MarsBlog.net

It looks like the Europeans are catching the Mars exploration bug. They’re even talking about manned missions by 2030.

Posted on September 30th, 2003 under Space Science. Comments Off

I’ve gone back and restored the individual archive links, and reformatted the monthly archives to be chronological lists of links to each month’s entries. Now all the MT permalinks are back in operation, and I haven’t overloaded my disk space (which, I confess, I need to bump up some more so as to avoid problems like this in the future).

Update: Just changed plans from 25mb to 200mb. I think that ought to tide me over for a while, disk-space-wise.

Posted on September 30th, 2003 under Meta. Comments Off

Hmm…didn’t someone just suggest using ISS as a testbed for manned trips to Mars?

Posted on September 29th, 2003 under Space Technology. Comments Off

A New Zealand wool and textiles company is being assessed by NASA as a possible supplier of materials for Mars surface suits.

Hm. Imagine the smell of woolen surface suit components drying on the register next to the airlock — in an already zoo-scented hab. On the bright side, having the astronauts knit their suits on the trip out would help alleviate their boredom in a productive manner.

Posted on September 29th, 2003 under Space Technology. Comments Off

Jost at Martian Soil says that the next Mars Society conference will be held in Chicago. This was mentioned as a possibility during the Eugene conference, but I had not yet seen an announcement that the choice had been made.

Posted on September 28th, 2003 under Mars Society. Comments: 1

The Mars Society has announced an essay contest, titled “Why Mars?”.

One of the hardest parts of convincing the “person on the street” and therefore the voters, and thence the politicians, is explaining why sending humans to Mars is so critical to our vision of a positive future. The reasons we adopt are as varied as our political, religious and philosophical viewpoints and are usually as well thought out as they are highly personal. It is time to emphasize the importance of why, not just how or when or how much money.

The contest is open to members and non-members of all ages, and can be in standard essay form or “alternative media”. Winners will receive a variety of prizes, from books to conference admission to free MS memberships.

Posted on September 28th, 2003 under Mars Society. Comments: 1

Don Peterson, Former Astronaut, has an editorial at SpaceRef, in which he criticizes the Orbital Space Plane project. Granted, there are many valid grounds for such criticism, but Mr. Peterson succeeds in avoiding the bulk of them, focusing instead on the fact that OSP is not (thank heavens) going to be another Shuttle.

(more…)

Posted on September 27th, 2003 under Space Policy. Comments Off

NPR’s Carl Castle this morning reported on China’s announcement that it plans to send a man into space by the end of the year. (Sorry, no links — it’s old news anyway.)

At the end of the piece, he said something to the effect of “The astronauts will be referred to using the Mandarin word for ‘space’, as ‘taikonauts’.”

Huh?

I thought that was a Western/Anglophone neologism, and that the Chinese actually refer to their astronauts as “yuhangyuan”?

Posted on September 23rd, 2003 under Chinese Space. Comments Off

Galileo Ends 14-Year Mission in Jupiter.

(Interesting choice of prepositions there…)

Update: Well, these moonbats turn out to have been wrong. [Cue mad-scientist Theremin crescendo] SO FAR…..

Posted on September 21st, 2003 under Space Technology. Comments: 3