“Should I honor my half-century on Earth by buying a convertible or by building my own satellite to launch into space?”
We have an obligation
“Colonizing other planets will be a multicentury effort. Nobody alive today will see the end of this project. But, in a way, that’s really cool. It forces us to be farsighted, to take the long view.”
A short article that includes a longer podcast. Both are worth the time.
The Atlantic Dust storm
The dust storm on Mars is a global weather event.
“The last dust storm on Mars to go global occurred in 2007, five years before the Curiosity rover landed at its Gale Crater site, according to officials with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.”
Family vacation
Posts have been a little thin here lately, I know. I’ve been away for a while on family vacation. We loaded up the car and set off on a camping roadtrip to explore a bunch of National Parks. It was the longest trip we’ve taken in terms of both miles driven and nights spent in sleeping bags. On the whole, it was a great trip full of memorable moments and family bonding.
Since our return, I’ve been thinking about the fact that families on Mars will never experience this. Not only will there not be family roadtrips and camping. There won’t be traveling vacations at all. Where would they go?
This has left me feeling a little blue. It seems a hard life for a family. Things like this often bother me, as I develop this series. The lives of these kids and their family will be so different than those of mine, it can be a little overwhelming to contemplate.
Of course the whole series pivots on identifying and exploring these differences. And my feeling of pity at what I imagine to be something they’d miss is culture-centric. We all feel that our experience is the norm and that of others is aberrant. Their lives will be full of memorable moments and family bonding, no car or sleeping bags required.
Still, it could be interesting to come up with a way they take a roadtrip together. Have to think about that a bit…
In the meantime, I’ll work on making things more interesting around here.
Giggling like school children
“We were under approximately 4 Gs when the engine cutoff, which gave us a good jolt forward during the deceleration and then a good jolt back into the seat after the third stage ignited. I looked at Anton and we both began to giggle like school children.”
nasa.tumblr.com Why is Mars small?
Here’s an article on the formation of the Solar System and why Mars is smaller than expected.
It’s interesting that Mars is small. It’s interesting to think about the formation of the Solar System. But what I find particularly compelling is the description of three distinct hypotheses, each just as likely to be correct as the others.
The Planetary Society Colors
X (formerly Twitter) The New Space Race
Everybody is getting involved!
Actually, this is part of an annual rocket festival in Thailand and Laos called Bun Bang Fai.
https://www.facebook.com/SciTechUniversedotcom/videos/1930087523924044/UzpfSTEzMjc0NTA3MDgzOTI1MToyMTMxNzU4MDk0NjI4NDM/
Alan Bean has died
“the more I thought about it the more I realized there were young men and women at NASA in the astronaut office that could fly the shuttle as good as I could or better, but I was the only one interested in trying to do this other job.”
That other job was to paint.
NPR.org The Expanse is saved!
