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Hey, who am I to argue with a genius? Hawking: Humans must colonize other planets

“Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out,” said Professor Hawking, who was crippled by a muscle disease at the age of 21 and who speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer.

“But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe,” said Hawking, who was due to receive the world’s oldest award for scientific achievement, the Copley medal, from Britain’s Royal Society on Thursday.

The Copley medal in question, it turns out, flew aboard STA-121.

I don’t see it mentioned in this article, but the radio news accounts said that Hawking’s comments focused on Earth-like planets as additional homes for humanity. I will take issue with that — it’s so limiting to require Earth-like planets, when there’s no guarantee that we’ll ever find any. And it’s exceedingly unlikely that we’ll find any in move-in condition…Earth-like conditions with existing, earthlife-compatible indigenous life (be it merely bacterial, or some combination of plants, animals, or other).

If you’re going to have to terraform even barren worlds with Earth-like parameters, how is that so much different from developing Mars-like planets as well? Why be so picky?

In fact, there just happens to be a Mars-like planet nearby, which wouldn’t require anti-matter rockets or tens of thousands of years to reach…

And for that matter, there are plenty of asteroids and moons in the universe, not to mention the infinite possible variations on O’Neillian space settlements. Settling Earth-like planets isn’t the only way to preserve the species.

Posted on November 30th, 2006 under Space Policy. Comments: 1

After several entries crabbing about lousy science fiction, it’s nice to be able to write about something good: a novelization of Michael Flynn’s short story Eifelheim.

Eifelheim is one of my all-time favorite short stories. I can hardly wait to see what he’s done with it in novel form. (Unfortunately, I do have to wait, since I just started re-reading The Federalist Papers.)

Posted on November 19th, 2006 under Entertainment. Comments Off

FYI: The erratic posting will likely continue until after Thanksgiving due to work and holiday travel. Our first post-ATP update to the Orion configuration is due on 11/22, which means a whole lot of overtime between now and then.

Posted on November 12th, 2006 under Meta. Comments Off

…that the astronautical abomination known as the Stick is facing a none-too-soon abortion. It’s either that, or NASA prioritizes its added requirements for Orion.

On the other hand, another group at LM appears to be thinking ahead to the possibility that the Stick might go bye-bye. Hmm…

Maybe if we get lucky, the Stick will be dumped and the GAO’s recommended review of NASA’s MCAD selection will result in a switch from Pro/E to CATIA V…and we’ll get rid of both of the two worst elements of Constellation.

ADDENDUM: John Goff posts a bit more, based on info in the L2 forums at NASASpaceFlight.com (which I really need to buy a subscription to, myself). Given other changes NASA wants in the CM, John’s discussion makes me wonder if chucking the Stick in favor of a more capable vehicle might open the door to a return to the 5.5m capsule diameter.

Posted on November 12th, 2006 under Space Technology. Comments: 2

Since Tim has asked a couple of times now, here’s a link to the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial.

Looks interesting. The prominent participation of Spider and Jeanne Robinson is a little off-putting, though — hasn’t Spider done enough damage to Heinlein?

Posted on November 12th, 2006 under Science Fiction. Comments Off

Words fail me.

Posted on November 12th, 2006 under Science Fiction. Comments: 4

Mars Global Surveyor’s mission will be ten years old on Tuesday.

UPDATE: Uh-oh…looks like MGS’ ten-year warranty must have expired, right on schedule:

NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor has been out of contact with Earth for nearly a week and engineers tried Friday to re-establish communication with the craft, which may be showing its age after 10 years in space.

The space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena lost contact with the probe for two days last week, then received a weak carrier signal with no data on Sunday. Since then, Surveyor has not confirmed receiving a command to point one of its transmitters to Earth, project manager Tom Thorpe said.

Posted on November 6th, 2006 under Space Science. Comments: 2

…just not quite the tapes NASA was looking for: Lost Moon landing tapes discovered

After addressing Earth, the American astronaut set up a package of scientific instruments, including a dust detector designed by an Australian physicist. The data collected by the detector was sent back to ground stations on Earth and recorded on magnetic tapes – copies of which are as rare as the ‘misplaced’ original video footage of the 1969 touchdown.

Last week, up to 100 tapes, clearly marked “NASA Manned Space Center”, turned up after a search in a dusty basement of a physics lecture hall at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. One of the old tapes has been sent to the American space agency to see whether it can be deciphered and ‘stripped’ of any important data which may have survived the ravages of time.

The data are a daily record of the environmental conditions and changes taking place at the lunar site after the Eagle landed safely in the Sea of Tranquility. The most important data were collected after the lunar module blasted off the surface later that day, leaving the still-running instrumentation behind.

The information showed that scientific instruments could be affected by setting them up around landing or take-off sites. They also proved that NASA did go to the Moon.

Posted on November 4th, 2006 under Space Science. Comments Off

As long as I’m dumping on the Mars Society, I might as well bring up this little gem, seeing as how it contrasts nicely with how Bob Zubrin’s obnoxious and nasty comments are handled.

Three or four years back, when I was running this blog on the Louisiana Mars Society website, some space nutter got my email address from the site and was pestering me about some crazy thing or other. I finally got fed up with the guy, and told him firmly but (I thought) politely that I was not interested in the foolish garbage he was talking about and didn’t want to hear from him about it again.

Shortly thereafter, Maggie Zubrin forwarded to me a copy of the exchange. Like a schoolmarm, she took me to task for being rude to the guy, which she was not about to tolerate considering I was speaking essentially on behalf of one of the chapters. Now, as much as I resented her tone and thought her reaction far exceeded the seriousness of the matter, I couldn’t argue with her perception that it was her place to criticize me for doing something she felt might reflect negatively on the larger organization.

One wonders where that desire for circumspection at the Mars Society is when it comes to Bob Zubrin’s screeds.

Posted on November 3rd, 2006 under Mars Society. Comments Off