We haven't stopped moving ahead. Nor will we. And hence, with the aim of ending a tumultuous year on a high note... very high... here's my roundup of recent space science news - and upcoming missions... and so on...
== Lots of stuff out there! ==
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| Asteroid 5748DaveBrin |
(If this is your season for general philanthropy or giving, or investing in a better tomorrow, here's my annual appeal that you consider the win-win-win of Proxy Activism! And again, do include potentially world-saving B612!)
But sure, the Big Guys will also help.
Even before the Vera Rubin scope commences to tally many new objects in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, some surprises are already emerging about that cold, dark region (of which Pluto is a part.) Astronomers have just found hints of an unexpected rise in the density of Kuiper Belt objects or KBOs, between 70 and 90 AU from the Sun. In the region between 55 and 70 AU, however, next to nothing has been found.
== So, who should do the exploring, out there? ==
Well, if you are talking about just exploring – poking at new places and doing science – then robotics wins, hands-down.
Sorry but machines are better for poking at the edges. That’s what NASA/Japan and Europe should do with respect to the Moon, instead of silly footprint stunts. For 5% of the cost of “Artemis” we could robotically seek and verify, or else (more likely) refute those tall tales of ‘lunar resources.’
But there’s another mission for astronauts – plus tourists and researchers – in space. And that is studying how humans can learn to actually live and work out there.
For the near term, that’ll entail a lot of work in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where issues of supply, recycling and radiation safety are easier to control. And above all, we should (must!) finally build spinning facilities that can tell us (at long last) what gravity conditions humans need, in order to survive and stay healthy.
Over 60 years since Gagarin, we still haven't a clue how to answer that simple question! It’s the fascinating topic that Joseph Carroll elucidates in "What do we need astronauts for?" published in in Space Review.
He follows that up with a more detailed article, "How to test artificial gravity" - about near term missions to experiment with spinning artificial gravity (SAG), starting with a simple test using just a Crew Dragon and the upper Falcon stage that launched it. Then moving on to a highly plausible path toward making space a vastly more welcoming place.
== Looking ahead.... Future Space Missions ==
Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin plans to skip from the tiny-but-self-landing New Shepherd, leaping way past sturdy-reliable self-landing Falcon9 and triple self-landing Falcon Heavy, all the way to landing sub-Starship New Glenn on a barge. Or so they say. I guess we'll see - maybe soon.
Rocket Lab’s twin probes to study aurorae and the atmosphere of Mars were made super-inexpensively. They’ll head out there soon (NOT cheaply) on the New Glenn heavy.
Among many terrific initiatives seed-funded by NIAC (where I was an advisor for a decade), one getting attention in the New Yorker is the Farview radio telescope to be set up on the Moon’s far side. Though the article made an error in the name; it’s NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC). But yeah, look at the range of incredible, just-short-of-science-fiction concepts!
One of my favorite NIAC concepts of the last few years was the Linares Statite, that would hover on sunlight, way out at the asteroid belt, ready to fold its wings and dive like a peregrine falcon past the sun to catch up with almost anything, such as another 'Oumuamua interstellar visitor. Slava Turyshev's Project Sundiver has shown that you get a lot of speed if you plummet to graze just past Sol, then snap open your lightsail at nearest passage. In fact it is the best way to streak to the Kuiper Belt. And beyond!
That's just one of many potential uses of lightsails that are described - via both stories and nonfiction - in the 21st Century edition of Project Solar Sail! Revised and updated, then edited by me and Stephen W. Potts, this great new version will be featured by the Planetary Society next month!
Finally....
Beautiful images of the hot place. The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has successfully completed its fourth of six gravity assist flybys at Mercury, capturing images of two special impact craters as it uses the little planet’s gravity to steer itself on course to enter orbit around Mercury in November 2026.
And an Ai piloted F-16 (with human observers) outperformed regularly piloted F-16s in tests including 'dogfights.'
My friend and former NIAC colleague-physicist John Cramer (who just turned 90; happy birthday John!) two decades ago used data from NASA’s WMAP survey to produce "The Sound of the Big Bang.” … A recent topic of Brewster Rockit!
And yeah, may you and yours... and all of us... manage to persevere... and yes thrive(!) through "interesting times."
And may we meet and party hearty eventually... out there.
33 comments:
Congratulations on your rock (though that's old news).
I hope I get to live long enough to see a successful SAG project in orbit! I've been fascinated by that concept for as long as I can remember!
Re: B612 Foundation
https://b612foundation.org/
(if the link in the topic doesn't work)
Now that's taking responsibility for our future. Ten years ago, I was running a fairly competitive Citizen Science team that searched for pulsars, did protein folding, crunched Gravitation Wave data and the like. Fun times. The pride and excitement of participants, especially red staters for some reason, was bigly gratifying.
Things changed, both technologically and politically. Not such fun times now. The Dark Side is easier and quicker, but not stronger.
The scientific spirit is the birthright of every sapiens.
ad astra and Calculemus!
Universe as hologram?:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/if-the-universe-is-a-hologram-this-long-forgotten-math-could-decode-it-20240925/
Let me toss this hot potato into the stew before I relax and reread the FOUNDATION series by Asimov and others (including our wonderful host).
The Apple+ series FOUNDATION is a waste of resources. Mae and I stopped watching mid-way through season 2. I read the spoilers in Wikipedia and watched parts of the final episodes. Why didn't they just use the stories "Uncle" Isaac wrote?
I was looking forward to a shutdown (since furloughed employees always get paid for the time off eventually). My supervisor called me late on Friday saying he hates making calls like this. I thought I was in trouble. No, just guidance on what to do. I set an away message on my IRS email address and made a special voice mail message. I found guidance for all my co-workers on what to say and write. So I take credit for stopping the shutdown. ;-)
I am typing this on my phone so I apologize for any twisted and evil spelling. I wish everyone of you a happy and joyful holiday season.
Now we are going to watch A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. If only we could find a decent Chanukah movie.
I set an away message on my IRS email address and made a special voice mail message. I found guidance for all my co-workers on what to say and write. So I take credit for stopping the shutdown. ;-)
That's in line with the way I live my life. Convince the universe I'd prefer a shutdown, so then it doesn't happen. That'll show me.
Why didn't they just use the stories "Uncle" Isaac wrote?
We're a minority here on this list, but I would have preferred that as well.
If only we could find a decent Chanukah movie.
I tried to think of one and came up empty as well. The closest I could come was Masada, which isn't quite what you have in mind.
The Old Testament would seem to be rife with good movie plots. You'd think the Chanukah and Purim stories would work well on the big screen, and yet I can't think of any such movies. Only Samson and Delilah and The Ten Commandments seem to have broken through.
"A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events.
Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — and at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop." (note - this is to be an unwritten policy!)
Jesus Homoousios Christ. Not sure we're going to make it out of the Solar System.
Pappenheimer
merry Christmas, Hugh, although you have now got me wondering how the Peanuts gang would handle the Foundation series ...
"A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge...
I thought that was going to be the start of a joke. Although I guess in a way, it was.
A charlie brown Xmas is one of the top five jazz albums of all time.
Recommend a really funny video with live actors doing the dances that the kids do on stage.
Bonus points to any who can name all of peanuts characters dancing.
Pandemics weed out those too stupid to get vaccinated.
Consider it to be evolution working in real time.
Best man at my wedding (well, at both of them...married Mae twice - civil ceremony then a religious one 14 months later) plays amazing piano and plays a marvelous Vince Guaraldi impression. We are going up to Detroit to see them next week.
MASADA is a great mini-series. I love the Jerry Goldsmith/Mort Stevens score. Don't know how well the Maccabee story would play today - religious extremists make war on European colonists and win. But we had God on our side...and we made that lamp burn for 8 days.
OMG...imagine the FOUNDATION TV series with the Peanuts characters replacing the current cast. Lucy as Demerzel. Charlie Brown as Day. Snoopy as Dawn (or should he be Dusk).
Hmmm, I wonder how much this had to do with anything:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/us/politics/trump-blame-shutdown.html
Ms. Jean-Pierre warned before the House’s Friday night vote that Mr. Trump’s own transition and inauguration could suffer in the event of a shutdown.
“I don’t want to get too much into hypotheticals, but this is the reality — transition activities will be restricted,” she warned. “With limited exceptions obviously, such as prevent imminent threats to the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
I know you’re familiar with this sort of thing, but laymen visit CB, and one might read it.
This is my favorite Christmas scene:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8lbgxkptfBI
Ahhh, the Phineas and Ferb Christmas special demonstrates a scheme to rival my coping plan of hypnotizing myself back to 1977.
Pretending to wake up and saying, "So, it was all a dream!"
Rugrats had some Channukah videos. Also (I think) South Park.
My weekly posting of chapters of THE ANCIENT ONES - my punny Sci Fi comedy crossover of Star Trek with vampires n' werewolves n' zombies(!) - continues with Part 4!
https://davidbrin.wordpress.com/2024/12/21/the-ancient-ones-chapter-4/
GMT:
Don't know how well the Maccabee story would play today - religious extremists make war on European colonists and win.
Well, the birth of a Palestinian religious leader who defied European colonists seems to play pretty well this tine of year,
But we had God on our side...and we made that lamp burn for 8 days.
It's become a running gag at my house that, for example, a gallon of milk that's still good way past its stamped expiration date is a "Chanukah gallon".
Of course, I lived my own Chanukah miracle last summer, driving down to the University of Illinois campus to help my daughter move. We usually lose the station that plays Stephanie Miller's radio show about an hour out of Chicago, but that trip, we were able to hear the entire three hours, all the way to Champaign.
My wife used to make cassette recordings of Prairie Home Companion back in the days of old. She found one old tape that had the original performance of the song HANUKKAH IN SANTA MONICA. It was so funny and the audience reaction was so great that Garrison Keillor had the artist perform it a second time.
Back in 2021 we were in the LA area right after Thanksgiving and we thought about stopping by Santa Monica for the first night of Hanukkah. Such fun.
When we were on St. Thomas from 2015 to 2018 we got very friendly with Chabad of St. Thomas. We had wonderful Hanukkah experiences with them. They would send volunteers down to Main Street and give out Hanukkah Menorahs to Jewish cruise ship passengers with just a simple request that they light them up at dinner. The menorahs were always happily received and many a cruise ship had holiday lights at their dining room tables.
Heinlein's "Book of Job" would make an interesting movie, but would producers go for the nudity, sex, lack of violence, a Heaven that Twain would be proud of, implicit and explicit rebukes of fundamentalism? well, never mind...the Marvel 'verse has pretty well introduced moviegoers to the concept of a multiverse, though.
If I had my druthers, though, we need an Amber miniseries with all the CGI Stephen Colbert can get funding for....
Pappenheimer
And may we meet and party hearty eventually... out there.
The Ogre must finish the second Earthseed book (should be turned into a TV series) ... must read more CULTURE books ...
Well, the birth of a Palestinian religious leader who defied European colonists seems to play pretty well this tine of year
One has to consider that, in the end, he defeated the Empire from within, his followers becoming emperors and destroying the religious tolerance that helped keeping it together.
I'm not sure why, but on line, I keep running into people who throw out casual references to personal connections with famous people.
Back on the old Cerebus list, one of the regular participants had been at the gathering of the American Atheists Society (or whatever it's really called) at which Kurt Vonnegut said of Isaac Asimov, "Isaac is in heaven now," and (purportedly) brought down the house with that line.
(The same guy also had in his possession the original artwork for the never-published Swamp Thing #88. Since most of you won't know what that is, a time-traveling Swamp Thing meets Jesus, but DC Comics balked at publication)
"...must read more CULTURE books...'
A worthwhile endeavor.
Pappenheimer
Re: CULTURE books
As my dad's dad used to say, "Eh et's nay Sco'esh, et's crrrap."
Hey, if Elon Musk's DOGE committee wants to take a stab at deregulation, he could start by getting rid of the FAA regulation requiring a crying baby on every flight. I wouldn't object.
We could offer that if Musk gets us to Mars, we will place his likeness on Mt. Rushmore—even though he isn’t potus. (Not quite yet, at any rate.)
Re: orbital habitats, I made models of O'Neill cylinders when I was but a youth, but I always wondered who would be paying for the parklike living conditions depicted. I suspect orbital 'colonies', if any, will be corporate and conditions on them cramped and dangerous, with a space premium resembling that of a U-boat*. Unless a new space race occurs.
*with as much work as possible done by remotes/drones teleoperated from Earth by denizens of Mumbai. As we all know, it's easier to keep a hunk of tin operational than a canned ape.
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer - that would only be a problem if the inhabitants of the O'Neill cylinders were not also the owners!
As we all become richer such things may well become probable
I challenge that assumption. I rather believe we move towards a society as depicted in The Expanse, with a few trillionaires at the top and billions of poor, unemployed people in Basic.
And that is one of the better scenarios.
I wonder If making life in Earth hellish is actual part of the plan to get us into space.
plan to get us into space
Like the old joke about why the British Empire happened - because they were searching for some decent food.
I have a connection with Isaac Asimov. At CONSTELLATION, the 1983 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore, I saw Asimov several times and he always seemed to have a group of attractive young women around him. I was a poor law student at that time and could not afford to go to the banquet dinner. I was walking by the door to the dinner and I saw Asimov exit along with his wife. He had a few people around him. I came up to his wife Janet and said something along the lines of, "All this convention, these pretty young women have been ogling your husband. Consider yourself ogled." She smiled widely. Asimov laughed and kept repeating, "It's only fair, it's only fair."
I was a pretty good looking kid of 23 at the time. The Washington Post described me as "a handsome, well-groomed young man in a business suit...."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1983/09/25/letter-from-the-world-science-fiction-convention/81ffbb1b-f13d-4de5-babc-6dcffe4c38fc/
My other great celebrity stories involve sitting down for drinks with Gene Roddenberry and a few of his friends in a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio in November of 1979...and having coffee with Morgan Freeman at the Frenchtown Cafe on St. Thomas in 1996.
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