Tag Archives: humans

Somewhat closer to home

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Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, thinks humanity should stop neglecting the space environment much closer to Earth.

The United States dropped most of its test flights in the stratosphere and suborbital space after figuring out how to send humans to low-Earth orbit and the moon, said Armstrong, who stepped onto the lunar surface during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. He thinks it’s time for that to change.

“In the suborbital area, there are a lot of things to be done,” Armstrong said here Monday (Feb. 27) during a presentation at the 2012 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC-2012). “This is an area that has been essentially absent for about four decades, since the X-15 finished its job.”

The X-15 was a rocket plane that took to the skies 199 times between 1959 and 1968, setting numerous speed and altitude records along the way. Armstrong was at the controls for some of those flights; before becoming an astronaut in 1962, the moonwalker was a test pilot for NASA and its predecessor institution, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

The test flights of the X-15 and other experimental craft of the era helped pave the way for future vehicles, such as NASA’s iconic space shuttle. Further investigation and exploitation of suborbital space — this time led not by the government but by private industry — could provide more technological and economic benefits to the country, Armstrong said. … (SPACE.com)

Into the real world

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NASA’s chief climate scientist James E. Hansen built his career studying Earth’s atmosphere and modeling humans’ potential impacts on climate. Then he realized that laboratory work wasn’t enough. Hansen never thought his decision to study atmospheric models would lead to his arrest. But there he was in handcuffs this summer, protesting at the White House against a pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico.

It wasn’t the first arrest, either. Hansen, who has directed NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 31 years, earned the sobriquet “father of global warming” after testifying before Congress in 1988 on the dangers of global warming. He appeared again in 1989. Then he quietly returned to his work, turning aside television and media requests for the next 15 years because, as he said, “you have no time to do the science if you’re talking to the media.” … (Universe Today)

White colored home stretch

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  • The Milky Way is redder than most spiral galaxies, but when combined with its blue arms, its overall color is white.
  • Our galaxy is very typical in terms of the type and number of its stars, research shows.
  • The Milky Way’s overall color is about the shade of white halfway between an incandescent light bulb and the standard spectrum white on a TV.

Turns out the Milky Way is aptly named, with the overall color of our galaxy resembling the shade of fine-grained spring snow in early morning light.

Splitting the light into its component wavelengths, however, reveals a redder-than-average color for the Milky Way’s core, and sky-blue spiral arms.

The portrait, pieced together from 1,000 similar galaxies culled from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, shows the Milky Way as it would appear from perspective of another galaxy, albeit one whose inhabitants have vision similar to humans. …(Discovery)

Cold Fusion Claptrap

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Voyager 1 is now leaving solar system, making it the first manmade probe to enter interstellar space. That’s quite an achievement, and it only took 30+ years. But if we’re going to get serious about boldly going where no man has gone before, and send humans beyond the solar system, we’re gonna need a cheap and plentiful energy source to help us get there.

Exactly how much energy are we talking about? Well, back in January, a paper appeared on the arXiv by Marc Millis, a former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, calculating the costs — in terms of energy — of a truly interstellar manned space mission. And it wasn’t good news.

For one scenario, he assumed a 500-person space ship on a one-way trip to establish a human colony on some distant exoplanet. That would require an exajoule of energy, or 1018 J, i.e., just about the same amount of energy consumed by everyone on Earth in one year.

An unmanned mission to Alpha Centauri would be even more of an energy hog, because of the need for more complicated maneuvers (deceleration, etc). That would require 1018 J. Millis figures we won’t have the ability to generate that kind of energy until 2200 for the passenger ship, and 2500 for the unmanned probe. … (Discovery)

Don’t have kids in space – yet

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Building a spaceship to visit another star is hard enough, but keeping the humans onboard alive for the ride may be even harder, space experts said Friday (Sept. 30) in a symposium dedicated to interstellar travel.

A trip to even one of the closest stars would take decades and possibly hundreds of years, likely spanning multiple generations. But scientists aren’t even sure humans can procreate safely in the microgravity of space.

“It is still unknown, if you want kids and you want reproduction, what gravity has to do with successful development,” MIT researcher Dan Buckland said here at the 100-Year Starship Symposium, a conference sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to discuss technologies and strategies needed for planning a mission to another star.

So far, humans haven’t managed to send a probe beyond even our own solar system, let alone to the nearest star more than 4 light-years away. A light-year, the distance light travels in a single year, is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).

“The distances to the stars at vast,” said biologist Athena Andreadis of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “Large starships will have to be self-sustainable. We don’t have such technology yet.”

Unless scientists can invent a practical method of simulating gravity on a spacecraft, an interstellar journey would be spent in weightlessness. Over time, microgravity ravages the body, decreasing blood volume, atrophying muscles, diminishing bone mineral content and impairing vision. … (SPACE.com)

Empty ISS?

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Like the Mary Celeste, the International Space Station (ISS) could be floating empty, devoid of humans by November. However, unlike the Mary Celeste, we’ll know exactly what happened to the crew.

In the wake of the Russian Progress vehicle crash shortly after launch on Aug. 24, a chain of events has been set into motion that could result in the decision not to fly astronauts into orbit. If this happens, the ISS will be temporarily mothballed before the end of the year to avoid landing astronauts during the harsh Kazakh winter. … (Discovery)

Do the ISS Wave

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ISS Wave is a round-the-world wave to the humans aboard the International Space Station (ISS) by their fellow humans on the Earth – choreographed by a grassroots Twitter campaign (@ISSwave).

ISS Wave will take place 24-31 December, 2010. Join us in this expression of human solidarity during the holidays by following these simple steps:
1. Plan your wave

The International Space Station has been orbiting the Earth over 15 times a day for more than ten years. Although it is about 390 km high, we can still see it from the Earth, thanks to the Sun reflecting off the solar arrays. There are various ways you can work out when it will be possible to see it from where you are, including Heavens Above, Twisst, NASA, ESA and Over Twitter. You might also check your local weather forecast. The ISS is bright, but not bright enough to be seen through the clouds!

If pass timings and/or weather conditions don’t work out for you, please still wave and share your wave (see below). You don’t have to be able to see the ISS to know it’s passing overhead. On Heavens Above, you can see all passes — visible and invisible — by clicking “All passes of the ISS”.
2. Invite tweeps, friends and family

Of course you can wave alone (the whole point is that you’re not alone, after all!), but why not invite tweeps, friends and family to wave with you? There are some good festive group waving opportunities including bright passes over the US East Coast, the UK and Europe on New Year’s Eve. Host your own ISS Wave Tweetup or just recruit your fellow revelers wherever you may be to come outside and wave!
3. Tweet* your wave

The point of ISS Wave is to express solidarity with our fellow humans on Earth and aboard the ISS. Make sure your wave is registered on our map for all to see by posting a tweet in the following format (not including the brackets):

[any text] #ISSwave [zip/postal code OR city] [country name or three letter code]

“[any text]” may include thoughts, holiday wishes, photos, videos, etc. It’s important that the last three elements of your tweet are the hashtag, location and country otherwise our map might not recognise your tweet! Double check the text of your tweet before posting by entering it in the box at the bottom of the map page.

*Not on Twitter? Not a problem! Share your wave with us by email and we’ll tweet it for you. Please use subject line “ISS Wave Tweet” and include the following in the body of your email:

* #ISSwave
* postal/zip code OR city
* country
* (optional) notes, thoughts, holiday wishes, and photos or videos of your wave (as attachments)

And remember, this is for Twitter, so all this needs to be 140 characters or less! (ISS Wave)