Category Archives: Mars Colony

A robotic exploration mission sent by NASA will attempt to land on the Martian surface later today (tune in to watch starting at 2:15 US eastern time), catching up to two probes sent by China and the United Arab Emirates that arrived last week.

The US has been here before, and its rover is equipped, for the first time, with a small helicopter that will attempt to explore Mars in flight. Chinas first trip to Mars will also attempt the difficult task of landing sometime in May or June. The UAEs mission will orbit the planet, carefully mapping it with remote sensors.

The arrival of all three probes at the Red planet was driven by its relative proximity to earth last year when the missions launched, but also presents a symbolic lineup: The reigning space power and its main competitor, along with a third nation outlining a new model of national space investment.

Its really important that NASA and the US continue to lead in space exploration, continue to do these civilization-first type missions, says Steve Jurczyk, a veteran NASA executive currently serving as the agencys interim head until president Joe Biden nominates a permanent replacement.

But what does leading in space mean in a world where space technology is increasingly easy to access? The old model of the Apollo program, which signaled technological superiority to the rest of the world, is now outmoded.

The US has been slow to catch on, to be frank, because it misunderstands some of the fundamentals of the new race, says Peter Garretson, a retired US Air Force officer who is now a senior fellow focused on space strategy at the conservative-leaning American Foreign Policy Council. For newly arrived space powers, repeating old tricks and doing new first-of-a-kind tricks still commands attention. But what really matters is who is establishing a long-term industrial and logistical base from which they can command long-term economic power.

Garretson and Namrata Goswami, an independent space policy analyst, have written a book called Scramble for the Skiesthat outlines their expectation that space power will be built around exploiting the economic potential beyond earth. In particular, they fear China will outstrip other powers because of its long-term focus on development.

Today, the context of space is much more about the economic returns, Goswami told Quartz in an email. A service like GPS or BeiDou offers the possibility of billions of dollars in return on investments. Countries like China are investing in space technologies like 3D printing, advanced robotics, and AI given their rationale of trillions of dollars of resources waiting on the Moon and asteroids to be harvested. The idea is not just showcasing space technology for its own sake, but towards a long-term strategic purpose.

US goals in space are not even one-thousandth as ambitious as what the Chinese have articulated, Garretson says, citing Beijings detailed plans to outstrip the US as a space power by 2045with a new space station, a moon colony, and the development of technology to capture solar power in orbit.

In comparison, American experience with space success during the Apollo program has led to a culture that favors symbolic moonshot projects over long-term, cumulative investment. But under recent presidents the growing role of public-private partnerships and policy directives prioritizing the economic development of space has bent policy toward this vision.

The Artemis program, launched under Trump to return US astronauts to the moon, provides a case study. The initial goal of laying the groundwork for sustainable long-term presence there fits with this new vision of space power, but the push to strip away the more complex parts of the program in order to meet an arbitrary 2024 deadline made less sense. Garretson says that delaying the 2024 date to build more useful lunar infrastructure makes sense. Any part of the architecture that is expendable and is not able to be used by the private sector for their own purposes is a missed opportunity, he adds.

As the US warily eyes China (and Russia) as rivals in space, it will also find itself working more with partners, both traditional and newly arrived.

In some cases, the UAE has an advantagethey havent got a history, they dont have these processes and procedure, Jurczyk says, comparing the young space program with its private-sector start-ups. In some ways they can be more innovative and lean forward in exploiting cube sats and small spacecraft. Were supporting them with lessons learned engineering very complex systems and help them with enabling their innovation.

For NASAs rover Perseverance, a key part of its mission will be setting aside samples of Martian geology to return to earth. The return mission, launching in 2026, relies on a rover built by the European Space Agency to snatch the samples.

For the countries with new programs, space power isnt just about achieving scientific milestones. It is about economic development, as in India, which began its space program just weeks after the Apollo 11 landing to enable weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and other development goals, Namrata says. And the message of exploration isnt just for other countries but also for a domestic audience, allowing unelected governments in Abu Dhabi or Beijing to gain prestige in front of their people.

But small, wealthy countries like the UAE and Luxembourg, itself a satellite pioneer, see a chance to win more than just prestige. Garretson argues that these countries are well positioned to be mediators and craft a new global consensus on space activity, enabling access to other technologies and attracting financial activity, as well as bigger role in global affairs.

Any nation that seeks to carry the banner of leadership in the world symbolically must also carry it in space, he says.

A version of this story originally appeared in Quartzs Space Business newsletter.

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The geopolitics of NASA's Perseverance mission to Mars - Quartz

The United Arab Emirates first interplanetary mission has passed a major milestone, successfully placing a spacecraft in orbit around Mars and beaming back its first ever picture of the Red Planet. The Hope probes arrival marks an important step forward in the countrys efforts to explore space, which include sending a rover to the Moon and pursuing a vision of one day building a human colony on Mars.

The Hope probe was launched in July of 2020 and arrived at the Red Planet following a journey of almost 500 million km (310 million miles). This makes the UAE just the fifth nation to reach Mars, and after slipping into its orbit last Tuesday, the spacecraft fired up its multi-wavelength camera to grab some photographic evidence.

The 12-megapixel image was taken around 25,000 km (15,500 miles) above the surface of the planet, and represents the first instalment of more than 1 TB of data that the Hope probe will relay back to Earth. Along with the camera, the spacecraft is equipped with an infrared spectrometer and ultraviolet spectrometer, which it will use to study weather and the Martian atmosphere and eventually build the first complete picture of the different layers within it.

As part of this science phase of the mission, the probe will also gather the first ever planet-wide, 24x7 picture of Mars daily weather and atmospheric dynamics across the course of a full Martian year, or 687 Earth days. This is expected to take until April 2023, though the probe could potentially be used to gather data for another two years after that.

Also forming part of the UAEs ambitious space exploration program is the Rashid Lunar Rover mission, which aims to make the country just the fourth nation to land on the Moon. Slated for launch in 2024, the mission is intended to probe the makeup of the lunar soil and thermal properties of the surface.

Both missions will inform the UAEs Mars 2117 strategy, which involves a simulated Mars mission here on Earth and the overarching aim of establishing human colonies in Mars by 2117.

Source: Emirates News Agency

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UAE's Hope probe beams back its first picture of Mars - New Atlas

Elon Musk, re-crowned as the worlds richest person on Thursday, has grand plans for his roughly $US200 ($254) billion net worth.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX plans to dedicate as much money as he can to colonizing Mars, and hes selling most of his material possessions in the process, the billionaire said in a December interview with Mathias Dpfner, the CEO of Insiders parent company, Axel Springer.

In fact, Ill have basically almost no possessions with a monetary value, apart from the stock in the companies, Musk told him. If things are intense at work, I like just sleeping in the factory or the office. And I obviously need a place if my kids are there. So, Ill just rent a place or something.

Musk announced last May that he planned to sell almost all of his belongings and that he will own no house. Since then the entrepreneur has sold off several homes in his real-estate portfolio, which was once worth upward of $US100 ($127) million.

In 2020, Musk sold several high-dollar pieces of property, including three neighboring homes in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles and an estate formerly belonging to the actor Gene Wilder.

Musk might well be parting ways with his California real estate as part of his move to Texas, which has no state income tax. But the billionaire also told Dpfner he was accumulating wealth not for material possessions but to eventually fund a colony on Mars.

I think it is important for humanity to become a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanet species. And its going to take a lot of resources to build a city on Mars, Musk said. I want to be able to contribute as much as possible to the city on Mars. That means just a lot of capital.

To Musk, parting ways with his material possessions also signals that hes committed to going to Mars.

Im also just trying to make clear that Im serious about this, he said. And its not about personal consumption. Because people will attack me and say, oh, hes got all these possessions. Hes got all these houses. OK, now I dont have them anymore.

As Musks net worth eclipsed that of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for the first time thanks to an early-morning Tesla stock rally on January 7, the CEO changed the pinned post on his Twitter profile to a 2018 tweet in which he promised to commit half of his wealth to building a city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves.

The SpaceX founder has said he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050 and build a fleet of 1,000 Starships to ferry them there. Musk aims to launch three of the 117.96m rockets SpaceX is developing for deep-space travel each day.

And lest you think a trip to Mars is too expensive for most people, Musk has said he intends for there to be loans available for those who dont have money and jobs on the red planet for colonists to pay off their debts. Some critics say Musks plans resemble an interplanetary form of indentured servitude.

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Elon Musk, once again the world's richest person, is selling all his possessions so people know he's serious about colonizing Mars - Business Insider...

Founded in 2009 by Jose Mariano Lopez-Urdiales, Spanish startup Zero 2 Infinity wants to launch passengers 40 kilometers into space using helium balloons.

Setting off from Andalucia in the south of Spain, the trip will take six hours.

The ascent will take three hours, while two hours will be spent floating in space, and a further hour will be spent on the descent.

Lopez-Urdiales was first struck by the idea while helping his astrophysicist father to float helium balloons to the threshold of space, he told Sifted.

The aim of the 40km flight is to allow passengers to experience the "overview effect," allowing them to experience the blackness of space, the roundness of the earth, and its blue color all without actually entering space itself, which is at around double the distance from Earth at 80 kilometers.

For the landing, the capsule containing the passengers detaches from the helium balloon and lands with a very large parachute, Lopez-Urdiales told El Economista.

He also highlighted that the space flight didn't produce any noise or CO2 emissions, nor did it bring with it any risk of explosion.

The company previously carried out a test in 2012 sending a humanoid robot up to an altitude of 32 kilometers.

At the time they said they wanted to eventually offer hours of flight time so people could experience longer periods in space.

They conducted a further test in 2017 launching a prototype consisting of a balloon and a rocket to a height of 40 kilometers, Phys.Org reported.

Zero 2 Infinity the only Spanish startup in the space tourism market. EOS-X Space, founded by Kemel Kharbachi, is exploring a very similar concept and plans to launch its first commercial flight in 2023.

Lopez-Urdiales accused Kharbachi of copying the company's concept after he worked with them on a funding deal that fell through. However, Kharbachi has denied the accusations.

Other space tourism concepts entail entering space itself at a high altitude. One landmark moment was when Space Adventures launched businessman Dennis Tito up to the International Space Station for eight days.

The Richard Branson-headed Virgin Galactic also aims to launch flights into space. In 2019, it became the first space tourism company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Elon Musk's SpaceX wants to go even further, getting humans to Mars by 2026 and eventually building colonies on the red planet.

Zero 2 Infinity's concept comes at a much lower price than the other options, at just over $130,000. However, Lopez-Urdiales says the transport still has to be tested out by professionals, who are scheduled to do so later this year.

The company also still needs to secure another $2.4 million in funding, despite having already raised around $7.2 million.

"We already have the capsules, the permits, the insurance, and the flight center," Lopez-Urdiales said. "It's now just a question of securing the remaining funding."

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A Spanish startup is offering trips to space in helium balloons as a cheaper alternative to SpaceX - Business Insider

Whats the attraction of Mars? I dont get it. Its an entire planets worth of desert. The total surface area of Mars is slightly less than the land area of earth, minus the water area, and its all cold desert.

Who needs this planet? You cant breathe the air. Itll be decades before anyone will ever be able to build a golf course there with real grass. Theyll have to settle for astroturf, shipped in at a cost of billions of dollars. Not only will there be no hope of raising dairy cows or goats in the foreseeable future, you can forget almonds and soy beans, too. Mushrooms will only grow between your toes.

People will have to live underground to get away from cumulative radiation exposure at the surface. You go a couple 100 million miles through vacuum, and as soon as you get to your destination, you have to dig a trench, build a subterranean home in it and cover it and live in it almost all the time.

The streaming video will be terrible, and Amazon deliveries will take ages. The gravity is so weak people will need special exercise equipment to keep their muscles from wasting away. No more getting the exercise you need by walking to work and back.

And yet for all that, there are people eager to sign up to join in colonizing Mars as soon as Elon Musk is ready to fire them at it. In the meantime the exploration of the planet by robots is getting ridiculous. Just the last two weeks weve seen not one but two Mars orbiters arrive at Mars, days apart, one from the United Arab Emirates and the other from China. Then, this Thursday, a US robot explorer is expected to land on the surface of the planet.

The US robot is equipped with microphones so we will be able to hear what Martian wind sounds like. Because, were buying property there, and thats the kind of thing you want to know when youre buying property. Whats the noise like? Is it going to keep me up at night?

Conditions on Mars are so awful, it would be immoral to set up a penal colony there. A crime against humanity.

Comparing colonizing Mars to colonizing the Moon, the Moon has pretty much all the same drawbacks Mars has. Nothing but desert. You have to live underground. Nothing will grow there for ages. Extra exercise equipment necessary.

But you could get Netflix. The view from the earth-facing-side is way better than any view from Mars. And when you got tired of it, you could get back to earth a whole lot easier and in just a few days.

Speaking of escaping tiresome conditions, I just googled When will this Senate hearing be over? Navigator, plot me a course for out of here. Google didnt help much.

There could be witnesses! That could drag the whole process out for days.

Its a pity the final vote cant be anonymous. The Senate can agree to an initially secret ballot, but if just 20 senators demand the votes be read off publicly, they have to be. And you can count on those 20 senators coming forward.

As a result, the whole exercise is going to provide multiple chapters in an upcoming book to be titled Profiles in Cowardice: the Trump Acquittal. Subtitled: All the Presidents Cowards.

The bad news: The Senate will probably vote to acquit. The good news: The trial isnt just before the Senate. It is, more importantly, before the American people. The people have been watching. As one of Trumps own lawyers said, the trial is unnecessary because the people can decide whether to vote for Trump again. All the more reason for the trial. Let the people see what voting for Trump again entails.

It entails a repeat of the January 6 coup attempt. If he even runs again in 2024 and loses again, we could get another assault on the Capitol building and Congress. It might be better organized the next time.

During the 2024 campaign season, the Republicans could choose to remove all barriers to the renomination of Trump. They could choose to have no primaries and let him coast to nomination. But if they do and theres another fiasco like we had January 6th, it will be on their heads, and the Republican Party will become history.

Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column,Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes@realchangenews.org.

Read more in the Feb. 17-23, 2021 issue.

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Mars is an example of something that's useless. There are others - Real Change News

February 12, 2021

PEMBROKE Art and music have ways of transcending lifes challenges, even during a pandemic.

Following that belief in part led the Givens Performing Arts Center and International Artists Foundation to win a highly regarded award for their recent collaborative project.

Givens Performing Arts Center, on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and International Artists Foundation in Lumberton are the recipients of a 2020 Gold NYX Award for its collaborative video presentation of music by Lumberton composer Mark Andersen. The NYX Video Awards is an international competition open to marketing, communications and videography professionals whose creative expertise and proficiency are both celebrated and recognized.

This is an exciting honor, said James Bass, GPAC executive director. Im so proud, not only of the award, but for the story that led us to this humbling recognition.

The project began when Bass, who is credited with producing the project, reached out to Mark Andersen about performing a concert for GPACs Front Row Arts Series, which presents virtual performances by local and regional artists.

In August 2020, Andersen recorded Rhapsody for Piano in three movements for the series. The music was written by Andersen during the COVID-19 pandemic and debuted on the GPAC stage.

The concert was special not only because it was the first time the music was performed on stage, but Andersen feared it may be his last performance.

Mark is truly a gift to our community. He is an absolutely amazing musician, and I wanted his music to be a part of this series, Bass said. I had no idea at the time that Mark was facing a very daunting health challenge.

The health challenge was renal cancer, diagnosed about a year ago.

It was stage 3 and I did not know how that would turn out, Andersen said. There was a very strong possibility that that might have been my last performance.

Because Anderson was previously diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, his condition was inoperable at the time.

They needed to get me in some better shape before they could do the operation, Andersen said. It was kind of a waiting game to see if I could get in good enough shape to have the operation before the cancer began to spread and it was too late.

After witnessing the positive feedback from and the large viewership of the concert, International Artists Executive Producer Lynn Andersen felt compelled to submit the project for the prestigious NYX award. On Dec. 18, Andersen learned that the submission was selected after an intense judging period featuring 1,616 entries from 33 countries.

We were extremely pleased to have worked with GPAC Producer James Bass, and his staff, during the production of this important concert of original music, Lynn Andersen said.

Having a nice stage and a professional staff to work with made the process that much easier, he said.

We were able to have a very nice venue that was easy to work in and people that are easy to work with, Lynn Andersen said. They were all prepared for us. We filmed and came home and started editing.

Although based in Lumberton, Mark Andersen is an internationally known composer and concert artist. His education includes East Carolina University, The American Conservatory of Music, and the Paris Conservatory of music, where he studied organ with Marcel Dupr and composition with Nadia Boulanger. He has performed internationally at many venues, including Royal Albert Hall, London; Carnegie Hall, New York; Lincoln Center, New York; and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

He has composed more than 200 pieces for organ, choir, symphony, and solo instruments in his career, including classical works and music for Broadway and opera stages.

Mark Andersen said he was grateful for the invitation to perform what he thought may be his final performance at GPAC.

I certainly would not have had the opportunity at that point to go back and perform at Carnegie Hall or any of the other major places, like the Kennedy Center or somewhere I had performed many times before in my life, but GPAC is here, Andersen said. Its my favorite performance space in Robeson County so I was very, very happy to have the opportunity to do it.

Shortly after Andersens concert debuted, he learned his prayers had been answered.

I relied on my faith, and the Lord was good to me and got me into good enough shape to where I got the kidney removed, Andersen said. It didnt spread and was contained in the kidney that was removed.

When Mark told me about his upcoming surgery and shared his fear that this might be his last performance and in the midst of a global pandemic in which live performances werent even an option I really knew what we were doing was something special, Bass said.

Andersens video, which has received more than 1,000 views, is a 30-minute performance of original music composed during the quarantine months of the pandemic, is titled Rhapsody for Piano.

Bass said that not only has it been shown on the GPAC webpage but through Carnegie Hall as well.

Im simply astounded by how popular it became in such a short time, Bass said.

We are proud of all the amazing individuals, agencies and companies who joined the NYX Awards this year, said Kenjo Ong, CEO of the International Awards Associate. This win by International Artists Foundation and Givens Performing Arts Center is not just a testament to their unbridled talent, but one that will inspire many for years to come.

The winning entries were judged impartially by a group of esteemed marketing, communications and videography professionals. The IAA selected a panel of international judges in the adjudication process and adhered to a strict code of excellence. The NYX Awards embraces diversity and ingenuity that comes from all corners of the world. The 2020 panel was comprised of judges from 16 countries.

Among the submissions, some familiar global brands were represented, including World Vision Canada, Heineken USA, PETA, Ferrari, BMW, Audi, Player One Trailers, Ubisoft, Morris Animal Foundation, TikTok Canada, Canon Singapore, Ericson Group Inc, FabFitFun, Adidas, Paradox Interactive, King Art Games, Miami Ad School, American Migraine Foundation, BBC Studioworks/Shoot You Ltd, Dell EMC, Unilever, CGTN, Lexus, Western Digital and AARP, to list a few.

A NYX Award has never just been about the title. Its an affirmation for the hard work these individuals have given for their work, Ong said. Their phenomenal ideas and concepts are two big reasons why the NYX Awards will continue to honor proficiency and expertise that transcends beyond normalcy.

Andersen learned recently that his scans were clear, and he still remains cancer free.

It turned out that the operation that they did in Duke was a complete success, so I will be playing again, Andersen said.

He plays frequently for Trinity Episcopal Church in Lumberton. Videos of the performances can be viewed on the churchs YouTube channel.

Rhapsody for Piano can be viewed at the Givens Performing Arts Centers website.

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College student with Lumberton ties starts company focused on removing oil from wildlife - The Robesonian

A new convoy of low-flying satellites could beam high-speed internet to the rural Midwest later this year as a test run for launching broadband to Mars.

Joey Bahr walks out to the front of his yard along a blacktop county road. He stops in a ditch and points to an orange-and-black sign that marks a buried fiber-optic cable. But for Bahr, the cable running beneath his feet is off-limits. Its owned by a neighboring internet service provider and is merely passing through on its way to a nearby town.

Its just maddening, Bahr said. Were at the end of the line basically.

Joey Bahr stands near a sign marking the buried cable that he can't tap into for his home internet, even though it travels through his property. (Photo by David Condos, Kansas News Service)

Bahrs story illustrates just how out-of-reach broadband remains for tens of millions of people in rural America.Nearly 10% of Nebraska households roughly 78,000 still dont have access to high-speed internet. Yet the promise of a future with broadband for all those in the rural Midwest, no matter how remote, might rest in the wide-open skies over the Bahrs home and a plan to send Wi-Fi to a future Mars colony.

Beaming the internet down from satellites might leapfrog the logistical and financial barriers that leave so many rural homes and those just outside the city limits on the wrong side of the digital divide. But to do that, the next generation of satellite internet service will need to be better than the space-based stuff thats been around for a while.

Existing satellite internet is better than nothing, said Daniel Andresen, a computer science professor at Kansas State University, but thats about all you can say about it.

He said customers often have to deal with web pages that load slowly due to bottlenecked bandwidth and video calls that appear choppy because of high latency, or lag times. They sometimes lose service completely if there is rain or snow.

Andresen said Kansans who live in towns even very small towns can generally skip satellite internet and connect their homes with fiber, cable or DSL.

But if somebody wants to live ... two miles outside of town, Andresen said, good luck getting any of the above.

The basic problem is that its not usually worth it to internet providers to string broadband lines out to places where people dont live close to each other. Each mile of fiber costs more than $27,000 to install. That might pay off in Wichita, which has 2,300 potential users per square mile, but not so much in Great Bends Barton County, with only 31 people per square mile.

Andresen says that leaves rural Kansans behind, especially as the pandemic moves so much of Americans personal and professional lives online.

Joey Bahr holds a map that shows how close his home is (represented by a blue dot) to a neighboring internet service area that offers cable broadband. (Photo by David Condos, Kansas News Service)

It used to be that, Internet access is kind of nice, but you go into town once a week and use the librarys and its fine, Andresen said. Now, its vital.

New 5G cellular technology might improve wireless internet speeds for some rural homes, but Andresen said its only likely to help someone who already has good 4G coverage. The high-frequency wavelengths that enable 5Gs fast speeds dont travel as far as 4G waves. And a tree or hill in the wrong place could block the signal.

5G could turn kind-of-haves into haves, but wont turn have-nots into haves, Andresen said. You end up with a situation where good connectivity tends to be pretty much no matter how much money youre willing to fling at it unavailable.

But the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, has a plan to send humans to Mars. And almost accidentally, that plan might just open the door to getting a better YouTube feed to the ranches and farms of Kansas.

For Elon Musks aerospace endeavor, SpaceX, the Starlink project is part fundraiser, part test run. The company needs money from internet customers to fund its ambitions in the heavens, like space tourism and colonizing the red planet. SpaceX also wants to deliver high-speed internet to those future Martians who, like the people of rural Kansas, will be spread across a sparsely populated landscape.

Unlike traditional satellites that sit roughly 22,000 miles out into space, Starlink satellites beam data from a mere 340 miles above the Earth. Theoretically, these low-Earth orbit satellites could provide even better speeds than wired internet because light travels 50% faster through the vacuum of space than it does through the glass of fiber-optic cables.

So far, SpaceX has launched about 1,000 satellites floating above a thin strip of the U.S.- Canadian border. Kansans should be able to try Starlink for themselves later this year when SpaceX activates another belt of satellites over the Midwest.

But travel three states to the north of here, and that internet future already exists.

The speeds and the latency theyre advertising appear to be holding true, said North Dakota Chief Technology Officer Duane Schell. So, yeah, theres a lot of excitement about it.

Schell is talking with SpaceX about testing Starlink in state parks and wildlife management areas in North Dakota, where Starlink satellites already cover most of the state. But he also sees it as a way to shore up the future of the states rural economy, from telecommuting to high-tech farming.

Without that broadband, Schell said, youre simply not going to be able to compete.

Starlink isnt alone on the mission to bring satellite broadband to remote places like western Kansas. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hired a former SpaceX executive to lead his companys satellite internet venture, Project Kuiper. HughesNet, already a major satellite internet provider in rural America, partnered with OneWeb to power a network of 650 satellites by the end of this year.

Derek Smashey, a financial analyst with Scout Investments in Kansas City, said satellite internet could eventually serve 15-20% of the population. So, Starlinks $99 monthly fees could cover the projects estimated $10 billion price tag.

It looks to us like that could be a $20 billion-plus dollar market just in the United States alone, Smashey said. I wouldnt want to bet against people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Eventually, SpaceX plans to build a constellation of Starlink satellites that deliver broadband not only to rural America, but also to arctic research stations, tanker ships at sea and other remote locations around the globe. The company has federal approval to launch 12,000 satellites and has already filed paperwork for 30,000 more 10 times the number in the sky now.

But that worries some people who like the sky the way it is.

The thought of having to see the stars through a grid of crawling satellites, thats pretty horrifying to me, said Samantha Lawler, an astronomy professor at the University of Regina in Canada. This isnt like light pollution from a city where you can go camping in the mountains and see the stars perfectly. ... It will be everywhere.

Lawler lives on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, where shes teaching classes via video using a home hotspot similar to what Joey Bahr uses in Kansas. But shes afraid that advancing our connection to the internet could come at the expense of losing our connection to the stars.

An image from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory showing at least 19 streaks that astronomers quickly surmised were Starlink satellites. (Photo credit CTIO/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA/DECAM DELVE SURVEY)

Humans have looked up at the stars since the dawn of humanity, Lawler said. Thats just sucha huge part of being human that we are very much in danger of losing.

In Barton County, Kansas, Joey Bahr said living in a place where his three sons can gaze up at the night sky was one of the reasons he and his wife, Anita, moved out here seven years ago. But living here means they have to connect to the internet through a cell tower a few miles away and try to stay under their data cap of 15 gigabytes per month.

It would take about six of those gigabytes to stream a single two-hour HD movie. If they go over that limit, he said their internet speeds can slow down to 600 kilobytes per second roughly 2% of the minimum speed in the federal definition of broadband.

The family reached a breaking point when their son tested positive for COVID-19 in the fall. Bahr and his wife suddenly needed to work from home, and their son used an iPad from school to keep up with his lessons. They decided to spend $200 on a second mobile hotspot just to get through the four-week quarantine.

Its a beautiful place. I love it, Bahr said of their property. Unfortunately, we are in kind of aninternet no-mans-land right now.

David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @davidcondos..The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. For more stories from the Kansas News Service, visitksnewsservice.org.

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How Elon Musk And A Mission To Mars Might Boost Internet Speeds In The Rural Midwest | netnebraska.org - NET Nebraska

A few days ago, Elon Musk appeared for an interview and the launch of the exclusive Clubhouse app where 5000 people joined the Clubhouse chatroom to hear him talk live.He talked about a whole lot of things, from his plans to coloniseMars, to whether Dogecoin might become the universal currency of the future, to the Gamestop incident and the stock market. Readon to find more here.

Also Read:Elon Musk's Wife Grimes Gives 8-month-old Son X AE A-Xii 'Viking' Haircut | See Pictures

Musk told everyone about his plans about beginning to set up a colony on Mars. He said he is considering a time-span of five and a half years till he can start getting people to Mars."The important thing is that we establish Mars as a self-sustaining civilization," he said.

Musk then went on to talk about memes and his 'meme dealers'. He talked about his company Neuralink, his company that has been doing research on human brain implants. There have already been a lot of experiments done with animals and Musk said they would have videos of working proof of Neuralink out soon. He was also quoted as saying. "We have a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull who can play video games using his mind".

Also Read:Elon Musk Loses Legal Battle With Tesla Critic, Judge Rules To Keep Defamation Case

Bitcoin, GME, stock market and Dogecoin have been in the news a lot the past few weeks and Elon Musk has been tweeting about them all. Previously, Musk has joked around about Dogecoinin the past, but this time he seriously appeared to endorse Bitcoin. He said, "I'm late to the party but I'm a supporter of Bitcoin", he said. This made the price of Bitcoin go up overnight.

Also Read:Randeep Hothi: Meet The Indian-American Student Who Sued Elon Musk And Won Round One

He considered Dogecoin to be a meme currency but didn't dismiss it. This is what he had to say about Dogecoin:"Arguably the most entertaining outcome, the most ironic outcome would be that Dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth of the future," Immediately after his comments, the value of Dogecoin dropped a little bit.He even talked about his favourite TV shows and said Cobra Kai was really good and something he enjoyed a lot. He also talked about the whole Gamestop Reddit drama. The interview ran for about 90 minutes in total.

Also Read:Bitcoin Prices Spike As Elon Musk Changes Twitter Bio, Netizens Call Him 'real Influencer'

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Elon Musk opens up about Mars, Gamestop and Dogecoin | Heres everything he said - Republic World

Events depicted in Amazon's"The Expanse," which just wrapped its fifth season,take place two centuries in the future when humankind has colonized Mars and cultivated a downtrodden working class in the asteroid belts between Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Apparently no amount of time diminishes the solid charms of a classic joke setup, because early on in the season an Earth admiral attempts to lighten a deposed politician's dark mood by telling his version of the classic "A, B and C walk into a bar . . ."

This joke stars a Belter, an Earther and a Martian. The Belter orders the finest Martian whiskey from the bartender, and the Martian orders Earther tequila. Both give the same explanation for their choices: "Drinking like my enemy helps me think like my enemy." Before the admiral can get to the punchline they're interrupted by urgent business, which turns out to be a warning about an impending disaster enormous in scale.

Six full episodes transpire before the admiral, Felix Delgado (Michale Irby) gets to the punchline. By that point in the season millions have been slaughtered on Earth, Mars and a Belter colony instigated by sadistic Belter extremist Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander), shifting the solar system's power balance.

The politician, Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) has been restored to power as the acting Secretary-General of the United Nations after her predecessor orders a military strike against the economically devastated Belter outpost Inaros once called home, leading most of his cabinet to resign.

In a moment of calm and candorshe asks Delgado to finish the joke, and the admiral complies: "The Earther says, 'Give me a shot of the finest Belter liquor you have, the best the Belt has to offer.' The bartender says, 'Because it helps you think like your enemy?' And the Earther says, 'No, because I'm trying to drink less. The best the Belt has to offer is terrible!'"

Neither Delgado nor Avasarala laugh, and in those seconds the Admiral's flippant twinkle melts. "It used to be funnier," he flatly offers.

Simple exchanges like thisremind viewers why "The Expanse" is consistently underappreciated in the realm of epic dramas. Here we see two people tasked with serving humanity and seeking peace revealing their arrogance and prejudice by way of a derogatory joke; they are leaders and ostensibly diplomats. To use a familiar and loaded 2021 term, they are the "elites."

But even these supposedly wise leaders are not above ignorant wisecracks about the presumed inferiority of the downtrodden or, we should say, they didn't used to be. By the time the joke has stopped being funny the Belt has delivered a wallop to the systemthat threatens to bring the established order to its knees.

Several times, including very recently, I've written about the limited appeal of end-of-the-world dystopias to audiences living in the middle of one, and on the surface it may be tempting to lump "The Expanse" in with other examples of apocalyptic visions. It was never that type ofshow.

From the beginning "The Expanse" has always extrapolated the probable direction our future would take with an eye on humanity continuing, not ending. In the same ways some hoary, dumb jokes don't really change, neither does humankind's greedy nature and its ages-old habit of optimizing civilization's function to benefit the wealthy and leaving the rest to struggle over scraps. Ever imagine what happens to a society that never quite makes it beyond late capitalism? Watch this show.

And I recommend that you do because "The Expanse" thisseasonserved up several disaster movies, a bullet-riddled action thriller and family drama, and it did a spectacular job with each. Each of its 10 episodes is a spectacle that refuses to sacrifice its stunning aesthetics even in the worstof circumstances. This also differentiates "The Expanse" from, say, an endless grind to survive a zombie world or a desperate frozen locomotive.

As terrible as the situation gets for the show's protagonists, the worlds depicted never look anything less than interesting, and the writing gives us a view into humanity's shortsightedness in broad strokes and intensely personal ones.

Human greed and perseverance will always be this show's roiling guts, especially once we know these characters and all they're capable of, for better or for the absolute worst.

Season 5 breaks free of the show's habit of viewing the solar system's intense political machinations, class warfare and economic disparity from the somewhat neutral view of the Rocinante, an independent gunship whose crew consists of Captain James Holden (Steven Strait) and chief engineer Amos Burton (Wes Chatham), who originate from Earth; pilot Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), a citizen of Mars; and executive officer Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), a Belter.

Spaceship crews that transcend cultural and political strife are a sci-fi mainstay, but the Rocinante's tight family sticks together because they don't fully trust any government while maintaining connections to each faction through their individual relationships. They've also bonded over their perilously close interactions with the story's X-factor, a sentient phenomenon known as the protomolecule that can wipe out entire colonies. Through the protomolecule the Roci crew also discovers a network of gates to other parts of the universe, some with inhabitable planets and some containing dead space.

Over the show's five seasons the Roci has contended with various factions wanting to use the protomolecule for their own benefit, but only recently Holden and his cohorts believed they had banished it from this system. But where there are zealots there must be world-ending weapons for them to steal.

Strangely enough, the protomolecule is not season's greatest ordeal nor itsmain strength.

Following a mild restart in the fourth season (the first to stream on Amazon after Syfy dropped the show) showrunner Naren Shankar's decision to temporarily break up the Roci crew to pursue personal missions refreshes the series yet again. Doing so expanded the development of Tipper's Naomi and Chatham's Amos, and enabled the writers to humanize the figures that could have been most easily written off as terrorists.

"The Expanse" cast's performances are powered with the same level of devotion to profundity that the producers give to getting the details of physics and space travel right. It follows that the series would operate with the same steadiness in its shift from a political saga fueled by struggles over resources into a provocative warning about ignoring so-called fringe actors and their passions.

"The Expanse" isn't shy about depicting Inaros as a self-serving, dangerous cult leader, to be clear. But through Naomi, who goes in search of the son she has with Inaros, Filip (Jasai Chase-Owens), we are given a tight shot on how easily abusive personalities can radicalize the disillusioned . . . which is entirely relevant at the moment.

Naomi is never seduced by his message but her son is fully indoctrinated, and through both of their stories we come to understand why and how a figure who begins the season as the system's most wanted man ends it as its most feared. Everything comes back to that punchlineand the political arrogance of underestimating a livid underclass. Designate people as a joke for long enough and eventually they'll make it their mission to turn their oppressorsinto one.

Amos returns to Baltimore, just in time to coincide with the Inaros faction's crippling attack. Earth's dire disarray pushes Amos to use his abilities as a strategist and negotiator instead of relying on brute force, and allows Chatham to spread his dramatic range wider than he has before. He also was part of the underclass. Now he has the Earth's chief executive on speed dial.

Anvar's Alex probably received the least amount of expansion next to Strait's character, but given that most of "The Expanse" makes Holden the center of the story sidelining him in order to beef up Naomi and Amos is excusable.

Alex's deemphasis may have been in the editing, however; the actor was fired in the wake of multiple sexual misconduct allegations brought against him in the summer of 2020. If you didn't know that, his sudden death-by-stroke in the finale may have taken you by surprise.

Nevertheless, the Rocinante crew finishes this season as heroes celebrated by Avasarala as the exemplar of what Inaros hates: an assembly of people pittedagainst one another by the powers that be, now working together for the common good. "All we have to do now is turn Belter, Martian and Earther into this," she says with a warm smile, adding, "This is how we win."

Genre fiction teaches us that whenever a character delivers a line like this with pure certainty, evil will surely test it and right on time Inaros responds in another part of space, setting the table for a sixthand final season that looks like it could be an existential battle pitting a pseudo-democracy against fascism.

Ignoring the real-world parallels that may hit too close to home for some people, the painstaking level of intricacy laced through every corner of "The Expanse" could make the prospect of leaping into this series daunting especially in a time when everyone's attention span has been taxed beyond belief.

Then again, right now much of the country is blanketed in snow, and many millions more are slumped into the midwinter doldrums. We crave some element of departure from the world's woe, but prestige habit also dictates that the writing gives us enough realism to hold onto.

"The Expanse" is a journey removed enough from reality to release us from its gravity, but relatable enough to draw us in. If you ever considered taking on the show, it would be tough to come up with a better time than right now.

All five seasons of "The Expanse" are currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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"The Expanse" shows the dangers of treating extremism as a joke - Salon

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency teamed up to look for brilliant ideas for food production in space, particularly in the upcoming Mars mission in 2024.

They are willing to give $500,000 for the best idea to help feed the astronauts on long-term space missions that are different from the dried and packaged food from Earth, Slash Gearreported.

This project is known as the Deep Space Food Challenge. Interested innovators have until May 28 to register, and NASA will award $25,000 for up to 20 teams.

Both NASA and CSA are trying to look for more feasible ways to use technology into bringing nutritious food into the spacecraft that will be used in the Artemis missionbut also making sure that it will not weigh down or produce more waste.

Specifically speaking, the contest said that they are calling for innovators to find "palatable, nutritious, and safe foods that require little processing time for crew members." Fox News reported that the contest's website specified that this technology should be designed to feed a crew of up to four astronauts for three years.

"NASA has knowledge and capabilities in this area, but we know that technologies and ideas exist outside of the agency," said Grace Douglas, NASA lead scientist for advanced food technology at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"Raising awareness will help us reach people in a variety of disciplines that may hold the key to developing these new technologies," she added.

ALSO READ: Growing Plants In Space: Astronauts Eats First Radish Grown in Space

According to UPI, NASA has set a deadline until July 30 for teams to submit their ideas, the time when they will choose the idea.

The Deep Space Food Challenge was inspired by the problems that astronauts face with food boredom aboard the International Space Station, the news outlet reported.

Douglas wrote in a paper in 2020 that astronauts report that the fresh fruits and vegetables and some semi-shelf-stable specialty items brought to them several times a year gives them a profound psychological benefit.

Douglas wrote a paperin 2020 with two colleagues, published in the Journal of Nutrition, that outlined the problems astronauts face with food boredom aboard the International Space Station.

Moreover, the paper outlined the efforts of astronauts in producing food in space, including the limited cultivation of greens and radishes. They have also started experimenting with yeast to grow nutrients that supplement the diets of astronauts, but none of these could provide a significant volume of food to the astronauts.

Last year, astronauts aboard the ISS have already harvested the first radish grown in space, which they were able to eat some before sending most of it back to Earth.

Douglas warned that NASA might not be able to provide the same to deep space missions in the future because the fastest possible roundtrip is about 250 days, making resupply nearly impossible.

Meanwhile, Science Times previously reported that the Mars City platform had launched an annual challenge of Mars City Design Challengesto promote Marschitecture that encourages innovators to design architecture that balances Urban Farming on Mars.

Competitions such as this and the Deep Space Food Challenge could perhaps someday make the dream of creating a Mars colony possible in the future.

RELATED STORY: Top 5 Winning Farm Ideas on Mars

Check out more news and information on NASA Mars Missionon Science Times.

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NASA and CSA Will Give $500,000 To The Best Idea of Food Production In Space - Science Times