Category: Space & Science

Ares & Eve

The latest Space Review contains an article that repeats an idea that’s been around for a long time, but has always seemed to be a bit disreputable, for what seem to me to be illogical reasons: since a large part of any deep-space mission is the equipment and fuel to get the crew back home to Earth, wouldn’t it make more sense to make the trip one-way?

There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a one-way space voyage nowadays, but I would argue that this is historically unusual. In the past, plenty of people took one-way voyages with only small chances of survival at the end. I would think that with the extra mass budget that a one-way trip allows, it would be perfectly possible to bring along enough supplies for one or two people to live out their natural lives on, say, Mars.

In my young and single days I often said that I’d be the first to jump at the chance of a one-way trip to Mars. Not sure what Andrea would have to say about that nowadays…

Rockets’ Red Glare

The space shuttle Discovery had a perfect launch today. It’s only the second flight in the more than 3 years since the loss of Columbia on reentry. This time a lot of care will be taken to make sure that the shuttle’s thermal protection system is up to its job. And if it has been damaged, the crew can stay at the International Space Station until a couple of the low-tech but reliable Russian Soyuz rockets can be launched to get them.

The shuttle has been rightly criticized as an enormous boondoggle, a gigantic white elephant that leaches valuable human and financial capital going around and around that should be better spent developing actual exploration vehicles. But the launch is still a glorious sight.

祝贺

Congratulations to Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng, China’s second and third astronauts, on their successful launch today.

It is ironic that NASA, after three decades of wasted work on the Shuttle and Station, is returning to the modular, capsule-based approach that worked well the first time around, which the Russians have perfected, and now the Chinese are carefully developing. The Chinese station will be built out of (shock, horror) Shenzhou orbital modules stacked together.

One can only dream of the kind of infrastructure that could have been in place had NASA similarly used spent Shuttle tanks, for instance.

Quote of the Week

John Savard, writing about space colony design in sci.space.history:

However, going over documents about space colonies, it is clear that because of cosmic rays, it is not possible, without using _very_ thick shielding, to reduce radiation to an *arbitrarily low level*. A little shielding cuts radiation exposure, but after a certain amount, secondary radiation from cosmic rays increases exposure.

In that area, it is *not* possible to achieve a level of shielding which reduces radiation exposure within the habitat to that found on Earth at sea level.

Of course, Denver, Colorado is not exactly overrun by mutants.