Mars colony IS happening! NASA testing menu on Mars astronauts in Hawaii...

There is a technological and cultural shift underway, and it is definitely extraterrestrial in nature. While most of us go about our Earth-bound lives, dozens of companies and countries are frantically scrambling to put together various Mars colony missions.

We have talked about many of those efforts in bits and pieces, and in a moment we will check out a Hawaiian study of six men and women testing isolation and food for a space trek. Before we go there, however, it might be worth asking ourselves why all of this is happening now.

In a word: Space-X. In 2002, Elon Musk started his Space Exploration company with the sole intention of rekindling mankind's passion for moving beyond our single-world existence.

He states that there are some very good reasons for roving further out into the solar system and eventually beyond, but first and foremost among them is that our species is a sitting duck for any planet-wide catastrophe, manmade or otherwise. Sure, pragmatists say life has survived on this planet for billions of years and will continue to survive, no matter what.

They would be right.

Unfortunately for the Cro-Magnons, dinosaurs, and saber tooth tigers that is little consolation. And I suspect our ghosts would also fail to appreciate pragmatic logic if and when cockroaches become the sole species on Big Ole Blue.

Aside from a species insurance policy, Elon Musk believes a multi-planetary future gives us something less tangible but even more important: hope. A future of space exploration is exciting and dream-worthy, whereas a dystopian existence on a single crowded planet might be categorized as hopeless.

So, what did Space-X hope to accomplish? Its goal was simple: send a greenhouse to Mars with the hope that it would catch the imaginations of world leaders and spur new interest in space. Somewhere along the way, however, Elon's company was forced to reduce the cost of building rockets, and those savings immediately attracted space payload interest.

In short, Space-X discovered that it could generate enough income to go further than launching one Mars greenhouse. It is now on a mission to become a transportation line to and from Mars and beyond. It hopes to become to modern society what the railroads were to the U.S. in the 1800's.

And, just like the railroad boom, space companies are flourishing and rushing to get their piece of the Space-X dream. Elon Musk is smiling because hope is alive and well.

Though the U.S. government has been nibbling ever-so-slowly at the Mars colonies cookie, it recognizes that mankind is now committed to making that leap. And so, as the grandfather with the most experience in maintaining lives in extra-terrestrial environments, NASA is busy solving the small but important problems, one of which is food.

The space agency has been developing special hybrids of vegetables that could survive and maybe even thrive in the thin Martian atmosphere. It has also been perfecting greenhouses for use on the red planet. Finally, it is now testing recipes and meal interactions among pseudo-astronauts who have been quarantined for four months in a special facility on a lava landscape in Hawaii.

It will be several months before the results of NASA's space food experiment are fully examined, but you can learn more right here: http://www.space.com/22360-mars-food-mock-space-mission-hawaii.html

NASA plans to drag a second Moon from space...

Okay, to be more correct, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) on April 5th said that the president's 2014 federal budget request will likely include one hundred million dollars as a down payment for a special NASA project. Specifically, the space agency will be tasked with capturing and dragging a 500-ton asteroid and parking it in a stable orbit around the Moon, effectively giving our Moon it's own mini-moon. There it will become a mining resource and a scientific study location. It might also serve as a base for other moon and mars colony ventures. Robotic spacecraft are expected to do all the heavy lifting, and then sometime in 2021 Astronauts would walk on the asteroid's surface. The total project cost is expected to run about 2.5 billion dollars.

Why would we do this when we have so many pressing needs right here on Earth?

Probably the strongest argument would be that on February 15th, 2013, at about 9:20 am local time, a 10-ton meteor about 49 feet wide streaked into our atmosphere at 33,000 miles per hour and exploded 18-32 miles in the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains. The blast shattered windows for miles and injured upwards of 1,100 people. On the same day, a massive 150-foot asteroid, weighing 143,000 tons, just missed Earth by a little over 17,000 miles. That means it came closer than many of our current orbiting satellites.

We are literally sitting ducks in a galactic shooting gallery. In 1908, an asteroid exploded a short distance above the ground over Tunguska, Siberia. The blast was more than 1,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima atom bomb. 830 square miles of dense forest was flattened as if stomped on by a giant foot. Since the comet or asteroid (there is some debate about the specifics) that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, our Earth has seen similar, smaller-scale impacts hundreds, maybe even thousands of times. If we don't learn how to stop, or at the very least deflect, an incoming asteroid, our species is doomed to relive the dinosaurs' rather unpleasant demise.

There are other less calamitous but equally viable reasons for undertaking this mission, not the least of which is that every time humankind makes a major technological push, there are thousands of smaller but valuable discoveries along the way. Did you know that NASA has already given us memory foam (originally named temper foam), freeze-dried food, firefighting equipment, emergency "space blankets", Dustbusters, cochlear implants, and now Speedo's LZR Racer swimsuits? In all, the space program is credited with more than 1600 technological advances that are used everyday in computers, medicine and advanced engineering around the world.

However, maybe the most convincing argument, aside from protecting our planet, is that we need an infrastructure for the human race to move out into the solar system and beyond. There are a dozen companies currently amassing funding and technologies to make commercial space ventures possible, but ultimately it is going to require many missions and as well as multiple fueling, mining, and station facilities to allow humans to become truly multi-planetary and thereby safe from a possible, and some say inevitable, Earth extinction event.

In short, NASA's asteroid retrieval project will be another rung in that important ladder to our future.

What do you think?

 

Space agency readies robots to build moon base....

It seems that every week brings news of efforts to colonize or commercialize space, and this week is no exception. Today we're going to talk about unmanned robots being developed for the sole purpose of building shelters on the moon. It's important to note, these robots are NOT a whim or pie-in-space fanciful dream. They have already been commissioned and tested by the European Space Agency (ESA).

(Image: compliment of ESA)

So when would such a mission take place? Though no dates or time horizons have been announced, it seems we are talking about years not decades. If this concept moves forward, the moon base construction could conceivably be mankind's first permanent foothold on another world, a step that is being cheered by space enthusiasts around the globe.

In a moment, we'll talk about the specifics of not one but two types of automated moon-building robots that would take as little as a week to build a full-sized human shelter out of moon dust, but in the meantime let's talk about how this effort could fit into a much larger, much grander plan.

Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and Solar City) has set his sights on colonizing Mars with 80,000 people starting in 2023. The reason he bypassed the Moon is because it lacks enough frozen water and proper sunlight for a self-contained colony to survive easily. On the other hand, Mars has both in addition to a high nitrogen atmosphere that could support plants in a basic greenhouse right now. NASA is actually working on creating tough hybrid tomatoes and other plants that could withstand the high levels of Mars radiation and drastic temperature swings. You can see more about NASA's efforts here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/mars_plants.html

(Image: compliment of NASA)

The reason I wanted to segue to SpaceX's hop-skip over a Moon colony is that no one organization has to do it all. As a matter-of-fact, the only way space will be conquered is if we have dozens, maybe even hundreds of programs, missions, and commercial endeavors working in concert to create a sustainable human infrastructure in space. There are now at least two companies poised to mine asteroids in space, with one main goal being to process ice into hydrogen fuel, which can then be marketed to other space missions. Effectively, gas stations in space. Two companies have serious plans to colonize Mars. Another is poised to send tourists whirling around the red planet before returning them to Earth. Russia, Japan, China, and the European Space Agency have all indicated a desire to create colonies on the moon. Bigelow Space and a smattering of less serious companies have talked about orbiting hotels, and we of course know that the International Space Station is already in orbit with lots of plans for future missions. These are all potentially symbiotic steps towards our future among the stars.

3-D printers are considered one of the most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st Century. These wonders use detailed 3-D computer scans to recreate anything from a machine gear to art sculptures. A few weeks ago, an 83-year-old woman received a complete 3-D printed titanium lower jaw bone. She was chewing food less than 24 hours later. You can see more about her operation here: http://www.gizmag.com/first-3d-printed-lower-jaw-implant/21383/

(Image: compliment of ESA)

Effectively, these printers take a 3-d computer likeness and stack layers upon layers of any given material to perfectly duplicate that object in all three dimensions. In January of this year, the European Space Agency announced that they had commissioned international engineering firm Foster + Partners to develop a robotic, unmanned 3-D printer that could create moon shelters. The chosen printer is called a D-Shape and, by combining simulated lunar soil and magnesium oxide then binding it with structural salt, it has successfully created a material similar to stone or concrete, which can then be used to construct honeycomb like walls that would shield a moon base from meteorites and radiation. At three meters per hour, this wonder could complete a structure within a week. Several of them working together could build an entire lunar city in just a few months.

(Image: compliment of ESA)

However, there is one downfall to the D-Shape process. We would still need to deliver not just the printers but large quantities of magnesium oxide and salt to the moon. It can, of course, be done at a massive expense but what if there was a better way?

(Image: compliment of International Space University)

Space architects from the International Space University in France believe they have an alternate solution. They call it Project SinterHab. This is a concept that they have been working on since 2009 and, like the ESA project, it has already undergone extensive testing and seems quite possible. Effectively, the SinterHab project would still use a 3-D printing head, which they propose mounting on a NASA rover. But instead of using binding products shipped from earth, they would use solar energy to microwave the dust, effectively creating a form of ceramic. The obvious advantage is that once the robots are sitting on Lunar soil, work can potentially continue endlessly.

Lunar skyscrapers and traffic jams, anyone?

Of course, no matter how we mold these lunar shells, we will still need to import all manner of equipment to make the empty domes livable, but thanks to this 3-D futuristic printer technology we may soon have permanent boots on another world.

Would you move to the moon?

 

 

Proof: Life on Mars was possible...

Today, NASA announced that the latest and greatest rover, Curiosity, has found evidence that three billion years ago Mars could have supported life.

John Grotzinger, the mission chief scientist, said, "The key thing here is an environment that a microbe could have lived in, maybe even prospered."

The Curiosity's drill bored down into the bedrock of what is believed to be a three billion-year-old lake bed, where it discovered fresh-water clay, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. These are the ingredients for a pretty comfy life...if you happen to be an Earth-like microbe.

Grotzinger went on to say, "We found a habitable environment that's largely benign. You could have drank the water that flowed."

Apparently, the next mission will be more advanced and capable of searching for evidence that microbes might have been right there in that tasty drinking water. I hope Elon Musk and his friends at Space-X remember to bring cups when their 80,000 person Mars colony is established :-)


I found more details about this exciting NASA discovery in USA Today's article here:   http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/12/life-on-mars/1982339/




Casper is stuck in space with a lunatic. What now?



Would you and your spouse take this risk to travel to Mars in 2018?

On January 5th of 2018, Billionaire Dennis Tito (the first tourist to space) intends to launch a married couple to Mars. This space trip will take 501 days and involves almost too many risks to list. First and foremost, any ship that leaves the electromagnetic field surrounding the earth will be exposed to horrendous levels of radiation caused by solar flares and other solar activity. This couple will also be flying in a repurposed rocket salvaged from one space program or another around the world. Off the shelf, relatively inexpensive and "simple" electrical parts will comprise the ship's living and navigation systems.  In short, this trip will lack almost all of the typical NASA state-of-the-art equipment and multi-check pretests. Additionally, according to many people, the entire project is being rushed and under-funded and fails to meet many measures of safe and typical space mission protocols...sort of like erecting a sail on a tiny boat and taking an ocean journey.

Would it surprise you to know that Dennis Tito's company has received a lot of interest and already has applications for the trip? To tell you the truth, it doesn't surprise me. The chosen couple, succeed or fail, will become instantly famous and members of a rareified historic group of first-doers. Add to that our relatively short lifespans and the fact that space exploration is at its absolute commercial infancy...and it's easy to see that some people might perceive this as their one and only chance.

So, again I ask you, would you and your spouse take this risk to travel to Mars in 2018?

The Guardian has a great article on this very topic:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/mar/01/mars-mission-risk-human-life-nasa