Category Archives: Mars Colony

Ive gotten used to writing these after a loss. It isnt nearly as much as writing after a win. To top it off, the week is starting with a sinus infection. Yay.

Fortunately, Ive gotten good at turning the page and shrugging off the Huskers performance the weekend before and not letting it ruin my week. And fortuntely, I still have the Jackrabbits...

Walter Scott, Billionaire Philanthropist, Dies At 90 : NPRThe former CEO of Peter Kiewit Sons Inc. construction firm helped oversee Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate and donated to many causes, particularly construction projects in Nebraska.

Husker Soccer Drops Close One At No. 9 Rutgers 1-0 - University of NebraskaPiscataway, N.J. The Nebraska soccer team (4-6-1, 0-2-1 Big Ten) came up short against No. 9 Rutgers, 1-0, at Yurcak Field on Sunday afternoon. This game marks...

Huskers Win Twice Against Omaha - University of NebraskaThe Nebraska softball team swept a doubleheader Sunday afternoon against Omaha in front of more than 400 fans at Bowlin Stadium. The Huskers won the first game 5-2.

Instead of euphoria, Huskers left to have spirited talk after 23-20 overtime loss to MSU: Im tired of it | Football | journalstar.comScott Frost gave a pretty simple explanation to the pivotal botched punt before diving into a long breakdown of why NU is left feeling dejected.

Huskers open as favorites over NorthwesternNebraska, which has dropped two straight one score games to fall to 2-3 on the season, will return home as the favorite against Big Ten West foe Northwestern.

The oddsmakers have clearly never watched a Nebraska - Northwestern game.

Toms Takes: Chemistry building for Huskers despite frustrating loss | Football | omaha.comTheres a chemistry building with this Nebraska team, you can see it, and it would have blossomed with a win on Saturday night. Still, theyre close, writes Tom Shatel.

Fairview wide receiver Grant Page is latest Colorado steal for Nebraska Cornhuskers The Denver PostFairview senior wide receiver Grant Page understands his college commitment wont be celebrated by many longtime sports fans from his own state. He doesnt blame them.

A beginners guide to Northwestern football: 2021 edition - Inside NUHey Classes of 2024 and 2025, transfers and new grad students! Weve put together a comprehensive look at the basics of the program.

Northwestern football: Wildcats, Evan Hull rout Ohio 35-6 - Chicago TribuneEvan Hull rushed for 216 yards and a pair of touchdowns Saturday to lead Northwestern to a 35-6 win over Ohio. Hull scored twice in a span of 2:02 in the first quarter on runs of 17 and 90 yards to help give the Wildcats (2-2) their first win over an FBS team this season.

Even in a dominant win, big questions still remain for Northwestern - Inside NUWhile the Cats may have looked impressive against Ohio, will they be able to hold their own against tougher competition?

Everything Pat Fitzgerald Said After Northwestern's Week 4 Win Over Ohio - Sports Illustrated Wildcats Daily News, Analysis and MoreFitz talks Ryan Family donation, Hilinski as QB1, Evan Hull's run game and more.

Colleges must choose whether to let athletes wear school gear for paid promotionsA sports management scholar weighs in on whether college athletes can appear in their schools swag while promoting various products.

Who is the only person Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin follows on InstagramLane Kiffin follows one person on Instagram, apparently using it as a recruiting tool

US captures first Ryder Cup since 2016 with strong performance on final day | Fox NewsThe U.S. held strong and defeated Europe to win the Ryder Cup on Sunday.

Justin Tucker field goal: Ravens beat Lions on record-setting kick (video) - Sports IllustratedRavens kicker Justin Tucker pulled off perhaps the greatest kick in NFL history as he nailed the longest field goal ever off the crossbar to beat Detroit.

NFL: Delay of game before Justin Tuckers Lions-Ravens game-winner clearly shouldve been calledFormer NFL referee Terry McAulay told Yahoo Sports that the Ravens clearly shouldve been flagged for a delay of game one play before Justin Tucker beat the Lions with a 66-yarder.

AP Top 25: Oklahoma drops to No. 6 and Clemson falls to No. 25 after Week 4

Oklahoma fell from No. 4 to No. 6 after a 16-13 win over West Virginia. The Sooners won the game on a field goal as time expired as the normally explosive OU offense hasnt been as potent in the last two games.

Dismissed from Ohio State, LB KVaughan Pope apologizes after storming off field during Akron game - CBSSports.comThe senior linebacker is no longer on the team after storming off the field in the Akron game

Penalty flag causes fumbled punt in Jaguars-Cardinals gameJamal Agnews kick-6 wasnt the only wild special teams play in the Cardinals win over the Jaguars on Sunday.

Affordable housing in outer space: Scientists develop cosmic concrete from space dust and astronaut bloodTransporting a single brick to Mars can cost more than a million British pounds making the future construction of a Martian colony seem prohibitively expensive. Scientists at The University of Manchester have now developed a way to potentially overcome this problem, by creating a concrete-like material made of extra-terrestrial dust along with...

Rural Counties with More Broadband Tended to Do Better in 2020 Census, Study Shows - The Daily YonderAlthough most of the nations rural counties lost population from 2010 to 2020, our analysis of new Census data shows that rural counties with better

Do compasses work in space?Google maps wont guide you to Mars - but will your compass work in space?

How a California distillery is turning fire-damaged grapes into something awesome | California | The GuardianHangar 1 collaborated with Crimson Wine group to salvage Napa-grown fruit for a specialty vodka with charitable intentions

How a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethovens unfinished 10th SymphonyWhen Beethoven died, all he left behind were some sketches for his 10th Symphony. Now, thanks to the help of artificial intelligence, the composers vision is coming to life.

Pokemon Oreos: Limited Edition Cookies Being Sold For Thousands On eBay : NPROne cookie featuring a rare Pokemon sold for $15,000 online, giving new meaning to the catchphrase, Gotta catch em all.

Crypto-Trading Hamster Performs Better Than Warren Buffett And The S&P 500 : NPRA hamster named Mr. Goxx enters one of two tunnels in the his cage, which determines whether he will buy or sell. As of Friday, his portfolio is up nearly 20%, according to his Twitter account.

Someone Found Their GoPro That Had Been Lost In The Snow For Months. Heres The Surprising Footage They Discovered Inside - DiggAfter four months of it sitting there, a big old black bear found it and not only managed to turn it on but also started recording himself playing with it. Hands down the craziest thing Ive seen!

The smart toilet era is here! Are you ready to share your analprint with big tech? | Life and style | The GuardianLoo design has barely changed in 150 years until now. Will people trade their privacy for the chance to find out exactly what is in their waste?

How sustainable is your toilet paper? - AxiosA green scorecard looks not at softness or durability, but at Earth-consciousness

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Cornhusker Football News: A Wild Volleyball Set, Toilet Paper Sustainability and a Crazy Weekend in College F - Corn Nation

Ross Marchand| Guest columnist

It looks like mankind wont be going back to the moon … on schedule, at least. According to arecent reportby the National Aeronautics and Space Administration inspector general, astronaut suits have been delayed by two years due to an array of technical, funding, and COVID-related challenges.

The unavoidable conclusion,alunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible, is hardly surprising given NASAs string of failures in trying to take humanity back to the lunar surface. The failures also speak to a larger strategic mistake that places inordinate importance on planting flags on alien worlds despite the practical and scientific disadvantages of that approach.

Humanity can venture to infinity and beyond while avoiding the black hole of wasteful spending.

The American people might have reasonably assumed that developing spacesuits is not a problem for NASA. After all, the water cooled, nonflammable Apollo-era suits seemed to pose little problem for pioneers such as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. But recent problems with current spacesuit design first started to surface in 2017 when the IGreported, despite spending nearly $200 million on extravehicular spacesuit development over the previous 9-year period, the Agency remained years away from having a flight-ready spacesuit to use on exploration missions.

Since that report, NASA spent an additional $220 million on developing a new spacesuit. And total spending will wind up costing the agency (and taxpayers) more than $1 billion ahead of human-led exploration missions. For all of this spending, NASA hasnt done a great job of explaining why new-and-improved spacesuits are even necessary.

According to the IG, the next-generation suits willfeature a new design to accommodate a broader range of sizes and improve fit, comfort and mobility, a response to complaints that existing spacesuits dont fit all body types. The suits are also designed to avoid the bunny hopping seen in the original moon exploration footage. Its frankly unclear why NASA cares so much about increasing the fit and flexibility of their suits.

The truth is thattens of thousands of applicantsare anxious for the chance to explore foreign worlds, and these willing astronauts dont seem too hung up on spacesuit limitations. Even if NASA has better reasons for designing a new suit, the process would undoubtably be less expensive if they relied on outside contracting. SpaceX hasalready offered its services, and chances are a privately-designed spacesuit wouldnt cost $1 billion.

Cost considerations aside, the focus on spacesuit design neglects the bigger picture. Perhaps its time for policymakers to question the wisdom of human exploration missions. Despite bipartisan hype, manned missions to outer space are notoriously overrated.

Robotic missions are a far more cost-effective way of discovering the skies above. Cambridge Cosmology and astrophysics professor and astronomer royal Martin Rees rightlypoints outthatthe practical case (for human spaceflight) gets weaker and weaker with every advance in robotics and miniaturization.

Besides, even successful, temporary human missions to other worlds wont translate into successful long-term habitation. Mars is probably the top contender for an outer space colony, yet even the red planet would need to be extensively terraformed to make it livable for humans. The simple act of growing food is basically impossible on Mars, no matter how many billions of dollars NASA spends on the endeavor.

Regardless of which spacesuits astronauts don in the future, it is time to rethink the Earthly obsession with sending humans to explore other worlds. Naked robots are far better at extraterrestrial endeavors than bundled-up astronauts.

Ross Marchand is a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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We can explore other worlds without the expense of having humans walk on them - Desert Sun

Did you knowNeural is taking the stage this fall? Together with an amazing line-up of experts, we will explore the future of AI during TNW Conference 2021.Secure your online ticket now!

The US government and Silicon Valley dont agree on everything, but when it comes to dominating the modern space race theyre perfectly aligned. Uncle Sams going to put American boots on Martian soil and Elon Musks building the spaceship thatll get them there.

No matter your notions on nations, theres something magical in truly believing that humans will walk on the surface of Mars in our lifetimes.

Science doesnt have a PR agent. Math doesnt have a marketing team. Getting children excited about the future is how we ensure the STEM fields continue to push humanity forward long after todays experts are gone.

And it seems like weve collectively decided that putting humans on Mars is the technological test we should take on to inspire the next generation.

Its difficult to argue against the idea of sending a small crew of professional space-farers to become the first humans to set foot on an alien planet.

There is, of course, an ethical argument to be made about exposing any human to unnecessary risks. But there have always been explorers willing to risk their lives in pursuit of adventure and advancing our species.

We need astronauts, and we need them to want to boldly go where no one else has.

The rest of us, however, should want no part of the red planet.

The red planet is gorgeous, its awesome, and we love it. But Mars is no place for a human.

We see videos of the Perseverance and Ingenuity rovers and the red planet doesnt look so bad. Its sunny, theres nobody there to mess with you, and honestly the views are spectacular. But the colonists experience, with available technology, would be a living nightmare.

And every current plan to put a human colony on Mars involves science fiction technologies that dont exist yet.

First off, your flight over would be excruciating. The trip takes about seven months, which is longer than the average mission aboard the International Space Station.

That much time in zero-gravity causes myriad health problems. Astronauts experience as much as 30% loss in muscle mass, a 1-2% deterioration of bone density, and their carotid arteries demonstrate a stiffness equivalent to those of a person 20-30 years older.

After two to three months in zero-gravity, it takes weeks to months to get muscle mass back and as long as two years for bone density to recover. The damage to the astronauts cardiovascular system, on the other hand, may be irreversible.

But Martian colonists wont be recovering on Earth. Theyll be on Mars where the gravity is a third of what it is on our home world.

So, even if youre only on Mars for a weekend vacation, youll spend about 14 months in zero-gravity before you can start to recover in Earths normal gravity.

If youre a colonizer though, the object is to stay there on Mars. And theres no such thing as artificial gravity.

Scientists have plenty of ideas on how to create it, but the most feasible ones involve either giant spinning space craft or inventing a mass acceleration engine that works like the impulse drives from Star Trek. Neither of those are options for a Martian surface colony.

On the surface, where you could be shielded from harmful radiation by lead-walled buildings or inside of Martian buttes, youd continue to waste away as your body adjusted to low gravity.

Theres no telling what kind of failures would occur throughout your digestive, nervous, and cardiovascular systems over time.

Worse, itd be a tossup whether physical deterioration or mental isolation would pose the more immediate threat. Life on Mars would be harsh, repetitive, and unyieldingly dangerous.

Colonists would be in a nightmarish situation where theyve lost much of their physical ability, making them likely to be a bit clumsier, yet the slightest wound could prove fatal.

On Earth, when you cut yourself, blood tends to ooze out. On Mars well, nobodys ever cut or bruised themselves on Mars.

We know that surgery in zero-gravity is extremely challenging. Blood pools differently in the body, and splatters differently outside of it, when were weightless.

What happens if you get a subdural hematoma on Mars? How do you deal with blood clots in a low-gravity environment?

Worse, those are the kinds of questions that astronauts have to answer, but as a colonist youd have so much more to worry about.

How do you deal with pregnancy in low-gravity? How harmful is space radiation to human sperm and eggs? Will children who are born and grow up in low gravity be able to survive in Earthsheavy gravity?

Life as a Martian colonist would be one of constant fear. Will a solar flare wipe out all electronics, forcing your entire colony to spend weeks or months at a time underground in dimly-lit radiation-shielding rooms? What dangers will humans, homesick and confined indoors, pose to one another as their mental states deteriorate?

The people who choose to colonize Mars will never see a blue sky, an ocean, or forest. Theyll never feel the sunshine on their naked face.

And, should they ever change their mind, theyll face a grueling seven-month voyage home, followed by months or years of physical therapy, and lifelong health problems.

Granted, technology could change. We could invent the warp drive or an anti-radiation force-field. We could discover a quantum physics workaround for gravity. Magical space aliens could open a wormhole for us and teach us to breathe the Martian atmosphere. Anythings possible in an infinite universe.

But, grounding our dreams in todays technology and that which can reasonably be expected to exist within the next 50 years, theres next to no chance youll get the opportunity to volunteer to live on Mars and if you did, it wouldnt be the adventure you might think.

Elon Musk says we need to become a multi-planet species. If something happens to this planet or climate change renders it uninhabitable, perhaps we could use a backup planet.

If Musk truly believes this, he should be investing his companies time, money, and energy into creating artificial gravity or a method by which to protect humans from space radiation.

Until those problems are solved, anyone volunteering to live on Mars is asking for a short, uncomfortable life doing work far better-suited for machines.

Mars might be a great place for space explorers to visit in the near future, but we could be centuries away from having the technology to make an actual colony feasible.

[Related: 5 reasons why living in space is way harder than solving climate change]

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So you want to live on Mars eh? Good luck. You'll probably die a horrific death - The Next Web

Surviving Mars, the colony building sim about surviving on Mars, is free-to-keep on Steam right now. In this age of constant free game giveaways, it can sometimes feel like too much work to open the Steam client, search a game title and then click 'Add to Account'. But you can do it. I believe in you. Besides, Fraser loved it: "Surviving Mars is a lot of hard work, but managing a burgeoning colony never stops being compelling," he wrote in his review.

The offer lasts until September 8, and is well worth taking advantage of unless you already grabbed it free on the Epic Games Store a couple of years ago. Still, you could always own it twice.

It's a wise time for Paradox Interactive to give away the base game, because Surviving Mars' new Below & Beyond expansion released today. That lets you explore under the surface of Mars, boring tunnels, setting up underground bases, and hoping against hope that nothing collapses. It also introduces heaps of new buildings and resources, and looks quite cool.

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Surviving Mars is free-to-keep on Steam for a limited time - PC Gamer

Technique and science fiction for the courageous, will you live on the Purple Planet? Now youll test it at no cost.

It is among the highest technique and control video video games that experience come to PC lately, so give you the option to get it at no cost That is nice information for all those that have now not attempted Surviving Mars but. Are you ? Smartly, make the most of the brand new Steam be offering temporarily as a result of its for a restricted time, and it leads to a couple of hours (at 7:00 p.m.). The most efficient factor is that while you upload the sport for your Steam library you stay it eternally.

By means of downloading it, Surviving Mars will likely be yours eternallyAdvanced by way of the veteran Haemimont Video games staff, authors amongst others of the vintage Imperivm technique sequence, Surviving Mars proposes us to construct a self-sufficient colony in the world Mars, which is a problem stuffed with secrets and techniques ready to be found out by way of essentially the most seasoned gamers. .

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In our Surviving Mars evaluation, we highlighted that this used to be a delightful and stress-free enjoy regardless of the demanding situations and setbacks we are facing. There may be paintings to do within the Haemimont Video games sport, for lots of hours, and every so often neither catastrophes nor some discomfort of the interface will assist us, however no one stated it could be simple, proper?, Commented our colleague Alvaro Castellano.

Surviving Mars was a bestseller with greater than 5 million gamers, prompting Paradox to make Surviving Mars a emblem with a long run. And not using a information about their upcoming tasks, after the luck of this technique sport the Haemimont staff opted for a survival name referred to as Surviving the Aftermath.

Extra about: Surviving Mars and Loose.

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Obtain Surviving Mars at no cost on PC and stay it eternally, however run, the be offering ends quickly - TheNewsTrace

LONDON It seems reasonable to expect fireworks from a play called Rockets and Blue Lights, a vivid title for an overstuffed, if intriguing, drama with no shortage of things to say.

Running through Oct. 9 at the National Theater here, Winsome Pinnocks play may require a chart to help track the action: Ten actors play 24 roles. But if the intricate plotting takes a while to flare, the ambition of the piece is welcome throughout. In a theatrical climate defined over the last year by solo or small-cast plays, here is writing that thinks big. It also brings Pinnock back to the National, where the author, now 60, made history in 1994 as the first Black British woman to have a play at that address.

Rockets and Blue Lights was seen briefly in March 2020 at the Royal Exchange Theater in Manchester before the pandemic intervened; a subsequent radio version was adapted for the BBC. The director Miranda Cromwells current production tethers a strong cast to a play in which present and past collide. Pinnocks principal theme is how artists illuminate (or betray) the world around them, and her way in is the work of the English Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner.

The reference in the title is to one of two oil paintings by Turner that were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1840. The other, The Slave Ship, might depict the infamous 1781 Zong massacre, which resulted in the deaths of more than 130 African slaves at sea. (Scholars are divided over the works inspiration.) The same painting is also known by an explanatory alternate title, Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying Typhoon Coming On, and Pinnock traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see the picture for herself.

The drama begins in 2007, with two women debating Turners achievement. How can such an ugly scene be so beautiful, Lou (Kiza Deen), asks of a painting in which she has a vested interest. An actress, she has signed on for a film in which she will play one of the drowning slaves an assignment a far cry from her previous starring role, on a TV sci-fi series called Space Colony Mars.

Pinnock then rewinds to the 19th century to address the rapport that develops between Turner himself (a feisty Paul Bradley) and a Black sailor, Thomas (an excellent Karl Collins), whom Turner encounters by the docks. I can tell by your blistered hand that youre a man of the sea, Thomas notes admiringly of the artist. Thomas, though, comes to grief, as befits a play in which the dead haunt the living: The film Lou is making is called, significantly, The Ghost Ship.

The drama ricochets through enough themes enslavement, artistic integrity, personal responsibility, among many others for a play double its two-and-half-hour running time. Through it all, Laura Hopkinss set allows water to lap at the edges: an apt visual for a play in which the sea is of more than passing interest.

That our attention is riveted throughout is due not just to Pinnock but also to Cromwell, a 2020 Olivier Award winner for Death of a Salesman, who locates the human pulse in an often dizzying text. The play ends with a moving roll call of the dead and a reminder that art can ennoble the deceased and, in a certain way, give them life.

Death also hovers over a second, though vastly different recent London opening: Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia, at the Almeida through Sept 18. This play by Josh Azouz filters World War II through the lens of the German occupation of Tunisia, a onetime French protectorate, which began late in 1942. In thrall to Frances Vichy regime at the time of the Nazis arrival, Tunisia, a useful program essay informs us, was home not just to a predominantly Muslim population but to 90,000 Jews, many of whom did not make it to the protectorates liberation, in May 1943.

As his title suggests, Azouz has taken an obvious leaf from Quentin Tarantino and exhibits the Oscar-winning filmmakers taste for folding unexpected levity into tales of depravity. The result shares with Pinnocks play a gratifying appetite for chronicling history anew, but wears out its welcome much faster: After a while, the gallows humor just seems glib.

Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisias defining character is a cruel yet smiley Nazi officer who has taken charge of the local community: The opening scene, set in a labor camp outside the city of Tunis, finds an impassioned young Arab, Youssef (Ethan Kai), forced by one of this villains minions to urinate on his longtime friend Victor (Pierro Niel-Mee), a Jew. Youssef advises Victor to move to New York after the war, and the talk soon turns to dispossession, and what it even means to call a place home.

The two men and their wives exist at the mercy of the tactically cheerful Nazi, who is improbably nicknamed Grandma because he likes knitting and refers to himself as an old woman albeit one unafraid to float the prospect of gouging out the eyes of Victors wife, Loys (Yasmin Paige, eloquently furious).

The power games unfold on a deceptively drab wooden set by Max Johns that springs open as required, and features holes for characters to poke their heads through, as in Beckett. Yet the more Azouz recalls one forebear or another, the more you register the difficulty he has in navigating shifts in tone; the director Eleanor Rhode brings a comparatively prosaic eye to material that might benefit from some stage wizardry.

Its good to see the charismatic Kai back onstage after his electric performance in Equus a season or two ago, and the comic actor Adrian Edmondson deserves credit for never soft-pedaling Grandmas dark impulses. But for all its laudable intentions, the play sits suspended between historical inquiry, sendup and cautionary fable: audacious, to be sure, but not fully realized.

Rockets and Blue Lights. Directed by Miranda Cromwell. National Theater, through Oct. 9.Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied Tunisia. Directed by Eleanor Rhode. Almeida Theater, through Sept. 18.

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On London Stages, High Ambitions and Mixed Results - The New York Times

Written By: Brittany M. Pride

Biko and the Thief is the space odyssey that we all need. Author Kevin Greene has created a collection of short stories that rivals your favorite version of Star Trek.

Earth, as we know it today, has reached maximum capacity. There are 10 billion people occupying Earth and Luna One, a lunar colony in space. Ezekial Rollins, an innovative physicist, who became a billionaire by the age of 25, has this idea of a planet for Black people by Black people.

This hit me in the feels. Imagine, a place for Black people built by Black people. I would go there right now if given the chance. Would you? In the story, Rollins has spent his time and built his fortune creating multiple portals to colonize Mars and additional space colonies, but now hes ready to focus on creating a better place for his own people.

Itll take 40 years to move through various portals to get to the new planet in Rollinss spaceship, Biko, to the new world of Kingdom. Rollins is joined by over 4,000 individuals looking for a better life than theyve experienced on Mother Earth and her colonies. Since the ride will take 40 years, Rollins has created sleep pods so that everyone will arrive at the new planet, Kingdom, as fresh as the day they left Earth and her colonies. This background is the first vignette in the book.

The next short story introduces the thief, Lindewe, to the reader. Lindewe is a straight-up bad chick all the way around. She is brilliant, thinks quickly on her feet, and never hesitates to go after exactly what she wants. She has made quite a name for herself in the galaxy floating through space, robbing people, and adding to her own treasure trove.

When Lindewe hears about the planet Kingdom and the Biko, she sets her sights on robbing the spaceship. Its a good plan. The residents of the ship will be asleep for the next 40 years, so it should be easy for Lindewe to get in, steal the valuables from its inhabitants, and get back to roaming the galaxy. Should be as simple as taking candy from a baby (although if youve ever tried to take candy from a baby or a toddler, you know it isnt that easy).Unfortunately, for Lindewe, she fails at her mission and finds herself stuck on the Biko. Curious to know how life is for Lindewe on the Biko? Youll enjoy this book.

Biko and the Thief has multiple short stories that take the reader along a journey through space. The first short story sets the tone and background for the remaining ones. Greene is a masterful writer, bringing to life the Biko and the dream of billionaire Rollins to create a safe place for his people.

BGN had a chance to speak with Kevin Greene, and we talked about how even one million years from now, Black people still havent found peace on Earth, so much so that more than 4,000 are willing to take a ship to a new land for a shot at a better life.

Greene first envisioned the characters and the quest for Kingdom in a dream and initially put them to paper in a graphic novel. It took Greene a year to write the original short story and another eight months to complete the remaining stories.He then self-published the book via Kindle Direct Publishing.

I thoroughly enjoyed the space escapade and getting lost in a new universe with Black characters as the main storytellers and not just comic relief or the quirky best friend. Everyone will be able to see themselves in various characters throughout the short stories presented. Greene does a great job pulling you into the tension and desperation of Lindewe in multiple scenes. You can feel her rage coming off the page as she realizes that the Biko is now her home for the next 40 years. Lindewe must decide if she is going to wallow in self-pity or figure out a way to make the best of her fateful decision.

The only issue that I had when I finished the novel was that I wanted more. However, the ending was a perfect set-up for a sequel or even a trilogy. I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed for more adventures of Biko and the Thief, which you can pick up on Amazon.

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Biko and the Thief: A Space Odyssey for Us - Black Girl Nerds

On July 20, American billionaire Jeff Bezos flew on a Blue Origin rocket past the Krmn line, which, at an altitude of 62 miles, is the widely accepted boundary of space. The spacecraft topped out at 66.5 miles above the Earth, and its crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness. Billionaire Richard Branson had reached the NASA-designated space boundary of 50 miles only nine days earlier. The other billionaire interested in space travel, Elon Musk, heads SpaceX, a company which has taken astronauts up to the International Space Station (ISS). Though Musk has not been in space yet, he has made no secret of his desire to take humanity to Mars and back.

Some futurists think a permanent colony on Mars will be possible. I dont expect to see one in my lifetime. The challenges of travel to Mars and survival on the planet are exceptional. Mars has thin air, frigid weather, and trace oxygen. And after 10 years on Mars at lower gravity, a spacefarers legs and bones would be so brittle that re-entry into the Earths atmosphere would render them useless.

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But one of the greatest risks in space is from radiation. Ionising radiation causes damage to cells and to DNA inside them. In deep space, ionising radiation is of two main types galactic cosmic rays that originate outside the solar system from exploding stars, and solar energetic particles from the Sun.

Radiation poses an existential threat to humans and to all other forms of life. Unsurprisingly, NASA considers radiation one of the major unresolved problems of sustained human spaceflight. Returning astronauts might face a greater risk of various cancers, eye ailments, and cardiac events.

The risks are not unique to humans either. Any organisms that accompany humans into space and to Mars would need to be able to withstand ionising radiation. As Christopher Mason writes in his eminently readable new book, The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, Sending an Earth-evolved organism to another planet would result in almost-certain death.

Earth is an incomparable planet. The magnetic field of Earth is created by currents of electricity that flow in the molten core. The Earths internal magnetism creates a region around the planet known as the magnetosphere, which protects us from the harmful effects of most of the radiation of space.

Several planets in our solar system have magnetospheres. Earths is the strongest of all the ones possessed by rocky planets. Our magnetosphere is a large, comet-shaped bubble, which has played an essential role in our planets habitability. Life would not exist on the planet without it.

The Earths magnetosphere extends to about 40,000 miles. The ISS is positioned at a higher altitude than Bezos or Bransons flight, and normally maintains a planned altitude of 248 miles. But since it is in low Earth orbit, it is still within the earths magnetosphere.

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The ISS circles the Earth every 90 minutes at 17,500 miles. Even at that altitude, there are enough molecules of the atmosphere to change its velocity, and cause it to dip towards Earth. To maintain a constant orbit, propellant is fired to reposition the station.

Astronauts on the ISS also experience the effects of radiation on prolonged visits. When astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year onboard, closed his eyes, he could see streaks of high-energy ions flash like shooting stars. But the radiation he experienced was much lower than the amount that might be encountered on a future mission to Mars.

The Moon is at a greater distance from the Earth than the ISS is. When Neil Armstrong went to the Moon, he wore foil plates on his ankles. Streaks of high-energy particles can be seen on these plates. But that was a relatively short mission.

Any attempts to colonise Mars would need to reckon not only with radiation exposure to the trip to the red planet, but on the planet itself as well. The current scientific consensus is that Mars has a molten core, but that the protection on the planet is much lower than on Earth.

NASA estimates that the radiation exposure from one mission to Mars might exceed the lifetime limit of astronauts. The actual limits vary by age and sex. But a 30-month round trip mission to Mars could result in 1000 millisieverts, which is roughly the same as the radiation exposure from 10,000 chest X-rays.

Shielding ships and protecting exposure of astronauts is a proposed solution to the massive amounts of radiation on a trip to Mars. It seems to work well against solar energetic particles. But currently there are no spacecraft that can shield against galactic cosmic rays. Clearly, solutions to the challenge are necessary if we are to contemplate prolonged human space flight.

In the more distant future, we might see the development of drugs that protect against radiation-induced damage. Another solution might be to genetically enhance humans to make them more resistant to DNA-damage. While this seems far-fetched now, scientists are currently studying animals like tardigrades that have high levels of radiation resistance to learn how they achieve it.

But even as we look to the planets and beyond, it is clear that Earth is our home and there is no place quite like it. We take our comforts for granted, but they will not be found on Mars or anywhere else.

Anirban Mahapatra, a microbiologist by training, is the author of COVID-19: Separating Fact From Fiction

The views expressed are personal

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Scientifically Speaking | Radiation is a deadly threat to human space travel - Hindustan Times

It's a well-known fact that Earth will not last forever. Our Sun is a middle-aged star, and it will inevitably run out of fuel, which will cause it to evolve into a red-giant star. From there, it will shed its outer layers of gas, and its innermost core will begin to collapse, causing it to shed its gaseous layers while the core will eventually become a white dwarf - the collapse stopped by electron degeneracy. Earth will likely be consumed in the aftermath - or rendered uninhabitable long before, due to the unpredictable energy output of the failing Sun and the increased temperatures.

There are, however, other interesting places we could potentially settle on before or after the Sun meets its eventual end. We've gathered some of the most interesting propositions.

It has long been believed that Venus is one of the most Earth-like planets in our solar system. It has a rocky body, with a solid surface, an atmosphere, a molten core, weather, and it's not a frozen void like Mars, or a gaseous body like Jupiter, Saturn, or the other gas giants in our solar system.

We did a lot of guessing about the conditions that exist on the surface of Venus and beyond, and many of them were proven true when the Soviet Union (now Russia) sent 10 probes to explore the second planet from the Sun. What they found is still shocking.

The surface is much more volatile than expected. Many of the probes were crushed by Venus' extreme atmosphere within minutes. The one that survived the longest hung in for a little over 2 hours. The mission was called Venera, and it was the first to ever successfully send probes to the surface of Venus. The project extended from 1961 to 1984, and the probe that lasted the longest managed to send back the very first pictures from the surface of another planet.

The features that make Venus Earth-like also set it apart. Its atmosphere is the densest and most deadly of all the terrestrial planets, composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide, a bit of nitrogen, and scant amounts of water vapor. Additionally, it is known to be that it sometimes rains sulfuric acid, and due to the effects of runaway greenhouse gases, temperatures are hot enough to melt lead.

You'd think it would be a total nonstarter if Earth were rendered uninhabitable, but it has been suggested that humanity could flee to Earth's 'evil twin' and live on cloud cities far above the planet's surface. The key to survival would be avoiding the hellish landscape below, where temperatures regularly reach842 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius), and the pressures are high enough to crush almost anything unlucky enough to venture below.

The farther you goup in Venus' atmosphere, the more temperature and pressure normalize. Eventually. you'd come to that sweet spot where the temperatures are quite warm, but not too inhospitable for life, and the atmospheric pressures are similar to that of Earth. Still yet, the cloud cover would provide sufficient protection from space debris and toxic exposure to the Sun's harsh radiation.

The BBC helps explain how these cloud cities work: "Theres still the problem of staying afloat in a suffocating atmosphere dotted with clouds of drain cleaner. But the solution is perhaps the happiest coincidence behind the entire audacious scheme. CO2 is heavier than air on Earth which means a balloon on Venus filled with an Earth-like atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen is lighter than the Venusian air. Fill a Venusian balloon with Earth air, and it will fly into the sky like a helium balloon."

"To live on Venus, then, just fill a balloon with nitrogen and oxygen, and live inside the balloon. A big enough balloon will have enough lifting power to support you and your supplies and a really big balloon could do even more. A one-kilometer diameter spherical [balloon] will lift 700,000 tons two Empire State Buildings. A two-kilometer diameter [balloon] would lift six million tons, says Geoffrey Landis - the NASA scientists who played a big part in popularizing the idea. The result would be an environment as spacious as a typical city.

One problem a cloud city would face would be getting access to the raw minerals we would need to survive, so, why not venture somewhere that has easy and abundant access to any mineral you can imagine - like an asteroid in the asteroid belt? There are definitely upsides and downsides to traversing the inner solar system and traveling to the asteroid belt, which is situated between Mars and Jupiter. Some astronomers have also suggested we are ignoring two potential key pieces of real estate: the strange asteroid-like objects which orbit Mars as natural satellites, called Deimos and Phobos.

We've long known they are anomalies as far as "moons" go. For starters, we have no idea whether Deimos and its fellow companion Phobos were zooming past Mars and were captured by its gravitational pull, or if they are somehow byproducts from the planet's formation. Neither are spherical, like most traditional moons, yet they have an almost circular orbit around Mars. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was even some speculation as to whether one or both were hollow or not due to their unusual characteristics, and today it is thought possible that Phobos may contain caverns. Phobos is the largest of the two, coming in at a diameter of 14 miles (22 kilometers), while Deimos has a diameter of just 8 miles (13 kilometers) - meaning these are some of the smallest moons in our entire solar system.

We may not be able to settle on either of the satellites, but they could prove decent bases for tracking out to the asteroid belt and finding a suitable candidate for relocation - plus, the asteroid belt is full of all sorts of materials we would need to build an Expanse-like colony in the outer solar system once Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Phobos and Deimos themselves are ticking time bombs. Take Phobos, for example. It orbits Mars from the closest distance of any "moon" in the solar system -- just 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers). It's drawn into Mars' gravitational pull by 6.6 feet (2 meters) every hundred years. Therefore, astronomers expect it will be torn apart by Martian gravity in 30 to 50 million years,

Deimos might fare better, as it orbits Mars from a distance of 14,576 miles (23,458 km), but other factors, such as its strange tilt and orbit, may rule it out. No worries, there are plenty of great candidates in the asteroid belt.

This brings us to actual...

It's believed that if Venus or Mars fail us, several moons circling the distant icy outer planets might become prime residential real estate. Arguments can be made for several different moons but there are two that many astrobiologists agree are great contenders for hosting transplanted Earth life, and those are Titan and Europa.

Titan, the shining beacon of the great ringed planet Saturn, is probably the most Earth-like place in our solar system. It has mountains, valleys, shorelines, a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and it even has liquid floating on its surface but, totally not the kind you'd want to drink, as it is composed of hydrocarbons - like methane and ethane. It has even been confirmed by the Cassini mission that Titan is geologically active. It would certainly take a lot of terraforming, but this amazing moon could be a great contender to migrate to once Earth starts to die.

Europa is another moon on our list. This Galilean moon of Jupiter doesn't have a protective atmospheric shield like Titan, but it does have a large series of cracks on its surface and it's believed that beneath its icy shell may be home to large reservoirs of water-ice.

Given Jupiter's far distance from the Sun, you'd think it would be a cold, barren wasteland, but tidal stresses between Jupiter and Europa keep the small moon from becoming completely iced over.

Per NASA, "Tidal heating could be powering a system that cycles water and nutrients between the moon's rocky interior, ice shell, and ocean, creating a watery environment rich with chemistry conducive to life."

"This is why studying Europa's chemistry on the surface and within the suspected ocean is important for understanding its habitability, because living things extract energy from their environments by chemical reactions."

"For Europa to be potentially habitable, it would need to have the essential chemical ingredients for the chemistry of life. These include carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, which are common elements, and scientists think it's likely they were present on Europa as it formed. Later on, asteroids and comets impacted the moon and would have deposited even more organic, or carbon-containing materials."

The big downside is that Europa has an extremely tenuous atmosphere, and is subjected to harsh radiation from Jupiter itself. This is bad for the life present on Earth, but there may be ways around this, and as a bonus, the radiation could very well help produce oxygen, which is a must for our survival.

"The radiation splits apart water molecules (H2O, made of oxygen and hydrogen) in Europa's extremely tenuous atmosphere. The hydrogen floats away and the oxygen stays behind. Oxygen is a very reactive element, and potentially could be used in chemical reactions that release energy, which lifeforms could exploit. If the oxygen somehow makes its way to the ocean, it could possibly provide chemical energy for microbial life."

We need more information on both moons to decide which one is most adaptable to human life. An artificial space station (think Xenon or Elysium) might be our best bet.

While either one of these options could be crucial to our ultimate getaway plan once the Earth is experiencing its last hours, we still need a large amount of research to do. And for the time being, our primary focus should be on saving or prolonging the life of the planet we already reside on.

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Cool Places We Could Migrate to Beyond Earth - Interesting Engineering

While it may not have the experience of the United States, nor the means of China, the United Arab Emirates certainly has ambitious plans when it comes to space conquest.

Since the establishment of the UAE Space Agency in 2014, the Gulf nation has reached several impressive milestones.

On October 30, 2018, the KhalifaSat was launched into orbit. While carried by the Japanese-made H-IIA rocket, it was the first spacecraft entirely designed and built in the Emirates. The main goal of this remote sensing Earth observation satellite was to provide high-resolution imagery of Earth.

A year later, in October 2019, a UAE Air Force fighter pilot, Hazzaa Al-Mansoori, spent a week on the International Space Station becoming the countrys first astronaut and the third Arab country after Saudi Arabias Sultan Salman bin Abdulaziz in 1985 and Syrias Muhammed Faris in 1987.

On July 20, 2020, the Al-Amal (Hope) probe was launched from the Japanese Space Center of Tanegashima with a far more ambitious objective: to study the variations of Mars climate over the seasons. To do so, it will mainly collect data on the oxygen and hydrogen content of the upper layers of the planets atmosphere. In total, the probe will spend a Martian year in orbit, or 687 Earth days.

On February 9, 2021, the probe reached Mars, a day before the 50th anniversary of the unification of the United Arab Emirates. On this highly symbolic date, the country also became the first Arab nation to reach the red planet.

As a result, Emirates joined an exclusive club of countries, which, at this time, only included the United States, Russia, India and the European Space Agency, to successfully send probes to Mars.

But the country is showing no signs of stopping here. The launch of the probe is part of the Emirates Mars Mission, a vast program focussed on building a colony on the red planet during the next 100 years.

While this project might sound like Science fiction, the UAE plans on creating a scientific city in the desert surrounding Dubai. There, the living conditions on Mars will be recreated as precisely as possible to develop the technologies necessary to colonize the planet.

The objective of this extravagant enterprise is to move away from an economy based largely on the export of oil and diversify industry. To do so, the UAE needs to inspire a new generation to enter the fields of science and technology. The message is already yielding results.

The UAE Space Agency already boasts more than 45% of women in its workforce, with many holding engineering positions.

The project Hope is run by a team that is under 35, a team made up of 34% women, said Sarah Al-Amiri, Minister of Advanced Sciences, who is also the chair of the UAE Space Agency and the Deputy Project Manager of the Emirates Mars Mission. An entire nation is putting its hope in a team of youth and presenting a message to the region.

Following the success of the Hope mission launch, a recruitment campaign for astronauts took place. Approximately 1,400 of 4,305 Emirati citizens that applied were women.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center of Dubai, which oversees all manned space flights for the UAE, eventually announced that the next two astronauts would be Mohammed Al Mulla, a Dubai police pilot, and Noura Al Matrooshi, an engineer at the UAE's National Petroleum Construction Company and the first Emirati female astronaut.

Like any spatial enterprise, the UAE space program also develops the countrys capacities in other fields, such as aeronautics, audio-visual broadcasting, and the surveillance of its territory.

The space agency's next objective? To land a rover on the Moon by 2022. Named Rashid, the small rover will be transported onboard the Hakuto-R lander, developed by ispace, and launched into space from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida by SpaceXs Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket. The Emirates Lunar Mission will be the first journey for Hakuto-R.

The objective of the 10-kilogram Rashid rover will be to explore areas of the Moon which have not yet been reached during previous exploration missions. It will also carry out a series of experiments on lunar dust, and test technologies needed to survive in the extreme conditions of the Moons surface.

The first prototype of the lunar vehicle is already complete and should now undergo testing. The launch is expected to take place at the beginning of August 2022, and the rover should reach the Moon three months later, in November 2022.

As the first mission to the Moon conducted by an Arab country, this project will be yet another historical moment for the United Arab Emirates. The mission, if successful, would also make the UAE and Japan the fourth organization to reach the lunar surface after the United States, China and the late Soviet Union.

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The United Arab Emirates: the next space power? - AeroTime News Hub