Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Laboratory >

New Developments in Space

17:59 / 15.04.08

The BBC reports that Russia is preparing to send monkeys to Mars.

It involves dosing them with radiation first. Perhaps they will become metahumans. Or metamacaques.

The WWF is perturbed.

13:15 / 02.05.08

I’m genuinely excited about this. If it works, it could go a long way in encouraging us to send a human mission to Mars. (Of course, if all the monkeys die, it could also set us back…hmmm.) I honestly don’t feel too bad about our simian cousins either because if they needed a human volunteer to be baby sat by the monkeys I’d gladly sign up.

Also, speaking of Mars, the Phoenix lander is less than a month away from touchdown. Here's hoping it finds some alien mold or something.

05:22 / 15.05.08

actually only a few days away - scheduled to touch down on 25 may. what are the odds in the collective 'lith mind - vast as that is - of it finding anything like life? do we really think we'll know when we see it?

exciting times...

07:06 / 15.05.08

this story gives a bit more of the challenges the lander will face - and what it will get up to when it's there (if it's succesful - less than 50% doesn't augur too well, eh?)

22:20 / 15.05.08

That's *without* the interference from intelligent Martian cats.

12:36 / 20.05.08

i've always found martian cats to be quite dim...

martian dogs on the other paw...

13:19 / 26.05.08

The Phoenix lander touched down last night.. I thought only too late of posting the link to the live feed from the Control Room on NASA TV. Even though it was just people in blue polo shirts staring at screens, with occasional updates on what's happening, I found it very tense.

The lander was the first for a while that uses little rockets to slow its descent. It hit the atmosphere at about 13 thousand miles per hour, then opened a parachute about 2 kilometers up, IIRC. The rockets I believe only fired in the last few hundred metres of the descent, so listening to the altitude update was a very dramatic moment. Even more so considering that communications take 15 minutes to reach Earth from Mars, so the whole landing procedure had to be automated.

The first pictures of the local surface are here.

I don't fully understand how important the experiments it will be doing are, but it's fantastic that it didn't smash into the surface of the planet.

18:48 / 26.05.08

My *understanding* (based on minimal information) is that Phoenix is supposed to be digging into the permafrost to see how suitable the area is for building a human colony - one that can melt ice to get water.

Evil Scientist
(prev. Wristwatch Nuke)

19:29 / 26.05.08

I don't fully understand how important the experiments it will be doing are, but it's fantastic that it didn't smash into the surface of the planet.

Hell yeah. Martian air defense isn't impregnable!

My *understanding* (based on minimal information) is that Phoenix is supposed to be digging into the permafrost to see how suitable the area is for building a human colony - one that can melt ice to get water.

I think it's also doing the usual thing of checking the permafrost for layers where microbial existance (as we undertstand it) would be possible and to do a number of tests on the water itself for things like ammonia levels and information about climatic history.

There was some concern from the American Astronomical Society that the type of tests being run by Phoenix might kill the very life it was looking for. Some theories of Martian microbiology suggest that evolutionary pressures would select for organisms with a percentage of hydrogen peroxide in their internal fluids, which could mean that some of the tests (designed for Earth-style MOs) could drown the little buggers.

21:14 / 26.05.08

NASA has totally been "inspired" by the Firefox logo for their mission branding.

Evil Scientist
(prev. Wristwatch Nuke)

11:23 / 27.05.08

Think in Russian.

Oh, not that one?

14:03 / 04.08.08

A Brazilian newspaer has run an online article claiming a NASA scientist told them, under promiss of anonimity, that in the next few days they will announce that the Phoenix probe has found liquid water on Mars, which totally changes the game.

Here's the link, for any of you who can read Portuguese.

Evil Scientist
(prev. Wristwatch Nuke)

10:28 / 01.10.08

So China's astronauts completed a successful space-walk over the weekend. But does it really matter?

The link goes to an interview with a space historian (ah, it's sweet that we live in a world where such a thing exists) and briefly discusses whether the space-walk is actually that momentous.

Personally I'm all for as much space development as possible, although at the moment it is really more of a prestige thing for governments to have sent people into outer space. It is an impressive achievement but I am starting to question the value of missions which have an unnecessary human component (it being cheaper, safer, and more efficient to use robotic probes IMO).

I suppose that it could be argued that each trip into space gives us more data to allow for long-term missions (such as the proposed Mars trip). But realistically this isn't going to provide anything new on that.

Quantum - killed by hadrons
(prev. Quantum)

14:39 / 01.10.08

It's all about the PR. Look at him waving the flag, putting a man in space is mostly to seem impressive, robot probes aren't as sexy.

Evil Scientist
(prev. Wristwatch Nuke)

16:43 / 01.10.08

robot probes aren't as sexy.

You've been going to the wrong websites.

19:53 / 01.10.08

Well, China's spacewalk doesn't do much for science, but it does show how quickly they're entering space. They've already got plans for a space station (it's already underway), and a second lunar orbiter as a prelude to a manned moon landing.

So as a demonstration that they can do these things and have the public will to keep doing these things, it's significant.

23:57 / 01.10.08

If China is going up, and fast, then that might be a big incentive for certain other industrialized countries to return.

Someone mentioned to me that Japan is considering a space elevator. A quick Google found this and this reports, which are a little lacking in hard details. It seems to be a grand plan at the moment, with promises to fund a lot of research on exactly how to do it.

Evil Scientist
(prev. Wristwatch Nuke)

10:24 / 02.10.08

It all comes down to getting the right materials to construct the elevator out of really. They're bloody expensive things to actually build but once they're up they pay for themselves pretty quickly. It'd revolutionise space travel to be able to get things into orbit quickly and cheaply.

That said, see Kim Stanley Robinson's book Red Mars for hilarious space elevator catastrophy.

museum in time, tiger in space
(prev. museum)

10:57 / 02.10.08

SpaceX (an American company founded by one of the co-founders of PayPal) has just sent a liquid-launched vehicle into orbit. They left a 165kg hexagonal prism up there, apparently. This blog, which is all about privately-owned space enterprise, links to a video of the launch.
There are quite a few companies like this, aren't there? Have any of the others reached orbit?

03:04 / 05.10.08

i always like the idea of a space elevator and wanted the job of being the little chap in the hat pressing the buttons, announcing - 'going up. first floor, haberdashery, home wares, men's wear, meteors. going up...'

what are the implications for the chinese in space, though? mining exploration on the moon - how many years before we see a full production station there digging it up? what will they get?

Quantum - killed by hadrons
(prev. Quantum)

12:57 / 06.10.08

Moon mining is pointless, Asteroid mining is the way. No gravity well, you see.
Re: beanstalks, the taper factor is what interests me, the cable/ribbon will be this shape <> as the bit in the middle has to hold up the weight of the cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Cable