Futurismic

So those cancer-causing nanotubes that people are raving about (wait, are they?) might be combined with the vast supply of dust and debris on the moon to make a new kind of concrete for structures on the moon.  It seems like a workable idea, though, and the cost of structures would be very minimal.  NASA’s idea is to build telescopes, satellite arrays, and other equipment on the moon and utilize this new “concrete” for those purposes.  Considering all the material is readily available, it doesn’t really take much to conceive of a science station up there.  Or a moon colony - oh, now that’s exciting.

Related posts

• NASA tests giant robot that could pick up and move a Moon base (0)
• Boeing proposes faster, cheaper route to the moon (4)
• A braw bricht moonlit nicht is a rare thing in the universe (5)
• ZOMFG! MORE CARBON NANOTUBES! (1)
• The search for life on Europa begins here on Earth (2)

My last couple of posts have been about nanotechnology, so naturally this time around it was an item on something very large that caught my eye (Via NewScientist Space):

NASA engineers are testing out a giant, six-legged robot that could pick up and move a future Moon base thousands of kilometres across the lunar surface, allowing astronauts to explore much more than just the area around their landing site.

ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer–is there, like a whole department at NASA dedicated just to coming up with acronyms?) would be about 7.5 metres wide, with legs more than 6 metres long. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, are now testing two small-scale prototype.

Check out the video of ATHLETE lowering itself,  video of ATHLETE walking and driving, and video of two ATHLETE robots lifting a mock lunar module off its mount).

(Image: NASA/JPL)

Related posts

• Cancer-causing Concrete! Nice! (1)
• Boeing proposes faster, cheaper route to the moon (4)
• A braw bricht moonlit nicht is a rare thing in the universe (5)
• You The Man Now, Dog (0)
• Won’t somebody think of the robots? (1)

Although the search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system has focused on Mars for many years (and it still might be found there), increasing attention is now being paid to Jupiter’s moon Europa. That’s because the scientific consensus now is that Europa almost certainly boasts an ocean, hidden beneath a shell of ice.

Life on Earth originated in the ocean. Could life have similarly arisen in Europa’s ocean?

We’ll have to go there to find out. Both NASA and the European Space Agency are actively studying launching a mission to Europa within the next decade, but even before that happens, technologies that could help us explore beneath the ice shell are being tested here on Earth. (Via Universe Today.)

This week–February 11 to 15–researchers are testing the NASA-funded ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer), a robotic probe designed to swim on its own under ice, creating 3D maps of the underwater environment, collecting data on environmental conditions, and taking samples of microbial life. The testing is taking place in Lake Mendota on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; later this year, the probe will be shipped to Antarctica for tests in permanently frozen Lake Bonney.

Manwhile, a team of U.S., Russian and Asutrian scientists are already heading to Australia to look for life in another Antarctic lake, Lake Untersee. Always covered in ice, Lake Untersee has a pH level closer to that of bleach than regular lake water. It’s also the planet’s single largest natural source of methane. All of these things mean conditions there may well resemble conditions in Europa’s ocean and other locations in the outer solar system.

One question: is life found on Europa European, or Europaen? Copy editors want to know!

(Image: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.)

Related posts

• Words for Worlds: What We’re Calling Pluto Now (0)
• The hazards for life on Mars (0)
• The debate over "Active SETI" (4)
• Space video about near earth asteroid missions (0)
• Sailing, sailing, over the bounding interplanetary main (2)

New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that moons like Earth’s are rare across the universe, occurring in only five to 10 percent of planetary systems at most. (Via Science Daily.)

The observation is based on the belief that the moon was born when the infant Earth was clobbered by something the size of Mars (shades of Velikovsky, except he had collisions like that that happening in historical times). Astronomers don’t see the amount of dust around other stars they would expect to see if those types of collisions were common.

This could have an impact on the likelihood of land-based life on other planets, since life may have moved from the ocean to the land on Earth due to the tides the moon induces. And here’s another question: would we have dreamed of travelling to other worlds if we hadn’t had one hanging so conveniently close in the night sky? Without a moon, would other civilizations ever develop space travel? (Image: NASA.)

Here’s an even more alarming thought: without a moon, think how differently science fiction would have developed. It might not even have developed at all.

And worse yet, what would songwriters have done without a moon to rhyme June with?

Why, the mind boggles.

UPDATE: Here’s an article from Astrobiology Magazine examining what Earth would be like "If We Had No Moon."

Related posts

• Shooting the moon (1)
• NASA tests giant robot that could pick up and move a Moon base (0)
• Every month the Earth beats up the Moon with its magnetotail (1)
• Does the moon break wind? (2)
• Cancer-causing Concrete! Nice! (1)

In addition to being able to finding NASA TV to watch the shuttle land, you can also check out NASA’s liveblog of the shuttle landing right here.

Related posts

• The search for life on Europa begins here on Earth (2)
• Space video about near earth asteroid missions (0)
• Postpone shuttle’s retirement? (4)
• Next ISS space tourist announced (0)
• NASA tests giant robot that could pick up and move a Moon base (0)

Last week here on Futurismic there were some great comments over the future of space seen from a resource rather than an expedition point of view. I mentioned in my post my hope that asteroids may in future be a good source of precious metals such as platinum. Today I stumbled across an example of how that may be done. Aside from the cheesy music and voiceover, this video from Space.Com shows Nasa planning of how to utilise the new Orion Moon landers to travel to Asteroids passing near to Earth’s orbit. By combining this style of approach with a few unmanned surveys of the composition of the NEO (near earth object), it may be possible to start harvesting precious metals that even a few tons would greatly increase current levels.

[via chris mckitterick, image by Don Eastwood]

Related posts

• Space is the place for a resource-rich and peaceful existence (0)
• Next ISS space tourist announced (0)
• Life on other planets (2)
• Is space the third option? (7)
• First images from the Large Binocular Telescope (0)

It’s a staple of SF: something punctures the hull of a spacecraft and crew members, alerted by the hiss of escaping air, scramble to plug up the leak.

Just one problem: in real space, no one can hear the hiss of escaping air, because it’s venting out into vacuum. And real spacecraft, unlike their fictional counterparts, seldom have nice smooth unblemished hulls where holes can be easily located: instead, every square inch is jammed with equipment. Which is why a research team from Iowa has developed a square sensor just an inch across that provides a computer with enough information to locate a leak in about a minute–as opposed to weeks with NASA’s current handheld devices. (Via ScienceDaily.)

Just the thing for long trips to Mars–and space junk-filled near-Earth orbits, too. (Photo from NASA via Science Daily.)

Related posts

• Space travel without propellant (2)
• When cybermoths attack! (0)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)
• Welcome to the United Kingdom of Ubiquitous Surveillance (2)
• Wearable monitors - cyberpunk style for the subway (3)

Space Adventures announces that Richard Garriott will be the next private citizen to travel to space as a tourist.

Garriott’s father was a NASA astronaut, so that makes it a unique flight. Son pays to fly up, dad was part of a giant government project to fly up.

The flight is October 2008, and Garriott already has a website set up where he’ll be chronicling the whole thing.

Related posts

• Could Bigelow’s inflatables replace the International Space Station? (1)
• Space video about near earth asteroid missions (0)
• Jules Verne - the first cargo ship in space (0)
• A dark day for the space industry (3)
• Visible Magnetic Fields (1)

Photo Credit: NASA/John Frassanito and Associates

Boeing is proposing a radical redesign for NASA’s planned return to the moon. Their proposal is both faster and cheaper than the current plan of record:

NASA’s current mission plan calls for the Ares V to send the new lunar lander and its payload into Earth orbit. Once there, Ares V would not only have to dock with the Orion crew vehicle (launched separately on the Ares I rocket) but also restart and provide the initial burn to send the assembled system into a trajectory toward the moon.

Boeing’s alternative would combine the Orion rendezvous with a pitstop for gas, allowing the Ares V to lift off from Earth with a much larger payload—and an empty lander. Boeing says this would allow NASA to deliver about three times as much mass to the lunar surface, and over fifteen times as much payload. What’s more, Ares V could then send the lander-Orion package all the way to lunar orbit with full tanks, rather than NASA’s current plan to use extra propellant in slowing down before soft landing.

I think that NASA as it exists today is an anachronism. When it comes to doing things fast and cheap, entrepreneurs will always beat out government bureaucracies.

Related posts

• NASA tests giant robot that could pick up and move a Moon base (0)
• Cancer-causing Concrete! Nice! (1)
• A braw bricht moonlit nicht is a rare thing in the universe (5)
• The search for life on Europa begins here on Earth (2)
• Space video about near earth asteroid missions (0)

NASA hasn’t had a good year for PR so far. Following on from the embarrassing media circus over the exploits of an ex-astronaut earlier this year, now they’re having to go public with the news that not only were some astronauts drunk in charge of their launch vehicles, but that they also discovered an act of sabotage on a computer module destined for the ISS.

Even the private sector hasn’t escaped the black cloud; an explosion at the test facility of Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, the company that is to supply Virgin Galactic with its sub-orbital vehicles, has killed three and injured as many again.

Stories like the above make me think that, as much as good as they look on paper, we probably shouldn’t be building nuclear powered rockets just yet - the cost of mistakes and mismanagement could be far higher.

Related posts

• Space video about near earth asteroid missions (0)
• Next ISS space tourist announced (0)
• Could Bigelow’s inflatables replace the International Space Station? (1)
• Visible Magnetic Fields (1)
• Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo images released (0)

Bigelow Aerospace is certainly on a roll with their inflatable orbital module projects, demonstrating that you don’t need a vast Federal budget to get functional capsules into space. Colony Worlds suggests that such low-tech success stories will erode political support for the ISS, which will become increasingly hard to maintain once the Space Shuttle is retired. Will this be the tipping point for the commercial space industry?

Related posts

• Next ISS space tourist announced (0)
• Space video about near earth asteroid missions (0)
• Jules Verne - the first cargo ship in space (0)
• A dark day for the space industry (3)
• Visible Magnetic Fields (1)