Against a background of riots and abuses at every level of power... and rejoicing over the smooth competence of the Crew Dragon mission... we can clearly see that the road branches before us. And the kind of civilization we want and need is the one worth fighting for.
Do we allow monstrous evil to destroy us -- as in the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd... and the insane torching of Uncle Hugo's Bookstore in Minneapolis -- to send us down what Heinlein forecast as "The Crazy Years"? Or even the madness of Nehemia Scudder? Or will we learn to thwart the evil men who now cackle as they exploit our new, godlike powers of perception and communication, in oder to incite violence and division and treason?
Next time I hope to offer a proposal for how to solve some of our social media toxicity.
But for now, let's turn to some lifting-of-spirits. With some good stuff, indeed.
== Better things! ==
Now Free! These are seriously great little volumes, each of them about a different, way-cool NIAC project I consulted on. ... "Thanks to a partnership with World Book, Inc., NASA is offering free access to Out of This World, a kids STEM e-book series featuring NIAC Fellows’ concepts. World Book is offering virtual access to all eight e-books free of charge to support educators, parents and students during the coronavirus pandemic."
Do we allow monstrous evil to destroy us -- as in the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd... and the insane torching of Uncle Hugo's Bookstore in Minneapolis -- to send us down what Heinlein forecast as "The Crazy Years"? Or even the madness of Nehemia Scudder? Or will we learn to thwart the evil men who now cackle as they exploit our new, godlike powers of perception and communication, in oder to incite violence and division and treason?
Next time I hope to offer a proposal for how to solve some of our social media toxicity.
But for now, let's turn to some lifting-of-spirits. With some good stuff, indeed.
== Better things! ==
Now Free! These are seriously great little volumes, each of them about a different, way-cool NIAC project I consulted on. ... "Thanks to a partnership with World Book, Inc., NASA is offering free access to Out of This World, a kids STEM e-book series featuring NIAC Fellows’ concepts. World Book is offering virtual access to all eight e-books free of charge to support educators, parents and students during the coronavirus pandemic."
The series features stories about the lives and scientific work of NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) researchers. NIAC supports the next generation of space exploration by investing in visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions with the creation of radically better or entirely new concepts, helping to turn science fiction into science fact. You can access the FREE e-book series on the World Book site here.
- A truly wonderful three minutes can be had here, taking a narrated video tour of the Curiosity Rover's latest 18.GB panorama from the slopes of Mount Sharp, in Gale Crater, on Mars. You are a member of a bold, scientific, maturing civilization that does stuff like this. Be proud. Defend it.
Alas, Curiosity is in mortal danger. The Trump Administration’s proposed budget cuts would debilitate several ongoing missions, Scientific American reports, and would even mean shutting down the iconic rover Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012.
- Natural superconductors found in meteorites? UCSD prof. Mark Thiemens and colleagues have used sophisticated instruments – like magnetic field modulated microwave spectroscopy (MFMMS). To find little inclusions that exhibit superconductivity from states imposed violently, early in the solar system’s evolution. “Naturally occurring superconductive materials are unusual, but they are particularly significant because these materials could be superconducting in extraterrestrial environments.” And yes, I depict natural superconductivity amid the perovskites of our planet’s mantle. In EARTH. Well, speculation is easy. What Mark & pals do is hard!
- Hubble’s 30th Anniversary Image… absolutely stunning.
- The Japanese space agency JAXA announced that their newly planned probe will land on the Martian moon Phobos – which I’ve long held to be potentially one of the most valuable sites in the Solar System - and snare at least 10 grams, or about a third of an ounce, of material from the moon’s surface using a coring collection system before taking off again. MMX will also release a German-French rover to explore the terrain and chemical composition of Phobos for roughly three months. The MMX spacecraft’s return to Earth in 2029 would complete the first round-trip voyage to Mars and back. The German and French space agencies agreed with JAXA to provide a small rover for the MMX mission based on the MASCOT robot deployed on the surface of asteroid Ryugu by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft.
The Haybusa mission was so spectacular… as was the U.S. asteroid mission at the same time… that it’s clear we are ready to start assaying some of the vast riches out there, making asteroids far more apropos for US-Japan-Europe, while all the Apollo-wannabe tourists go rushing to the sterile, useless, dusty lunar plains. More on results from this marvelous mission here.
Again. Humanity will return to the Moon as Chinese, Russian, Indian and other astronauts provide their nations with tourist rites of passage. And to be clear, the Chinese are doing fine things! Their Chang’e-4 mission on the far side used ground penetrating radar to do cool science. And who knows? All those nations’ missions might find something (beyond proved polar water ice deposits) to prove me wrong about that resource poor wasteland. Mazel tov.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Japan and Europe should do things those other nations can’t. Go where the real riches are.And yes, the Japanese will do asteroids without us, if we stupidly turn our backs on those riches out there, in order to inanely repeat an act of 90% symbolism.
Again. Humanity will return to the Moon as Chinese, Russian, Indian and other astronauts provide their nations with tourist rites of passage. And to be clear, the Chinese are doing fine things! Their Chang’e-4 mission on the far side used ground penetrating radar to do cool science. And who knows? All those nations’ missions might find something (beyond proved polar water ice deposits) to prove me wrong about that resource poor wasteland. Mazel tov.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Japan and Europe should do things those other nations can’t. Go where the real riches are.And yes, the Japanese will do asteroids without us, if we stupidly turn our backs on those riches out there, in order to inanely repeat an act of 90% symbolism.
Grownup efforts haven't ALL been sabotaged, yet. “NASA’s historic uncrewed mission to the metallic asteroid Psyche is now, also, a SpaceX jam. Elon Musk’s rocket company will be responsible for getting the probe launched on board a Falcon Heavy. According to some estimates, the materials making up Psyche could be worth a staggering $10,000 quadrillion.” - from Futurism.
== More space! ==
- Physicist and Breakthrough maven James Benford and science popularize-philosopher/author Paul Davies gave a January talk on the possibility of “lurker” alien space probes in our solar system, and especially on very near-Earth asteroids. Especially a few that qualify as extra Earth moons. Plus a followup interview. Of course, this is a central topic to my novel Existence.
And now news of another “pseudo-moon” of Earth, this one no larger than a limo! Arrived ~ 3 years ago, may leave in 4 years. About the size of a limo.
- The Sun appears to be far less active than other similar stars. This perspective on evolution of the Sun and could mean that our star is in a midlife lull at the moment. This data on luminosity variability – a side product of the Kepler planet-seeking mission – suggests our sun’s anomalous stability might be a major factor in the Fermi Paradox.
“Researchers identified 369 stars with similar temperatures, masses, ages, chemical compositions, and rotational periods as the Sun. They found that despite these similarities, most of the stars displayed far higher levels of brightness variation that indicate average activity levels around five times higher than that of the Sun.” Possibly one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the last few years.
“Researchers identified 369 stars with similar temperatures, masses, ages, chemical compositions, and rotational periods as the Sun. They found that despite these similarities, most of the stars displayed far higher levels of brightness variation that indicate average activity levels around five times higher than that of the Sun.” Possibly one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the last few years.
== Finally... Those Navy-baiting UFOs? ==
See a cogent analysis of the “UFO” videos, leaked to the public in 2007 and 2017, that appear to show three unidentified flying objects moving in weird and unexpected ways. ‘The Navy had already acknowledged the videos were real, but pointedly did not say what they show.’ Watch the embedded technical appraisal, offering very simple and highly likely explanations that truly shoot down the ‘alien spacecraft’ category.
There were already many reasons to doubt the zealous UFOism of my neighbors at the “To the Stars Academy.” But the visual analysis seems also to (alas!) render unnecessary my own theory about WHO is doing this! (That it’s DARPA or USN Research.) And my speculation as to HOW it's being done. I’ll keep mum on the latter, for now, but my notion is entirely plausible and all that. It’s just not necessary to explain these images. Not any longer. Rats.
Though my novel Existence explores DOZENS of vastly more-plausible scenarios for alien ‘lurkers’ in our solar system. Watch the vivid 3-minute video trailer. (See also my story “Those Eyes.” Which shreds the ‘why’ of visiting Teaser Ships.)
Seriously? There are now something like a BILLION times as many cameras on this planet as there were in the 1950s, many of them better, more mobile and all far more widely distributed. So how come all the UFO images remain almost exactly as blurry as they were then?
Seriously? There are now something like a BILLION times as many cameras on this planet as there were in the 1950s, many of them better, more mobile and all far more widely distributed. So how come all the UFO images remain almost exactly as blurry as they were then?
Oh. Also sighted… China’s newly robo-tested capsule for crewed spaceflight looks amazingly (or not so amazingly) like the SpaceX Crew Dragon.