63745261
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MarkWhittington writes:
According to a Monday story on Space.com. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is having another go at developing a space plane that can deliver a payload to low Earth orbit, land, and then be rapidly turned around to do it again. The dream is as old as the original space shuttle program, but has thus far eluded researchers. If the goal can finally be achieved, it will allow for not only the rapid deployment of satellites, but for the topping off of orbiting fuel depots, a scheme favored by many as an alternative to launching deep space missions on a heavy lift rocket such as the Space Launch System,
63644003
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MarkWhittington writes:
A Thursday story in Extreme Tech suggests that “robot sex partners” are going to be pretty common by 2025, just over a decade away. Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are combining to make possible any kind of sexual experience one could desire, without actually having to deal with an actual human being with feelings and desires of their own. The potential for disruption for society and human relations will be profound. Imagine the demise of the world's oldest profession and even a decline in human to human sexual relations as even the unattractive and unappealing can have their deepest desires satisfied with no strings or consequence.
63409833
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MarkWhittington writes:
SpaceX’s Elon Musk’s decision to build a space port on the Texas Gulf Coast has been met with near universal acclaim, albeit perhaps muted from Florida, which lost out on the hunt for a commercial launch facility. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a conservative firebrand, tweeted, “Congrats to Texas & @SpaceX for their commitment to a commercial launch facility in Cameron county!” However a writer for Breitbart California took a much dimmer view of the deal in a Wednesday article.
The article, while taking issue with the incentives the state of Texas used to attract the commercial space port, when riven with numerous factual errors concerning the incentives, the other reasons Texas was chosen, and SpaceX''s plans for its California facilities.
63008715
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MarkWhittington writes:
While participating in a panel called “The US Space Enterprise Partnership” at the NewSpace Conference that was held by the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell opined that NASA’s budget should be raised to $22-25 billion, according to a tweet by Space Policy Online’s Marcia Smith. The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency’s limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
The statement represents something of a departure of the usual mutual antagonism that exists between some in the commercial space community and some at NASA. Indeed Space Politics’ Jeff Foust added a tweet, “Thought: a panel at a Space Frontier Foundation conf is talking about how to increase NASA budget. Imagine that in late 90s.” The Space Frontier Foundation has been a leading voice for commercializing space, sometimes at the expense of NASA programs.
62172537
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MarkWhittington writes:
Rep. Bill Posey, R-Florida announced on Thursday that he was introducing a bill along with Rep, Derek Kilmer, D-WA called the American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space (ASTEROIDS) Act of 2014. The act is designed to protect the private property rights for entities mining asteroids and to otherwise encourage asteroid mining. The bill is in apparent reaction to efforts by companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries to locate and mine Earth approaching asteroids for their resources.
The crucial part of the short piece of legislation states that the resources mined from an asteroid would be the property of the entity undertaking the operation. This language gets around the provision of the Outer Space Treaty that states that states are forbidden to establish national sovereignty over celestial bodies, which would be a perquisite to the United States allowing a private entity to own an asteroid. It rather grants mineral rights to the asteroid, something that the treaty does not mention. This is no enforcement mechanism in the event of a dispute with another country, however.
62033577
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MarkWhittington writes:
While he has initiated the social media campaign, #Apollo45, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is also using the occasion to campaign for an expansion of American space exploration. According to a Tuesday story in the Washington Post, Aldrin has expressed the wish that President Obama make some sort of announcement along those lines this July 20. The idea has a certain aspect of déjà vu.
Aldrin believes that the American civil space program is adrift and that some new space exploration, he prefers to Mars, would be just the thing to set it back on course. There is only one problem, however. President Obama has already made the big space exploration announcement. Aldrin knows this because he was there.
President Obama flew to the Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010, with Aldrin accompanying as a photo op prop, and made the announcement that America would no longer be headed back to the moon, as was the plan under his predecessor George W. Bush. Instead American astronauts would visit an Earth approaching asteroid and then, decades hence, would land on Mars.
61571915
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MarkWhittington writes:
Thursday, Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin issued a challenge to a debate to Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, former astronaut and president and CEO of Ad Astra to a debate. The debate is not whether or not astronauts will go to Mars. The debate will be about how they will go to Mars. "Resolved: Electric Propulsion in an Enabling Technology for Human Mars Exploration.” Chang-Diaz would make the affirmative argument. Zubrin will make the negative argument.
The argument boiled down to its essential is about a mode of propulsion. Chang-Diaz is working on a plasma rocket engine called VASIMR which he claims will make trip times to and from Mars far less than conventional chemical rockets. Zubrin not only disputes that this is possible, but even desirable.
Chang-Diaz asserts that the radiation hazards inherent in interplanetary flight makes a quicker population system a vital pre requisite for missions to Mars. He has touted his VASIMR engine, which he has been working on for a number of years, as a solution to that problem. Zubrin responded that these assertions are false.
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MarkWhittington writes:
According to a Wednesday story on Coming Soon, a movie called “In the Event of a Moon Disaster” has been greenlit for production starting in early 2015. The movie is based on the premise that the Apollo 11 moon landing ended in a disaster that left Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to die on the lunar surface. That alternate ending was actually quite possible.
During the final descent of the lunar module, Armstrong and Aldrin found themselves being taken straight into a boulder strewn field on the lunar surface by the automatic landing system. Armstrong quickly took manual control of the lunar module and landed it in a relatively flat part of the moon that would become famous as Tranquility Base. But that and a pair of computer glitches that occurred around the same time could have resulted in tragedy rather than triumph.
The movie is based on a speech that writer William Safire had written for President Richard Nixon in the event of a moon disaster. The speech, perhaps the best Safire ever wrote, was a heartfelt salute to the fallen astronauts as well as a vow that men would follow in their footsteps. It ended with, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”
61339819
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MarkWhittington writes:
Ever since the House passed a NASA spending bill that allocated $100 million for a probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa, the space agency has been attempting to find a way to do such a mission on the cheap. The trick is that the mission has to cost less than $1 billion, a tall order for anything headed to the Outer Planets. According to a Wednesday story in the Atlantic, some researchers at Draper Labs have come up with a cheap way to do a Europa orbiter and land instruments on its icy surface.
The first stage is to orbit a cubesat, a tiny, coffee can sized satellite that would contain two highly accurate accelerometers that would go into orbit around Europa and measure its gravity field. In this way the location of Europa’s subsurface oceans would be mapped. Indeed it is possible that the probe might find an opening through the ice crust to the ocean, warmed it is thought by tidal forces.
The second stage is to deploy even smaller probes called chipsats, tiny devices that contain sensors, a microchip, and an antenna. Hundreds of these probes, the size of human fingernails, would float down on Europa’s atmosphere to be scattered about its surface. While some might be lost, enough will land over a wide enough area to do an extensive chemical analysis of the surface of Europa, which would then be transmitted to the cubesat mothership and then beamed to Earth.
61272851
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MarkWhittington writes:
Elon Musk is well known as a private space flight entrepreneur, thanks to his space launch company SpaceX. He is also a purveyor of high end electric cars manufactured by his other company, Tesla Motors. But many people do not know that Musk has a third business, Solar City, which is a manufacturer of solar panels. Tuesday that company announced a major play to increase the output of solar panels suitable for home solar units.
Solar City has acquired a company called Silevo, which is said to have a line of solar panels that have demonstrated high electricity output and low cost. Silevo claims that its panels have achieved a 22 percent efficiency and are well on their way to achieving 24 percent efficiency. It suggests that 10 cents per watt is saved for every point of efficiency gained.
Solar City, using the technology it has acquired from Silevo, intends to build a manufacturing plant in upstate New York with a one gigawatt per year capacity. This will only be the beginning as it intends to build future manufacturing plants with orders of magnitude capacity. The goal appears to be for the company to become the biggest manufacturer of solar panels in the world.
61209695
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MarkWhittington writes:
According to a Saturday story in the Los Angeles Times, the recent revival of tensions between the United States and Russia, not seen since the end of the Cold War, may provide a shot in the arm for the American rocket engine industry. Due in part in retaliation for economic sanctions that were enacted in response to Russian aggression in the Ukraine, Russia announced that it would no longer sell its own RD-180 rocket engines for American military launches. This has had American aerospace experts scrambling to find a replacement.
The stakes for weaning American rockets off of dependency on Russian engines could not be starker, according to Space News. If the United States actually loses the RD-180, the Atlas V would be temporarily grounded, as many as 31 missions could be delayed, costing the United States as much as $5 billion. However SpaceX, whose Falcon family of launch vehicles has a made in the USA rocket engine, could benefit tremendously if the U.S. military switches its business from ULA while it refurbishes its own launch vehicles with new American made engines.
61079427
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MarkWhittington writes:
With the New Horizons probe just about a year away from its flyby encounter with Pluto, which was once considered the ninth planet in the Solar System, its principle investigator Dr. Alan Stern has challenged Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson to a debate over whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet. Tyson, a celebrity astrophysicist whose updated version of Cosmos has just finished its run, has thus far refused to do so, according to a Tuesday story on Space.com.
Tyson explained his refusal to debate Stern on his Facebook page. “As a general rule, I don't debate people. Done it once or twice before, but abandoned the effort. What's behind it is that I don't have opinions that I require other people to have. So debates don't interest me for this reason.” Tyson, aside from his Cosmos series, is a fixture on television and radio talk shows. He is generally treated with deference by interviewers such as Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher with his positions on a variety of subjects ranging from Pluto to climate change going unchallenged.
This elicited a sharp retort by Stern on his own Facebook page. “Tyson says he won't debate. All scientists engage in debate over competing ideas. If he persists in not supporting his position by engaging in debate, I'll consider it evidence he knows the position isn't supportable.” Stern has threatened to debate an empty chair if Tyson does not reconsider his position. Stern’s challenge and Tyson’s refusal has kicked up something of a social media firestorm.
60977871
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MarkWhittington writes:
It turns out that the recent FAA environmental impact statement that seemed to give a stamp of approval for the proposed SpaceX space port in south Texas is not the end of the regulatory process, but the end of the beginning. A story in the Brownsville Herald reminds us that the report has kicked off a 30 day review period after which the FAA can allow SpaceX to apply for a launch license to start work on the Brownsville area launch facility. And that in turn kicks off a 180 day process during which the FAA makes the decision whether or not to grant the required licensing and permits.
But even that is not the end of the regulatory hurdles that SpaceX must face before the first Falcon rocket roars into the skies over the Gulf of Mexico. The Longview News-Journal reports that a number of state and federal agencies must give their approval for various aspects of the space port before it becomes operational. For instance, the Texas Department of Transportation must give approval for the movement of utility lines.
Environment Texas still opposes the space port since it is close to a wild life reserve and a state park. SpaceX has already agreed to enact measures to minimize the impact the space port would have on the environment, “such as containing waste materials from the construction and enforcing a speed limit in the control center area.” Environment Texas is not impressed, however. Whether it is disposed to make trouble in the courts is an open question.
60945369
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MarkWhittington writes:
"The Edge of Tomorrow," the science fiction actioner starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, is enjoyable on many levels. On the other hand it gets the notion of reenacting the D Day invasion for the 21st Century all wrong.
The plot premise for the movie is that aliens have taken over much of Europe, much like the Nazis did decades ago. There is an Eastern Front where Russian and Chinese forces are battling the aliens and apparently an Italian and Scandinavian fronts as well. The key to victory seems to be an invasion of Europe with allied forces based in England.
The trailer shows, so it is no spoiler, that the invasion turns out to be a shambles. The aliens are waiting for the invasion force and takes it in ambush. However just a modicum of sensible tactics, informed by the last D Day invasion of Europe, would have caused a different outcome.
The invasion appears to consist of Cruise, Blunt, and their buddies being dropped on the beach near Calais on bungee cords wearing cumbersome exoskeletons from hovering tilt rotor vehicles. There is a shot of at least one hover craft on the beach, but that seems to be the sum total of D Day 2.0.
The original D Day started with a preliminary bombardment of the beaches by air and sea. It also involved some depth in the forced entry by use of paratroops. The invaders had the use of aerial recon photos. None of these were present in the movie. No wonder they got slaughtered.
A few batteries of long range rail guns emplaced at Dover could have plastered the beach at Calais from one end to the other. Stealth drones could have pinpointed the aliens and helped to target them for air strikes. Some of those bungee warriors could have dropped several miles inland. They could have developed exoskeletons that gave them some mobility.
60844153
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MarkWhittington writes:
The National Research Council issued its report on the future of space exploration on Wednesday, June 4. 2014. The report stated that the “horizon goal” for any program of space exploration in the near term (i.e. the next two decades) is a Mars surface expedition, It also started that the current NASA program, which includes a mission that would snag an asteroid, put in in lunar orbit, and visit it with astronauts is inadequate to meet that goal.
The report gave two reasons for its critique of the current NASA program. First the asteroid redirect mission would not create and test technologies necessary to conduct a crewed Mars mission. Second, NASA projects essentially flat budgets for the foreseeable future. Any space exploration program worthy of the name will cost considerably more money, with five percent increases in NASA funding for a number of years.
