Jonfliesgoats

Satellite internet also has some big implications regarding the ability to disrupt and censor internet access in repressive areas. Granted signals can be jammed, but more information access seems to be on the horizon, making ti more difficult for your local strong man to filter your search results. There are some unique surveillance opportunities with this too.

Congratulations, Japan, with your Epsilon rocket. It's also a better looking rocket than, say, the New Shepherd system.

This is a very, very cool thread!

I love the Canaries!

That's a handy write-up!

Dry erase boards are in briefing rooms and are pretty common these days. Chalkboards are disappearing. They make me feel more academic. Seriously. Holding chalk makes me feel more intelligent. As soon as I realize this newfound sense of self satisfaction comes from holding chalk in my hand I immediately feel stupid. And I should. I am still embarrassed that those thoughts even cross my mind.

For high school and some college students, you may not be aware that real space research and development is happening closer to you than you think. What aerospace research and development is happening near you? University of Wisconsin-Madison (Yay! Babcock icecream! Free Zoo!) http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/ Tennessee http://mabe.utk.edu/research/ Southampton, UK http://www.southampton.ac.uk/engineering/undergraduate/courses/aerospace_list.page

I think they experimented with this, sort of, on Skylab. They were running on a fixed, circular part of the structure. What Tod said. I posted before I scrolled.

Most universities have plenty of support for writing your proposal, but if you don't have access to that: http://theprofessorisin.com/2011/07/05/dr-karens-foolproof-grant-template/ Finally, I have concluded that I have no idea what I am doing, talking about or what anyone else is doing. If a fool like me can figure out how to get by, you can too. There is a wealth of brain power in these forums ready to assist a student or budding Bond villain in their goals.

KSP gets creative nerds talking to each other. A little bit of attention to the way weirdos turn ideas into research into advancement may be worthwhile. The NSF is very important to American non-military technological progress and is under appreciated. Also, if there is a high school senior or college freshman perusing these posts, don't be shy about grant proposals. We fund all kinds of whacky research that may or may not mature into something brilliant. Why not yours? I'll paste a few links to hopefully encourage more folks to write the proposals which they may have been privately considering. https://nsf.gov/funding/azindex.jsp Also, this. You have the (delicious) brains! http://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/about/research/index.html AFIT: https://www.afit.edu/

Nibb speaks truth. The first settlements will suck. Then again, settling has always been a business of hardship, toil and risk. Death will be around every system failure and something as simple as a drug resistant microbe in a hydroponics farm could make starvation or scurvy a real hazard. Humankind will persevere, though. A joke regarding dark cultists may not be that far off from the truth. I suspect the prospect of living on a planet, removed from terrestrial law enforcement, with 10 to 100 of your dearest followers would appeal to a number of charismatic leaders.

Agreed regarding veggies. Martian carrots or Europan tomatoes may be delicious, however. One of the things I enjoy about ridiculous challenges (capturing a hostile satellite or placing pigs in Lunar orbit) is that given sufficient time, people start proposing real ideas. Serious projects are definitely doable, considering the collective brains on earth. Just a few decades ago, we thought mapping the human genome would take a century. Sequencing technology improved so we didn't have ro run countless gels.

I think some miss the point with the colonial comparisons. No comparison has one for one validity. Comparisons drive at general concepts. Generally, we face similar challenges in engineering and risk as the colonial Europeans. True enough there were people living in the Americas, but that doesnt reduce the risks posed to the European actors. Imagine if the Americas had Smallpox rather than the Old World, for example. The technological challenges are comparable too. Wealth through trade with the Americas was a strange proposal at the time which was conceptually possible, but far from a sure bet. Determined resistance by Stone Age people's could have driven Europeans from the continent and ruined any investment in commerce. It happened when American peoples out-competed struggling Norse. I spent a good part of my life watching something similar occur in Afghanistan. Human expansion into space is difficult but no more so than other big leaps we have made. Regarding risk, people will die. That's part of exploration and expansion. Some will raise their eyebrows at my seemingly perfunctory acceptance that people will die. This doesn't make their loss palatable or less tragic. In fact, before we succeed entire projects will fail. If we decide only to move forward with zero risk, we effectively decide to do nothing. The missing factor here is that all risk is relative. The relative risk from inaction in the short term may be acceptable, but, in the long term our species' survival depends on expansion skyward. This is why guys like Elon Musk are so passionate about landing people elsewhere. Finally, I am not advocating an immediate, unprepared departure to colonize Mars or Europa. I am trying to point out that self-defeating ideology is harmful, but appealing. If we are convinced that these challenges are beyond us and will remain so, we can feel better about keeping our goals low. Ambitous goals are uncomfortable because they come with implied, unforgiving, high standards of performance. Making humanity an enduring presence in the solar system is not beyond us. If we choose not to do so, it's because of a failure in our collective vision.

I know various universities and even FFA groups are discussing the risks of monoculture in crops. It made it into casual conversation in corn country, even when I was growing up. I seem to remember a current problem with global banana that touches on this. Let me see if I can find the article I was thinking of. Here it is: The sad story of the Gros Michele and Cavendish bananas. Monoculture's risks. Also, this is relevant to spaceflight since it is likely that ten astronauts living off of what they grow in a greenhouse will only have monocultures of various crops. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35131751

I love the mouse-infested space sausage ideas! In Australia, Koalas do odd things. Koalas may wind up performing hilarious but fatal hijinx. Is there any reason a Koala would not be edible? Farm in Space: jokes aside, farming will be a necessary part of colonization and possibly travel to the outer solar system. If it takes a ton of supplies to support 2kg of mice for two years, some sort of farming, say with hydroponics, starts looking appealing to recycle at least some biomass on the vessel. Of course, I would rather see goats, chickens and donkies crammed into an Orion capsule and launched haphazardly skyward. This why dad never gives me the keys to the space program.

Fair points, guys, but I stick to my comparisons with primitive exploration. Huge costs and risks were associated with the first European colonies in N. America. Certainly, it was easier to chop down trees and build boats, but colonies in Greenland and N. America involved political and human risk comparable to what we see in spaceflight. Also, we don't appreciate the difficulties of navigation before the magnetic compass, astrolabe and ship's clock. These vessels represented huge investments by their country, and loss of a ship, say in the Swedish Navy was crippling. Beyond the suitability of given analogies is that exploration and expansion is a vital part of human existence. If humanity is to survive, we aren't going to stay cooped up here on Earth. We can explore. I agree, however, that technology is less of a challenge to overcome than developing political and economic will to do these trillion dollar projects.

General access means we can get a lot of stuff up with frequent launches. Egalitarian access means we move to make space accessible to smaller players, but this may reduce the financial incentive to build more rockets, etc. The two things may or may not be mutually exclusive.

One of the reasons we need organizations like DARPA and the NSF is something todofwar put concisely. Why do something for no perceptible benefit? The problem is that we get huge leaps from venturing forth for no tangible benefit. That's the role of organizations that fund research which doesn't capture the interest of industry, Heavier than air flight faced this challenge before the First World War and after. Like today, we depended on Orteig and FAI to set up rewards. Militaries were only marginally interested in these planes for limited reconnaissance purposes, and it took a few years to get anything more than a few tech nerds interested in those sputtering, canvas contraptions. Perhaps a better example coemsmfrom early experiments with electricity? In the long term, humankind benefits from exploration. The specific investors face dicier odds on their investments.

Interesting question. This gets right to one of the problems of ethics and technology facing humanity, 1.). Elites, unfortunately. They have the funding and ambition. Undesirables, however you define them, don't have the funds or spare time. We see this already with private investors in space (tech. Billionaires) and those paying for orbital and suborbital flights of fancy. 2.) Elites. Already happening. 3.) I don't think this is ideal but I don't think we have a choice. Ideally, space would be open to all of us. However, as long as launch costs remain high, only those chosen by governments/companies or people with lots of money will make the trip. It's unlikely that a grad student with a decent proposal will make it up let alone sending prisoners to some celestial penitentiary like in sci-fi movies. A question for you: How would you provide egalitarian access to space without restricting access in general?

India successfully flew to mars for less money than was spent producing the film Gravity. Pretty cool!

Collective will to venture beyond LEO is low, as you say because we don't have a compelling reason to go. A human presence elsewhere, especially a lasting one, offers significant but intangible benefits: survival, exploration, etc. Tangible benefits are what motivates investment, like military advantage, commercial uses, etc. This problem has been faced before. Europeans simply didn't sail west (in large numbers) until economic and military conditions forced them to do so. Still, the benefits of expansion are there. The Italian principalities that rejected Columbus before he got funding from the Spanish were worse off for their lack of foresight.

100 mice: 2kg Food: 5g/day/mouse * 730 days*100mice = 365 kg Water (no recovery/recirculating): 12ml/30g body mass/day*2000g*730days*1g/ml water = 584kg water Vessel Mass (based on payload to vessel ratio of Apollo CSM): 10tons Vessel Mass (based on CSM&LEM payload to vessel ratio): 40 tons 100 mice would just be too heavy! 10 mice would make a 4 or 5 ton vessel viable. Long term, would there be enough genetic variation to support two years of mouse reproduction? Also, to control expenditure of stores, the food would have to have contraceptives mixed in until a certain point, at which you allow the mice to become fertilized. So the feeding/pharmaceutical schedule for the mice would have to be worked out. Monkies are actually a really good idea! I think we need to find the soundtrack to our monkey moon mission: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/sep/23/monkey-music-tamarins

I suppose a mouse lunar orbiter that orbits for several months then lands would be possible. That would simulate a human mars mission and recovery. Giving the mice a chance to procreate for some generations would also be useful. With regard to feeding, mice on hoses would not be able to reproduce while mice that can reproduce can't be on hoses. Perhaps keeping them in tightish hamster tubes would allow them to claw their way to food/moisture/each other? After a year on the lunar surface the mission would end or the mice could be recovered. A viable population of reproducing mice along with year's worth of feed, etc. would be challenging. Luckily, we have some experience keeping mice live in space already. I feel a distinct need for some comforting numbers!

They are actually mice, but this is a pretty neat development. https://www.rt.com/news/340059-mice-embryos-space-travel/

We could send this thing to lunar orbit for radiation evaluation: http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/20jan_marsmice/