Tag Archives: space

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Charlie Stross’ 21st Century crystal ball

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Charles StrossIf you’ve not caught it already, you should get over to Charlie Stross’s blog and check out his 21st Century FAQ; it’s your source of rant fodder for the coming week.

For example, in answer to the question “[w]hich of (Socialism | Capitalism | Libertarianism | Fascism | Democracy) is going to save us?”:

We’re still waiting for the definitive ideological polarity of the internet era to emerge, although Bruce Schneier has opined that the key political hot potato of the 21st century will be the question, “how do we maintain the concept of privacy in an age of ubiquitous communications and surveillance”, and some believe that privacy is already dead. Given the way Moore’s Law is taking us towards an essentially unlimited ability to record everything, I’m not able to argue with the inevitability of surveillance: what I’d dispute is the morality of it.

Responses and counter-arguments are cropping up already, naturally enough; for example, here’s Brian Wang refuting Stross’s claim that space colonisation and the Singularity are non-starters:

We know we can send people into interplanetary space for several days (Apollo). We could easily make the trip to Mars in days [using the Orion nuclear rocket configuration] and then onto to Jupiter in days. We could bring supplies, radiation protection in cargo that is equivalent to several great pyramids or how many loaded aircraft carriers equivalents.

Plenty of material for discussion for the more geeky water-cooler meet-ups. [image by Patrick Nielsen-Hayden]

So, do we reckon Charlie Stross is a fox or a hedgehog?

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Obama budgets for moonshot

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Space Shuttle Endeavour launchingWell, at least one sector of the web is in a cheery mood at the moment – the space buffs are pretty stoked that President Obama’s budget includes a nice boost for NASA:

The budget calls on NASA to complete International Space Station construction, as well as continue its Earth science missions and aviation research. Yet it also remains fixed to former President George W. Bush’s plan to retire the space shuttle fleet by 2010 and replace them with the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would fly astronauts to the space station and return them to the moon by 2020.

Good news for extropians and forward-thinkers, then – though it’s almost surprising to see a spending increase on something that, by definition, doesn’t garner immediate tangible results at home. Perhaps Obama”s  gang are thinking that this is the ideal time to sneak by a budget increase that might otherwise cause much angst and wailing; US$19billion may sound like a lot, but it’s a tiny fragment of that bailout package… [image by jurvetson]

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Price wars… in spaaaaaace

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A man floating in zero-gravity yesterday (no, not really)Proof, if such were needed, that one should always shop around to ensure you’re getting the best value deal: RocketShip Tours are entering the space tourism market with a bargain price tag.

Upstarts RocketShip Tours and XCOR Aerospace say that the price of their flights, slated to begin as soon as 2010, will be $95,000, about half that of the ones being offered by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which also hopes to launch as early as 2010.

“Our goal is to make space travel accessible and affordable to those who aspire to experience the ultimate adventure,’’ said Jules Klar, CEO and chairman of RocketShip in a statement.

I hadn’t expected to hear much out of the space tourism outfits in the current economic climate, but beating one’s own drum as the cheaper option is probably the only announcement that won’t gather a lynch mob outside your HQ. The Boston Globe article is painting RocketShip’s announcement as the start of a ‘price war’, but given that neither outfit has actually completed one of their proposed tourism flights yet I suspect it’s more of a PR war than anything else.

Assuming that flights to and from orbit become commonplace (come on, allow me some optimism here, it’s been a long week), can we assume that there’ll be a similar spread of service suppliers as there currently is in the air travel market? Would you really want to take a jaunt to LEO with the aerospace equivalent of Aeroflot?

All of a sudden, I have a vision of space hobos jagging free rides on orbital freighters to see the sights and maybe find a few month’s work… and I find myself rather liking the idea of being the Jack Kerouac of the space generation. Time to ease up on the Dexedrine, maybe. [image by markjsebastien]

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Solar power from space: here in ten years?

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One of the most visually striking science fictional solutions to our hunger for energy has to be SBSP – solar power beamed from space. Nothing says ‘awesome’ quite so much as a lance of coherent energy zapping through the atmosphere and into a collection station before powering your toaster or charging your pod-car…. but how soon might it turn up?

According to the not-so-imaginatively named start-up company called Space Energy, Inc, it could be soon. Space Energy says “it plans to develop SBSP satellites to generate and transmit electricity to receivers on the Earth’s surface […] The hitch: this concept is based on as yet unproven technology.”

For ‘unproven’ there, you might want to swap in ‘sketchy’:

… the actual test results conducted for a Discovery channel documentary proved a total failure. The former NASA executive and physicist who organized the experiment, a John Mankins, admitted in a press conference that the $1 Million budget spent of the experiment resulted in less than 1/1000th of 1% of the power transmitted being received on the other island.

Ouch. I wonder if SE, Inc are sincere but a little deluded, or whether they’re another snake-oil energy company? There’s been a few of those cropping up recently, and I can’t help but suspect there’ll be more to come… especially when the price of oil starts rising again.

Still, maybe two decades will do it for space-based solar – apparently the Japanese are on the case:

Researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have begun to develop the hardware for a SBSP satellite they hope to launch by 2030. They will begin testing this month of a microwave power transmission system designed to beam the power from the satellites to Earth.

All very well, but will no one think of the birds?

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Solar eclipse ‘diamond ring’ as seen from the moon

A little snippet of space-pr0n for ya; last week, the Japanese SELENE/Kaguya lunar orbiter probe shot some video footage of the Earth passing between the Moon and the Sun.

The ‘diamond ring’ effect is only ever seen on Earth on the rare occasion that we witness a total solar eclipse; this is probably the easiest way to see something otherwise incredibly rare (and mind-expandingly awesome, as far as I’m concerned). [via PinkTentacle]