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Returning to the Moon and Going to Mars Something for all the pessimists and naysayers out there
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Heart the ISS: Ten Reasons to Love the International Space Station It’s been called a white elephant, an orbital turkey, a money pit, and an expensive erector set. Seemingly, even many people at NASA think building it was a mistake. The International Space Station has been plagued with repeated delays, cost overruns, and bad press. Additionally, the ISS has never really caught the fancy of the general public and most likely there’s a fair percentage of the world’s population who have absolutely no idea there’s a construction project the size of two football fields going on in orbit over their heads. Nancy Atkinson Feb 2008 But I’m going to be honest. I’ll come right out and say it: I really like the ISS. In fact, I’m crazy about it, and have been ever since Unity docked with Zarya back in 1998. Yes, my heart belongs to the space station, and since its Valentine’s Day, I’m going to profess my feelings here and now with ten reasons why I love the International Space Station: (In no particular order:) 1. International Cooperation. Didn’t your heart swell with pride for the Europeans when the Columbus science module finally became part of the station this week? And you gotta love the Canadians for their reliable, heavy-duty Canadarm 2. The Russians have been steady partners in station construction and re-supply for years now. Japan’s science lab will be added on the next shuttle mission. The ISS is the largest, most complex, international engineering project in history. In a world where violence and political animosity floods the daily news, it’s incredible that this structure is quietly being built by 16 different countries working together in relative harmony. If not for the international partners, the ISS probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has said that the station’s most enduring legacy is the international partnership that created it. 2. Actually Building an Outpost in Space. The dream of almost every post-Apollo space enthusiast is to have a settlement or colony in space. As humble as it is, the ISS is exactly that. Humans have been living on board the station for over 7 years now. The experience of constructing and living aboard this complex structure in space is invaluable, and any future outpost will benefit from what’s been learned with the ISS. 3. The Personalities. Peggy Whitson, the first female station commander. Clay Anderson’s unique sense of humor. Suni Williams’ marathon and haircut for cancer patients. Mike Lopez-Alegria’s music. Mikhail Tyurin’s golf shot. Yuri Malenchenko’s wedding. Frank Culbertson’s September 11 perspective. Yury Usachev’s spinning antics. It goes all the way back to the three-way fist pump on Expedition One between Bill Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev, and Yuri Gidzenko. With the Expeditions lasting 4-8 months, we have the opportunity to get to know the astronauts and cosmonauts that live and work on board the ISS. If you watch the daily feeds from the ISS or listen to the periodic press conferences, you can become familiar with the different personalities of the station crews. The number one personality has to be Don Petit and his Saturday Morning Science. 4. You can see it almost every night. I’ve witnessed jaws dropping and eyes widening in wonder when people see the ISS for the first time gliding silently and swiftly across the night or early morning sky. I never tire of observing it. Find out when the station will fly over your backyard at NASA’s website or at the Heaven’s Above website. 5. No major problems so far. One of the real impressive things about the ISS is that all the components, built by different countries and contractors have fit together perfectly. Yes, there have been intermittent computer issues, a faulty smoke alarm and the torn solar arrays. But these problems have all been resolved in short order. The damaged SARJ (Solar Alpha Rotary Joint) is a looming issue that could be problematic. But there are some first-rate engineering minds working on this matter, and it appears they have time to come up with a solution. The station has never had a major calamity or had to be evacuated in over 7 years of continuous human occupation. Knock on a Whipple Shield. 6. The general public can participate. Schools and informal education centers can conduct live question and answer sessions with space station crews. Middle school students can choose locations on Earth for the ISS crew to take pictures as part of the EarthKAM project. Ham radio operators can talk regularly with astronauts and cosmonauts with the ARISS (Amateur Radio on the ISS.) College students can design projects to be researched on board the station. And of course if you have $40 million in spare change you can ride to the ISS on a Soyuz as a spaceflight participant. 7. Finally, we have science officers. The other dream of every post-Apollo space enthusiast (and Star Trek fans) is to have science officers to conduct real scientific research. The ISS has had science officers since 2002, but science hasn’t been in the forefront of the work on board the ISS. Yet. 8. Long term research. The ability of the ISS to serve as a platform for science has come under fire. But what other lab has been expected to produce scientific results while still under construction? With the addition of the European and Japanese science labs, and the expected increase in crew size from three to six in 2009, scientific research, the original purpose of the station, will finally be able to be conducted with consistency. The microgravity environment of the ISS allows the study of long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body, crucial for any future human exploration on the moon and Mars. Research will help fight diseases such as diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, and AIDS. The station provides a unique place to test technologies such as life support systems and new manufacturing processes, and gives us a long-term platform to observe and understand Earth's environment and the universe. 9. Post docking fly-arounds. After each construction mission to the ISS, the shuttle’s post docking fly-around gives us a chance to see the new additions and latest configuration of the station. The astronauts say it’s a thrill to see how their handiwork on a specific mission fits into the big picture of the entire ISS, and it’s a thrill for us back on Earth to see the station’s new look, too. Plus the fly-around usually gives the shuttle pilot some actual stick time to fly the shuttle and a little time in the limelight. 10. What else would we be doing? Many people feel that the ISS’s tremendous budget has taken funds away from robotic exploration and other science. I can’t argue with that. But when it comes to human spaceflight, what else would we have been doing for the past 10-20 years? A space station was the logical next step after the shuttle. The main problem is that it took so long to decide on a plan, get it approved by Congress and get it in the works with international cooperation. But now, with construction and maintenance ongoing, we’re constantly and continually learning how to live and work in space. The ISS is a resource that will guide us on our future human endeavors in space. It’s more than just an obligation to finish and then be disregarded. The planning and funding for its future should encompass the maximum utilization of its fullest potential. In my eyes, the International Space Station is a thing of beauty, a work of art, an engineering marvel, and a constant companion that I watch for every night as it orbits our planet. The ISS should be given all the respect, and love, it deserves. |
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You Survive in Space Without a Spacesuit? The sci-fi movie Sunshine gets it almost right By Morgan Smith Aug. 1, 2007 In the new sci-fi film Sunshine, an astronaut named Mace must leave his spacecraft without a protective suit. He makes it through his exposure with only a case of frostbite. Could you really survive outer space without a suit? Yes, for a very short time. The principle functions of a spacesuit are to create a pressurized, oxygenated atmosphere for astronauts, and to protect them from ultraviolet rays and extreme temperatures. Without it, a spacewalker would asphyxiate from the lack of breathable air and suffer from ebullism, in which a reduction in pressure causes the boiling point of bodily fluids to decrease below the body's normal temperature. Since it takes a bit of time for these things to kill you, it's possible to make it through a very quick stint in outer space. At most, an astronaut without a suit would last about 15 seconds before losing conciousness from lack of oxygen. (That's how long it would take the body to use up the oxygen left in the blood.) Of course, on Earth, you could hold your breath for several minutes without passing out. But that's not going to help in a vacuum. In fact, attempting to hold your breath is a sure way to a quick death. To make it for even a few seconds, Sunshine's Mace must have expelled the air from his lungs before he ventured into the starry void. If he hadn't, the vacuum would have caused that oxygen to expand and rupture his lung tissue, forcing fatal air bubbles into his blood vessels, and ultimately his heart and brain. Scuba divers are also at risk for air embolism; they're instructed not to hold their breath as they ascend from the deep sea. An astronaut who fell unconscious from lack of oxygen would last for a few minutes more before dying from asphyxiation or the effects of the pressure reduction. Ebullism would result in the formation of bubbles in the moisture found in the eyes, mouth, and skin tissue. One NASA test subject who survived a 1965 accident in which he was exposed to near-vacuum conditions felt the saliva on his tongue begin to boil before he lost consciousness after 14 seconds. In the movie, Mace takes the precaution of wrapping himself in insulation torn from the walls of the spacecraft he's leaving. This might provide some protection against temperatures in space that can run from minus-200 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It might also ward off ultraviolet-related skin damage during a short jump through space. What about the frostbite? That's actually the least plausible result of Sunshine's suitless spacewalk. The cold wouldn't cause Mace too much harm in just 15 seconds, even if he encountered the very lowest temperatures in space. That's because heat leaves the body very slowly in a vacuum. The more likely damage would be a "space hickey"caused from the swelling and bursting of the skin's small blood vesselswhich would look more like the effects of freeze-drying a wart than a case of frostbite. |
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Survival Imperative for Space Colonization In 1993, J. Richard Gott III computed with scientific certainty that humanity would survive at least 5,100 more years. At the time, I took that as reason to relax, but Dr. Gott has now convinced me I was wrong. He has issued a wake-up call: To ensure our long-term survival, we need to get a colony up and running on Mars within 46 years. July 17, 2007 New York Times If youre not awakened yet, I understand. Its only prudent to be skeptical of people who make scientific forecasts about the end of humanity. Dr. Gott, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton, got plenty of grief after he made his original prediction in 1993. But in the ensuing 14 years, his prophetic credentials have strengthened, and not merely because humanity is still around. Dr. Gott has used his technique to successfully forecast the longevity of Broadway plays, newspapers, dogs and, most recently, the tenure in office of hundreds of political leaders around the world. He bases predictions on just one bit of data, how long something has lasted already; and on one assumption, that there is nothing special about the particular moment that youre observing this phenomenon. This assumption is called the Copernican Principle, after the astronomer who assumed he wasnt seeing the universe from a special spot in the center. Suppose you want to forecast the political longevity of the leader of a foreign country, and you know nothing about her country except that she has just finished her 39th week in power. What are the odds that shell leave office in her 40th week? According to the Copernican Principle, theres nothing special about this week, so theres only a 1-in-40 chance, or 2.5 percent, that shes now in the final week of her tenure. Its equally unlikely that shes still at the very beginning of her tenure. If she were just completing the first 2.5 percent of her time in power, that would mean her remaining time would be 39 times as long as the period shes already served 1,521 more weeks (a little more than 29 years). So you can now confidently forecast that she will stay in power at least one more week but not as long as 1,521 weeks. The odds of your being wrong are 2.5 percent on the short end and 2.5 percent on the long end a total of just 5 percent, which means that your forecast has an expected accuracy of 95 percent, the scientific standard for statistical significance. And you can apply this Copernican formula to lots of other phenomena by assuming theyre neither in the first 2.5 percent nor the final 2.5 percent of their life spans. Now, that range is so broad it may not seem terribly useful to you, and Dr. Gott readily concedes that his Copernican formula often is not the ideal method. The best the formula could do regarding Bill Clinton, who had been president for 127 days when the 1993 paper in Nature was published, was predict he would serve at least three more days but not more than 13.6 more years. You could have gotten a narrower range by using other information, like actuarial data from previous presidencies, or factoring in the unlikelihood that the Constitution would be changed so he could serve more than two terms. But the beauty of the Copernican formula is that it allows you to make predictions when you dont have any other information, which is how Dr. Gott managed to predict the tenure of virtually every other nations leader that day in 1993 a total of 313 leaders. If none of those still in power stays in office beyond age 100, Dr. Gotts accuracy rate will turn out to be almost exactly 95 percent. Some philosophers and experts in probability theory have argued that Dr. Gott is making unwarranted deductions from past life spans, and that it is wrong to assume there is nothing special about the moment weve chosen to make a forecast. (See www.tierneylab.com for details of the debate.) But last year two philosophers, Bradley Monton and Brian Kierland, analyzed the criticisms and concluded in an article in the Philosophical Quarterly that Dr. Gott had indeed come up with a useful tool for difficult situations like trying to forecast doomsday without data from other planets. The Copernican formula predicts, based solely on our 200,000-year track record, that the human race is likely to survive at least 5,100 more years but not longer than 7.8 million roughly the same prediction youd make based on the longevity of past mammals on Earth, Dr. Gott says. That upper limit is a disappointment to those of us who imagine humans multiplying across the universe for billions of years. Dr. Gott doesnt rule out that possibility, but the Copernican Principle makes him conclude it is unlikely. After all, if colonization is common and theres nothing special about our civilization, why havent we already colonized other worlds? Why arent we colonists ourselves from a civilization somewhere else? If you think of yourself as a randomly chosen individual among all the intelligent beings who ever lived in the universe, then the odds are youre living in one of the larger and older civilizations simply because a lot more people have lived in those than in small, short-lived civilizations. The sobering facts, Dr. Gott says, are that in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe, weve only been around 200,000 years, and were only on one tiny planet. The Copernican answer to Enrico Fermis famous question Where are the extraterrestrials? is that a significant fraction must be sitting on their home planets. It might seem hard to imagine that humans would invent rockets and then never use them to settle other worlds, but Dr. Gott notes that past civilizations, notably China, abandoned exploration. He also notes that humans have been going into space for only 46 years a worrisomely low number when using Copernican logic to forecast the human spaceflight programs longevity. Since theres a 50 percent chance that were already in the second half of the space programs total lifespan, Dr. Gott figures there is a 50 percent chance it will not last more than another 46 years. Maybe the reason civilizations dont get around to colonizing other planets is that theres a narrow window when they have the tools, population and will to do so, and the window usually closes on them. In 1970 everyone figured wed have humans on Mars by now, but we havent taken the opportunity, Dr. Gott says. We should it do soon, because colonizing other worlds is our best chance to hedge our bets and improve the survival prospects of our species. Sooner or later something will get us if we stay on one planet. By the time were in trouble and wish we had that colony on Mars, it may be too late. You could argue that hes being too pessimistic about space exploration. The space program may be only 46 years old, but humans have been exploring new territory for tens of thousands of years, so by Copernican logic perhaps theyll keep it doing it far into the future. But given recent trends after going to the Moon, we now barely send humans into orbit hes right to be worried. If its true that civilizations normally go extinct because they get stuck on their home planets, then the odds are against us, but theres nothing inevitable about the Copernican Principle. Earthlings could make themselves the statistical anomaly. When extinction is the norm, you may as well try to be special. |
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Hawking Says Space Colonies Needed The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday. Forbes.com June 2006 Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference. "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Hawking, who came to Hong Kong to a rock star's welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture Wednesday were sold out. Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of." The 64-year-old scientist - author of the global best-seller "A Brief History of Time" - uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end. However, Alan Guth, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Hawking's latest observations were something of a departure from his usual research and more applicable to survival over the long-term. "It is a new area for him to look at," Guth said. "If he's talking about the next 100 years and beyond, it does make sense to think about space as the ultimate lifeboat." But, he added, "I don't see the likely possibility within the next 50 years of science technology making it easier to survive on Mars and on the moon than it would be to survive on earth." "I would still think that an underground base, for example in Antarctica, would be easier to build than building on the moon," Guth said. Joshua Winn, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, agreed. "The prospect of colonizing other planets is very far off, you must realize," he said. Hawking's "work has been highly theoretical physics, not in astrophysics or global politics or anything like that," Winn added. "He is certainly stepping outside his research domain." Hawking's comments Tuesday were reminiscent of the work of American astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who was a believer in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan, a Cornell University professor and NASA-decorated scientist who died in 1996, noted that organic molecules, the kind that life on Earth is dependent on, appear to be almost everywhere in the solar system. Sagan played a leading role in the U.S. space program, helping design robotic missions and contributing to the Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo expeditions. But his work also focused on the search for habitable worlds and intelligent life beyond the solar system, as well as theories about life's origins, ideas popularized in his best-selling 1985 novel, "Contact," which was made into a film starring Jodie Foster. At Tuesday's news conference, Hawking said he to was venturing into the world of fiction. He plans to team up with his daughter, 35-year-old journalist and novelist Lucy Hawking, to write a children's book about the universe aimed at the same age group as the Harry Potter books. "It is a story for children, which explains the wonders of the universe," said Lucy Hawking. They did not provide further details. |
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Profits set to soar in outer space Prepare for liftoff: The space business may be the most incredible new opportunity of your lifetime. By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine February 27, 2006 (Business 2.0) - Let's not wax sentimental about our space exploits thus far. The Apollo era was heroic, but beating the Soviets to the moon never provided a compelling economic reason to return. (We didn't even get Teflon or Tang as spinoffs--both were invented before 1960.) Space spending soars The shuttle and the international space station continued this record of dismal return on investment. Small wonder, then, that most private-sector investors have focused instead on more earthly pursuits. Only one thing will prod us into the cold, hard vacuum of space, and that's the prospect of earning cold, hard cash. Fortunately, there's now a lot of that to go around. Worldwide government spending on space is soaring to $50 billion a year, a 25 percent jump over 2000. NASA represents only $16 billion of that total, but during the next 20 years, the U.S. space agency is likely to sign contracts totaling as much as $400 billion to launch a human mission to Mars. We are also well into the commercial space age. In 1998, private-sector spending on space applications began to exceed government spending, and the gap is widening. A critical mass of entrepreneurs -- some with familiar names like Bezos and Branson -- have been backing space-related companies for years. In the coming months, their efforts will reach blastoff stage (quite literally). Some of the markets they're targeting, like the $4 billion satellite launch business being pursued by PayPal founder Elon Musk, are ripe for competition. But most, such as suborbital tourism, space hotels, and solar satellites, don't yet exist. All, however, have the potential to generate astronomical returns during the next decade. Building infrastructure is the first step, and here historical analogies abound. The federal government is poised to begin contracting with the private sector to deliver cargo into orbit, a trend that could nurture a market for civilian spaceflight in much the same way that airmail contracts from the Post Office spurred the development of civil aviation a century ago. Prize money -- the incentive that launched Charles Lindbergh -- is now being offered for everything from building a machine to extract oxygen from lunar soil ($250,000) to building an aircraft capable of delivering tourists to orbit by 2010 ($50 million). Opening up the Wild West Meanwhile, new technologies are opening up new possibilities. Consider the space elevator, which is enabled by the advent of lightweight carbon nanotubes; a 62,000-mile elevator to the heavens would reduce orbital freight costs by 98 percent and open up space just as the railroads opened up the Wild West. The long-term possibilities are even more celestial. Ever heard of 3554 Amun? It's a space rock about 2 kilometers in diameter that looks as if it might have fallen straight out of The Little Prince. There are three key things to know about 3554 Amun: First, its orbit crosses that of Earth; second, it's the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroid yet discovered; and finally, it contains (at today's prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. And if you time your journey right -- 2020 looks promising -- it's easier to reach than the Moon. That doesn't mean it's easy, of course; nothing worthwhile ever is. The automobile, commercial air travel, the PC, the Internet, the cell phone -- all took decades to reach their full potential, and none would have taken root without stubborn entrepreneurs who refused to heed conventional wisdom. The greatest barrier to the open markets of space isn't physical or technological; it's psychological. But for those who have the right stuff, the rewards may prove greater than anything the Apollo astronauts ever imagined. |
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Challenger Go at
Throttle Up People say they remember where they were when they heard the terrible news. I believe that. I recall where I was too. I was at my brothers house, playing snooker with my young nephew. The report came on the BBC TV news. There was a sick, empty feeling that left me numb. The same feeling Id had when they reported the murder of John Lennon. A feeling of deep loss. On 28th. January 1986 the space shuttle Challenger, one of four orbiters, exploded 73 seconds into its flight a few miles above the millions of people gathered at Kennedy Space Centre. The large crowd was there to send off another shuttle crew and the first civilian into orbit around the Earth for a few days. It was becoming routine to see shuttles going off on various missions. They said this is the way it would be in the future, after the first launch. My memory took me back to April 1981 and the press site at KSC. The feel of the cold, damp air evaporating as the warm Florida sun rose on the dawn of a new era. No longer would astronauts perch atop monstrous rockets in cramped capsules. This was the era of the Space Shuttle. The first spaceship to fly back to earth to be cleaned up, serviced, re-stacked to its boosters and fuel tank and sent up again within a few months. They said that once the first 4 test flights were complete we could expect a launch per month. I had put spaceflight to back of my mind. I was aware of all the science going on in orbit. Of ESAs Spacelab missions, satellite launches and other missions. By 1986 NASA had four operational orbiters; Columbia, Endeavor, Discovery and Challenger. To many spaceflight had become pass and no longer a big event covered live by the media. The maiden launch of Columbia in April 1981 was the last live coverage of a manned spacecraft by the BBC or any other UK TV channel. The last until the 2005 launch of Discovery, which was the return to flight of the shuttle programme after the tragic loss of Columbia during re-entry in 2003. I grew up watching Apollo missions to the Moon live on TV. All of the Apollo missions were televised live. The whole world tuned in to watch the awesome spectacle of a Saturn V rocket launch. The biggest and most powerful machine ever constructed. It was an exciting show. The big build up to the final countdown, followed by the awesome image of the massive rockets blasting up from the launch pad. They were big TV events, everyone stopped to watch. As the sad news came over the TV and the horrific images were repeated over and over I recalled my experiences and feelings when I saw Columbia blast off for that first flight. The restless crowd pushing towards the edge of the canal basin, 3 miles from the launch pad, many frantically shouting GO! The excitement rising as the countdown reached zero. The massive, billowing clouds of white smoke as the engines fired and the brilliant light as the shuttle rose from its pad. A few seconds later to be followed by the rumble that grew to a crackling, ear splitting roar, as the explosion of gas from the engines beat the air for miles around with a tremendous shockwave. 20 seconds later the shuttle vanished out of sight behind a static column of steam and smoke that was standing up into the clear blue sky like a giant white pillar. A few minutes later those with binoculars saw the solid rocket boosters separate and a loud cheer went up. Columbia was on its way into orbit. It was a powerful and moving experience. Almost religious. I tried not to watch or listen. The news was so terrible. It was a nightmare come true. I was so glad I wasnt there that fateful day to witness it. I would not want to be among the crowd that day. It was the last place in the world I would want to be. The investigation that followed the disaster told a tale of woe. Staggering mistakes and mismanagement. Warnings from engineers in the know were ignored. I suspect political pressure from Washington was put upon NASA to ensure that the civilian teacher Christa McAuliffe was in orbit to coincide with President Reagans State of the Union Speech. Im sure it would have look impressive for the free world had it happened. But as pointed out in the final analysis by physicist Richard Feynman, no matter how much they wanted the shuttle to fly it would not. Nature cannot be fooled If something is designed and engineered badly it will fail. Bruce Murray, director of JPL and controller of many successful planetary missions, summed it all up by saying we lost seven brave and admirable people launching a satellite. The debate about the value of manned spaceflight continues today. As NASA struggle to get the shuttle program back on track in order to fulfill its need to complete the International Space Station. In the face of some outstanding successes with unmanned probes to Mars and Saturn, people are asking if it is necessary at all to send anyone into space? This is a fair argument when we consider the cost and risk of sending people into space. There needs to be good justification for it. Pro space enthusiasts will tell you that there is no better computer or machine than a human being. And that humans are the best explorers. However, humans are not as tough as robots. Were getting some great science done with small machines on far away worlds, and at no risk to us except financial. So, understandably we hear the question why are we in space? The reply is often that we are a curious species and its in our nature to explore. But at what cost? There are many pressing needs here on Earth. We could build a lot of hospitals for the money being spent on space. Which is but a fraction of the cost being spent on war. So should we end war before we go any further into the cosmos? So many arguments, so many choices. But mans curiosity and intelligence is what drives us forward as a technological civilisation. If we do not strive to understand more about the universe we live in we are doomed to fail. It is as H.G. Wells said All the universe or nothing. If we do not go to the Moon, Mars and beyond then all the combined struggles and strife of mankind is for naught. We shall fade away and perish as the dinosaurs did. One species out of millions that came and went. The only proof that we ever existed would be the probes we left on other planets and the long distance voyagers we sent out of the solar system. If we want to survive and achieve immortality among the stars, then we must leave the cradle of civilisation. This is the ultimate goal of mankind. It may not be governments that pioneer the way though. They may fail to have the political courage and long-term vision. It may be the wealthy individuals acting together. Private space flight is now a reality. At the dawn of commercial aviation, it was the entrepreneur who led the way. Governments couldnt see the need for air travel. Now it is the same with space travel. The US government wants to apply aviation laws and guidelines to private operators. Perhaps this is a sign that space travel will become as popular as air travel within 100 years. History may repeat itself. Keep watching the skies. But if it were not for the brave pioneers who led the way into space, there would be no private space programmes, no ambition for people to go and no dreams of great achievement. The cost has been high but the way to the stars is now open. Its up to us if we want to take it. Where do you want your great grandchildren to be in 100 years? Its all the universe or nothing. Which shall it be? Chris OKane 2006 |
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'Everyone thought I was out of my mind' Buffy creator Joss Whedon tells Gareth McLean about his plan to shake-up Hollywood Wednesday October 5, 2005 Guardian Joss Whedon is big on personal responsibility. It was one of the major themes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - standing up for what you believe in, fighting your demons and accepting that nothing comes for free. It's there again in Serenity, the writer-director-producer's big screen adaptation of Firefly, a western-in-space series that was cancelled after half a season in the US. Serenity's universe is a dark place. Under the captaincy of Mal Reynolds, a motley crew travel through space eking out a living wherever, and however, they can. While they smuggle, cheat and steal to survive, these are noble thieves, existing under the rule of an apparently benign galactic government which reveals itself as less than lovely. There are no wrinkly-browed aliens to intervene with magical technologies, no polished spaceships or pristine uniforms, no quick fixes in a brutal sky. "Aliens inevitably distance you from what I really wanted to do," says Whedon. "I wanted to come back down to earth in space, show that no matter how much advanced technology we create, we're still going to be us - flawed, conflicted people with the same problems we've always had. And although that sounds depressing, it's what makes us human. And what happens when you try to do that? Well, there's a clear statement in the film about what happens." After taking on two fugitives, Reynolds's crew find themselves the focus of the government's attentions, at the centre of a sinister universe-wide conspiracy, and the prey of the diabolical Reavers who will "rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skin to their clothes. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order." Serenity might share the dubious honour of being a film born of a cancelled TV show, but Star Trek it ain't. "I love this idea of the future because it's one in which you have to make everything you have," says Whedon. "You make your family, your choices, your ethics. It's a hard life. It's not in any way a passive life. It's pioneering." The appellation of genius is issued too often, but, as creator of Buffy, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Toy Story, comic-book scribe, musician and lyricist, Whedon is, by any standard, at the very least brilliant. The third generation of TV writer in his family (his father Tom wrote for Benson and The Golden Girls, his grandfather John for The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Donna Reed Show and Leave It to Beaver), he started his career writing on Roseanne. As well as credits for Toy Story, Alien Resurrection (a script he reportedly said had been ruined by the director) and Titan AE, he also worked on Speed, Waterworld, Twister and X-Men, though how much of his work remains in the finished films is disputed. Apparently, only two of his lines remain in X-Men while much of Speed's dialogue is his. Whedon is familiar with the machinations of Hollywood and was prepared for a slog in getting Serenity made. In fact, it was "unexpectedly easy". "At first, everyone looked at me like I was out of my mind," he says. "I wanted to make a movie out of a show that had just been cancelled with a cast of unknowns. But then Universal stepped in and said they'd pay the rent." This ease perhaps has something to do with the much-discussed death of the blockbuster, the failure of the likes of Stealth and The Island to deliver returns on their mega-budgets. Serenity cost $40m to make, which is not an insubstantial sum, but it's a world away from The Island's $120m budget. "We'd like to shake up the Hollywood paradigm of first weekend, big name, get-'em-in-quick, shock-and-awe marketing and go back to the era of making a smaller movie where you believe in the story. There have been some decent summer movies recently but, by and large, they've been pretty soulless. If you're dealing with a smaller budget and focusing on the people instead of what you can afford to do with CGI, it's much more exciting." Serenity is a compelling story - the one that would have been told had the series not been cancelled - very well done. The rise and rise of DVD will also have persuaded Universal that Serenity was worth a shot. At a time when studios make five times more on home entertainment than on cinema tickets, and theatrical releases increasingly act as tasters for release on DVD for smaller budget films, films such as Serenity are simply a better bet than something involving Michael Bay. Even if it doesn't pay off, you haven't lost $100m. "DVD is changing everything," Whedon nods. "It's scaring a lot of people. I think it's nifty. Fear is good. It's healthy. It keeps you strong." Speaking of strong, Whedon is in the early stages of writing the script for the upcoming Wonder Woman, due in 2007. He's having, he says, the time of his life. After some unfortunate experiences on other big studio films, he's made sure he and the studio are singing from the same hymn sheet. "I've explained exactly what I thought the movie was, and Warner Brothers agreed. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing it. I was able to find a lot of what made her tick and they responded to that. There's so much to explore with her." So, in the grasp of the creator of Buffy, Wonder Woman is in safe hands? It's quite a responsibility, but Whedon's big on that. "Oh, I'm sticking with all the important stuff. The bracelets. The invisible plane. The magic lasso. I will find a way of not making it cheesy." Returning to the subject of his new film, Whedon explains that although science fiction is often derided it holds a mirror up to reality in a way only genre films can. As Serenity unfolds, it addresses contemporary concerns of deceitful government while its people are distracted by consumerism. The personal becomes political. "Serenity is about the kind of people who believe they can't take what the government feeds them - and in our country right now, that's important. People get fed an enormous amount of lies and anyone who points that out might be deemed unpatriotic. It seems to be less and less acceptable to care about where information comes from and what our government's doing." Having said that, Whedon continues, his film isn't partisan. "Everything in America right now has a big line drawn down the middle, and you're either on one side or the other. This movie isn't that. It's not about one government being bad, or more or less government being the right thing. It's about how the machinations of politics affect the little guy." |
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| New company wants
Mars colony All companies set goals, but newly formed 4Frontiers Corp. is eyeing some expansive horizons. The company's mission: to open a small human settlement on Mars within 20 years or so. CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts
(AP) |
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| From Giant Leaps
to Baby Steps Imagine if we had been so timid about space in the 1960's. Eugene F. Kranz New York Times 3 Aug 2005 Houston - To read and listen to the coverage about the space shuttle, you would think NASA's mission team has taken careless risks with the lives of the seven astronauts who went into space on the Discovery last Tuesday. During the launching, foam fell off the external tank. For the risk-averse, the only acceptable thing to do now is retire the shuttle program immediately and wait for the divine arrival of the next generation of spacecraft. I am disgusted at the lack of courage and common sense this attitude shows. All progress involves risk. Risk is essential to fuel the economic engine of our nation. And risk is essential to renew American's fundamental spirit of discovery so we remain competitive with the rest of the world. My take on the current mission is very straightforward. The shuttle is in orbit. To a great extent mission managers have given the spacecraft a clean bill of health. Let us remember that this is a test flight. I consider it a remarkably successful test so far. The technical response to the Columbia accident led to a significant reduction in the amount of debris striking this shuttle during launching. Mission managers have said that the external tank shed 80 percent less foam this time than on previous launchings. Only in the news media, apparently, is an 80 percent improvement considered a failure. Rather than quit, we must now try to reduce even more the amount of foam that comes off the tank. The instruments and video equipment developed to assess the launching and monitor debris falling from the tank worked superbly. For the first time, the mission team knows what is happening, when it is happening and the flight conditions under which it occurred. This was a major mission objective, and it is an impressive achievement. Having spent more than three decades working in the space program, I know that all of the flights of the early days involved some levels of risk. Some of those risks, in hindsight, seem incomprehensible by today's timid standards. If we had quit when we had our first difficulties in Project Mercury, we would have never put John Glenn on the Atlas rocket Friendship 7 in 1961. Two of the previous five Atlas rockets test-fired before Friendship 7 had exploded on liftoff. On Gemini 9, 10 and 11, all in 1966, we had complications with planned spacewalks that placed the astronauts at risk. Rather than cancel the walks, we faced the risks and solved the problems. These set the stage for Gemini 12 later that year, during which Buzz Aldrin spent more than five hours outside the capsule and confirmed to NASA that spacewalks could be considered an operational capability. Eventually, this ability enabled astronauts to retrieve satellites and repair and maintain the Hubble space telescope; and during the current mission, spacewalks were used to repair a gyroscope on the International Space Station and will allow the crew to fix some of the damage that occurred during the launching. These are the rewards for the risks we took on those early Gemini flights. I understand the tragedy inherent in risk-taking; I witnessed the fire aboard Apollo 1 in 1967 that killed three crew members. It filled us with anger at ourselves and with the resolve to make it right. After the fire we didn't quit; we redesigned the Apollo command module. During the Apollo missions that followed, we were never perfect. But we were determined and competent and that made these missions successful. I see the same combination of anger, resolve and determination in the space shuttle program today. These people are professionals who understand risk, how to reduce it and how to make that which remains acceptable. Most important, the current mission has demonstrated the maturity of the shuttle team that endured the Columbia disaster and had the guts to persevere. This is the most important aspect of the recovery from the Columbia accident, and is a credit to the great team NASA now has in place, headed by its administrator, Michael Griffin. There are many nations that wish to surpass us in space. Does the "quit now" crowd really believe that abandoning the shuttle and International Space Station is the way to keep America the pre-eminent space-faring nation? Do they really believe that a new spacecraft will come without an engineering challenge or a human toll? The path the naysayers suggest is so out of touch with the American character of perseverance, hard work and discovery that they don't even realize the danger in which they are putting future astronauts - not to mention our nation. Eugene F. Kranz, author of "Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond," is a former Apollo flight director. |
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Pushing for the next giant leap Humans have a "moral imperative" to open up space as a "new frontier", says X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis. By Jo Twist BBC News science and technology reporter 17 July 2005 He also believes that within the next decade humans will find ubiquitous life on Mars and, in our lifetime, millions of people will be going into space. Mr Diamandis addressed last week's Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in Oxford, held in Europe for the first time. TED Global brings together scientists, designers and big thinkers to discuss how to make a better future for all. High ambition "If you think about space, everything we hold of value on this planet is in infinite supply there," Mr Diamandis explains. "Earth is a crumb in a supermarket full of resources." Inspired by the Apollo mission, it has been his ambition since childhood to take people into space, he says. Mr Diamandis raised cash with help from the Ansari Foundation and others to create the Ansari X-Prize. The prize rewarded the first non-government funded manned craft to reach the official 100km boundary of space twice in two weeks. The $10m jackpot was won by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites team in 2004. Its SpaceShipOne craft was the first vehicle to achieve the feat, and a modified version will now form the fleet for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourist service. Both Mr Rutan and Mr Diamandis are passionate believers that humanity's future in space should be led by non-governmental missions. Risk and reward Only those missions can afford the great risks that are inherent in such early exploration. "True breakthroughs require risks," thinks Mr Diamandis. The cost of getting into orbit is the key to human survival, wealth and prosperity Peter Diamandis "The X-Prize showed that risk was OK. We should be allowed to take risk, and anyone who says we shouldn't should be put aside," he explains. Those breakthroughs could happen in space; some could even provide world changing solutions for Earth, he believes. Such risks, as evidenced by the recent false starts for the space shuttle, are proving increasingly difficult to justify for government-supported organisations, such as Nasa. English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, told the BBC News website that non-government missions were the only real option. "My feeling is that with every advance in the miniaturisation of robotics, the practical case for sending humans into space is weakened," he said. "Nasa-type projects are vastly expensive, partly because they are risk averse. "So I think that any future for manned space exploration should be private sponsorship by people who are prepared to take the risk and cut corners," he argued. He foresees many more probes doing the exploring for us, as satellite technology advances. This will help us understand our origins. New frontiers Indeed, one of the main themes at TED last week was that humanity has barely touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of its own evolution. That goes for our knowledge of life outside of our "middle world" existence, as biologist Professor Richard Dawkins phrased it at the conference. "We are young as a species," says Mr Diamandis. In terms of what our future in space would look like, he says: "We cannot conceive it". "It is like asking the Europeans in the 1400s to think of life today. We will make decisions to change the very fabric of society. "We may even reinvent society and the human form," he says. If it sounds reminiscent of Christopher Columbus' colonialist ambitions, Mr Diamandis talks the talk that suggests it is. "We are on the verge of the greatest exploration the human race has ever known," he says. Frontiers are among our planets' scarcest resources, according to Mr Diamandis. At frontiers, new decisions are made. People can rise to their full potential there because they are unhindered by social structure, he argues. Of course, one motivation for claiming new frontiers and colonising them is power and wealth, which Mr Diamandis says drives the human desire for exploration. "The cost of getting into orbit is the key to human survival, wealth and prosperity," he says. The infinite resources that Mr Diamandis talks of include nickel-iron asteroids worth $20 trillion on the open Earth market. But for now, Mr Diamandis is busy organising other X-Prizes to push humanity into taking risks, pushing scientific, medical, and technological advances. X-Prizes for energy, genetic, environmental and medical development are all under development. Geneticist Craig Venter has just joined the X-Prize board for a rapid genome prize. His motivation here sounds altruistic. "The most critical tool for solving humanity's challenges is a committed passionate human mind," says Mr Diamandis. |
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The Drive to Discover
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| Man vs. Machine
Some truths take a lifetime to learn; some you know when you're 5 years old. At that age, I knew that human beings were meant to explore space. By Andrew Chaikin Wired Magazine Dec 2004 It was 1961, and the space age had barely begun. I didn't know about President Kennedy's challenge to send people to the moon within the decade, but I knew that humans would go there - after all, my picture books almost always included astronauts exploring alien vistas. Today, decades after the final Apollo mission, we still haven't sent a human back to the moon - or beyond it. We explore the solar system with robots, like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which have been roaming the deserts of Mars for close to a year. These rovers are magnificent examples of human ingenuity. They drill into rocks to analyze chemical composition. Their microscopic imagers zero in on tiny details, while a pair of cameras capture widescreen, Imax-quality panoramas. The rovers can even dig trenches to reveal what's beneath the surface. It's tempting to think that wonderful machines like these could replace human explorers. But Spirit and Opportunity can do only what they're told. They can detect only what they have been designed to detect. The data they can collect in a month on Mars could be gathered in a matter of hours by a lone human field geologist. Even the mission's scientists and engineers agree that to realize the full potential of scientific discovery on other planets, we'll need to put human minds and hands to work. The question is not whether to send people, but when. Of course, the costs and risks of sending humans to the moon, Mars, or nearby asteroids will outweigh the benefits for at least the next decade. Until that balance is tilted by the development of new spacecraft and protective measures that reduce danger and expense, we'll have to live by the watchword of engineer Gentry Lee, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Mars missions: "Never send a human to do a robot's job." But the balance will tilt, and when it does, humans will follow in the footsteps of our robotic creations. That doesn't mean machines will act only as a kind of advance team for people; even after astronauts have begun exploring alien worlds, they will need robotic assistants to handle repetitive or especially dangerous tasks. But only human explorers can raise the pace of discovery a quantum leap. And only they will tell us what it is like to be there. This is the precious gift we got from the Apollo astronauts who visited the moon between 1968 and 1972. One recalled his amazement at exploring the lunar landscape, a wilderness that was more ancient than he could comprehend and more beautiful than he had imagined. Another described orbiting the moon alone, in darkness, gazing out at a sky filled with unblinking stars, and wondering who might be staring back. All spoke of their awe at seeing Earth, lovely and distant, rising beyond the moon's lifeless horizon - and of the sobering realization of how far from home they really were. These stories, postcards from the edge of human experience, are just a taste of what we will gain when humans once again journey to other worlds. The future of space exploration is for robots and people. But don't take my word for it. Ask a 5-year-old - the one inside you, who longs to be an explorer.
Andrew Chaikin is the author of A
Man on the Moon, the basis for the HBO miniseries, From the Earth
to the Moon.
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| Conversation With
John Young Ex-astronaut says moon's resources may help Earth By PATTY REINERT 17 Dec 2004 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau Associated Press File Astronaut John Young, who was part of the Apollo 16 mission to the moon in April 1972, salutes the U.S. flag after it was planted on the lunar surface. WASHINGTON - In more than four decades at NASA, astronaut John Young has flown in space six times seven if you count his lunar liftoff. He smuggled a corned beef sandwich aboard a Gemini capsule, walked the moon during Apollo and commanded the maiden voyage of the space shuttle Columbia. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle two weeks before his retirement from the space agency, Young, 74, said he'll spend his time advocating for a return to the lunar surface and a human mission to Mars, convinced that life on Earth could depend on it. Q: What were you thinking about and feeling when you first approached the moon on Apollo 10, and when you landed there to explore on Apollo 16? A: I was flying the spaceship and we were breaking into lunar orbit, and we broke out over the highlands on the back side of the moon. It was completely dark ... so we were in the dark and then we broke out into sunlight and saw the back side of the moon. The impressive thing about the back side of the moon is how many darn craters it has. If the back side of the moon was facing us, I think human beings would be far more adaptive, far more educated, about (asteroid or comet) impacts on planet Earth. We're going to have a few of those before it's over with. ... But one-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon is just delightful. It's not like being in zero gravity, you know. You can drop a pencil in zero gravity and look for it for three days. In one-sixth gravity, you just look down and there it is. Q: Why should humans go back to the moon? A: The moon has a lot of resources that we'll learn how to use in this century and that will be great. ... The technologies we need to live and work on the moon will save us right here on this planet. Bad things are inevitably going to happen to us, like comet or asteroid impacts or super volcanoes. Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too. The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455. How does that relate? You're 10 times more likely to get wiped out by a civilization-ending event in the next 100 years than you are getting killed in a commercial airline crash. The most dangerous thing we do in Houston, of course, is drive our automobiles to work every day, so you know how dangerous that is and how many people get killed doing that. But wiping out civilization. ... It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen. Q: You commanded the first flight of space shuttle Columbia in 1981, and you've also been a strong advocate for upgrading safety at NASA. How do you think the agency is doing with that, and how long do you think the space shuttle should be used? A: You're going to need the shuttle to fly 28 missions in 10 years to build the space station. I think the only way to do that is to keep at the shuttle and look at every problem they have, and they're doing that right now. I wish we were flying right this minute. Q: With Sean O'Keefe retiring, what do you think NASA needs in its next administrator? A: I think they need to be looking at somebody who understands the business. It's a tough business, you know, doing things for science and technology and advancing the future and making real progress on the long term. It's tough to get people to want to do that. The goal of going back to the moon and on to Mars even though it would develop the technologies that over the long haul would save people on this planet nobody wants to invest in it. You'd think people would be worried about their children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren, but we really don't worry. We now have the ability to develop the technology to allow us to control our own destiny, and I think we should do that. I think it would be very important in the long haul to try to keep civilization going. It's a pretty important bunch, a great gang we all belong to the human race ... Q: What are your retirement plans? A: I plan to keep advocating for developing the technologies we need to get off the planet and keep the shuttle going and build the space station and do all the things we need to do to make progress in science and technology. Over the long haul, doing that will certainly make things better for people all over the Earth. You know, sooner or later, the Chinese and the Indians are going to want two cars in every garage, just the way we do. If they put fossil fuel cars in every garage, there isn't enough oil on the planet to do that. I think going to alternative sources of energy is the key to the future of civilization on this planet, because we're gonna run out. ... Nobody's worried about that, but we should be very worried about that. I think it's really important to get folks educated about these problems ... Earth's geologic history is pretty clear: It says, quite frankly, that single-planet species don't last. Right now we're a single-planet species. We need to fix that. |
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Stocks' Final Frontier Humans reached for the heavens once again in 2004, from the president's push for Mars to SpaceShipOne's daring suborbital adventures to Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. Tim Beyers wonders if there are profits for investors on Earth in this new space race. By Tim Beyers January 10, 2005 We're kicking off the first five weeks of 2005 by profiling five promising innovations on the verge of exploding into the mainstream in the New Year. Last week, we covered radio frequency identification tags, otherwise known as RFID. Today, we're tackling the commercialization of space travel. You might want to fasten your seat harness. Star Trek hit the airwaves in 1965, but 2004 will go down as the year the real star trek began. Nearly 40 years after that seminal TV series, and more than 35 years after humans landed on the moon, we've reached the dawn of a new space race. But instead of America battling the Soviets, it is Lockheed (NYSE: LMT) vs. Boeing (NYSE: BA), SpaceDev vs. Orbital Sciences, Virgin vs.... well, every other embryonic space tourism outfit. And the stakes in this battle couldn't be higher: The winners will earn market supremacy in the final frontier. Talk about pricing power. More importantly, imagine the investment potential. Typically, it takes decades for developments in space to have a real impact at sea level. Last year's full calendar of intergalactic events changed that. From President Bush lighting a fire under NASA to get to Mars, to SpaceShipOne earning the $10 million Ansari X prize for suborbital space flight, to Sir Richard Branson's new Virgin Galactic venture, the heavens suddenly became downright hip. And it's continued into 2005. Witness the cover of the most recent issue of Wired magazine for which Branson donned astronaut gear. And though it doesn't feature Wired's textured stock cover and various other stylish colored bubbles, we at The Motley Fool have a remarkable new publication called Rule Breakers. This service, which I'll describe for you in more detail in a minute, is dedicated to ferreting out tomorrow's great growth stocks early in their disruptive stage. What Is a Disruptive Innovation? As the name implies, it's a breakthrough that rattles the walls of the conventional, technological advances, from the automobile to the microwave oven, that ultimately reshape our lives. Being a certifiable science fiction geek, I get pretty excited by all these developments, but the investor in me wonders if this is all hype. Can those of us here on Earth really make money from humanity's newfound passion for the heavens? In a word, yes. There are dozens of potential markets created by commercializing space flight, including the following two that I think are most promising. Space tourism Though SpaceShipOne's historic flights captured the headlines, it was the Feds who were responsible for potentially jumpstarting suborbital space tourism. The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (even less romantically known as H.R. 5382) ultimately allows average Americans to hitch a ride on a rocket at their own risk. The president signed the bill into law two days before Christmas. Soon after, interest in the 70-mile-high club began to run high among celebrities. For example, William Shatner of Star Trek fame, and Sigourney Weaver, star of the Alien films, both said they'd enjoy traversing the final frontier. But what about average Janes and Joes? Virgin thinks they'll sign up in droves. In fact, a spokesman quoted in the Wired story says more than 12,000 people have registered at Virgin Galactic's website, each a potential future ticket holder. Says Virgin spokesman Will Whitehorn, "People are throwing checks at us." At $200,000 per ride, that's potentially $2.4 billion in sales. But space tourism has been hyped before. During Christmas of 1968, Pan Am chief Juan Trippe started taking reservations for trips to the moon. Some 90,000 people signed up. What's different this time around? For one, we're not talking about a trip to the moon. A suborbital trip not even 90 miles above the Earth is a breeze compared to a lunar expedition. Second, the cost of spaceflight has dropped considerably, in no small part due to the relatively low cost of computing equipment. And finally, space travel is safer now. Consider SpaceDev, which created a rocket engine that literally burned rubber to light SpaceShipOne's candle. That's far safer than the combustible components used to create classic rocket fuel. So, how can the common investor get in on space tourism? Right now, SpaceDev is among the very few public companies in this mix, but there are plenty of private companies worth watching. Among them: the LiftPort Group, which is constructing a space elevator; Space Adventures, which has been dealing in space tourism since 1998; XCOR, which is competing with SpaceDev to create suborbital space engines; and the Zero Gravity Company, which offers weightless flights on a specially modified Boeing 727. Galactic hitchhiking Cargo is a huge industry -- just ask FedEx (NYSE: FDX) and UPS (NYSE: UPS). Those two generated more than $60 billion in sales over the past 12 months. But that's the tip of the proverbial iceberg when you think about the entire market, which includes airline cargo, private couriers, trucking, shipping, and so on. Especially now with the continued rise of e-commerce, the industry seems to get larger every day. Don't expect growth to slow anytime soon, especially now that more payloads are headed for the stars. Consider Space Services, which arranges orbital funerals. Next month, more than 100 of our dead from around the globe will lift off from SpaceX's Falcon I rocket, which is designed to reach orbit more affordably than the classic white and black behemoths of old. Combine that with new micro-satellites that will be easier to haul and you've got a burgeoning industry ready to dot outer space with more electronics than you can find at your local Best Buy. That's good news for companies that already do part of their business in space, such as Sirius (Nasdaq: SIRI) and XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR). Where are the investing opportunities in space cargo? SpaceDev is helping construct micro-satellites, as are the big defense contractors. Other big players such as SpaceX and Space Services remain private, but both of them are absolutely worth watching. Beam me up That the Feds are asking the private sector to invest in space is good for everyone, especially investors. But it's also worth noting that NASA's mission to get back to the moon in 10 years and Mars afterward will require it to fund hundreds of innovations, many of which will be created in private labs. Fortunately, the space agency knows this and has unveiled Centennial Challenges. Modeled after the Ansari X prize that SpaceShipOne took home, the first awards will be modest, but could grow over time to as much as $50 million for far-flung adventures such as commercial moon shots. No doubt, the combination of federal and private investment should grow the commercial space market dramatically over the next five years. Though many of the companies that will participate in this revolution remain private, not a few are public today, from ghoulish trickster Xybernaut to mega-contractor Ball (NYSE: BLL). And many more likely will come public soon. David Gardner described these opportunities best when he said, "The earth can shake when Rule Breakers are born on our public markets. They bring a disruptive technology, diabolically clever and effective marketing, or a totally new business model to this little backwater planet of ours. They rattle our capitalistic foundations. And in so doing, they create serious profits for the opportunistic investors who find them early on." It's our job to keep our eyes peeled for these kinds of opportunities. We take a great deal of pride in finding worthwhile stocks, and making strategic bets where we may. In that sense, this revolution is no different than any other, and we can all profit together. If you choose to join us before Jan. 31, take 50% off. Now, would you mind beaming me up? Motley Fool contributor Tim Beyers is a confessed Trekkie, and he got the Star Wars DVD collection for Christmas. He wishes he owned some of the stocks in this story but, alas, he doesn't. Fortunately, you don't need a telescope to see what stocks Tim owns. You can check his portfolio here, in his Fool profile. The Motley Fool, which has a disclosure policy, is investors writing for investors. |
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An Opposing Viewpoint
(with my reply) Hi Great, I have to agree with everything you say. Yet you haven't addressed the inspirational value of such a mission. Unless we humans begin to dream collectively in a big way, we're going to snuff ourselves out on this tiny claustrophobic planet. Mario ---------------------------- To: Mario Di Maggio Subject: How To Mars ? Hello, The cost of one manned mission to Mars ($400.00 B ) is equivalent to a thousand robotic missions.( $0.40 B) We could put dozens of scientific satellites in orbit around not only all our solar system's planets but also all their major moons. In addition we could send dozens of landers to all latitudes of all planets and their major moons. It doesn't stop there. We could visit comets and asteroids and even send spacecraft out of our solar system. We could virtually touch every corner of our solar system and for decades. The scientific payoff and discoveries dwarfs the alternative of a single mission to a single location of a single planet for just a few months. Supporters of manned spaceflight like to argue that the astronaut is more effective than a robot. Well even if this was true the astronaut would need to be not twice as effect or ten times or one hundred times but rather a thousand times as effective to just get the same value as the robot. Lets concede that the astronaut is twice as effective as the robot. That makes the robot a better choice by a factor of five hundred times. Would the Mars pancam image be any better taken my an astronaut ? The argument for the astronauts also claims that a human is needed in the loop. That argument misses the point that with robots humans are in the loop. Just look at JPL. They have hundreds of the worlds best researchers. They are directly in the loop orchestrating the rovers activities. This is called telepresence. Those researches are virtually on Mars. Also note how JPL claims the rover cameras have 20/20 vision. This telepresence technology is also on trial in the operating rooms of hospitals. Doctors are performing surgery telerobotically from up to thousands of miles away from the patients. The plain fact is that people are in the loop big time with the robots. Now remember, I concede that the astronauts would be more effect than the robots but the problem is that they would be marginally more effective for a disproportionate cost to the tune of five hundred times less scientific returns. The manned mission supporters realize this lack of value so they cite the spin off technologies that benefit mankind. This is a very hollow argument. If you really value, for instance, the medical devices that emerge then it is silly to not pursue them in a direct targeted way rather than spending all your money visiting the moon and hoping that this will trickle down to an improved pace maker. Furthermore much if not all of the spin of technologies will inevitablly emerge on their own good timetable. Please, lets touch and visit every corner of our solar system and for decades rather than a single mission to a single location of a single planet for a single moment in time. Sincerely D. D. |
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Brief report-back on the meeting I attended in London on Friday 10th December 2004: The Scientific Case for Human Space Exploration Hosted by the Royal Astronomical Society and held in the main lecture room of the Linnean Society (where Darwin and Wallace's thoughts on natural selection were first presented in 1856).
Contacts I made: Dr Kevin Fong (Lecturer in Physiology and Director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, UCL). Dr Fong, one of the UKs leading 'exobiologists', is difficult to pin down, yet says he would be delighted to help us with our Future of Space exhibition Dr Charles Cockell (British Antarctic Survey). Unfortunately I failed to corner him, yet he is such an enthusiastic and eloquent exobiologist Im confident he will be very willing to assist us. The same would be true for Dr Ian Crawford (Research School for Earth Sciences, Birbeck and UCL), who together with Dr Cockell organised this meeting
Steve
Eckersley
(Senior Mission Systems Engineer, EADS [Earth Observation, Navigation &
Science] Astrium Ltd). Steves group has just completed a
comprehensive study for ESAs Aurora programme on the best ways to minimise
the effects of harmful radiation. He would be happy to help us where he can. Mr Bernhard Hufenbach (ESA Directorate for Human Spaceflight, Microgravity Research and Exploration). I asked Mr Hufenbach about acquiring a real or mock-up futuristic spacesuit being developed by ESA (we were keen to use ESA over NASA). As far as he knew though, there were no finished products available, yet he would pass my details on to someone who would know for sure. Other contacts: Dr Robin Catchpole - updated him on my new position, and he says he would love to deliver talks and evening lectures in our planetarium in the future Anita Heward - met Anita for the first time. British Festival of Space director. Rodney Buckland - chatted to him for a long time, founder of the European Space School
Heather Couper & Nigel
Henbest - touched base and updated them The highlight of the meeting for me was to see both the NASA Chief Scientist (Dr Jim Garvin) and ESA Chief Scientist (Dr Bernard Foing) on the same programme! Interesting information included: The Space Shuttle will only be retired after the ISS is finished, as all ISS components have been built to fit the Shuttle cargo bay Speakers unanimously agreed that the debate over human vs. robotic exploration is outdated and unfounded. The two will happen together, maximising on robotic exploration where we can, because work man-hours in Space are expensive. So the UK politicians and members of the scientific community still clinging to this theological (due to its level of irrationality, as one speaker put it) argument had better wake up or the UK will miss the boat Although human Space exploration is very expensive, it is important to remember that the money does not go into Space. It stays on Earth and circulates through the economy. Extremely comprehensive and thorough studies described by Jim Garvin and others show that human exploration costs LESS per science discovery/advance than does robotic exploration The reasons Moon bases feature in both the NASA and ESA plans to go to Mars are: (a) the need to learn how to live and explore Space in our own backyard first (b) tremendous scientific benefits of studying the Moon carefully (ie which contains true ancient Earth samples) (c) the absolute necessity of learning how to manufacture materials on other worlds Dr Cockell explained we are NOT going to Mars to search for life (as it would lead to disappointment if we didnt find any, especially amongst the public). We are going to Mars to do what weve always done - to EXPLORE. If we find life, that will be significant. If we dont find life, it will also be significant. Thats how science works He also described the Christmas Present Effect - a wonderful analogy explaining how you could never build a robot to find the perfect Christmas present. To find such a gift requires YOU to be there to see whats available, to draw on your lifetimes accumulated knowledge, and then to bring widely disparate data together into a coherent picture. A robot could never explore a planet like a human geologist, as it would only discover the things we have asked it to look for. Dr Cockell recently went shopping for paper clips and discovered the absolutely perfect gift for his sister: a Cambridge edition of Monopoly - which of course he hadnt known existed up till then Impact craters are good places to look for life because shocked rock is porous, providing a habitat for microbes
It is
unlikely we will encounter alien microbes which could infect humans and pose
a hazard to life on Earth. From what we know, pathogens and diseases on
Earth are highly co-evolved with their hosts, and cross-species infections
are very rare Later that evening a larger short meeting was held in the Royal Geological Society lecture hall, where Jim Garvin updated us on the very, very latest from the Mars Exploration Rovers (ie. information received that day). He also explained that: The Rovers were designed to operate for 30 days. They have now been operating faultlessly for over 330 days! Huge amounts of data have been received, more than anyone at JPL could ever have dreamed or wished for. This is an incredibly successful mission that has done wonders for NASAs image and credibility, and has been an absolute boon for planetary science Yet Jim Garvin and his team concede that ALL the information that has been collected so far by the robotic Rovers could have been gathered in a few days by a single human geologist. Additionally, the interpretation of the data and hypotheses formulated to date could all have happened in the mind of that human geologist as s/he was working in the field Although the Rover instruments were not designed to look for signs of life, NASA can confirm that so far no carbonates have been found (ie. the instruments can detect levels as low as 10% by weight). Yet surprisingly high levels of sulphur have been found, coating almost all the rocks studied so far. Conclusion I thoroughly enjoyed this meeting and look forward to attending many more. From Thinktanks standpoint its a great way to meet useful astronomy and Space science contacts, and for this community to become aware of our planetarium and exhibits. From a personal perspective, Im really glad to finally be living so close to centres where such significant events take place!
Mario Di Maggio |
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| Sagan's
rationale for human spaceflight by Michael Huang Monday, November 8, 2004 Sagan, among others, has argued that spaceflight is required to ensure the future of humanity. Good ideas are often forgotten, but they do not die. They are discovered through reading, or created independently again. The recurring debate on whether humans should be in space omits such an idea. The relationship between human spaceflight and the survival of the human species was explained by the spaceflight pioneers Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard, and has since been expressed by Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and many others. Sagan's thoughts are of particular interest, since he devoted his career to space science and the search for extraterrestrial life, not human spaceflight. Carl Sagan was initially a critic of astronautics. Like many scientists, he believed astronauts diverted funds from "real science", missions with robots and scientific instruments. "Guys in a tin can in low Earth orbit are where the excitement isn't," he once said. One of the reasons for the Cosmos television series and book was to inspire an excitement in scientific discovery equal to the excitement of the first human missions. The worldwide success of Cosmos helped set the stage for the enduring popularity of today's space science missions. In 1994, the long-awaited sequel to Cosmos was published. To the surprise of many, this new book was more about humans than science. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space found a rationale that not only justified human spaceflight, but raised it to the highest importance. ... every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive. It seems too simple to be true. The purpose of life in space is to survive. But this is true of all life, whether it is in space or on Earth. Every other purpose of life, even happiness, must defer to existence. These are the missing practical arguments: safeguarding the Earth from otherwise inevitable catastrophic impacts and hedging our bets on the many other threats, known and unknown, to the environment that sustains us. In medieval times, some people kept a human skull in their home to remind themselves of mortality, and to view their priorities against the big picture of life and death. A modern equivalent is the dinosaur fossil. The fossilized remains of a once great and dominant species reminds the human species of our eventual choice: survival or extinction, or as Sagan put it, "spaceflight or extinction". A technological civilization that lives on the surface of a single planet has inevitable threats to its long-term existence. Current threats--impacts from space, nuclear or biological war--will be joined by new threats from emerging technologies. Even if all these threats are detected, solutions such as disarmament or relinquishment are incomplete or politically impossible. We will have to live with these threats, just as we have been living under the threat of nuclear war. This requires that we live in a way that will withstand a catastrophe if it occurs: living at multiple locations throughout the solar system, and living with the assistance of life-supporting technologies. Space technology, despite its name, is not limited to space. Technology designed for the extremes of space can be used in any extreme environment. If a catastrophe made Earth hazardous for life, space technology will sustain life in space and on Earth. This is happening now. NASA aims to use spacesuit technologies in a suit for homeland security: a protective suit for environments contaminated with biological or chemical agents. Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil... The technologies that threaten us and the circumvention of those threats both issue from the same font. They are racing neck and neck. This new race is not between nations or ideologies; it is a race between powerful technologies. Will we use science and technology to end life or support it? Intercontinental ballistic missiles or interplanetary launch vehicles, nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants, biological and chemical weapons or life support systems, weapons of mass destruction or technologies of mass life? What is Carl Sagan's vision? If we were up there among the planets, if there were self-sufficient human communities on many worlds, our species would be insulated from catastrophe... A cataclysmic impact on one world would likely leave all the others untouched. The more of us beyond the Earth, the greater the diversity of worlds we inhabit... then the safer the human species will be. There is a renewed effort--by governments, companies and individuals--for a small fraction of humanity to live independently beyond the Earth. One way to assist the colonization of the solar system is to spread Sagan's message to a larger audience. The popularity of Cosmos was due to its exceptional use of television. Its sequel Pale Blue Dot deserves an equally inspirational documentary film or television series. Similar documentaries could be based on William Burrows's The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth (to be published in 2005) or Martin Rees's Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century--On Earth and Beyond (2003). Human spaceflight and the survival of the human species are ideal subjects for the screen. Hollywood has produced memorable human spaceflight films, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Apollo 13, and the epic disaster is one of Hollywood's favorite genres. These visuals would work equally well in the documentary format. Narrations of quotations (see Space Quotes to Ponder) and interviews with experts would convey the history and current status of the idea. SpaceShipOne's Ansari X Prize breakthrough brought the world's attention to the idea of personal spaceflight. Hopefully, a documentary will do the same for another important idea. Source: Space Review http://www.thespacereview.com/article/261/1 |
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| Zubrin
on Terraforming Mars As a former Martin-Marietta aerospace engineer, prolific author and founder of the non-profit Mars Society (1998), Robert Zubrin is regarded as the driving force behind the proposed Mars Direct mission to reduce the cost and complexity of interplanetary travel. The flight plan calls for a return journey fueled by rocket propellant harvested in situ, from the Martian atmosphere itself July 2004 Astrobiology Magazine As described in Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet, the Mars Direct concept eventually became a cornerstone of a frugal 'living off the land' approach to travel in NASA's Design Reference Mission. The Design Reference Mission (DRM) covers Earth launch to Mars landing, Mars cruise to Mars launch, and Earth return. The mission entails sending cargo ahead, docking the crew at the space station, then meeting up with the stashed supplies once on Mars. "For our generation and many that will follow, Mars is the New World," writes Zubrin. The New York Times Book Review (Dennis Overbye) indicated how such an outline initially was greeted as breaking conventional wisdom about martian mission plans: "Part history, part call to arms, part technical manual, part wishful thinking, The Case for Mars ... lays out an ingenious plan. ......one of the most provocative and hopeful documents I have read about the space program in 20 years." The Mars Society continues to grow across many countries with thousands of members interested in space advocacy, particularly how best to encourage the exploration and settlement of Mars. Notable among the Society's members are science-fiction author, Greg Benford, and Academy Award winning director, James Cameron. Astrobiology Magazine had the opportunity to talk with Robert Zubrin about the possibilities for terraforming Mars. Astrobiology Magazine (AM): First off, should Mars be terraformed? Robert Zubrin (RZ): Yes. AM: Does Mars contain all of the elements needed to make the planet habitable, or will we have to import gases, chemicals, etc., from elsewhere? If so, then will Mars always need constant inputs to achieve habitability, or do you think that given enough inputs Mars would reach a tipping point and planetary processes would create a self-sustaining feed-back loop? RZ: It appears that Mars does have all the elements needed for terraforming. The one outstanding question is nitrogen, whose inventory remains unknown. However theory suggests that Mars should have had an initial supply of nitrogen comparable to the Earth, and it seems likely that much of this is still there. AM: How long will terraforming take? When you envision a terraformed Mars, what do you see? RZ: If one considers the problem of terraforming Mars from the point of view of current technology, the scenario looks like this: 1. A century to settle Mars and create a substantial local industrial capability and population. 2. A half century producing fluorocarbon gases (like CF4) to warm the planet by ~10 C. 3. A half century for CO2 to outgas from the soil under the impetus of the fluorocarbon gases, thickening the atmosphere to 0.2 to 0.3 bar, and raising the planetary temperature a further 40 C. This will cause water to melt out of the permafrost, and rivers to flow and rain to fall. Radiation doses on the surface will also be greatly reduced. Under these conditions, with active human help, first photosynthetic microbes and then ever more complex plants could be spread over the planet, as they would be able to grow in the open. Humans on Mars in this stage would no longer need pressure suits, just oxygen masks, and very large domed cities could be built, as the domes would no longer need to contain pressure greater than the outside environment. 4. Over a period of about a thousand years, human-disseminated and harvested plants would be able to put ~150 mbar (millibars) of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. Once this occurs, humans and other animals will be able to live on Mars in the open, and the world will become fully alive. That's the scenario, using current technological approaches. However technology is advancing, and 23rd Century humans will not conduct their projects using 21st Century means. They will use 23rd Century means and accomplish the job much faster than anyone today can suppose. So if someone in the 24th Century, living on a fully terraformed Mars, should discover this interview, I believe that she will view it in much the same way as we today look at Jules Verne's lunar mission design. We today look at Verne's ideas and say "Amazing, a man living a hundred years before Apollo foresaw it -- and not only that-- launched his crew of three from Florida, and returned them in a capsule landing in the Pacific Ocean where they were picked up by a US warship, all as things actually happened. But launching people with heavy artillery - how 19th Century can you get?" So our 24th Century Martian historian studying this interview will smile and say; "Incredible. Here are people 300 years ago talking about terraforming Mars. But doing it with fluorocarbon gases and green plants --how 20th century can you get?" AM: Who should the first human colonists to Mars be and how should they be chosen? Since Martian gravity is one-third of Earth's, wouldn't bone and muscle loss, along with radiation, make colonization a one-way journey? What are the implications of what, from an Earth-perspective, is exile? RZ: Life is a one-way trip, and we are all permanently exiled from our past. In that sense Mars colonists, and all colonists, are no different from anyone else. It is just more apparent in their case, as in addition to leaving behind the time of their past, they also leave behind the place. But in so doing, they gain the opportunity to create a world where none existed before, and thus gain a form of immortality that is denied to those who are content to accept the world they are born in. AM: If there's life on Mars, how do we balance the Martian right to life with the human impulse to explore and extend our borders? RZ: The basis of ethics needs to be of benefit to humanity. If there is life on Mars, it is microbial, and its interests can in no way be considered as commensurate with human interests. Those who argue otherwise strike a fashionable pose, but deny their arguments every day through their actions. If bacterial interests trump human interests, then mouthwash should be banned, chlorination of water supplies should be banned, and antibiotics should be banned. If bacterial interests trump human interests, then Albert Schweitzer and Louis Pasteur should be denounced for crimes against bacteria. Now, in saying that ethics must be based in human benefit, we need not deny that preserving valuable environments in important. It is important to save the amazon rain forest, for example, because a world without an amazon rain forest would be a poorer inheritance for our descendants than one with one, and the degree of the impoverishment exceeds whatever value might be obtained in the short term from slash and burn agriculture. However, in the case of Mars, the calculation votes the other way, as a terraformed Mars, filled with life, cities, universities, used book stores, and yes, rain forests, would be a vastly richer gift to posterity than the current barren Red Planet. Clearly, just as anyone who proposed transforming the current Earth into a place like Mars would be considered mad, so those who, given the choice, would keep Mars dead rather than make it a place as wonderful as the Earth must have their sanity doubted. There remains only the question of science. Surely we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to study native Martian life before we terraform the place. We surely will. Terraforming Mars will be a long term project, and should native Martian microbes exist, there will be ample opportunity to study it before terraforming takes place. There will also be opportunity to study how it adapts to warmer, wetter conditions and the presence of terrestrial microbes after terraforming takes place. Furthermore, if Mars actually is terraformed, there will be much more people on Mars to study every aspect of Mars, including both its native and immigrant life. So in fact, our knowledge of Martian biota will be increased by terraforming, not decreased. AM: Humans sent to live on Mars will bring with them ideas on how to govern themselves, rules of conduct for living in society, economic motivations, and personality conflicts. How should the colonization of Mars be managed, and how should Mars be governed? Should the colonization of Mars be a cooperative effort among every nation, or should only those that financial contribute be in charge of the operation? RZ: The Founding Fathers of the United States called our infant republic a "Noble Experiment," a place where the grand liberal ideas of the Enlightenment could be given a run, and the idea of a government based on the rights on man could be tested to see if it could succeed in practice. Their Noble Experiment did succeed, and as a result became the model for a new and better form of human social organization worldwide. Mars can, should, and will be a place for numerous new Noble Experiments. The well of human social thought has not yet run dry, nor do I believe that we have yet discovered the ultimate and most humanistic form of society possible. In the 22nd Century, as in the 18th, there will always be people who think they have discovered a better way, and need a place to go where the rules haven't been written yet so they can give their ideas a try. For these, the Martian frontier will beckon. Many of their ideas will prove impractical, and their colonies will fail. But some of those who really have a better idea will succeed, and in doing so, light the way forward for all humanity. So, to answer your question, I say that the colonization of Mars should not be managed at all, but be done through the joyful chaos of human freedom. AM: Taking a leap into the future, let's assume the technology, biology, sociology, and politics have all combined to create a unique sub-race of humanity on Mars. Generations of human beings have now been born, grown, bred and died on Mars. Who are these Martians? RZ: In 1893, the great historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote: "To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness of strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance that comes from freedom -- these are the traits of the frontier." I think that says it all. The pioneers of the Martian frontier will be the Americans of the future. |
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| Author: Mars mission to
inspire humanity SAN FRANCISCO, California 15 April, 2004 Human exploration of the moon and Mars will move humanity beyond terrorism and war, inspiring the public in much the same way as Europeans who explored North America 500 years ago, science-fiction author Ray Bradbury said Thursday. Bradbury praised President Bush's initiative to return humans to the moon by 2020 and later land astronauts on the Red Planet. He spoke before a presidential commission reviewing the president's proposal. The panel is to make recommendations to NASA and the president in June. "If you sell it on the basis of a new freedom, a new movement away from the politics and horror and terror on Earth, I think people will recognize how (important) that is," Bradbury said. Bradbury, 83, faced skeptical questions from some commission members. |
 Image source: Space Review |
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| Commissioner Paul Spudis, a visiting scientist at the Lunar and Planetary
Institute in Houston, asked how space exploration could be sold to the
"practical side" of the American public. Another panel member noted that
many people complain about spending money on space exploration when there
are many more pressing problems on Earth. Bradbury said $1 billion a day is spent on war and conflicts. President Bush's proposal, announced in January, would be funded by $1 billion in new NASA funding each of the next five years. "If we take one day each year and spend it on space travel, we could do it," Bradbury said via a satellite link from Los Angeles. Bradbury said such challenges did not stop Spain and England from supporting explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. "All sorts of problems hadn't been solved," Bradbury said. "If they had stayed there, there wouldn't have been an America." The panel also wondered whether public support would dwindle if astronauts were killed on interplanetary missions. Bradbury, who wrote about the human colonization of Mars in "The Martian Chronicles," said thousands of people died exploring North America. "You simply do not give up," he said. Originally from: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/04/16/moon.marscommission.ap/index.html |
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| It's all universal Earth and space are just different parts of the cosmos Andrew Lam Sunday, January 18, 2004 San Francisco Chronicle We live in troubling times, but when we look upward, it seems there's ample grace waiting in the heavens. The images of an orange rock- strewn plain that NASA's Spirit, the space probe currently roving on Mars, is sending back are mesmerizing. Meanwhile Stardust, another space probe, is on its way back to Earth -- as if in a fairy tale -- with comet dust captured in its net. In a week, a second NASA rover will land on the opposite side of Mars to study rock sediments and signs of life. Adding to it all, another space probe, Cassini, will begin orbiting Titan, a planet-size moon by Saturn, later this year. President Bush's announced plans this week to send manned missions to Mars - with the cooperation of Japan and Europe -- and establish a permanent station on the moon. And China hopes to have a manned station orbiting the moon. While thinkers and writers still haven't come to terms with the full impacts of the forces of globalization, another age is already upon us. Call it cosmozation. The word doesn't exist in the dictionary, but then, two decades ago, neither did globalization. Soon, Webster will have to add cosmozation, or something akin to it, to future editions in order to address man's intensifying relationship with the cosmos. Roland Robertson, a social scientist, defines globalization as: "The compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole." The world shrinks, geographical constrains are overcome, while identities become multilayered, complex. As a species, we may not always get along with each other, but these days, thanks to an integrated economy and unprecedented mass movement across borders, and modern technology - satellites, cell phones, jet planes, and the Internet, and so on - we are, like it or not, constantly aware of each other's existence. We are, in fact, interacting and influencing one another on an unprecedented scale and intensity, regardless of the distances. Taking Robertson's definition a step further, it seems inevitable that the universe, too, shrinks and compresses as we explore and measure it and infer profound implications from our discoveries. Cosmozation is the process in which man's awareness expands beyond the globe: He grows cognizant that he exists on intimate levels with the rest of the universe, that he is interacting with it, and, increasingly, having an effect upon it. For example, scientists are discussing the possibility of a large asteroid hitting Earth and what to do about it. The last asteroid that collided with our planet 65 million years ago wiped out more than 90 percent of life here. One idea is that various countries could send up nuclear missiles in a concerted effort to deflect a big asteroid's trajectory, were it to come our way. What is astounding is not that another sizable asteroid might collide with Earth, but that we think we can do something about it. Unlike the dinosaurs, we have, in effect, become active agents in this process. The knowledge that humans can have an effect beyond our own planet informs NASA's decision in September to crash the spacecraft Galileo on Jupiter rather on Europa, one of Jupiter's 39 satellites. Europa has an ocean under its ice and active volcanoes to boot. It just might be supporting alien life. Jupiter, on the other hand, is very hot and gaseous and deemed incapable of life. Crashing Galileo on Europa would have risked contaminating it with microbes from Earth. That decision says something about our new perspective regarding our position in the universe. Until 600 years ago, we assumed our world was at the very center of the universe that it was flat, and that it was orbited by the sun. Today, thanks to advances in technology including the Hubble telescope, which stares into the far edges of the universe, we've found evidence of hundreds of other solar systems, with planets orbiting a star, or in some cases, binary stars. We even spotted a planet with an atmosphere 150 million light years away. A few years ago, a meteorite from Mars known as the Allan Hills meteorite astonished the world when scientists said they found tantalizing traces of fossilized life within it. Their findings have been contested, but the meteorite renewed enthusiasm for the idea of panspermia (Greek for "all- seeding") -- the interstellar exchange of DNA, a theory championed by Francis Crick, who discovered the DNA molecule with two other scientists half a century ago. Besides, there is such a thing as self fulfilling prophecy: If Earth didn't receive DNA for a startup way back when, we are now actively sending out DNA through space with our spacecraft and satellites and shuttles. We know Earth is constantly bombarded by meteors when we look up into the night sky and spot shooting stars. But more astounding is what astronomer Lou Frank speculated about a decade ago and found new evidence for only recently. Using the Hubble telescope to study Earth's atmosphere, Frank proved that Earth is constantly hit by snowballs from space. The implications are enormous: If snowballs from outer space hit Earth regularly, it is "snowing" onto other planets, too, providing much-needed water for the primordial soup. We are slowly discovering that ours is not just a lonely blue planet amid the heavens but, in fact, it exists as part of an open and intricately complex system. Distant planets and alien civilizations, if once the stuff of science fiction, are beginning, to be seriously considered by scientists. Astronomer Sergio Fajardo-Acosta, a researcher at University of Denver readily confesses: "I personally believe that there are many civilization out there ... The distances are staggering and communication is a problem, especially if that civilization is in another galaxy. But with imagination and a very sophisticated technology, I think we could probably overcome the distance limitation and communicate with others." The sea on which we sail in our voyage of cosmozation is infinitely more vast and wondrous than that of Columbus. And if modern life has its pitfalls, and if cynicism often colors our world views, we can always look up to the starry night and be re-enchanted. The cosmic age has arrived. Originally from: www.sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/18/INGOO48DT71.DTL Andrew Lam is an editor at Pacific News Service. He is featured in a documentary on PBS this April called "My Journey Home" to Vietnam. |
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| Too High? Back to the moon and beyond. Dennis E. Powell Suppose that you were to sit down and calculate the total amount you and your family will spend on automobiles purchase price, interest on loans, fuel, insurance, repairs, and so on over the next 25 years. The number would probably startle you. It would probably be well over the price of a new home. That big, round figure would in and of itself suggest all manner of non-automotive possibilities. It might even make a car seem a bad idea. Of course, that number would not in and of itself allow for the fact that those automobiles would produce some returns, probably among them transportation to and from the job in which you make the money to pay for them and then some. So it is with the loudest argument being raised in opposition to the president's program to return Americans to the moon and, if all goes well, on to Mars. Opponents object on three main grounds, really, none of which survives thoughtful scrutiny:
Considering them in order, the privatization of space exploration is, ceteris paribus, a fine idea, but it misses an important fact: We left an American flag, not a "no trespassing" sign, on the moon, and in 31 years the private sector has failed to go there, or even get to low Earth orbit. The private sector, though involved in some fledgling launch efforts and successful in the construction of commercial satellites, has not found the means to get far off the ground. Some kinds of research and development seem to get done only under the aegis of government. It was 35 years ago that a Defense Department agency, DARPA, got the idea of linking together computers at research facilities. Over time, DARPAnet turned into something now known as the Internet. The situation is getting worse, not better. "Simply put, much more D development is being done," noted Charles M. Vest, president of MIT, in a 2002 speech, "but less R research at the frontier, or of longer-term potential is being done." A project such as the one Bush proposes would do much to reverse the trend. As to the second argument, given voice by Paul Davies in the New York Times thusly, "Without some radical improvements in technology, the prospects for sending astronauts on a roundtrip to Mars any time soon are slim, whatever the presidential rhetoric," there is this to be said: Of course we can't do it. That's why the president did not announce that we'd leave for Mars the day after tomorrow. We couldn't fly to the moon in 1961, either, when President Kennedy announced his plan for us to do so before the end of the decade. Much of the value in space exploration is in the identification and solution of problems. "With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond," said Bush. We go when the problems are solved. And in the course of solving those problems we make technological advances that have uses other than space exploration. The electronics revolution we all enjoy the computer on which you are reading this was greatly advanced by inventions that would not exist but for the space program of the 1960s. "I think very little in the way of enduring value is going to come out of putting man on the moon," said Philip Abelson, director of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory and editor of Science. "We would have put in a lot of engineering talent and research and wound up being the laughing stock of the world." Abelson made his remarks in 1963. It is a matter of historical fact that the most difficult problems get solved only when they must get solved. Penicillin languished on a laboratory shelf for a decade until World War II and the resulting need for effective ways of fighting infection forced the allies to develop a way to produce it in quantity. Establishment of a moon base and, later, an excursion to Mars, would force the development of technologies of great importance in the energy and environmental realms as well as many other fields. "The moon is home to abundant resources," Bush said, allowing for development of products of value in further exploration and, perhaps here, as well as development of new technologies. Once developed, they would quickly find their way to mainstream, Earth-bound use, just as the development of cheap, reliable semiconductors in the 1960s led to everything from cellular telephones to personal computers to digital photography. There is more to space development than Tang and form-fitting mattresses. The most misleading of the arguments is the one having to do with cost. The number being batted around $1 trillion was apparently pulled by someone from the thin vacuum of space. It is a made-up number. A fabrication. It apparently derives from the half-trillion dollars NASA (kicking up its heels in delight) estimated would be the cost of a gold-plated moon base and trip to Mars when George H. W. Bush proposed it in 1989. Someone, somewhere, applied some goofy mathematical spinning to the price of NASA's 1989 wish list and came up with the $1 trillion figure. It's worth remembering that NASA didn't get its wish list. The president's proposal would increase NASA's budget by very little. How is this possible? Easy. "We will begin the program quickly, using existing programs and personnel," the president said. The space shuttle, a giant sop of NASA's budget and one of the few aspects of the space program that has returned little of scientific or technological value, will be phased out, gone entirely by 2010. Military space-launch programs will be incorporated more closely into NASA's activities, reducing duplication of costs. Contractors, who benefit most from the spin-offs of research and development, will be expected to bear more of the R&D costs themselves. But let us suppose that it does end up costing a trillion dollars. Here is where the automobile example above comes into play. The money involved would be spent over many years at least a quarter century and a well-run space program more than pays its own way. Indeed, that's very nearly the definition of a well-run space program. Those who argue that we shouldn't go to the moon and Mars because there are things to be done here on Earth are guilty of lapses of logic which are nearly unforgivable. "How are they going to pay for all this?," goes a typical argument, stated by a Flint, Mich., resident in an Associated Press poll published Tuesday. "I don't see how it's morally justifiable. In Flint, there isn't a school roof that doesn't leak." Setting aside whether it is the job of the federal government to send roofers to Flint, Mich., it's important to note the common logical error of assuming that it's either-or, that if we don't go to the moon we'll fix the roofs in Flint instead. The "a nation that can go to the moon ought to be able to . . ." phenomenon has been around since, well, since the nation went to the moon. That is not, of course, how it works. When we have a well-defined space goal, people are put to work. They pay taxes. The contractors for whom they work pay taxes. The economic engine turns. And Flint becomes better able to fix its own roofs, not inconceivably employing methods and materials developed by the space program, whose roofs will need to be somewhat more impenetrable than even those in Flint, Mich. It's not a zero-sum game, and arguing that it is makes as much sense as saying that we shouldn't build a house because there are so many improvements that can be made to the cave. The new space initiative is about creating something where nothing existed before. And we're the ones to do it. "Although goals have varied over time, the commitment to a U.S. presence in space has never wavered," notes a 1994 Rand report. "As part of that commitment, the country has developed a large infrastructure to support space operations, a pool of expertise matched by few nations, a very capable industrial base, and a network of international partnerships. The nation derives substantial benefits from space for defense, communications, science, and a number of other applications." In that report, no project was seen as having more potential benefit economically, inspirationally, and in improving the quality of life on Earth than a lunar base. "And along this journey," the president said Wednesday, "we'll make many technological breakthroughs. We don't know yet what those breakthroughs will be. But we can be certain they'll come and that our efforts will be repaid many times over." If history is any measure, he is right. The lesson is not lost on other nations, notably China. Gu Yidong, a director of China's manned spaceflight program, gets it: "With the further development of space technologies, outer space application will turn out to be an important driving force for China's economic and social development," Gu told Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, in October. In short, a program of the sort the president envisions would more than pay its own way, even as ownership of an automobile is more often than not economically sound. That NASA wanted a Ferrari in 1989 means nothing, because the president is not proposing to buy them one. Instead, he's put the space agency on notice: He'll usher through enough to get the new space vision started; after that, he said, "Future funding decisions will be guided by the progress that we make in achieving these goals." Fancy that: funding tied to performance! There are questions that can and should be legitimately be asked about Bush's proposal. Can NASA turn itself around, restore to itself the kind of ethic that made its achievements of the 1960s among America's proudest? Will NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe be able to wring the pork out of an agency that in many ways has become just another piece of the bureaucracy, and will he be able to ride herd over the disparate interests which must work together to bring the plan to fruition? Do we still have the national ability to focus on a goal that by its nature must span several presidencies, in a time when demagoguery, easy fixes, and flat-out lies are a growing part of our political discourse? Setting up a residence on the moon and visiting Mars will not be easy tasks. The public and political response to the president's plan will say less about the plan than it will about what we as a nation have become. "We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves," Bush said. "And only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel." How the plan is accepted will tell much of whether our curiosity remains alive. It's certainly worth thinking about, while you are, say, driving to work.
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| The Moon Imperative Jeffrey Bennett January 2004 The Bush administration's plan for a return to the Moon is drawing skepticism from many quarters. Some think we can't afford the cost, and that the money would be better spent on problems here at home. Others look at the spectacular success of the Spirit rover on Mars, and argue that the space program should focus only on robotic missions. Even some space enthusiasts argue against the Moon base, believing we should head directly to Mars. But my 25-year career in science education, including two years at NASA headquarters, tells me these concerns are misplaced. The Moon is the right goal, and now is the right time. It has been more than thirty-one years since astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt completed the last of a 3-day series of excursions on foot and by buggy on the surface of the Moon, and blasted off to return home with Apollo 17. For all practical purposes, our human space program has been grounded ever since. Sure, we have flown many times to Earth orbit, and even now there are astronauts aboard the International Space Station - but the Moon is more than one thousand times as far from Earth as the Space Station. If we liken the Apollo Moon landings to the voyages of Columbus, our presence on the Space Station is like a Spanish presence on Gibraltar. An entire generation has grown up in a world where humanity's greatest accomplishments in space flight belonged only to their parents and grandparents. Those who worry about the cost of a new space initiative may answer with "so what?" I'm no fan of budget deficits, and I'm a skeptic of supply-side economics, but there are indeed some programs that pay for themselves. The historical case for Apollo is clear-cut. Technology developed for the Moon landings became the basis for modern computers. The need for rapid communication between scientists and engineers working in different places fueled the innovations that led to the Internet. Our success in the race to the Moon turned the tide in the Cold War, ultimately turning former enemies into friends without a shot being fired. Economists can argue over the precise economic benefit of Apollo, but our nation clearly got a great return on its investment. We can expect just as great a return on the cost of building a permanent Moon base. We'll need to develop many new technologies to make it possible to live and work on the Moon, and to travel routinely between the Moon and Earth. Moreover, with a permanent base, we can hope to get additional economic benefit directly from the Moon. To take just a single example, consider the Moon's potential for offering a new source of clean and abundant energy. One idea suggests obtaining solar energy on the Moon and beaming it back to Earth. Even more intriguing is the prospect for nuclear fusion with helium-3 - a rare gas that is abundant in the lunar soil but virtually nonexistent on Earth. Incredible as it may sound, a nuclear fusion power plant that used hydrogen as its fuel could extract enough energy from the water flowing through your kitchen faucet to power the entire United States. We do not yet know how to build a fusion power plant, but the availability of helium-3 would make the task much easier, and the kitchen faucet example shows that we wouldn't need much. Think about it: no more concern over global warming, and no more difficulty providing energy to poor people in developing nations, all because of a fuel we find on the Moon. Let's move on to the next argument against the Moon - the idea that we can get an even better return from robotic missions. This might arguably be true if we focus only on measurable economic benefits (although I doubt it). After all, we also need new technologies for robotic missions, and robots could in principle tap lunar resources as well. But it neglects what may have been the greatest value of the Apollo landings: the intangible value of inspiration. For thousands of years, visiting the Moon was the stuff of mythology, and suddenly it was real. If we could put a man on the Moon, then surely no dream was out of reach. We were inspired to believe that anything is possible if you work hard enough, and people around the world looked to America as a nation that could make dreams come true. Robotic missions will always give us the ability to study places that are too far away or too hostile for us to visit ourselves. But no one grows up with the dream of being a robot. Inspiration comes from people. Finally, let's turn to the argument that we should skip the Moon and go straight to Mars. Even if this were the right thing to do, it's far less likely that we could do it now. Mars at its closest is 200 times as far as the Moon. Any realistic plan for visiting Mars envisions the use of local materials to support a human outpost and to manufacture fuel for the return trip. We do not yet know how to do these things, nor do we fully understand the dangers of sending astronauts on such a long trip. Mars is a great goal for the long-term, but we can't afford to wait on reinvigorating our space program. Moreover, from the standpoint of inspiration, the Moon has something that not even Mars can offer - the fact that everyone recognizes it in the sky. If we build our Moon colony as an international collaboration, as we should, then people of every nation, every race, and every religion will be working together on the second-most visible object in the sky. Imagine a world in which even the poorest children can look up at the Moon and know that people just like them are living and working there. Imagine a world in which Arabs and Israelis, Chechens and Russians, Americans and Iraqis, can all look up and say, "We are working together up there, so surely we can work together down here. This coming July 20 will mark the 35th anniversary of the first Moon landing, when Neil Armstrong stepped out and said, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." His words carried the message that space exploration transcends political boundaries, belonging to no one person, nation, or culture. It is time for us to continue our leap, building a base on the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond. In doing so, we will prove that conflict is not the only option open to our species. A permanent Moon base will offer the hope of a better future, one in which we all learn to work together to preserve our home planet, while at the same time beginning a journey that may ultimately take us to the stars. Jeffrey Bennett http://www.jeffreybennett.com |
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Most of the feedback on my commentary about the new Moon/Mars exploration initiative boiled down to two issues: (1) Scientists worry that the space science budget will be decimated to pay for the new initiative, a worry substantiated by the almost immediate cancellation of the Hubble servicing mission. (2) Others wonder how we can possibly afford the initiative. So here are a few additional thoughts... On the question of how the new initiative will affect the science budget: The issues have been wonderfully summarized by a former Chief Historian at NASA; I've copied his essay below. Regarding the Hubble cancellation, NASA's Administrator claims the decision was NOT based on money, but rather on a variety of factors of which post-Columbia Shuttle safety was paramount. The scientific community is understandably skeptical, so we'll see where it goes from here. Personally, I think that Hubble and other space science missions are among the only really inspirational things that we as a nation have at present, so it seems pretty self-defeating to cut them in order to make room for a future program whose most important aspect is its inspirational value. Turning to the question of where the money will come from, let's start with a painful truth: the President's proposed budget for the initiative is woefully inadequate. He is essentially asking to get started with very little new funding now, leaving all the big costs to be dealt with by future presidents. A more serious approach to such a bold initiative would admit that it's going to cost a lot of money and then make the case that it's worth the cost. Yes, I think it's worth spending a couple hundred billion to start a Moon base (for all the reasons outlined in my commentary). Thus, we should get started by finding significant new funding for NASA right now --- not by raising its budget by slightly more than inflation, as the President proposed, but by being prepared to double or triple the budget for space exploration. So now to the obvious question: even if the program has long-term benefits, where do we get the money for it now, when we are running a $500 billion deficit this year? Well, I've got to admit that borrowing $500 billion from our children in a single year borders on the criminal. But, that said, borrowing can be worth it if it is for an investment that will provide a positive return in the future. And consider this: The average error in projected budget deficits a year out is about 12%, which means about $60 billion on the $500 billion projection for this year. Thus, the uncertainty in this year's budget deficit is four times NASA's entire budget --- meaning that even a substantial increase for space is effectively lost in the "noise" among our other budgetary problems. If you accept my contention that there's a long-term positive return for the space initiative, then we ought to go ahead and find the necessary funding. (It's also worth noting that even in the short term, money spent on the space program essentially all goes to the creation of fairly high-tech, high-paying jobs that usually stay right here in the U.S. --- exactly the kind of jobs that we are most in need of.)
But, you ask, isn't my claim of a positive return based primarily on the
unquantifiable value of "inspiration"? Well, yes, but it's not quite as
loosey-goosey as it may sound. First, for those of you who may have missed
my appearance on Denver's 9 News on Saturday morning, I gave the following
analogy to illustrate the importance of inspiration in general:
In addition, while inspiration is generally considered priceless, let's
try to put a value on it anyway, just for the sake of argument. For
example, suppose that building a Moon base as a stepping stone to Mars and
beyond provides only enough inspiration to cause an additional 1% of the
U.S. population to go on to get a college degree. This is a pretty
conservative assumption, especially when you consider that the percentage
of the U.S. adult population (over age 25) with a 4-year college degree
has already risen from 7.7% in 1960 to about 26% today. (Yes, I do think
much of that can be traced to Apollo, but that's a different argument.)
Statistical studies of income show that, over a lifetime, the average
college graduate earns some $1 million more than a high school graduate.
Now run the numbers:
This $3 trillion return is roughly 20 times the estimated cost for the
Moon base. That's an investment that's hard to beat, even if the cost has
been underestimated by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4.
Bottom line: Building the Moon base is the right thing to do, even if the particulars of the President's current proposal are inadequate or wrong-headed. Rather than trying to kill a great idea, we should all be working together to make sure the great idea is implemented the right way. Let's not pretend it can be done on the cheap, but instead say that bold ideas require bold steps. As President Kennedy said in 1961, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..." The Moon should never have been a one-shot deal. It's time to go back and complete a dream that has been on hold for more than 30 years. The future depends on it.
Best to all,
Jeff
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Essay below from Roger Launius, the former Chief NASA
Historian
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Greetings:
I'm sure everyone has been following with great interest the president's initiative to return to the Moon and go on to Mars. I am cautiously optimistic about what I have heard about this initiative. The devil is in the details with this proposal, however, as I suppose is the case with everything. I'll be very interested to see the details and the ramifications that will result from this change of focus. The space enthusiast in me says, great, let's go back to the Moon and on to Mars. We need to get out of low-Earth orbit and now is as good a time as any. I'm very excited by the prospect of a return to the Moon, this time to create a permanent human presence there. For a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it will provide a reasonable testbed for technologies and procedures necessary to undertake a human mission to Mars, going to the Moon now makes sense. But, the cynic/curmudgeon/realist in me wonders about how all of this will unfold and what hard choices it will engender. Is it "unfinished business" from the first Bush administration, as many think about the second Gulf War? Is this, therefore, "son of SEI?" Where is the money going to come from, and two questions about this come immediately to mind: (1) is it enough to fund these major initiatives, even taking into consideration the reprogramming of other funds within the NASA budget? and (2) what is the likelihood that Congress will agree to this given the record deficits already being recorded and lots of other priorities for precious tax dollars? Am I the only person who thinks this is essentially an unfunded mandate what has tremendous potential to backfire on the spaceflight community? An unfunded mandate, as you know, presents enormous if not insurmountable difficulties. Moreover, the early statements on this proposal talk about refocusing NASA to accomplish this new human exploration function, and either discontinuing or having another organization carry out missions that do not directly support it. What does that mean for the Earth science mission, the aeronautics research mission, the planetary exploration program beyond the Moon and Mars, and the great observatories such as the proposed Webb Space Telescope, to say nothing of continuing Hubble astronomy made possible by another servicing mission? Does this initiative signal the end of NASA as we know it? One of the scientists at NASM said that a useful analogy to this proposal would be for the president to tell NIH that its task is now to cure cancer but that it do so within only very modest increases to its current budget, and that all activities of the agency should support that goal. Anything that doesn't should be ended. No AIDS or Diabetes research, no CDC, etc. He thought that was what the president had done to NASA. In addition, what about space access? If we cannot put humans into orbit, and hopefully the Crew Exploration Vehicle will be able to do this earlier rather than later but I am mindful of a landscape littered with failed human space access projects, how can we go anywhere else? Finally, although I'm a big believer in returning to the Moon will that part of this proposal resonate with the public, or is it something that is basically saying, "to boldly go where nine Apollo crews have gone before?" The answers to these, and a lot of other questions that I have will have to await the further delineation of the proposal. We'll see. It's going to be an interesting next several months. Roger D. Launius, Ph.D. Chair, Division of Space History National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution
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