MarsBlog - Part 103

Curious Anniversary

NASA is today marking the 45th anniversary of its creation, while Japan is coincidentally merging its three national space agencies into one, effective today.

Ironic that our aerospace agency seems to need a splitting-up into three separate agencies, with portfolios in manned space, planetary science, and aeronautics, the Japanese are merging their separate space launch, planetary science, and aeronautics agencies into one.

A Closer Look

If you think the upcoming five-fer is a big deal, take a look at what is on the horizon for Mars exploration.

Fire in the Sky

It’s not Mars-related (well, do we really know it’s not a Martian meteorite?), but this is just plain cool.

[via NASAWatch]

Europe to Mars

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

Fixed Again

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.

ISS and Mars

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

“…Where the Martians are Martians…”

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.

Chicago (Not the Musical)

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.

Why Mars?

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.

Lack of Vision

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.

Continue reading Lack of Vision

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