Here’s a wonderful story about Alan Bean.
“Every color in Alan’s heart was there on the Moon, in its craters and rocks and hills, because a human was walking in that world — an artist — and wherever humans go there is color. All the color.”
X (formerly Twitter) 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 Humans to Mars Report 2018
“The Humans to Mars Report (H2MR) is an annual publication that presents a snapshot of current progress in mission architectures, science, domestic and international policy, human factors, and public perception regarding human missions to Mars – and highlights progress and challenges from year to year. By doing so, H2MR provides stakeholders and policy makers with an invaluable resource to assist them in making decisions that are based on current facts rather than on the dated information and speculation that sometimes tends to persist in the public arena where Mars is concerned.”
https://www.exploremars.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/H2MR_18_Web.pdf
Moms in Space
Viking imagery redux
Some really nice reprocessing of old Viking imagery.
“I am fond of the Viking missions. Their orbits took them far above Mars (as far as 56,000 kilometers from the surface), giving them the ability to take sweeping images of entire hemispheres. Modern missions mostly don’t stray so far from Mars’ surface, and can’t fully capture the same sweeping vistas captured by the Viking Orbiters. ”
The Planetary Society You need a vision
“The moon is certainly achievable, we have been there already, but from what I can see there is no vision there – you need a vision of going somewhere, doing something that is hard, going further than humans have ever been before,” she said.
the Guardian Info on NASA’s InSight Lander
“As early as May 5, 2018, NASA is set to launch Mars InSight, the very first mission to study the deep interior of Mars. We’ve been roaming the surface of Mars for a while now, but when InSight lands on Nov. 26, 2018, we’re going in.”
NASA Solar System Exploration Off the table?
Well, somebody’s going to go to Mars. Just maybe not NASA.
“In its first 16 months, the Trump administration has reset NASA’s goals toward exploring the Moon and is planning significant investments in a “Gateway” in lunar orbit to serve both as a station for humans to live in deep space and as a way station for vehicles to cycle between the Moon’s surface and orbit.
“The simple answer is that space exploration is not a priority for this administration in spite of the rhetoric,” Grunsfeld said. “Mars is off the table as far as I can tell. The Gateway is the asteroid mission without the asteroid and is primarily to give the aerospace contractors something to do for the next decade while we wait for some real leadership.””
Ars Technica Space mining
Here’s an interesting paper on the political and economic future of space mining. It begins with a survey of the current state of affairs. This alone is worth reading. There’s a lot going on! It then details a simulation exercise used to explore the ramifications of space mining for the Earth economy. Finally, it analyzes the insights gained from the simulation.
The focus is on mining of near-Earth asteroids with Earth-return of materials, but the issues discussed are certainly relevant to the development of colonies on Mars.
www.sciencedirect.com Beyond dollars and cents
“He noted that space exploration had a benefit beyond dollars and cents, and pointed to the example of his own children. Muilenburg said his daughter was thrilled to try on a Boeing Starliner spacesuit during a recent family visit to Florida, while his son was entranced by the work being done on SLS.
“The inspiration quotient is very high,” Muilenburg said.”