From me, in a podcast with Anthony Colangelo.
Category Archives: Space Science
Humans To Mars
In the wake of last week’s conference, the 2017 report is out.
China And Asteroids
This sounds sort of hinky to me (as is usually the case with Chinese space announcements). They’re going to bring an asteroid into cislunar space within a decade, but don’t think they’ll have the technology to process it until four decades from now? And how does getting artificial gravity from a spinning asteroid work, exactly? Also, pretty sure there will be some intense discussions about what kind of liability China will assume under the Liability Convention if they attempt this.
Red Dragon
2018 isn’t happening, but they may send two Dragons to Mars in 2020.
[Update a while later]
Meanwhile, in Michoud…
SLS LOX Dome Dropped And Damaged Beyond Repair https://t.co/TkOkVUAEr7 @NASA_SLS #NASA pic.twitter.com/6daG95g7TX
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 10, 2017
It’s almost metaphorical.
[Update a few minutes later]
@WeHaveMECO so it was a suborbital drop?
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) May 10, 2017
@WeHaveMECO @SciGuySpace Every drop is suborbital.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) May 10, 2017
The Week In Space
It’s going to be a busy one in DC.
Terraforming Mars
“The rate of loss of gas today is very low — slow enough that it would take billions of years to remove the equivalent amount of gas that is in the atmosphere,” principal investigator Bruce Jakosky said in an email. There is some CO2 left in the polar ice and in carbon-bearing materials, he added, but not nearly enough to warm the temperature significantly if it somehow was put back in the atmosphere.
“There isn’t a source of CO2 that could replenish the atmosphere — even outgassing of CO2 from volcanoes has got to be incredibly slow today,” Jakosky added. “If we wanted to put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to raise temperatures significantly, it would take something like 10 million kilometer-sized comets (if they were all made entirely of CO2). This is just not feasible.”
I think there are other possibilities (e.g., bombarding it with carbonaceous and other asteroids, and comets, and manufacturing the CO2 on the surface), but largely, I consider the obsession with Mars to be much more romantic than practical, at least as a new earth.
The Storms Of Jove
Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts on the gas giant.
Enceladus
Is it the most likely place to look for life in the solar system? I know that Carolyn Porco thinks so. Or at least that it’s a better prospect than Europa. Plus, we haven’t been warned to attempt no landings there.
It’s obviously a lot harder mission than Europa, but it seems like going to Europa to look for life instead of Enceladus is like the guy who went to a different block to look for his lost car keys because the light was better there.
Space Weather
New data that could provide warning of catastrophic solar storms. We need this both in space and on earth. I worry much more about the sun acting up than I do CO2.
The Planetary Society
Entirely not unexpectedly, they have some terrible suggestions for Trump and NASA:
- Maintain the exploration of Mars as the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
- Direct NASA to plan an executable, affordable path for sending humans to Mars orbit by 2033
- Expand NASA’s highly successful science portfolio
- Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
- Initiate annual five percent increases to NASA’s budget for five years
The only good one is the fourth. Here are mine:
- Make the continuous reduction of the cost of space activities the organizing principle for NASA’s human spaceflight program
- Direct NASA to end development of its own launch systems and to start to procure propellant in LEO to enable trips beyond
- Expand NASA’s science portfolio with data purchases
- Continue to grow and support the commercial space industry
- Direct funding from SLS/Orion to support 1-4