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MarkWhittington writes:
One of the reasons for looking forward to the summer will be the return of the Canadian-produced science fiction dramas “Killjoys” and “Dark Matter” to the SyFy Channel this July 1. Both series were fun space adventures that are filled with action and intrigue during the first seasons last year
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MarkWhittington writes:
Budget cuts may have moved the Luna 27 Russian moon lander from 2020 to 2025, but whenever and if ever it launches, it will likely carry a European-built drill that will bore two meters into the lunar surface at the moon’s South Pole. The drilling system will extract packed ice thought to exist in some of the permanently shadowed craters at the lunar South Pole. The drill is called, appropriately, Prospect: Platform for Resource Observation and in-Situ Prospecting in support of Exploration, Commercial exploitation & Transportation. The drill portion of Prospect was built Finmeccanica in Nerviano, Italy and has already been tested in simulated lunar soil
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MarkWhittington writes:
Yahoo TV revealed more information about the six-part “Mars” miniseries being produced by Ron Howard and Brian Glazer to air on the National Geographic Channel in November. The miniseries will combine a scripted drama depicting the first attempt to colonize the Red Planet in 2033 with interviews with present day experts such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Andrew Weir, the author of “The Martian,” which was made into a smash hit film last year
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MarkWhittington writes:
Due to a directive by President Barack Obama, NASA has no current plans to return to the lunar surface. However, the space agency is still facilitating the study of mining lunar material and using it to build things on the moon’s surface as part of the In-Situ Challenge. The University of Southern California professor Behrokh Khoshnevis was the winner of this year’s challenge due to his proposal to use a process called Selective Separation Sintering.
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MarkWhittington writes:
The day after the voters of Austin decided to drive Uber and Lyft, the ridesharing companies, out of the Texas state capital, the Houston Chronicle reported that Republican lawmakers in the Texas legislature have decided to ride to the rescue. The lawmakers will introduce a bill in the 2017 legislative session to establish a state-wide regulatory regime for ridesharing companies. The proposed legislation will be far more business-friendly than the draconian measures favored by Austin and which now exist in Houston
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MarkWhittington writes:
With Donald Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, speculation abounds about the role of one of his warmest supporters, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, in his hypothetical administration. Gingrich has been mentioned for White House chief of staff or even vice president. The former speaker has been known for his creative ideas, not the least of which was a moon base that he suggested during his own presidential run in 2012. Despite the fact that the idea was ridiculed at the time, speculation abounds in the media, will Newt Gingrich “make the moon great again” under President Trump?
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MarkWhittington writes:
Austin declined to pass a proposition that would have lifted requirements for a stringent background check for drivers who work for ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft. The requirements include fingerprinting and other measures that Uber and Lyft maintain are overly burdensome and unnecessary. Opponents of the deregulation proposition are engaged in a considerable amount of chest thumping that Austin will not compromise on public safety. The ridesharing companies, true to their word, are preparing to cease operations in the Texas capital.
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MarkWhittington writes:
As Donald Trump, incredibly, became the presumptive Republican nominee, a great deal of angst is arising over how he might handle NASA as president. Space Policy Online noted that Trump has dodged the question of how much the space agency will be funded during his potential presidency. Noting previous statements on the Journey to Mars, Ars Technica speculates that NASA will be in for a downsizing under a Trump presidency.
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MarkWhittington writes:
Aviation Week reported that China has suggested that its first crewed moon landing will take place in the 2031-36 time frame. The schedule is somewhat later than the previous estimate, which placed a Chinese moon landing sometime in the 2020s. But, the announcement represents a long term strategy for the Chinese space program and its integration into larger political, military, and economic development. China has also announced goals to land more robotic probes on the lunar surface, a mission to Mars in 2020, and the building of a space station later this decade. The next crewed flight will take place later in 2016 and will involve tests of a prototype space station module called the Tiangong-2.
Vice News suggests that the Chinese space program is designed to spur technological innovation. The assessment is based on the experience of the American space program.
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MarkWhittington writes:
The news the SpaceX plans to land a version of its workhorse spacecraft called the Red Dragon on the surface of Mars as early as 2018 has led to speculation in Discovery Magazine that the entrepreneurial space launch company could beat NASA in landing people on the Red Planet. The idea bears some closer examination
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MarkWhittington writes:
The drumbeat of criticism of NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System continues in some parts of the media with a story in Buzzfeed entitled “Why is NASA Building An $18 Billion Rocket to Nowhere?” It’s a lovely if somewhat misleading catchphrase that has been repeated by SLS opponents in hundreds of blog posts and tweets.
In fact, the Space Launch System will enable NASA to go to quite a few places with its ability to lift 130 metric tons of payload into low Earth orbit at once
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MarkWhittington writes:
SpaceX announced that it intends to send a version of its Dragon spacecraft, called “Red Dragon,” to Mars as early as 2018. The mission, to be launched on top of a Falcon Heavy rocket, would be the first to another planet conducted by a commercial enterprise. The flight of the Red Dragon would be the beginning of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s long-term dream of building a settlement on Mars.
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MarkWhittington writes:
While NASA is firmly fixed on Mars as one of the places in the solar system where life might be discovered, the space agency is already looking at some of the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn as alternate venues of alien life. Europa, orbiting Jupiter, and Enceladus, orbiting Saturn, have ice crusts surrounding oceans, warmed by tidal forces from their home planets, that might harbor life. NASA has already manifested a mission to Europa to take place in the early 2020s. Motherboard noted that a project being funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program (NAIC) is developing a way to penetrate the ice crust to access the warm water ocean of Enceladus.
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MarkWhittington writes:
One of the oddest things ever to come out of a scientist’s mouth was recently uttered by Neil deGrasse Tyson, a celebrity astrophysicist and media personality. According to a story in Business Insider, Dr. Tyson suggested that the universe is likely a computer simulation created by highly advanced aliens. In fact, he thinks the likelihood that we are all living in a form of “the Matrix” which is to say a virtual world “may be very high.” Understandably, Tyson’s view is not widely shared by other scientists.
In other words, Tyson has embraced intelligent design, if not full bore creationism, albeit expressed in scientific rather than religious terms. Instead of “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth” Tyson might express his version of Genesis as “In the beginning, the Master Programmer executed that heavens and the Earth simulation.” But the hypothesis Tyson is suggesting is much the same thing. Instead of God, he is talking about aliens so advanced that they might as well be God.
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MarkWhittington writes:
Forbes posed an interesting question, what if NASA had continued its lunar program? The idea for the alternate history is that the space agency, perhaps instead of developing the space shuttle, continued to fly Apollo voyages to the moon beyond the Apollo 17 mission that took place in December 1972. In our history, people have not been back to the moon since, even though two presidents who happen to be named George Bush attempted to start space exploration programs that would have begun with a return to the moon. In any case, had the 1970s had been dominated by Apollo “like a bloodless war” to coin the phrase by Arthur C. Clarke, a number of things about the moon would have been discovered earlier and might have led to the building of a lunar colony in the 20th Century.
