First up is Pamela Gay from Star Stryder with In Search of Alien Air.
She links to, and comments on, two papers that discuss the difficult
task of finding extra-solar planets.
I'm near-sighted and have trouble seeing past the end of my nose. It's
astounding to me that we can find planets around another star.
Ken Murphy sends along his article in The Space Review - The
Exploration of, and Conquest of, the Moon!.
In the 1950s, people were beginning to realize, as rockets
penetrated further and further past the threshold of space, that
perhaps Goddard had been on to something, and perhaps a trip to our
Moon was possible. To help popularize this idea in the freest
bastions of the free world, the US and UK, two teams of authors and
illustrators set out to create books that would be accessible to
everyone and explained the most basic principles of what would be
involved. The results couldn't be more different, perhaps
reflecting the deeper cultural lessons, but also differing in the
scope of their ambitions.
Moving outward from the Moon to Mars and the Asteroid Belt we have
Darnell Clayton at Colony Worlds with Colonizing Ceres Before Mars
Could Save The Red Planet.
Whether or not our species actually settles the red planet is
highly questionable. Unlike Earth's Moon, Mars lacks major
resources of any kind that would make colonizing the planet
worthwhile. Unless those crimson deserts can provide some return on
investment, it may be wiser to turn Mars into a penal colony, than
attempting to recreate the world into a second home.But humanity
may be able to justify settling Mars by diverting its attention
towards the asteroid belt first--and the key towards conquering the
asteroid belt, as well as Mars may lie upon the dwarf world Ceres.
The choice of which to settle first is a Cereous matter ...
Stuartatk at Cumbrian Sky talks about one of our happy robot pals who
have gone before us and made tire ruts on the surface of Mars in
Tracks
A couple of days ago an image flashed up on my screen and I
literally froze as I looked at it...
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]
It wasn't anything anyone else would consider to be "special" or
"amazing"; just a grainy, black and white picture of Opportunity's
tracks through the inches-high dust dune running around the edge of
Victoria Crater, but it triggered something in me, a reaction, a
response, that refused to go away. Just two notches in an
undulating, close horizon, but it made my breath catch in my
throat, because it occurred to me that that picture was the latest
in a long line of images showing nothing less than Mankind's
progress and development - if not Evolution itself.
Come to think of it one of the more interesting memories I have
growing up is looking at wagon wheel ruts carved into rock near my
grandma's place in Oregon - ruts made by pioneers on the Oregon trail.
TopSpace at RLV and Space Transport News links to and comments on a
USA Today article about Eric Anderson and Space Adventures.
These people (ISS tourists) are not part of a market study. They
are hard data that prove the appeal of space tourism (sorry, I
prefer that term). Furthermore, their "regular folk" backgrounds
indicate that a similar percentage of people in lower net worth
strata would go if the ticket prices came within their reach.
With respect five of anything doesn't prove much - the sample size is
too small. We can be hopeful but ought to be wary of inferring from
ratty data.
Speaking of cynics ... it's Shubber from Space Cynics about the ISS in
Slim Pickings.
Thomas Pickens III seems to think that the future opportunity for
making the ISS that success that we all deep down know it can be is
to get the pharmaceutical industry to line up to use it... if only
they knew how valuable it was!
I'd be wary of using an expensive one of a kind government facility
that costs a bundle to get to as well.
Louise Riofrio at Babe In The Universe links pop culture and Niels
Bohr in STARDUST and Niels Bohr.
STARDUST is based on a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman. A star (Claire
Danes) falls to Earth in human form and can't return to the sky.
Along the way she encounters lovestruck Tristan Thorne (Charlie
Cox) and pirate Captain Shakespeare (Robert DeNiro), who captures
lightning in his airship. She is pursued by Prince Septemus (Mark
Strong) and a wicked witch (Michelle Pfeiffer). The villains wish
to cut out the star's glowing heart to gain her secret of eternal
life.
The eternal life of stars has been a mystery that life on Earth's
surface depends on. According to standard models, life should not
have evolved here at all because when the Solar System was forming
the Sun was only 75% as bright. Earth's average temperature would
have been 15 degrees below zero Celsius, frozen solid. This can't
be true, for geology and the fossil record say that Earth had
liquid water and life when models say it was frozen solid. This
conflict with observations is the Faint Young Sun paradox.
Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams weighs in with Remembering Robert
Bussard. As you are no doubt aware of Robert Bussard passed on last
week. His work on fusion may yet bear fruit - and we'll owe him a
great deal if it does. But we should also remember him for other work
it's the ramjet that I return to as I think about him. If you
collect classic papers, as I do, here's one for you: Bussard's
"Galactic Matter and Interstellar Spaceflight" in Acta Astronautica
6 (1960), pp. 179-94. Imagine a scoop created by a magnetic field
that sucks in interstellar hydrogen ionized by a forward-firing
laser. The result is fed into a fusion reactor. Get the vehicle up
to about six percent of light speed and you could light that
engine, with presumably amazing results.
There are worse ways to get around the galaxy.
Greg Laden at Evolution (catchy tag line, Greg) opines that Sputnik
was The greatest thing that ever happened to America.
If you were raised in a society in which there is an evil enemy
that you are convinced intends to arrive some day on your country's
shores, take over your government, impose a new social order, marry
your sister, and so on, then when this evil foreign government
sends the first warning shot in this war and it is an unprecedented
and amazing feat of science, then suddenly you love science. You
pay taxes to fund science. Your idolize science. You start
demanding that science comes to the rescue. One way to do this is
to fund science, fund higher education, build up the universities.
Maybe? What do you think?
Space Files reports that the UFO seen during Apollo mission thing has
been resolved.
One of the legends of the space age is that during their flight to
the moon, Apollo astronauts saw UFOs, or objects they couldn't
identify but which were obviously floating in space somewhere close
to them. This is rather a fact than a legend, as Buzz Aldrin
confirmed it in numerous interviews.
I mean we know this it never hurts to point this out. Me, I think that
it's incredible that we assume there are aliens savvy enough to cross
thousands of light years, hide their presence from us but .. dumb
enough to pull an oopsie and show themselves to the guys aboard
Apollo?
Thanks for reading and thanks for contributing!
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