“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.
Thank You, Dr. Hawking
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgTIh8Mg8R2/
We Really Should
“If you have it in your power to do something great and important and wonderful then you should.” (at 3:08)
Insurance
“We’re talking about an insurance policy—a backup plan in case something does happen to the Earth. I once talked to Carl Sagan about this, who said, “We live in the middle of a shooting gallery with thousands of asteroids in our path that we haven’t even discovered yet. So, let’s be at least a two-planet species, as a backup plan.””