Wonders from space... and beyond

Naturally, I'll have much to say about the Mueller Report, but not today. (Well, maybe in a coda, at the end.) For now, let's boost our spirits by...

... looking toward space!  Starting with...

A stream of terrific shadow selfie images from Japan's Hyabusa-2 probe touching down on  asteroid Ryugu, then getting blown back as it fires a bullet to kick up sample material. 'If all goes according to plan, these three samples will come down to Earth in a special return capsule in December 2020.” And this after deployment of three mini-landers.

This seems a perfect partnership with NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex probe, sampling another asteroid. Below, I'll discuss how the U.S. and Japan plus a few tech wizards should go do these treasure rocks (where the vast wealth is) while letting China, Russia and all the other Apollo-wannabes scamper to sterile-useless Luna for their coming-of-age rites. 

And yet.... we now find that incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought. 

== It's quiet out there... maybe too quiet ==

My paper on the ethical, logical and theological  bases for METI – Messaging to ET Intelligences – is now in the journal Theology & Science. ‘The “Barn Door” Argument, The Precautionary Principle, and METI as “Prayer”—an Appraisal of the Top Three Rationalizations for “Active SETI.”’ Yes, so far it is restricted by subscription. But let me offer you the abstract:

“Proponents of Active SETI, or METI, defend their messaging-to-aliens agenda with fallacious arguments like the Barn Door Excuse, that technologically advanced extraterrestrials must have already listened to our radio leakage, (e.g. “I Love Lucy”), hence more direct beaming will not betray Earth’s location. 

"Further, they claim that sending pinpointed, collimated messages will only lead to positive outcomes. In fact, laser-like “messages” are far more powerfully detectable at great distances than old-time television, and concerns about potential downsides should be appraised by scientific risk-assessment. It is argued that METI is psychologically driven as a version of the ancient human practice of prayer.”

Yes, there truly was a reason it got published in Theology and Science.

== Yes, humanity should keep exploring the moon ==

We’ve learned so much from lunar bits, especially taken by the Apollo missions. This Apollo14 sample apparently formed deep under the crust of the Earth, then got blasted to Earth’s surface, then blasted to land on the Moon, got buried and modified, then got blasted onto the moon’s surface to be plucked by an Apollo14 astronaut. How do we figure all this? We’ve learned to track an amazing suite of physical and chemical and isotopic clues thanks to … well, science.  Federally funded R&D that propelled half of our economy, since WWII.

And yet...  Come see a screed of utter-drooling nonsense –  declaring that China is “winning the new space race‼!” Oh, no! They just put a tiny solar rover on the Moon!  "The stakes are high: Who will be able to obtain the vast resources in space, for example, water/ice, iron, titanium, platinum and nickel; secure the routes of trade; and write the rules of space commerce such as trade in energy propellant and precious metals."

Sigh. I am forced to get repetitive. The moon has what? It has absolutely none of those things except possibly some buried water as a source of propellant, at the difficult to access poles. And even that is likely to be eclipsed by vast amounts of water available in asteroids... along with actual, rather than make-believe gold, platinum etc. 

Why pretend to justify joining the Apollo-wannabes with faux claims of lunar 'resources' that don't exist? Even the normally smart and cogent Isaac Arthur breaks his arms desperately waving away any need to justify that claim with actual numbers. Oh, and here’s another cock n’bull story about moon mining and Helium 3 mythology, without a hint of due diligence on actual numbers or plausibility.

The only way that China wins any "space race" would be either militarily (as in the first chapter of Ghost Fleet; and yes, be wary) or else if the $%$#! Republicans force us into a "united/international consortium to go back to the moon." In that case – a lose-lose for the U.S. -- we'd have to transfer all our technology, boosting the Chinese and Russian while gaining nothing. 

Show us the "ores" you blithely armwave to be on the moon! Show us clear charts how it would be a 'way-station" to Mars. You can't. Oh, but with no one else apparently calling out this insanity, with a sigh, let me reiterate. 

The moon started out resource depleted because it came from Earth's crust, after most metals sank into our planet's core. Then the newborn-molten moon fractionated again, sending most of what was left settling into it's own core! As for what remained, there were no water processes which concentrated most useful ores on Earth. 

True there's aluminum and silicon and smidgeons of titanium in Luna's crust... and all of it is in super tight oxygen bonds that will take truly major energy input to separate -- possible, but hugely non-trivial. A little scattered meteoritic iron might get collected by dragging magnets endlessly through dust. Or we could go where it came from...

In contrast, half of the asteroids seem to have come from a shattered proto-planet. Some of them come from its carbon-volatiles-water rich outer crust. Some from the stony middle and many of them from the purified metal/iron/gold etc core. Pre-refined metal! 

Again, the only resource advantage of the moon is purported Helium Three. And please show it to me. Show me a customer. Hold me back from strangling the next cultist raving "Helium Three!" 

Yes, I do think we should keep exploring Luna!  Humanity is going back there, no matter what. And that's fine, Chinese and later Indian, Russian and Saudi and European and billionaire tourists will skip about, planting footprints in that dusty, useless, utterly resource-free plain. (And the U.S. should sell them services, maybe landers! Indeed, we might send a few small robots to explore some of those lava tube tunnels, partly to prevent the Chinese from claiming them all. But joining their mad rush for footprints? Why?)

Their surface reasons will be 'scientific,' but we all know it will be tourism and national pride. Having their Bar Moonzvah (“Today I am a man!”) 

Mazel Tov. The Americans and Japanese and Diamandis-ovs and Musk-ovites should transmit congratulations. Let's blow them kisses from the asteroids where we're getting spectacularly rich, doing things that only we (with our fellow true modernists) can do.

Wake up and smell the platinum.

== More news about deadly rocks ==

Fascinating evidence suggests that two of the super-Earths orbiting very close to a Kepler studied star may have collided in the past and that one of them is so dense it might consist only of the stripped iron core of an earlier, larger version.

Evidence suggesting that the rate of asteroids impacting the Earth-Moon system actually went up, starting about 290 million years ago, and the rate probably rose by 2.6x.  Perhaps a major asteroid broke up around then. In any event, all the more reason to support the B612 Foundation’s work, helping count and study potential impactors and concocting plans to deal with them.

Meanwhile, the theory that Earth’s volatile elements arrived through the steady bombardment of ancient meteorites during the Late Heavy Bombardment has been challenged by those who propose that a catastrophic collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object, sometimes referred to as Theia, some 4.4 billion years ago --- which many believe created Earth’s moon – may have delivered those volatiles.

== Go-go! ==

In preparation for it's first potential test fire, followed by hover trials, SpaceX had moved Elon's Starhopper suborbital vehicle to a launch pad at its Boca Chica test site near Brownsville, Texas. 

== And finally ==

Ah, but then there’s the Chinese orbital tracking station in Patagonia, operating without the slightest supervision by Argentina’s government or public. One more highly… assertive… international action. Only note that Patagonia is also where some of the world’s oligarchic elites have been buying up whole mountains for their post-apocalyptic retreats. All based on their weirdly smug assumption that we all won’t know exactly where they’ll be, when we decide to get mad.

Can you see patterns under the patterns? If Alien meddlers wanted to ensure our failure... or get hilarious reality TV ... the perfect plan is is to use their agents -- (Rupert? Vlad) to craft what we see right now. Oh, but let's not get all science-fictional!  Not till next time.