“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 One Year
I find this video mesmerizing. You are down there somewhere, going about one year of your life. What were you doing from July 2015 to July 2016? The question I keep coming back to is: was it important?
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 Space war
I don’t intend Generation Mars to be a dystopian saga. That doesn’t suit the target age range and, even if it did, there are too many of those around already. So I don’t see armed interplanetary conflict as part of the series. However, it is interesting to think about the physics of such conflict in space and just how wrong most sci-fi movies get it. And there is a lot to be learned from such thought experiments. The discussion of heat transfer in this video is a good example.
https://www.facebook.com/Nerdist/videos/1909008429409923/?hc_ref=ARSUXPh4WM3PMyLE-5WdBBQkAdlioRmU8UAzKi1S5gfVaPr5RyKQEtl-I3N1o2PAXjo
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.”
There is no Planet B. Yet…
https://www.facebook.com/NowScienceNews/photos/a.255576118192463.1073741828.250707748679300/431936273889779/?type=3&theater
Making Life Multi-planetary
A new paper from Elon Musk (written before the Falcon Heavy launch, but published this month) with lots of detail on the BFR.
“Our updated design leverages a smaller vehicle, still pretty big but a single vehicle that can do everything that’s needed for greater Earth orbit activity. Essentially we want to make our current vehicles redundant. We want to have one system—one booster and one ship—that replaces Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon. If we can do that, then all the resources that are used for Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon can be applied to this system.”
Altruism
Life on Mars will be a positive sum game.