Although microgravity is not exactly the greatest place to sustain an injury (unless you are a dangerous microbe), many scientists are exploring new ways of conducting surgery in a weightless environment.
While a space doctor will be needed to help mend the wounds of astronauts, they may choose to use lasers to seal the wound instead of medical stitches.
Since regular earthly stitches are composed of synthetic material and catgut, scientists may prefer using lasers as it would translate into one less item to pack (as well as one less requirement for a future space doctor).
(SpaceX) What this would mean for taxpayers and high tech jobs in the United States is very significant. Let's consider the default plan under way, which expects that our country will use the Russian Soyuz at the currently negotiated price of $47 million per seat for the period between Shuttle retirement (2010) and Ares/Orion reaching Space Station (2016). Even assuming that we drop the number of US astronauts going to Station from the current 30 per year with Shuttle down to 14 per year, the cost will be approximately $3.3 billion. However, there is also a human cost in the thousands of jobs that the money could have supported back home.
In contrast, F9/Dragon would cost less than $20M per seat and it is 100% manufactured and launched in the United States. We are estimating that it would create well in excess of a 1000 high quality jobs at Cape Canaveral and an equivalent number in California and Texas, where we do our manufacturing and testing. Moreover, the total cost would only be $1.5B, so taxpayers would save nearly $2B. [...]
COTS Capability D can be completed within two years from date of funds receipt. In fact, with a little extra money and some modifications to the plan, it can be accelerated even further.
Since COTS Capability D is an existing option in an already competed contract, NASA could exercise it right away, resulting in immediate job creation. [...]
If you think this makes sense, please contact your representatives in the House and Senate, as well as Rep. Mollohan and Senator Mikulski who lead the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittees. Please encourage them to fund NASA Exploration in the Stimulus Bill and provide the $300M in funding necessary to begin COTS Capability D.
While the public may not be a fan of spending even more tax dollars for the private sector (note: this author is not), Congress should probably fund the COTS-d program (as outsourcing to Russia does not sound like a great idea).
SpaceX has even provided a video, in order to help inspire Americans to support a home grown NewSpace company.
Note: In order to help kick off this recap (no future pun intended) I decided to embed this video from Hulu YouTube highlighting the best space geek commercial ever played on the super bowl.
Articles readers of this site may be interested include:
Alexander Declama of Potentia Tenebras Repellendi highlights NASA's new chariot rover which will enable astronauts to freely roam the lunar surface (without fear of running low on supplies).
David Portree from Altair VI discusses how NASA could power moon bases throughout the long lunar night via flywheels (which would store energy collected during the day from solar). Beaming energy from Earth to the Moon is also discussed.
Riding with robots creates a video tribute to our mechanical friends who have scouted the solar system on our behalf (note: hopefully their scanners and wheel prints will be followed up by boots).
Before to read the rest of the entries from two weeks ago (as there is a lot of great content mentioned!).
Be sure to read the rest of the articles from the Carnival of Space, and if you would like to have your article featured be sure to visit Universe Today for details on how to enter.
Although our species has mastered the art of landingrovers upon the Martian surface, we have yet to develop a fast way to transport astronauts from Earth to Mars (assuming we can figure out how to safely land humans upon the crimson soil).
While some "feasible" technology may be able to shorten the overall trip to under 40 days, Moacir L. Ferreira Jr. is proposing that a rocket could potentially do it within 72 hours with the help of his CrossFire Fusor reactor.
(CrossFire Fusor) The CrossFire Fusor relies on magnetic fields for confining radially charged particles and relies on electric fields for trapping longitudinally them. It also relies on electric fields for accelerating the charged particles for reaching great kinetic energy of about 600KeV (7 billion°C) at inexpressive energy consumption.
The CrossFire Fusor is the first nuclear fusion reactor designed for achieving a true three-dimensional confinement plus a three-dimensional charged particles injection, and for having an adequate escape mechanism for the charged products of nuclear fusion thrusting a spacecraft. It also is the first, among the non-neutral plasma reactors, that can confine a plasma in a quasi-neutral state solving the saturation problem.
The CrossFire Fusor also is the first designed for having great flexibility for confining and fusing charged particles comprising positive and negative ions from neutronic and aneutronic fuels. The nuclear fusion fuel can be composed of several light atomic nuclei like hydrogen, deuterium, tritium, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, in special boron hydrides and helium-3.
The CrossFire Fusor also is the first providing a method for converting energy of charged products from aneutronic nuclear fusion directly to electricity by neutralization process, that can reach an efficiency exceeding 95%, and it is the first to present a power supply system with a concept of multidirectional energy flow.
While the technology itself looks promising, we may not see this type of rocket available until 2020 (as nuclear fusion has yet to be perfected).
Either way, if Ferreira's reactor is not used for interplanetary travel to Mars, it may have a future in keeping the lights on for future settlers of Ganymede, Callisto and beyond.
Whether or not we head to the asteroid belt before Mars, one thing is clear--while we may have the means to land upon and (hopefully) sift the metal from "the rubble" (or useless rocky material), we probably will be unable to inexpensively melt the metals on site.
Even though lasers are always an option, future colonists may not be too thrilled with using extra power to melt down the space metals, as that would only add to the overall cost of shipping the material elsewhere.
While some may be content to pass the cost onto the customer, it may be cheaper (and wiser) to ship the metals to the red planet in order to have the metals melted down via Martian sunlight.
Since Martian sunlight operates at half the strength of Earth's, the solar furnace would probably have to be slightly altered to achieve the same strength as its bluer big brother.
Although some may suggest that the future asteroid mining industry could simply ship the metals to Earth, it may be wiser to divert the route towards Mars, as the red planet orbits about 100 million kilometers closer (at Aphelion) than Earth.
Martian colonists would also have the advantage of utilizing the crimson worlds two orbiting moons, allowing mining fleets to melt their metals upon either Phobos or Deimos without having to land on the Martian surface (which has a fairly steep gravity well).
Either way, Mars may play a critical role in our quest to colonize the solar system (which may make it a prime spot for future real estate).
After successfully launching their Falcon 1 rocket, SpaceX is aiming at not only sending cargo and crew to the International Space Station, but also potentially landing people on the Moon by the next decade.
Click on the image below to watch.
Note: Did any of you catch the reference to Mars? :-)
I was saddened to hear about Jim Benson's passing away recently, who founded SpaceDev (and later on Benson Space which dissolved due to his health situation).
While Jim Benson will be missed by all (mostly his close friends and family), I think its best to remember the man for who he was--a passionate advocate for expanding our species to other worlds.
After threepreviouslaunches that ended prematurely, it looks as if SpaceX has finally launched their Falcon 1 rocket, setting a stage for NewSpace (aka the private space sector) and more importantly humanity.
Here is a link (windows media player) to the video for those of you who might have missed the launch. an image of the Falcon rocket at liftoff.
Update: Some are saying that the video is linking to the second launch. I will see if I can hunt down a video towards the fourth launch (as SpaceX has yet to post an official video of the launch an official video of the launch in their gallery section).
Update 2: Clark via Space Transport News has found a video of the launch via YouTube! :-)
As any government official can tell you, creating and maintaining roads in a community can be quite expensive.
The problem only becomes much worse when one considers creating them off world, especially if humanity decides to build thriving colonies. These future space settlements will need a dependable transportation system in order to move goods around their respective globes.
(Israel 21st Century) Invented by the US military in the 70s, the continued innovation behind PRS's soil stabilization honeycombs is very much Israeli. Now used as a soil stabilizer in Siberia to help truckers get to isolated tracts of land, or in landscaping to prevent soil erosion, the high-tech honeycombed sheets, called the Neoweb Cellular Confinement System is "beyond clean technology," says Yitzchak Schary, documentation manager for Tel Aviv-based PRS.
Schary, who's consulted for Israel's Environmental Protection Ministry on Sustainable Development, speaks with ISRAEL21c about the innovation. Represented in 40 countries, the company's product is "actually low-tech, high tech and cleantech all in one," he says. "Although the product is fairly dry, it's a soil stabilization solution for civil engineering projects, and inherently sustainable."
Developed as an advanced polymer, Neoweb can be laid out on land, and then filled with local soil, or recycled materials to form a road, or as infrastructure for landscape architects.
Although adaptations will obviously have to be made to adapt this technology towards the vacuum of space and Martian weather, the technique behind it could be duplicated on both Luna (aka the Moon) and the red planet.
Colonists can use these "honey combs" to create and maintain roads inexpensively, which will help reduce the overall cost of building large settlements off world.
As far as the Moon goes, they could then melt down the top layer via microwaves in order to insure that rovers do not kick up too much lunar dust into the vacuum of space (which could become a hassle for travelers behind them).
While acquiring soil on Mars should be relatively easy (thanks in part to its thin atmosphere), Moon settlers will probably have to use lunar vacuum cleaners or soil acquired from innovative "air" drilling in order to help create various highways for rovers to travel upon.
This will enable outposts located at various locations around both the Moon and Mars to remain interconnected with each other, allowing them to thrive thousands (or millions) of kilometers away from Earth (without the sense of feeling isolated from the rest of the global community).
Regardless whether one intends to dwell upon a dusty world, or an icy one, living on another planet, moon, or dwarf planet is going to require energy. Without a dependable power source, off world settlements will become nothing but fantasy, regulated to the imaginations of Star Wars, Star Trek and Serenity.
While a few worlds such as Mercury, Luna (aka the Moon) and Saturn's Titan are blessed with an abundance of energy in the form of solar energy, helium-3 and methane-ethane lakes, respectively, most of the other spheres that dance around the sun (or their respective planets) seem to lack an ample supply of energy.
Without an lush supply of energy nearby, colonists living on other worlds will be forced to import energy from abroad, making these outposts not only expensive, but also small (as increased energy demand may make large cities unreasonable).
In order for our species to truly create independent colonies elsewhere, we may have to drill down beneath the soil in order to acquire the neccessary energy to power our future interplanetary cities.
Despite the fact that this technology is a little over a century old, geothermal energy has the potential to not only power our own home world, but the other globes that "roam" the vacuum of space as well.
For those unfamiliar with the technology, a geothermal power plant basically uses heat from the Earth's core to turn water (or a "watery mix") pumped from above into steam. This steam in turn spins the turbine engines, creating electricity for nearby communities to use.
While the technology may not be as glamorous as solar power satellites, it does have the potential of fueling our energy dependent world.
(Video: Scientists explaining how geothermal energy works, as well as its potential. Credit:Google.org)
While this technology is promising, one may wonder whether or not this technology would be feasible off world. After all, in order for geothermal power to have any relevance, it would have to reside on a world that is not only somewhat geologically active, but also contains water (or another liquid substitute) to turn the turbine engines.
Fortunately for our species, it seems that most of the worlds in our solar system seem to be blessed with both.
Mars
Upon first glance, the surface of the red planet appears to be (for lack of a better word) dead. While boasting the largest volcanoes in our solar system, the crimson globe apparently changes little, aside from a "global-cane" that covers the surface every six (earthen) years.
Despite its passive appearance, the Martian depths may be more active than we think beneath the surface, as evidenced by its semi-active core that seems to be generating a "lumpy magnetic field" that barely pops up above the surface (in some spots).
(Image: Artistic drawing of Martian geysers, Credit: Arizona State University / Ron Miller)
Mars also is known to host geysers in its southern pole, which may indicate that the red planet may a lot warmer underneath than we can imagine. Combined with the abundance of water, Mars may become fertile ground for future geothermal power plants.
Ganymede
With its parent world orbiting almost 780 million kilometers away from the Sun, solar power is not an option for any future colony settling on Jupiter's largest moon.
Boasting a global magnetic field which is ironically three times larger than the planet Mercury, a future outpost on Ganymede may be a prime candidate for a geothermal plant.
While future "Jupiterans" would have to live within "aquarium houses" in order to survive the intense radiation surrounding the moon, their ability to "tap" into the Jovian moons center, providing enough energy to turn this frozen globe into a second Earth.
Saturn's Icy Moons
Despite its size, the tiny ice world of Enceladus contains geysers that are spewing icy crystals above its surface.
While scientists remain baffled on how such a tiny world can contain a core warm enough to produce geysers on top, this tiny world could become a prime candidate for a geothermal power plant (by tapping into the "warm crevices" beneath).
(Video: NASA highlighting geysers discovered on Enceladus, Credit: NASA, via Windows to the Universe)
But Enceladus is not the only ice world orbiting Saturn with geysers. Last year scientists discovered that both Tethys and Dione are also spewing ice particles into space, which may hint toward a warmer than anticipated core underneath.
Triton
Often known for its retrograde orbit around Neptune, Triton may become a major settlement in the future by harvesting helium-3 from the atmosphere of its paternal planet.
But before colonists can exploit the blue gas giant for profit, they will need to find a way to acquire energy upon that frozen world. Fortunately, Neptune's "favorite son" does boast nitrogen geysers, whose erupting pressure may help keep an advance turbine engine spinning (thus keeping "the lights on" for a future colony.
Charon
While the debate rages on whether or not its "bigger brother" can join the planet club, scientists suspect that Pluto's moon Charon may also have geysers on its surface, which could point towards a warmer core underneath.
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Even though off world colonies will probably have to adjust their technology in order to make geothermal power plants feasible (perhaps by using the geyser pressure from the worlds to turn the turbine engines instead of simply using steam heat), future settlements may consider it more reasonable to power their cities from energy below, rather than importing it from afar.
With NASA preparing to establish a lunar outpost upon Earth's nearest neighbor, there have been various proposals on how to house the astronauts upon the Moon.
Here is a video by Architecture and Vision on what they envision NASA's first Lunar will look like.
While NASA has yet to indicate whether they are in favor of roaming space bases, or one that remains stationary, one design element seems to be clear--inflatable lunar bases seem to be gaining favor with the space agency (which is probably good news for companies like Architexture and Vision and Bigelow Aerospace).
Last year, FedEx launched a humerous Superbowl commercial, joking about how the company was willing to service businesses located anywhere--even on the Moon.
Even though FedEx currently has no plans to service companies located off world, about 14 teams are determined to send their little robots across the lunar surface in order to claim the multimillion dollar prize offered by Google.
While many of the teams hope to secure the "purse prize," in the hopes of attracting future investments (not to mention media attention), one contestant from Romania may find itself in a lucrative position of helping to send small packages inexpensively towards the lunar surface.
After all, if NASA is going to establish lunar bases (not to mention China and Japan), then these companies may be interested in positioning themselves as the primary carrier for delivering Lunar packages.
Despite the fact that other spaceports exist in the United States (such as Oklahoma, Virginia and of course, Florida), Spaceport America has captured the media's attention, with thanks in part to Virgin Galactic's ability to market itself to "the masses."
Now it looks as if Spaceport America has taken some of Virgin Galactic's "flare," as they have revamped their website in order to make it more attractive.
(Video: A brief tour through what the upcoming Spaceport America will look like. Credit:Spaceport America)
The revamped Spaceport America site hosts many features, including a press release section (for the media) and a weblog (for the geeks).
Creating a fancy website is a great way to attract (and keep) the attention of those curious about traveling "beyond the black," especially children (who may end up building homes on other worlds).
That's it for this week's Carnival of Space. Stay tuned for the next Carnival, and if you would like to have your article featured next week, be sure to visit Universe Today for more details.
NASA has released another video highlighting their Constellation mission, which features new space suits that will protect them as they venture upon the lunar surface.
While alternatives have been proposed (such as the Direct Launcher), none have been able to make it beyond the "powerpoint stage" and into reality. Despite the criticisms, NASA is assuring everyone that the Ares I rocket is fine, and will fly towards the heavnes with its bigger brother Ares V.
If successful NASA plans on establishing a few lunar outposts which will hopefully spark humanities interest in retaking the stars (not to mention colonizing every planet, moon and dwarf planet along the way).
Not content at watching NASA and China claim the stars for themselves, it looks as if the European Space Agency (or ESA) is seriously considering sending their own representatives to visit the surfaces of both the Moon and Mars.
(Video: ESA promoting both humans and robots for space missions. Credit:ESA)
While their recent attempts at recruiting astronauts is a start, the Europeans need to figure out a way of launching their own citizens into space.
If Europe is to inherit the vast wealth our solar system has to offer our planet, then they seriously need to consider adding humans to the equation lest they find themselves looking to the past for their glory, instead of the future.
While the site (and sound) of rockets is beautiful on Earth, it would be even more glorious to have that rocket launch lunar side (perhaps towards the asteroid belt, or even Mars).
Thanks for reading, and for those of you seeking to join the brave souls publishing their thoughts about humanities quest to wander the stars, you can find more information by visiting Universe Today.
Mars is cold. It's unbelievably cold. In order for future colonists to avoid freezing to death (as well as their machines), they are going to need a source of energy to provide heat.
While innovativesolar power may be able to help keep a small outpost alive, it will probably not be able to power large settlements.
Even though nuclear power plants have proven their worth as far as energy goes, Earthly politics may prevent them from being used on Mars, as launching anything nuclear has the side affect of making a million minds nervous.
In order to establish thriving cities upon the pink deserts of Mars, future colonists may have to turn towards algae in order to keep their cities (and rovers) alive.
(Haaretz.com) "I am constantly dumbfounded by this plant. This little thing is the baseline for the production of oxygen in the world; it knows how to use carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen. It amazes me that despite this, algae are not given enough respect, and instead are treated like green slime." [...]
Berzin, the founder of GreenFuel Technologies - a U.S. company that produces green fuel from algae - discovered that "green slime" contains one of the keys to the alternative fuel the world is seeking. His company is the first ever to develop and produce biofuels from algae that are bred on gases emitted by power plants. It might sound like some sort of magic trick to put algae, CO2 and sunlight into a box and come out with fuel, but Berzin did it.
The fuel from these algae may not only help to keep the lights on within future Martian cities, but also enable them to develop faster (human driven) rovers, as the solar powered ones on Mars are definitely lacking in the speed department.
Since Mars has plenty of CO2 within its atmosphere, future colonists could easily pull this gas from the Martian environment, as well as from "the nostrils" of humans and pigs (after they exhale that is).
Mars also has no shortage of water, and while it will have to be heavily filtered, it could be more than enough to satisfy the thirst of these terrestrial algae.
While NASA plans on finding ways for us to "recycle our air," Russia is trying to find the perfect balance for a breathable atmosphere on board a future Martian spacecraft.
(Universe Today) Volunteers in Russia are testing the ability of humans to breathe argon-enriched air, as part of a research program that simulates a manned trip to Mars. Researchers want to know if humans can survive breathing air similar to that found on Mars. Of the experiment one Russian scientist said, "Our experiments show that argon combined with the right portion of oxygen is safe for humans. I tested it on myself and I'm OK, and volunteers are also doing fine."
Despite the fact that argon is apart of the Martian atmosphere, some may wonder why the scientists chose that over nitrogen, since their is more nitrogen than argon on the red planet.
The answer lies with the fact that argon is a lot safer than nitrogen, as the latter has the potential to bond with oxygen (via static heat), which can form Nitric Oxide--or even worse, Nitrogen Dioxide), which can be fetal towards humans.
Argon on the other hand is not only non-toxic, but it can resist bonding with other elements (as it is more stable) giving future astronauts fewer headaches to worry about.
This makes Argon the perfect "filler gas" (as pure oxygen is too dangerous), and this experiment may make it possible for humans to one day visit, and perhaps live on Mars.
Congrats to Brian Turner for presenting the concept in a humerous, yet understandable manner (although it appears as if O'Brien did his homework regarding the space elevator). Note: The Kansas City Space Pirates are looking for a few good sponsors, so if you have deep pockets (or just feel like helping them out) feel free to invest in their project.
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