MarsBlog - Part 119

MER Launches Delayed

Launching Is Delayed for Repairs to 2 Robots

The launches have been delayed “about a week” to allow repairs to faulty circuit boards, to correct flaws which could have (deja vu) caused the landers to crash on descent.

Traffic Jam

Mars spacecraft heading for traffic jam

Well, better this than the opposite extreme.

Perhaps someone will take the right lesson from this: if we plan to send increasing numbers of increasingly capable probes (and eventually manned missions), we are going to need a permanent, dedicated, high-bandwidth communications node of some sort at Mars. Using Odyssey as a relay is a great idea, but it’s only a start.

Mark Whittington links to this interesting article in Wired on the various commercial efforts to return to the Moon. It’s a good overview of what’s coming up, and even better — it actually has a positive outlook for the potential these efforts could unleash.

Fiddling

Columbia disaster fails to inspire space policy

To some on Capitol Hill, it appears Congress is just going through the motions of reacting to the Columbia disaster by superficially scrutinizing the administration’s plans for the space agency and funneling money back home.

“We need a thorough overhaul of NASA,” said one unidentified Congressman, “but that’s no reason to question the pork and earmarks targeted to my district…”

The Columbia tragedy could have been the impetus politicians needed to gather public support for a great new space adventure, as President John F. Kennedy did in 1961 when he challenged the nation to go to the moon.

Noooooo! Aieeeeeeee! Not another Kennedy Program! [beats head against wall]

OSP Back in the News

Space plane a banal step for man — NASA pondering designs that critics say lack imagination

Ouch. The LA Times doesn’t seem to think much of the capsule alternative.

Japan Misses the Point

Japan’s space sector is wondering whether it is worth it to continue with the H2-A, given that the commercial launch market is so weak.

Maybe they just need to find new markets.

Japanese corporations seem to spend a lot of time and money on studies of tourist flights and space hotels and the like…hmm…

And Then There Were Two

Space Station Gets Lonelier

To think that, until two months ago, we were arguing over when the crew might be bumped up to the promised seven.

New Mars Book

Or a relatively new Mars book, anyhow (it’s copyrighted 2002): The Smithsonian Book of Mars.

It’s a condensation of the basic knowledge about the planet, including a brief background on the history of Mars observation and exploration. The bulk of the book covers the planetological info gained to-date, including chapters on the internal structure, topography, atmosphere, exobiology, the moons, etc. It’s a pricey book ($40 even at B&N here in Denver) but it’s a quality book that looks like it should be a good reference.

Nyet, Yuri

Well, no one from the group running the Yuri’s Night party in Colorado Springs got back to me, so…no party for me.

Terminology Question

I was poking around in the MarsBlog archives and came across this post on “environmental ethics” from last fall.

Note the line to the effect that “there is no nature without life”. That is, the term “nature” implies the presence of life. Since there is no life (of which we are aware) on Mars, the term would seem to be inapplicable there.

Any suggestions on an appropriate alternative? “Original”? “Raw”? “Agrestal”?

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