Stephen Hawking: 'Humankind Belongs in Space'

Technological advancements that took place over the past few decades have made the world a very dangerous place to live in. Nuclear missiles are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to methods that humankind can employ to destroy itself. Global warming and chemical weapons are also high on the list, as are other natural factors. Famed physicist and scientist Stephen Hawking believes that the world needs to look at the stars for inspiration, and leave Earth before it's too late.

The famed expert believes that it's wrong for humankind to keep all of its eggs in a single basket, so to speak. “I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load,” Hawking tells Big Think.

He also mentions the fact that the world's resources are currently being depleted at a massively-high rate, far beyond what can be replenished naturally or artificially. Greed and the quest for profits is making large corporations hinder innovation in fields of science investigation alternative energy sources, and this will soon manifest its effects on the planet. Hawking believes that we wouldn't want to be here when that happens. Plus, he adds, the Sun will only take a few billion years before it expands to envelop Earth, so we shouldn't be here at that time.

Speaking about situations such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost saw the onset of global nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union, Hawking says that “the frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully.” Even if we are successful in doing so, the Sun will kill all life on Earth over a period of time. When it begins to swell, global warming will increase its effects, until all water is evaporated. Without the precious liquid, life as we know it will disappear.

“Life on Earth will have disappeared long before 7.6 billion years. Scientists have shown that the Sun's slow expansion will cause the temperature at the surface of the Earth to rise. Oceans will evaporate, and the atmosphere will become laden with water vapor, which (like carbon dioxide) is a very effective greenhouse gas. Eventually, the oceans will boil dry and the water vapor will escape into space. In a billion years from now the Earth will be a very hot, dry and uninhabitable ball,” says Dr. Robert Smith, an astrophysicist at the University of Sussex.

Celebrating The ISS And Preparing For The Future

Now that the International Space Station is fully operational, the programme partners will gather in Berlin on 19-21 April to discuss the successes and potential of this unique international cooperation.

The International Space Station (ISS) is now almost complete and capable of housing a crew of six astronauts. At times, more than 12 people can work aboard.

One of the most ambitious international projects ever and the largest spacecraft to orbit our planet is ready for at least 10 more years of productive operations.

The Station's success stories will be presented during a three-day symposium at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin beginning 19 April. International speakers will discuss their achievements, the lessons learnt and current projects. The gathering has been convened by ESA Director of Human Spaceflight, Simonetta Di Pippo, on behalf of the ISS international partners.

The speakers of the symposium will include several astronauts, high-level representatives of the participating space agencies and major players from the industry. The keynote speaker on the first day is Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Samuel Ting. Prof Ting is leader of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a cosmology experiment for capturing the cosmic ray particles for better understanding of the origins of the Universe and the biggest scientific experiment designed for the ISS. Professor Ting will speak about a subject close to his research: the value of the ISS for science.

The first expedition crew, William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, who opened a new era in international cooperation by moving into the Station 10 years ago, will also reunite, for the first time, during the symposium.

'ISS for you: citizens first'

The slogan of the symposium reflects the importance of the International Space Station to humankind in general. It is this century's first concrete example of peaceful cooperation, uniting 14 nations.

Benefiting from uninterrupted weightlessness and a privileged vantage point on Earth, the Universe and the space environment, its research facilities cover a wide range of fundamental and applied fields, affecting our daily lives on Earth. It is also a unique testbed to prepare advanced concepts for future exploration missions.

ISS is a classroom in space, inspiring new generations. From it, we can see the fragility of our home planet and the vastness of the Universe. It is at the final frontier, inviting us to explore, learn and use.

As the symposium will show, the Station is benefiting us all.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on What NASA Means to America's Future

Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke at the University at Buffalo and answered a student's question about federal cutbacks to NASA funding.

The New Space Race

Introduction

Recent media reports suggest that China is stepping up their program to send people to the Moon just as America appears to be standing down from it. This circumstance has re-awakened a long-standing debate about the geopolitical aspects of space travel and with it some questions. Are we in a race back to the Moon? Should we be? And if there is a "space race" today, what do we mean by the term? Is it a race of military dimensions or is such thinking just an artifact of the Cold War? What are the implications of a new space race?

Many in the space business purport to be unimpressed by the idea that China is going to the Moon and publicly invite them to waste money on such a stunt. "No big deal" seems to be the attitude - after all America did that over 30 years ago. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recently professed to be unmoved by the possible future presence of a Chinese flag on the Moon, noting that there are already six American flags on the Moon.

Although it is not currently popular in this country to think about national interests and the competition of nations in space, others do not labor under this restriction. Our current human spaceflight effort, the International Space Station (ISS), has shown us both the benefits and drawbacks of cooperative projects. Soon, we will not have the ability to send crew to and from the ISS. But that's not a problem; the Russians have graciously agreed to transport us - at $50 million a pop. Look for that price to rise once the Shuttle is fully retired.

To understand whether there is a new space race or not, we must understand its history. Why would nations compete in space anyway? And if such competition occurs, how might it affect us? What should we have in space: Kumbaya or Starship Troopers? Or is the answer somewhere between the two?

Some History

People tend to think of Apollo and the race to the Moon when they hear the term "space race" but the race began with the October 1957 launch of a Russian satellite called Sputnik. The clear implication of this new Soviet satellite was that if they wanted to, they could lob a nuclear bomb at the United States. This situation led to near panic in America, with outraged demands that we technically catch up to the Soviets as quickly as possible and damn the cost.

The initial phases of the space race were not auspicious for America. In our publicized and televised launches, vehicles frequently blew up while the Soviets appeared to effortlessly achieve an endless series of headline-grabbing space "firsts." American officials working behind the scenes knew that we were not as far behind as it seemed but to reveal that knowledge was to disclose our national technical means of surveillance. So each new Soviet first was officially greeted with silence.

The Russians raised the stakes in the spring of 1961 with the launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Although America followed a month later with Alan Shepard's ballistic hop, the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, wanted to issue a challenge, one carefully crafted to be beyond the existing capabilities of both the USA and the USSR, yet reachable by us (but not by them) over the course of a few years. A manned landing on the Moon was selected as the ideal target for such a race. Although no specific strategic goals on the Moon were identified, it was believed that the attainment of this difficult task would demonstrate the superiority of our open, pluralistic capitalist society in contrast to its closed, authoritarian, socialist opposite number.

The so-called "Moon race" of the 1960's was a Cold War exercise of soft power projection, meaning that no real military confrontation was part of it, but rather, it was a competition by non-lethal means to determine which country had the superior technology and by implication, the superior political and economic system. In short, it was largely a national propaganda struggle. Simultaneously, the two countries also engaged in a hard power struggle space race to develop ever-better systems to observe and monitor the military assets of the other. There was little public debate associated with this struggle, indeed, much of it was held in the deepest secrecy. But as the decade passed, military space systems became increasingly capable and extensive and largely replaced human intelligence assets for the estimation of our adversaries' strategic capabilities and intentions.

The United States went on to very publicly win the race to the Moon, giving rise to a flurry of rhetoric pronouncing everyone's peaceful intentions for outer space while the larger struggle continued to play out behind the scenes. NASA's replacement effort for the concluded Apollo program, the Space Shuttle project, promised to lower the costs of space travel by providing a reusable vehicle that would launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. Because of the need to fit under a tightly constrained budgetary envelope and for a variety of other technical reasons, the Shuttle did not live up to its promise as a low cost "truck" for space flight. However, the program resulted in a fleet of four operational spacecraft that flew over 120 missions over the course of its 30-year history.

Although widely cited in American space circles as a policy failure, the Shuttle had some interesting characteristics that led it to be considered a military threat by the USSR. One of the earliest missions of the Shuttle had its crew retrieve and repair an orbiting satellite (Solar Max). Later missions grappled balky satellites and returned them to Earth for refurbishment, repair and re-launch. This capability culminated with a series of Shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which conducted on-orbit servicing tasks ranging from literally fixing the worthless satellite (the first mission) to routine upgrading of sensors, replacement of solar arrays and main computers, and re-boosting the telescope to a higher orbit. The significance of these missions was that the HST is basically a strategic reconnaissance satellite: it looks up at the heavens rather than down at nuclear missile sites from orbit. The Hubble repair missions documented the value of being able to access orbital assets with people and equipment.

Another relatively unnoticed series of Shuttle missions demonstrated the value of advanced sensors. As a large, stable platform in orbit (the orbiting mass of the Shuttle is almost 100 mT), the Shuttle could fly very heavy, high-power payloads that smaller robotic satellites could not. The Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR) was a synthetic aperture radar that could obtain images of the Earth from space by sending out radar pulses as an illuminating beam. It could thus image through cloud cover, day or night, all over the Earth. In a stunning realization, it was found that it could also image subsurface features; in particular, the SIR-A mission mapped ancient riverbeds buried beneath the sands of the western Sahara from space. The strategic implications of this were immense; as most land-based nuclear missiles are buried in silos, they cannot be hidden from account because of sensors like imaging radar.

The construction of the International Space Station (ISS) became the next frontier for strategic space. One of the most complex spacecraft ever made, it was designed to be launched in small pieces by the Shuttle without an end-to-end systems test on the ground and assembled on-orbit. It worked perfectly the first time it was activated. The building of the ISS documented that not only could people assemble complex machines in space, they could also repair, maintain and upgrade them as well. As the ISS nears completion, much complaint continues about its cost and supposed lack of value, yet even if we get nothing further from it as a research facility, it has already taught us invaluable lessons about the building and maintenance of large spacecraft in orbit.

These new Shuttle capabilities had significant policy implications for the Soviets. To them, it seemed that the Shuttle was a great leap forward in military space technology, not the "policy failure" bemoaned by American analysts. With its capabilities for on-orbit satellite servicing and as a platform for advanced sensors, the Shuttle became a threat that had to be countered. The USSR responded with their own space shuttle (Buran), which looked superficially very similar to ours. The Challenger accident showed that Shuttle was a highly vulnerable system in many respects; even as the Soviets developed Buran, the American military decided to withdraw from our Shuttle program.

During the 1990's, we saw a revolution in tactical space - the use of and reliance on space assets on the modern battlefield. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has made the transition to the consumer market, but it was originally designed to allow troops to instantly know their exact positions. A global network of communications satellites carries both voice and data, and interfaces to the partly space-based Internet (another innovation originally built for military technical research). The entire world is connected and plugged in and spacebridges are now key components of that connection. Fifty years after the beginning of the Space Age, we are now, more than ever, dependent upon our satellite assets.

Space and the national interest

Most people don't realize how the many satellites in various orbits around the Earth affect their lives. We rely on satellites to provide us with instantaneous global communications that impact almost everything we do. We use GPS to find out both where we are and where we are going. Weather stations in orbit monitor the globe, alerting us to coming storms so that their destructive effects can be minimized. Remote sensors in space map the land and sea, permitting us to understand the distribution of various properties and how they change with time. Other satellites look outward to the Sun, which controls the Earth's climate and "space weather" (which influences radio propagation.) No aspect of our lives is untouched by the satellites orbiting the Earth. In a real sense, they are the "Skynet" of the Terminator movies - they are our eyes (reconnaissance), ears (communications) and brains (GPS and Internet) in Earth orbit. Fortunately, they are not yet self-aware. But the people who operate them are.

All satellites are vulnerable. Components constantly break down and must be replaced. New technology makes existing facilities obsolete, requiring replacement, at high cost. A satellite must fit within and on the largest launch vehicle we have; satellites thus have a practical size limit, which in turn limits their capabilities and lifetime. Once a satellite stops working, it is abandoned and a replacement must be designed, launched and put into its proper orbit.

Satellite aging is normal and expected but satellites can also be catastrophically lost or disabled, either accidentally or deliberately. Encounters between objects in space tend to be at very high velocities. The ever-increasing amounts of debris and junk in orbit (e.g., pieces of old rockets and satellites) can hit functioning satellites and destroy them. NORAD carefully tracks the bigger pieces of junk and some spacecraft (e.g., ISS) can be maneuvered out of the path of oncoming debris, but smaller pieces (e.g., the size of a bolt or screw) cannot be tracked and if they collide with a critical part, it can cripple a satellite.

It has long been recognized that satellites are extremely vulnerable to attack and anti-satellite warfare (ASAT) is another possible cause of failure. Both the US and the USSR experimented with ASAT warfare during the Cold War. Although it sounds exotic, ASAT merely takes advantage of the fragility of these spacecraft to render them inoperative. This can be done with remote affecters like lasers to "blind" optical sensors. The simplest ASAT weapon is kinetic, i.e., an impactor. By intercepting a satellite with a projectile at high relative velocity, the satellite is rapidly and easily rendered worthless.

Despite the fact that the destruction of satellites is relatively easy, it has seldom happened by accident and never as an act of war. Although most space assets are extremely vulnerable, they are left alone because they are not easy to get to. Some orbiting spacecraft occupy low Earth orbit (LEO) and are accessible to interceptors, but many valuable strategic assets are in the much higher orbits of middle Earth orbit (MEO) 3000 to 35000 km and geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) 35786 km. Such orbits are difficult to reach and require long transit times and complex orbital maneuvers which quickly reveal themselves and their purpose to ground-based tracking.

In 1998, a communications satellite was left in a useless transfer orbit after a booster failure. Engineers at Hughes (the makers of the satellite) devised a clever scheme to send the satellite to GEO using a gravity assist from the Moon. This was the world's first "commercial" flight to the Moon and it saved the expensive satellite for its planned use. One aspect of this rescue is seldom mentioned but attracted the attention of military space watchers everywhere. This satellite approached GEO from an unobserved (and at least partly unobservable) direction. Most trips to GEO travel from LEO upwards; this one came down from the Moon, a direction not ordinarily monitored by tracking systems. This mission dramatically illustrated the importance of what is called "situational awareness" in space.

Our current model of operations in space is well established. Satellites must be self-contained and operated until dead, then completely replaced - a template of design, build, launch, operate, and abandon. With few exceptions, we are not able to access satellites to repair or upgrade them. Sometimes favorable conditions allow us to be clever and rescue an asset that had been written off, but the system is not designed for such operation. The current spaceflight paradigm is a use and throwaway culture. Yet thirty years of experience with the Shuttle program has shown us that such is not the case by necessity. What is missing is the ability to get people and servicing machines to the various satellites in all their myriad locations: LEO is easy, but MEO and GEO cannot be accessed with existing space systems. Yet from the experience of Shuttle and ISS, we know that if they could, a revolution in the way spaceflight is approached might be possible.

The Vision for Space Exploration and its implications

The Vision for Space Exploration (the Vision, or VSE,) announced by President Bush in January 2004, called for returning the Shuttle to flight after the Columbia accident, completion of the International Space Station, a human return to the Moon and eventually voyages to Mars and other destinations. This proposal was subsequently endorsed by two different Congresses (in 2005 and 2008) under the control of different parties; both authorizations passed with large bipartisan majorities. The preface to the founding VSE document states that the new policy is undertaken to serve national "security, economic and scientific interests."

Subsequent statements and writings elaborated on the purpose of the VSE. Despite concerted efforts to distort its meaning, the goal of lunar return was not to repeat Apollo but to create a long-term, sustained human presence in space by learning to use the material and energy resources of the Moon. The VSE was to be implemented under existing and anticipated budgetary constraints; the guidance given to NASA for this aspect of the mission was to stretch timetables if money became short. The idea was to create this new system with small, incremental, yet cumulative steps.

The intellectual underpinnings of the VSE began to be undermined by NASA almost immediately. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) made lunar return an Apollo redux, with the development of a large, 150-mT-payload heavy lift vehicle becoming the centerpiece and sine qua non of human spaceflight beyond LEO. An ambitious program to establish an early robotic presence to prospect for resources on the Moon was cancelled, along with the incremental approach outlined by the Vision. Thus, the Moon became a distant goal, with first arrival of humans occurring well after 2020, if then. NASA had chosen something familiar, an architecture very similar to Apollo with little effort made to develop reusable, refuelable spacecraft (although the Altair lander used LOX-hydrogen, so in principle, it could be modified for refueling).

In short, the purpose of returning to the Moon, i.e., to create a sustainable human presence based on the use of lunar resources, got lost in the ESAS shuffle. Lunar return became synonymous with "Apollo on Steroids" and heavy-lift rocket building while ESAS (Constellation) became synonymous with the VSE. Project Constellation, the agency project to develop the new Orion spacecraft and Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles, was a costly, throw-away space system that got us to the Moon with considerable capability, but with little or no thought given to planned surface objectives or activities. The idea of finding and learning to use the resources of the Moon became an experiment slated for the manifest of some future mission, not the primary driver or objective of lunar return. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently mapping the Moon and sending us data on the extent and nature of lunar resources, but no lander missions are planned to follow up on its findings. The ingenuity of an incremental program was lost and we created no new capability in space.

The goal of the VSE is to create the capability to live ON the Moon and OFF its local resources with the goals of self-sufficiency and sustainability, including the production of propellant and refueling of cislunar transport vehicles. A system that is able to routinely go to and from the lunar surface is also able to access any other point in cislunar space. We can eventually export lunar propellant to fueling depots throughout cislunar space, where most of our space assets reside. In short, by going to the Moon, we create a new and qualitatively different capability for space access, a "transcontinental railroad" in space. Such a system would completely transform the paradigm of spaceflight. We would develop serviceable satellites, not ones designed to be abandoned after use. We could create extensible, upgradeable systems, not "use and discard." The ability to transport people and machines throughout cislunar space permits the construction of distributed instead of self-contained systems. Such space assets are more flexible, more capable and more easily defended than conventional ones.

The key to this new paradigm is to learn if it is possible to use lunar and space resources to create new capabilities and if so, how difficult it might be. Despite years of academic study, no one has demonstrated resource extraction on the Moon. There is nothing in the physics and chemistry of the materials of the Moon that suggests it is not possible, but we simply do not know how difficult it is or what practical problems might arise. This is why resource utilization is an appropriate goal for the federal space program. As a high-risk engineering research and development project, it is difficult for the private sector to raise the necessary capital to understand the magnitude of the problem. The VSE was conceived to let NASA answer these questions and begin the process of creating a permanent cislunar transportation infrastructure.

So where do we stand with the creation of such system? Is such a change in paradigm desirable? Are we still in a "space race" or is that an obsolete concept? The answers to some of these questions are not at all obvious. We must consider them fully, as this information is available to all space faring nations to adopt and adapt for their own uses.

A new space race

The race to the Moon of the 1960's was an exercise in "soft power" projection. We raced the Soviets to the Moon to demonstrate the superiority of our technology, not only to them, but also to the uncommitted and watching world. The landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 was by any reckoning a huge win for United States and the success of Apollo gave us technical credibility for the Cold War endgame. Fifteen years after the moon landing, President Reagan advocated the development of a missile defense shield, the so-called Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Although disparaged by many in the West as unattainable, this program was taken very seriously by the Soviets. I believe that this was largely because the United States had already succeeded in accomplishing a very difficult technical task (the lunar landing) that the Soviet Union had not accomplished. Thus, the Soviets saw SDI as not only possible, but likely and its advent would render their entire nuclear strategic capability useless in an instant.

In this interpretation, the Apollo program achieved not only its literal objective of landing a man on the Moon (propaganda, soft power) but also its more abstract objective of intimidating our Soviet adversary (technical surprise, hard power). Thus, Apollo played a key role in the end of the Cold War, one far in excess of what many scholars believe. Similarly, our two follow-on programs of Shuttle and Station, although fraught with technical issues and deficiencies as tools of exploration, had significant success in pointing the way towards a new paradigm for space. That new path involves getting people and machines to satellite assets in space for construction, servicing, extension and repair. Through the experience of ISS construction, we now know it is possible to assemble very large systems in space from smaller pieces, and we know how to approach such a problem. Mastery of these skills suggests that the construction of new, large distributed systems for communications, surveillance, and other tasks is possible. These new space systems would be much more capable and enabling than existing ones.

Warfare in space is not as depicted in science-fiction movies, with flying saucers blasting lasers at speeding spaceships. The real threat from active space warfare is denial of assets and access. Communications satellites are silenced, reconnaissance satellites are blinded, and GPS constellations made inoperative. This completely disrupts command and control and forces reliance on terrestrially based systems. Force projection and coordination becomes more difficult, cumbersome and slower.

Recently, China tested an ASAT weapon in space, indicating that they fully understand the military benefits of hard space power. But they also have an interest in the Moon, probably for "soft power" projection ("Flags-and-Footprints") at some level. Sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit is a statement of their technical equality with the United States, as among space faring nations, only we have done this in the past. So it is likely that the Chinese see a manned lunar mission as a propaganda coup. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that they also understand the Moon's strategic value, as described above. They tend to take a long view, spanning decades, not the short-term view that America favors. Thus, although their initial plans for human lunar missions do not feature resource utilization, they know the technical literature as well as we do and know that such use is possible and enabling. They are also aware of the value of the Moon as a "backdoor" to approach other levels of cislunar space, as the rescue of the Hughes communications satellite demonstrated.

The struggle for soft power projection in space has not ended. If space resource extraction and commerce is possible, a significant question emerges - What societal paradigm shall prevail in this new economy? Many New Space advocates assume that free markets and capitalism is the obvious organizing principle of space commerce, but others might not agree. For example, to China, a government-corporatist oligarchy, the benefits of a pluralistic, free market system are not obvious. Moreover, respect for contract law, a fundamental reason why Western capitalism is successful while its implementation in the developing world has had mixed results, does not exist in China. So what shall the organizing principle of society be in the new commerce of space resources: rule of law or authoritarian oligarchy? An American win in this new race for space does not guarantee that free markets will prevail, but an American loss could ensure that free markets would never emerge on this new frontier.

Why are we going to the Moon?

In one of his early speeches defending the Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy laid out the reasons that America had to go the Moon. Among the many ideas that he articulated, one stood out. He said, "whatever men shall undertake, free men must fully share." This was a classic expression of American exceptionalism, that idea that we must explore new frontiers not to establish an empire, but to ensure that our political and economic system prevails, a system that has created the most freedom and the largest amount of new wealth in the hands of the greatest number of people in the history of the world. This is a statement of both soft and hard power projection; by leading the world into space, we guarantee that space does not become the private domain of powers who view humanity as cogs in their ideological machine, rather than as individuals to be valued and protected.

The Vision was created to extend human reach beyond its current limit of low Earth orbit. It made the Moon the first destination because it has the material and energy resources needed to create a true space faring system. Recent data from the Moon show that it is even richer in resource potential than we had thought; both abundant water and near-permanent sunlight is available at selected areas near the poles. We go to the Moon to learn how to extract and use those resources to create a space transportation system that can routinely access all of cislunar space with both machines and people. Such a system is the logical next step in both space security and commerce. This goal for NASA makes the agency relevant to important national interests. A return to the Moon for resource utilization contributes to national security and economic interests as well as scientific ones.

There is indeed a new space race. It is just as important and vital to our country's future as the original one, if not as widely perceived and appreciated. It consists of a struggle with both hard and soft power. The hard power aspect is to confront the ability of other nations to deny us access to our vital satellite assets of cislunar space. The soft power aspect is a question: how shall society be organized in space? Both issues are equally important and both are addressed by lunar return. Will space be a sanctuary for science and PR stunts or will it be a true frontier with scientists and pilots, but also miners, technicians, entrepreneurs and settlers? The decisions made now will decide the fate of space for generations. The choice is clear; we cannot afford to relinquish our foothold in space and abandon the Vision for Space Exploration.

Source:- http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1376

NASA and Space - The Future vs. the Past

In covering the uproar over the just-released NASA budget and its implications, the major media headlines have been trumpeting: "Lunar Program Cancelled". Yes, sadly the budget has cancelled the current lunar program, based on the NASA designed Ares boosters and Orion capsule. However, as some other writers have pointed out, the Vision for Space Exploration program (VSE), which was conceived by a true government consensus after the Columbia disaster, was in effect hijacked in 2005 by the last person anyone of us would have ever suspected, the greatly respected aerospace engineer, Dr. Michael Griffin. That the VSE envisioned by the White House was hijacked is in little doubt, since the only representative of the space advocacy community specifically invited to attend the former President's 2004 speech was Rick Tumlinson, no friend of business-as-usual in US space policy. The White House shares no blame for picking Dr. Griffin, since many in the space community saw him as a very good choice. Other writers have pointed out that the VSE and Constellation which supposedly implemented it are very different programs. In an interview, Brett Alexander said "I was a primary author of the Vision for Space Exploration.....But they chose the most expensive architecture (for Constellation) and they had cost and technical issues with it. The cost overruns are astonishing."(Amy Klamper - Space News 2-1-2010).

Under Admiral Craig Steidle starting early in 2004, the VSE was a forward looking program that was open to new ideas and the development of fundamentally new, innovative technology. Griffin shut the door firmly on most of those new ideas in 2005. Instead, he looked backward at what had been stolen away from him and the space community by politics 40 years ago - a continuation of the Apollo Program, and tried to re-create it as "Apollo on Steroids". Any studies which had been underway involving re-usable rockets or spacecraft were apparently ruthlessly suppressed, so that the public and most outside experts never got to see the results. Critical long-range programs were cancelled and their funds raided for the short-term goal. Everything that possibly could be made expendable to save a few pennies was. MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics professor David Mindell says in a Space and Earth article posted on physorg (2-5-2010) that "NASA is eating its seed corn for Constellation". The result was exactly what I warned about in 2005 (Return to the Moon p. 137 - 2005) - the use of "giant expendable LEMS" (Lunar Modules) in the new program, itself only symptomatic of NASA's institutional mindset under Griffin.

I have had the experience of being laid off and I know what an terrible impact this has on a person and his family. I have also experienced the frustration of having a project taken away from me. I thus totally commiserate with any and all of the employees who may lose their current NASA jobs, and who have expended herculean efforts on trying to make the Constellation program work. But we need to think about the whole purpose of the space program. The concept of NASA as a short-range jobs program has to end, since it is politically and economically unsustainable. The unwillingness of Congress and the previous President to adequately fund the program that they superficially publically supported proves this beyond a doubt. Dr. Griffin also consistently and massively underestimated the development and construction costs of all the single use vehicles that would be needed for any lunar program and the program's annual operating costs. All of the jobs currently about to be lost would have been eventually lost, but with even greater trauma and distress at the additional wasted effort.

Why has the announcement been received so negatively by many whose jobs are not at risk?. Newspapers and politicians of both parties from the affected areas uniformly responded negatively to the proposal, due to the loss of local jobs. Reaction from national news outlets was mixed and more balanced. It is also now clear from other writers that the announcement gave some of them the impression that the long-range intent was to end human spaceflight. For example, Stephen Weinberg, a long-time opponent of manned space flight and supporter of the "look but don't touch" viewpoint, threw contrary evidence to the wind with the title of his article "Ending Manned Space Flight Is The Right Thing For Science".

As a result of this and similar opinions, fear grew that the budget announcement was intended to kill the current Constellation program but then not replace it with anything. Even the Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords echoed fears that "We may soon abandon our mission" (of manned space exploration). The current budget does remove the Constellation Lunar program without replacing it with any specific destination or goal. (It is admittedly very hard to come up with a specific first goal without at least a year of discussion, and the Augustine Commission deliberately did not focus on a single first goal.) The most obvious first goal for a human expedition would be a near earth asteroid, since it would not require the development of a lander. One comment following a negative article by Astronaut Tom Jones (Popular Mechanics 2-2-2010) made an excellent analogy to support the fact that we can't go very far yet since we do not have a space infrastructure in place: (placing propellant depots in orbit in 2020 is the equivalent of building a road network and gas stations to enable auto travel in 1920).

In addition, those of us who have watched with frustration as mankind was restricted to Low Earth orbit (where we have now been stuck for about 38 years), were depressed at the thought of another whole decade stuck in Low Earth Orbit, even if the human program survives. The justification for staying in LEO has been that we were preparing for further exploration beyond LEO. Bolden's honest press conference comment (2/6/2010) that we would not be flying the Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) needed for further exploration until after 2020 did not help. Practically, though, to develop a really inexpensive and practical HLV would probably take about that long, and to develop payloads to put on it would also take about the same amount of time. All of the serious, current, competing, expendable HLV plans are so expensive that very few would ever be launched. One writer agreeing with Augustine Commission member Leroy Chiao's blog of 2-4-2010 pointed out that what we need is "indefinitely affordable technology" to access the Moon and other destinations. (Constellation would have been affordable only very temporarily at best).

If you would ask any of the older astronauts, many of them would tell you in effect, that "Space is about the future". It is not about the past. While we greatly honor all of the past work that has been done on the program, if we only focus on the glories of the past, we miss the ultimate point of the program - the future and long term survival of the human race, and using space resources and energy to protect the Earth. A one-planet species is eventually a dead end. Many other individuals and groups have rallied to the defense of the new path, including Buzz Aldrin, the X-Prize Foundation, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, the Space Frontier Foundation, The Planetary Society, The Economist, and Wayne Hale, who made an eloquent reference to Robert Heinlein and his writing in support of space (NASA Blogs 2-2-2010).;
Lori Garver, NASA Associate Administrator, said "We're not cancelling our plans to explore space: we're cancelling Constellation" (Leslie Mullen - Astrobiology 2-3-2010).

There is also an article from someone who's job is obviously NOT at stake, and who is a long-time friend of the space program, Director James Cameron (Washington Post 2-5-2010). Cameron is a calm, clear and practical thinker and manager who knows how to pick good technical people, and how to use his resources and funds most effectively to make good movies. He has directed the development of very advanced technical equipment which will soon be used to very good effect by many other producers and directors. He (with his picked staff), had to imagine what this equipment would do, why it was needed and how it would work, before they designed it. He is also able to follow engineering arguments so that he has a respect for the opinions of engineers and does not order them to do the impossible or the dangerous. Thus he has many of the exact skills that would be needed to make high-level decisions about a large technical program. He is obviously far more competent in such matters than the NASA manager who so little respected engineers that on the day in 1986 before the Challenger exploded, he said the immortal, despised and ultimately deadly words "take off your engineer's hat and put on your manager's hat".

About 10 years ago, Cameron attended one of the early Mars Society Conventions. He sat in the audience with us, soaking up all the Mars technical lore for his projected Mars TV series which was probably cancelled by all the quickie competition from the cheap Mars movies that were made during that period. Later, in a talk to the whole convention, he revealed a better pressurized manned rover design for the Moon or Mars than any that I have ever seen from NASA. As a result of operating cameras in the Russian submersibles during the filming of the actual wreck of the Titanic, miles deep under the North Atlantic, he wanted to be able to reach out and pick up objects on the ocean floor, which was of course impossible due to the extreme pressure. As a result, his rover design allows the entire rover to "kneel down" on its axles when a promising object on the surface is spotted. A robot arm then can pick up the object and place it into a small airlock. When the inner airlock door is opened, the rock can be immediately examined, without the hours required to "suit up" just to collect a single rock.

Some of the comments on Cameron's article criticize him for expressing his opinion while not being a "rocket scientist". The answer to this may lie in what led Dr. Griffin astray. Griffin is a world-class and magnificent engineer, but without casting aspersions on engineers, who I greatly admire for their technical skill, he is "only" an engineer. Cameron (as described here) is thus in effect operating at a level "above" the level of the engineer. He has to respect engineers, but also be more than an engineer. If you ask a space engineer to design a space program, he will probably design it based on vehicles. This is the famous "If you have a hammer - the answer is a nail" trap. Before you ever start designing hardware, first you have to decide the overall purpose of the program - why are we doing this at all, then what that hardware should do and then how it should do it. Only then should hardware design begin. Griffin and his team instead began with hardware designs and created a program that partially fit those designs.

While the cancellation of the lunar program has made many of us depressed at the prospect of returning to the treadmill of going in circles in LEO for another decade or two, the actual choice is one of going in bureaucratic circles forever or not. The basic question is (if you work in the space industry): do you want to get to the point where large numbers of people can travel to and can work in space, or do you want space to be too expensive for that for decades to come? Do you want to build expendable rockets forever, or start building Mars landers and lunar mining equipment. Government agencies by their very nature cannot and will not reduce operating costs. Private companies have to do that to compete. Without reducing operating costs dramatically, our space future will be left on the ground.

What will happen if the new program (which once more opens NASA to new ideas) is allow to proceed? It is even possible that with private enterprise handling the known hazards of transport to LEO, NASA will be able to re-focus its old genius on transport and exploration beyond LEO, so that we might even be able to return to the moon sooner than under the current program. (That is, of course, if we can formulate a good scientific or economic reason to go back there immediately.)

So yes, we will not be going to the moon on impossibly expensive expendable rockets, with expendable crew capsules and expendable lunar ferries, and without even knowing why we are going back or what we would do once we return. What we will be doing (hopefully - if the politicians keep their promises, which no-one can guarantee), is beginning the transition to the expansion of the human economic sphere into space. The so-called "flexible path, if it is followed properly, will open up access to multiple destinations and space activities. For example the use of space for production of clean, continuous solar energy could be enabled (although this option was unfortunately not mentioned in the announcement). Reduced cost of access will also allow much more and better space science to be done. Human and robotic expeditions to the Moon, Mars, its moons and to near earth asteroids would become possible and much safer.

How will we be able to tell if the program is going in the "right" direction? The government should go ahead and create launch contract guarantees with at least two companies for ground to LEO operations. It should never develop or operate an earth to orbit vehicle again. We (the future-oriented space community) will need to see actual funding supported and enacted to allow development of advanced and innovative technology, such as plasma rocket engines like the VASIMR for use in deep space, and hypersonic air-breathing engines for future launch vehicles. We want several companies to be able to develop systems to safely, reliably and cheaply deliver cargo and passengers to low Earth orbit destinations. We want the government to underscore the critical need for a heavy lift booster (HLV), and encourage the private sector to develop one itself, preferably as a re-usable two stage booster (no easy task).

We want to see the development of a truly and fully integrated space transportation system by NASA in conjunction with the private sector, one that will allow access to all areas within and including the Moon's orbit (cis-lunar space), as well as the nearby Earth-Sun LaGrange Points 1 and 2. This system should include both vehicles and nodes and incorporate delivery of propellants to orbit by private launch vehicles to be stored in large propellant depots (nodes). This would allow deep space vehicles to be launched without propellants in their tanks, greatly increasing the size of vehicles that can be launched. We want to see the development of generalized, re-usable vehicles (space taxis, space tugs, lunar ferries) for transport of humans and cargo to points beyond low earth orbit and return to their starting point for re-fueling. We need to see a long-range, realistic plan for actual exploration missions based on reduced transport costs and the actual funds available. We want crew safety, redundancy and creation of self-rescue abilities and crew refuges to be a high priority. We also need solid reasons and rationales for each exploration mission. We also expect closer cooperative efforts in manned exploration between the US and other countries with less visible US domination. In space, countries should cooperate and companies should compete for the benefit of all.

What can we do to make the current massive lurch in the space program palatable to its critics. In the near term, exceptional measures should be taken to assist NASA and contractor employees to find new jobs with either orbit access service providers or within NASA to begin work on the new in-space transport system. We would hope that the government would encourage the new companies to open facilities in some of the communities which stand to lose the most jobs, as Bolden suggested at his press conference. Within just a few years, reduced costs could mean even more space-related jobs than there are now as cost savings spill over into the private sector and encourage more launches by both government and business. Reduced access costs could thus mean more missions. We should establish a clear path and timetable to the availability of a private HLV, and specific payloads for its manifest, such as giant space telescopes and propellant depots. As soon as feasible, a logical sequence of human mission destinations with a rough timetable should be established, to show everyone that human exploration beyond LEO will continue.

Space is a very, very hard row to hoe. Some of the projected entrepreneurial milestones will happen later than expected and expenses will initially be higher than expected. Disasters will probably happen. However, the benefits of space commerce and clean energy and being a multi-planet species far outweigh the risks and costs if they are accomplished by business methods. Space must become economical before it is practical. Give the new (and old) space entrepreneurs a real chance to accomplish this and I believe that the results will be truly amazing.

Source:- http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1377

Few Good Constellation Informative Videos

"Guests Bret Drake, Clarence Sams and Wendell Mendell explain future missions, the requirements of future explorers and the scientific and economic implications."

Astronaut Scott Parazynski chat with kids

Astronaut Scott Parazynski has a chat with Kids, any one of those could be next Niel Armstrong.

Galactic Colonization Limited By The Inability To Expand Exponentially

Galactic colonization is likely to be limited by the Fermi Paradox. Image credit: NASA

(PhysOrg.com) -- For more than 50 years, many have taken the so-called Fermi Paradox to indicate that the existence of intelligent alien civilizations is an impossibility. However, a recent re-examination of the paradox points out that, rather than discounting the spread of an intelligent civilization, the Fermi Paradox merely points out that advanced civilizations with exponential growth are unlikely to exist.

Enrico Fermi speculated (during a lunch break) that the age of the universe, as well as its size, meant that there should be a number of advanced societies keeping Earth company, in a galactic sense. Growth of these civilizations would be exponential, Fermi implied, and therefore if they existed, we would have encountered them already. Ergo, advanced alien societies must not exist, since their expansion hasn't brought them into the range of our detection.

A new take on the Fermi Paradox, though, changes the equation a bit. At Pennsylvania State University, two scientists suggest that the key to the paradox is the assumption that civilizations would colonize the universe at an exponential rate. Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum point out that finite resources preclude exponential expansion. Technology Review offers a look at the problem of exponential growth:

"The problem is that this kind of growth may not be possible, and they look at Earth as an example. For any expansion to be sustainable, the growth in resource consumption cannot exceed the growth in resource production. And since Earth's resources are finite, and it has a finite mass and receives solar radiation at a constant rate, human civilization cannot sustain an indefinite, exponential growth."

This means that, if we decide to colonize our galaxy, Earth's civilization will be unable to do so at an exponential rate. If you apply the realities of Earth to possible alien civilizations, then it becomes much more likely that there are other advanced societies out there. Like Earth, though, they are limited in their expansionary capabilities. Perhaps there are thousands of alien societies out there, just trying to effectively colonize their moons or settle on planets in their solar systems. It is possible that, if that is the case, the question of existence of intelligent alien life may not be answered in our life times.

Orion Propulsion Completes Qualification Testing for Innovative "Green" Propulsion System

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--Orion Propulsion, Inc. today announced completion of a qualification test program for the Forward Propulsion System (FPS) of Bigelow Aerospace's Sundancer Project, the world's first commercial space habitat. The innovative Orion Propulsion thruster system uses hydrogen and oxygen that are produced from Bigelow's proprietary Environmental Control Life Support System (ECLSS) as propellants for the spacecraft's attitude control system. This truly "people-powered" space craft, which burns hydrogen and oxygen generated from water, sweat, and urine, eliminates the need for more toxic propellants such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide that are more costly to use and harmful to the environment - on Earth and in space.

Tim Pickens, CEO of Orion Propulsion, said, "We are excited to complete this critical demonstration that will move Bigelow Aerospace one step closer to creating a self-sufficient commercial human habitat that is safer and more environmentally friendly than any other system in use. I am proud of our team for delivering a best-in-class solution for this landmark project. We look forward to completing production and flying critical flight hardware on the world's first commercial space habitat."

"Orion Propulsion has been an excellent partner and has met every delivery date and performance milestone," said Bigelow Aerospace Program Manager, Eric Haakonstad. "Their team worked with our very specific and demanding requirements to put together an elegant and "green" propulsion system that is safe, cost efficient, powerful and reliable - these are critical elements that will enable Sundancer's success over its 15 year life cycle in space."

The test program was a thorough evaluation of the propulsion system and included thermal cycle vacuum testing, electro-magnetic interference testing, acoustic and vibration testing. In addition, an accelerated life test program was conducted simulating space environments including vacuum, and temperature swings. The culmination of the qualification period was a Design Certification Review held with Bigelow Aerospace May 27-28, 2009. The review presented the results of the qualification test program and documented the requirement verification process for the FPS. The review was passed and authority has been given to proceed with assembly of the flight hardware. The assembly of flight hardware began June 1, 2009 and will continue through the summer. The first flight ship-set should be completed in August of this year.

The Orion Propulsion "green propulsion" system provides environmental benefits through eliminating the need to launch into the atmosphere other highly toxic propellants such as hydrazine or nitrogen tetroxide, thus reducing weight and launch costs. It also creates a safer, cleaner work environment for humans on Earth and in space. In addition, it can be adapted for other uses including "roll control" for small launch vehicles and propulsion or attitude control on other space craft.

About Bigelow Aerospace

Bigelow Aerospace is dedicated to developing next-generation crewed space complexes to revolutionize space commerce and open up the final frontier to all of humanity. At Bigelow Aerospace, we're building the future today! For more information, visit www.bigelowaerospace.com.

About Orion Propulsion, Inc.

Orion Propulsion is a leading provider of reliable, affordable rocket propulsion systems and test infrastructure solutions to commercial and government organizations. Founded in 2004 by CEO Tim Pickens, Orion Propulsion specializes in rocket propulsion design and fabrication, engine testing services, ground support equipment, and launch operations support. Orion Propulsion is a woman-owned business, headquartered in Huntsville, AL. For more information, visit www.orionpropulsion.com.

Video: Unlikely Suns Reveals Improbable Planets

Brown Dwarf is a star so small—some are hardly more massive than a large planet—that it never lit up. Astronomers scarcely even bothered to look for planets around such runts. Yet they have now seen hints of mini solar systems forming around brown dwarfs and similarly unlikely objects.

Few if any astronomers expected the sheer diver­sity of planets beyond our solar system. The most extreme systems are those that orbit neutron stars, white dwarfs and brown dwarfs.
Neutron stars are born in supernova explosions, and planets orbiting them probably congealed from the debris. The bodies orbiting white dwarfs are the hardy survivors of the demise of a sunlike star. And brown dwarfs, themselves barely more massive than planets, nonetheless appear to be sites of planet formation.

Read Entire Article at Scientific American

NASA Return to Lunar Orbit Will Scout for Future Human Exploration

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launching this week, will set the stage for the planned U.S. return to the moon by surveying locations and resources

Atop an Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida sits the first step in what will surely be a long and arduous task for NASA—returning humans to the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, set to lift off this week, will orbit the moon in search of potential landing sites and useful resources, such as water ice, that would facilitate a long-term human presence.

For starters, LRO will improve maps of the moon, says astrophysicist John Keller of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., deputy project scientist for the $500-million mission. "A point I like to make about LRO," he says, "is that when it comes to the shape of the moon, we actually know the shape of Mars much better than we do of the moon." Three-dimensional laser-altimetry data taken by LRO will help to close that gap.

Planetary scientist David Kring, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, sounds a similar tone, noting that the orbiter "will be exploring regions of the moon that have been fuzzy or completely invisible to us in the past."

The satellite's polar orbit will allow it to focus on especially desirable regions for human activities. At the moon's poles, Keller explains, the fairly consistent low angle of the sun makes available essentially constant access to solar power and, potentially, stores of water frozen in permanently shadowed craters. (A companion spacecraft to LRO will seek out direct evidence of that water ice in October.)

Among the orbiter's seven scientific instruments is one with a distinctly human-focused assignment: The Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER). It will seek to characterize and assess the physiological effects of high-energy cosmic rays. Earth's inhabitants are largely protected from cosmic radiation by the planet's atmosphere and magnetic field, but long-term residents of the moon would be exposed to potential cellular and genetic damage without proper shielding.

CRaTER has cosmic-ray detectors separated by a material known as tissue-equivalent plastic. That plastic mimics how biological tissue absorbs radiation, and the LRO mission is the first time it will find use outside Earth's protective influence, Keller says. "By looking at the difference" between the radiation registered by the detectors, he explains, "you can say something about how much [energy] was deposited into that plastic."

The LRO mission springs from NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, the Bush-era plan to return humans to the moon by 2020 on board Ares rockets currently in development to replace the space shuttle, which retires next year. But while the lunar timeline and the Ares program are under scrutiny by a blue-ribbon panel of independent experts convened by the White House, the robotic precursor to human exploration continues apace.

Kring says that even given the uncertainties in the future of manned spaceflight in the U.S., the lunar orbiter is a mission whose time has come. "Not only is this the right time to launch LRO, the LRO spacecraft should be the first in a small fleet of missions that expand our horizons and, simultaneously, provide opportunities to enhance our nation's technological capabilities," he says.

Life May Extend Planet's 'Life'

Life May Extend Planet's 'Life': Billion-year Life Extension For Earth Also Doubles Odds Of Finding Life On Other Planets

Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear. Or maybe not quite so soon, researchers now say. (Credit: iStockphoto)

Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear.

Or maybe not quite so soon, say researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who have come up with a mechanism that doubles the future lifespan of the biosphere—while also increasing the chance that advanced life will be found elsewhere in the universe.

A paper describing their hypothesis was published June 1 in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Earth maintains its surface temperatures through the greenhouse effect. Although the planet's greenhouse gases—chiefly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane—have become the villain in global warming scenarios, they're crucial for a habitable world, because they act as an insulating blanket in the atmosphere that absorbs and radiates thermal radiation, keeping the surface comfortably warm.

As the sun has matured over the past 4.5 billion years, it has become both brighter and hotter, increasing the amount of solar radiation received by Earth, along with surface temperatures. Earth has coped by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thus reducing the warming effect. (Despite current concerns about rising carbon dioxide levels triggering detrimental climate change, the pressure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has dropped some 2,000-fold over the past 3.5 billion years; modern, man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide offset a fraction of this overall decrease.)

The problem, says Joseph L. Kirschvink, the Nico and Marilyn Van Wingen Professor of Geobiology at Caltech and a coauthor of the PNAS paper, is that "we're nearing the point where there's not enough carbon dioxide left to regulate temperatures following the same procedures."

Kirschvink and his collaborators Yuk L. Yung, a Caltech professor of planetary science, and graduate students King-Fai Li and Kaveh Pahlevan, say that the solution is to reduce substantially the total pressure of the atmosphere itself, by removing massive amounts of molecular nitrogen, the largely nonreactive gas that makes up about 78 percent of the atmosphere. This would regulate the surface temperatures and allow carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere, to support life, and could tack an additional 1.3 billion years onto Earth's expected lifespan.

In the "blanket" analogy for greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide would be represented by the cotton fibers making up the blanket. "The cotton weave may have holes, which allow heat to leak out," explains Li, the lead author of the paper.

"The size of the holes is controlled by pressure," Yung says. "Squeeze the blanket," by increasing the atmospheric pressure, "and the holes become smaller, so less heat can escape. With less pressure, the holes become larger, and more heat can escape," he says, helping the planet to shed the extra heat generated by a more luminous sun.

Strikingly, no external influence would be necessary to take nitrogen out of the air, the scientists say. Instead, the biosphere itself would accomplish this, because nitrogen is incorporated into the cells of organisms as they grow, and is buried with them when they die.

In fact, "This reduction of nitrogen is something that may already be happening," says Pahlevan, and that has occurred over the course of Earth's history. This suggests that Earth's atmospheric pressure may be lower now than it was earlier in the planet's history.

Proof of this hypothesis may come from other research groups that are examining the gas bubbles formed in ancient lavas to determine past atmospheric pressure: the maximum size of a forming bubble is constrained by the amount of atmospheric pressure, with higher pressures producing smaller bubbles, and vice versa.

If true, the mechanism also would potentially occur on any extrasolar planet with an atmosphere and a biosphere.

"Hopefully, in the future we will not only detect Earth-like planets around other stars but learn something about their atmospheres and the ambient pressures," Pahlevan says. "And if it turns out that older planets tend to have thinner atmospheres, it would be an indication that this process has some universality."

Adds Yung: "We can't wait for the experiment to occur on Earth. It would take too long. But if we study exoplanets, maybe we will see it. Maybe the experiment has already been done."

Increasing the lifespan of our biosphere—from roughly 1 billion to 2.3 billion years—has intriguing implications for the search for life elsewhere in the universe. The length of the existence of advanced life is a variable in the Drake equation, astronomer Frank Drake's famous formula for estimating the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy. Doubling the duration of Earth's biosphere effectively doubles the odds that intelligent life will be found elsewhere in the galaxy.

"It didn't take very long to produce life on the planet, but it takes a very long time to develop advanced life," says Yung. On Earth, this process took four billion years. "Adding an additional billion years gives us more time to develop, and more time to encounter advanced civilizations, whose own existence might be prolonged by this mechanism. It gives us a chance to meet."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090612203303.htm

Moon Magic: New Tool To Visualize Past, Future Lunar Eclipses

The top row of images is comprised of digital photographs taken from Troy, N.Y. of the Feb. 21, 2008 lunar eclipse. The bottom row of images is comprised of computer simulations rendered by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (Credit: Image courtesy of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Lunar eclipses are well-documented throughout human history. The rare and breathtaking phenomena, which occur when the moon passes into the Earth’s shadow and seemingly changes shape, color, or disappears from the night sky completely, caught the attention of poets, farmers, leaders, and scientists alike.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method for using computer graphics to simulate and render an accurate visualization of a lunar eclipse. The model uses celestial geometry of the sun, Earth, and moon, along with data for the Earth’s atmosphere and the moon’s peculiar optical properties to create picture-perfect images of lunar eclipses.

The computer-generated images, which are virtually indistinguishable from actual photos of eclipses, offer a chance to look back into history at famous eclipses, or peek at future eclipses scheduled to occur in the coming years and decades. The model can also be configured to show how the eclipse would appear from any geographical perspective on Earth — the same eclipse would look different depending if the viewer was in New York, Seattle, or Rome.

“Other researchers have rendered the night sky, the moon, and sunsets, but this is the first time anyone has rendered lunar eclipses,” said Barbara Cutler, assistant professor of computer science at Rensselaer, who supervised the study. “Our models may help with investigations into historical atmospheric phenomena, and they could also be of interest to artists looking to add this special effect to their toolbox.”

Graduate student Theodore C. Yapo presented the study, titled “Rendering Lunar Eclipses,” in late May at the Graphics Interface 2009 conference.

The appearance of lunar eclipses can vary considerably, ranging from nearly invisible jet black to deep red, rust, to bright copper-red or orange. The appearance depends on several different factors, including how sunlight is refracted and scattered in the Earth’s atmosphere. Yapo and Cutler combined and configured models for sunlight, the solar system, as well as the different layers and different effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, to develop their lunar eclipse models.

For the study, Yapo and Cutler compared digital photos of the Feb. 21, 2008, total lunar eclipse with computer-rendered models of the same eclipse. The rendered images were nearly indistinguishable from the photos.

Another model they created was a rendering of the expected 2010 lunar eclipse. Yapo said he looks forward to taking photographs of the event and comparing them to the renderings. One potential hiccup, he said, is the April eruption of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska – volcanic dust in the Earth’s stratosphere can make a lunar eclipse noticeably darker and more brown. Yapo and Cutler’s models can account for this dust, but they performed their simulation prior to the eruption, and assumed a low-dust atmosphere.

The research paper can be viewed at:
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/graphics/eclipse_gi09/

For more information on Cutler’s computer graphics research, visit: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~cutler/

New Cleaning Protocol For Future 'Search For Life' Missions

Testing of next generation rovers onboard the Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition. This "Cliffbot" rover is being designed to sample rock outcrops on Mars and the Moon where scientifically relevant samples are easier to access. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Kvell Ove Storvik, Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE). Rover courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.)

Scientists have developed a new cleaning protocol for space hardware, such as the scoops of Mars rovers, which could be used on future "Search for Life" missions on other planets.

The new protocol was developed as part of a project to investigate life that exists in extreme Arctic environments, which are the closest analogue we have on Earth to the surface of Mars. The studies are also designed to help guide future NASA and ESA planetary missions.

Published in the journal Astrobiology, the decontamination protocol was developed and tested by scientists at the University of Leeds and NASA. It deals with the dilemma known as 'forward contamination' - ensuring that bugs from Earth don't hitch a ride across space and jeopardise the integrity of samples collected by rovers.

The decontamination protocol involves a cocktail of chemicals that were applied and tested on various sampling devices, including a glacial ice core drill and a rover scoop.

"We are trying to avoid a case of mistaken identity," says Professor Liane Benning, a biogeochemist from the University of Leeds and co-author of the paper.

"We know that on Mars, if present, any biological signatures will be extremely scarce. Therefore it is essential that we are able to minimise 'background noise' and to document just how clean our sampling devices really are before we use them," she adds.

"We are now able to fully decontaminate sampling devices in the lab and field to null levels of detectable organic biosignatures, before any samples are collected. Importantly, this new procedure doesn't just sterilise, but it also cleans off any trace organic molecules of dead organisms," says Professor Benning.

The work was carried out as part of the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expeditions (AMASE) which uses Svalbard (a set of islands in the Arctic ocean at 74-80˚N) as an international test site for NASA and ESA "Search for Life" instrumentation scheduled to fly on future Mars missions.

Svalbard is an excellent terrestrial analogue environment to Mars as life is scarce and it has a similar geology and many pristine glaciers.

"This work also enabled recent habitability and biomarker preservation studies in the extreme glacial settings of Svalbard. In addition, this work will guide future planetary missions, especially those to icy regions in the Solar System, such as Mars, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn (Europa and Enceladus) where we are interested in understanding the potential habitats of cold-loving organisms living in ice," says Dr Jennifer Eigenbrode, NASA research scientist.

This work was carried out during the 2005 and 2006 field seasons of AMASE and was funded by a NASA ASTEP award to co-author Andrew Steele at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and grants from the Earth and Biosphere Institute at the University of Leeds to Liane G. Benning.

What Comes After Hubble?

The James Webb Telescope's beryllium mirrors are designed to warp in the cold of space

Full-scale model of James Webb Space Telescope, on display in Munich: The model weighs 12,000 pounds. EADS Astrium

As NASA prepares for the launch of the last Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission next week, astronomers are already anticipating the construction and 2013 launch of the beloved observatory's successor.

In the coming weeks, engineers will wrap up testing the segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's newest space-bound observatory. Like astronomer Allan Sandage, it will pick up where Hubble left off -- by studying the redshifted galaxies speeding away from us, in an attempt to understand the nature of the accelerating universe and its origins.

"We generally refer to the James Webb Space Telescope as a successor for Hubble. It's not really a replacement for Hubble; it's intended to take the next, deeper look into the universe," said John Decker, deputy project manager for the James Webb project, based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

But like any proud parent, Decker had to do a little bragging: "The images that we will see will be very much like the Hubble images, only better," he said.

The scope was conceived, designed and executed with an aim at ingenuity. Among JWST's engineering feats are the space umbrella that will unfurl to keep the scope cool once it reaches its outpost a million miles from Earth, and the design of its primary mirror, which will contain 18 segments that come together somewhat like the eye of a fly.

When the pieces are put together, Webb's primary mirror will be 6.5 meters wide, about three times the size of Hubble's. If engineers used Hubble-esque materials to make JWST, the scope would weigh 10 times what Hubble does -- way too much to get off the ground.

"It would be like trying to launch Palo Alto into space. You wouldn't want to do that," said Scott Texter, telescope manager for Northrop Grumman, which is NASA's main contractor on JWST.

So how to make a lighter, yet light-receptive mirror? Scientists turned to beryllium, a space-worthy material that's as hard to find on Earth as it is in the heavens.

Beryllium Mirror: NASA

Beryllium, a relatively rare, light element, is formed by collisions of carbon and oxygen atoms in the space between stars. Sometimes, this interstellar billiard action will break up atomic nuclei into the lighter elements lithium, beryllium, and boron. On Earth, beryllium is found inside emeralds; it's produced for industrial use through chemical reactions. The JWST team chose beryllium primarily because it remains stable even at incredibly cold temperatures. The mirrors will be coated with gold to increase their infrared capability.

The first few segments just finished an arduous cold-testing process at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. After chilling the segments to -414 degrees Fahrenheit using a helium-cooled vacuum chamber, engineers examined the pieces to determine how they changed shape.

"It's a different shape when it's at a very, very cold temperature -- but that's the shape that matters," Decker said.

Engineers mess with the mirrors a tiny bit to make them correctly shaped in the cold -- meaning they will be ever-so-slightly warped at room temperature.

Uh-oh. A warped mirror on a space telescope?

Texter said not to worry. Hubble's famous mirror flaw came from misshapen measuring tools, and what's more, the decision was made not to test that telescope as a whole before sending it into orbit.

"That decision was a bad decision. But we're not doing that on this telescope. We're doing multiple end-to-end tests," Texter said.

Incidentally, the corrective mirror that fixed Hubble's eyesight will be removed next week as part of a facelift that should allow the telescope to continue sending cosmic postcards home for another five years, enough time to overlap with JWST. But no matter how many surgeries it's had, Hubble won't compare to its younger kin.

Hubble is designed to look at relatively close objects. But the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate -- the farther away objects are, the more quickly they are receding from us. And for many reasons, those are the objects we'd most like to study.

The light from those objects has been stretched into the infrared part of the light spectrum, a phenomenon known as red-shifting. Webb is designed to see infrared light much more clearly than Hubble. It will see light that left its source about 12 billion years ago, the "springtime of the universe," when the very first clumps of stars started forming the earliest dwarf galaxies.

Texter compared it to paleontology.

"Paleontologists dig down into the ground, and the deeper they dig, the further they go back in time. Astronomy is kind of like that. The further you look, the further back they are," he said. "The state of astronomy today is that we have a pretty good understanding of how the universe has evolved within the last 5-ish billion years, and ironically, we actually have a pretty good understanding of how the universe came to be ... but we don't have a very good idea for how things evolved from the moment of the Big Bang and more recent history. That's the mission of James Webb, to bridge that gap in our understanding of the very