's African and subcontinent exclaves are no longer on the political map but their legacies still survives.  As mentioned above there is a strong Indian presence in Oman and many shipping lanes and airplane routes continue to connect the subcontinent to Oman.  The ties are even stronger between Oman and Zanzibar.  Most Omani and Zanzibaris (and even some Pakistanis around Gwadar) are Ibadi Muslims, neither Sunni or Shia but a unique denomination which recognizes philosophy, use of a smaller and separate hadiths, and other beliefs.  Oman is responsible for the survival of the Ibadi Muslim faith as the only Ibadi Muslims who cannot claim Omani descent or influence are a few remote Berber tribes in the Saharan Desert.  These exclaves cannot be found on a map but their legacy lives on in the realm of human geography.

The Arab Spring: One Year On

Today, Friday the 27th of February is the first Friday after the one year anniversary of the start of Egypt's Revolution.  The Middle East is still on fire on Egyptians protest against the military junta while liberals slowly realize they lost the country to Islamists, Bahraini Shia begin to violently resist the minority Sunni's monarchy, and Syria continues to be in civil war as Syrians fight against the Arab national socialist Baath Party.

All videos are from the past three days.

Egypt



Bahrain





Syria

Aloha Oe: The Geography of Oahu in Song

The song "Aloha Oe" is a classic Hawaiian song frequently sung to express loneliness, homesickness, love, and even Hawaiianess.  The song was composed by then Princess, and future Queen, Liliuokalani in 1877 during a tour of the island of Oahu.  The most accepted story is the princess based the song off the love one of her officers had for a Hawaiian female farmgirl.


http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=oahu&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=32.939885,79.013672&vpsrc=6&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Oahu&t=m&ll=20.262197,-157.697754&spn=7.210414,9.338379&z=6&iwloc=A" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map

While the tune is deeply associated with the Hawaiian islands in many minds, the lyrics themselves also express the geography of eastern Oahu, where Liliuokalani was when she thought up the song.

English Lyrics

Proudly swept the rain by the cliffs

As it glided through the trees

Still following ever the bud

The `ahihi lehua of the vale

 

Chorus:

Farewell to you, farewell to you

The charming one who dwells in the shaded bowers

One fond embrace,

'Ere I depart

Until we meet again

Sweet memories come back to me

Bringing fresh remembrances

Of the past

Dearest one, yes, you are mine own

From you, true love shall never depart

I have seen and watched your loveliness

The sweet rose of Maunawili

And 'tis there the birds of love dwell

And sip the honey from your lips

The first line mentions rainswept cliffs.  The princess was leaving Maunawili in eastern Oahu when she first started thinking of the song.  Eastern Oahu is the windward side and is frequently hit by rain showers.  The cliffs, formed due to Oahu's volcanic history, act as a barrier which causes the eastern side to receive even more rain than it would if the island were flat.

Military Geography of the Strait of Hormuz and the Allied Coalition

The British Daily Mail has a great infographic showing the Strait of Hormuz, the regional geography, the oil output of the various countries which use the strait (about 30% of the world's output though not all their oil goes through the strait), and the America-British-French naval coalition which is currently there to ensure Iran does not close the strait.

Click to enlarge.  From Daily Mail.

Of interesting note, the United States led an international alliance into the 1990-91 Gulf War to prevent Saddam Hussein from controlling less than seven percent of the world's oil when he annexed Kuwait.  If Iraq would have been able to take Saudi Arabia's oil fields in the "doomsday scenario" he would have controlled twenty percent of the world's oil output.  Iran currently has five percent of the world's oil output and could control twenty-five to thirty percent of the world's output by closing the strait.

The Strait of Hormuz is now a flashpoint with Iran trying to demonstrate its control of the Persian Gulf with the Allied Coalition trying to keep trade with the Arab Oil states open.

From The Daily Star of Lebanon