Tag Archives: space

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Space is the place, redux

Seeing as how SpaceX managed to pull off the first commercial rocket launch to reach orbit over the weekend, I figure we’re allowed to get a bit excited about space again… it’s a welcome distraction from the World Cup, if nothing else. It might have been even more of a distraction to our antipodean friends, some of whom spotted weird lights in the sky that may (or may not) have been parts of the Falcon 9 falling back to Earth [via SlashDot].

But who can we trust to tell us the truth of it, hmmm? After all, the Chinese have a history of telling porkies about their space program, and hell knows the Cold War space race was all about giving the people the story you wanted them to believe… it might be fun to work as a spin doctor for a multinational space company.

Speaking of the Cold War, did you know that Venera, the Russian mission to Venus, was the first to send back photographic images from another planet? If any nation-state or corporation is taking a poll on where we should send space probes next, my vote goes for Titan – it’d be fun to find out if those atmospheric anomalies are actually the signal of methane-based microbial life that they appear to be…

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Mega-engineering: awesome future concepts from Shimizu Corporation

Get yourself over to Pink Tentacle right away; they’re hosting a bunch of mega-engineering promo images and design concepts from Japan’s Shimizu Corporation, who plainly aren’t afraid to think in directions with strong science fictional undertones. Directions such as floating lily-pad cities, million-citizen pyramidal cities, space hotels… and turning the moon into a gargantuan solar power station.

The moon reconsidered as solar power station - Shimizu Corporation

This one’s the winner for me, because any image of a planetary satellite re-engineered into a solar power plant that has the words “MASTER PLAN” masked onto it in large letters is, by any sane and reasonable metric, better than pretty much any other image. Of anything.

Bonus! Compare and contrast with these images of Russian space-race installations and rolling stock decaying the middle of nowhere [via Chairman Bruce]. Maybe one day in the deeper future, people will tut and shake their heads at images of Shimizu’s lunar power station, pocked with impact damage and slowly drowning in lunar dust…

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Zombiesat!

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The undead really are everywhere at the moment – even up in orbit. Zombiesat is the delightful (and, one assumes, largely unofficial) term for the state of defunct communications satellite Galaxy 15, which has recently stopped responding to control commands, and is now shambling toward the orbits of other (still-functional, and presumably expensive) comsats…

… though probably not in search of brains. Even so, if you can’t get a sort of flippant but fun Charlie-Stross-meets-Ben-Bova story out of this one, you’re probably not trying.

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Orbital Legislation 101

Via BoingBoing, The Guardian highlights a new module available to law students at Sunderland University on “law and the legal system beyond Earth’s atmosphere”:

Topics already arising in the field include gaps in health and safety for potential space tourists, and damage to satellites from other objects orbiting the Earth. Looking further ahead, some lawyers have raised questions about land titles on the moon or other planets.

Chris Newman, one of the lecturers who will be teaching the module, said: “It is a growing area which has relevance across commercial, company, property, environmental, intellectual property and IT practice sectors. We think that our qualification will offer valuable knowledge in a fascinating area.”

[…]

The syllabus is likely to draw on earlier attempts to extend legislation into uncharted areas, such as the arguments between nations over huge sections of Antarctica. There are no plans as yet to test students on how they would make a case for Earth law against that of other civilisations, should any be discovered.

It’s easy to scoff and file this among the mass of pointless degree topics available to UK undergraduates, but with commercial space operations coming up close behind the nation-state space programs, it’s not going to be all “territory held in mutual trust for the good of all mankind” up there for long. Mix this module with a few more covring squatter’s rights, the successful defense of minerals claim-jumping and some basic tort law, and your new-frontier legal practice is ready for business…