Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Even though the majority of our distinguished readership are FREAKING NEEEEEEERDS, it is very likely many of you havent gotten around to watching The Expanse, which closed six seasons of a near-perfect run last Friday. Instead of recapping season six or reviewing it, Im going to do like Patrick H. Willems, one of my favorite FilmTubers, and tell you why its awesome.

Adapted from the novels by James S.A. Corey (pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), The Expanse is set in one of the most carefully constructed universes in speculative TV, as even the few logical gaps it has can be filled by the fans without needing convoluted theorizing. Its the 24th Century, humanity has expanded and settled throughout the Solar System aided by efficient fusion-propulsion that makes traveling between the Inner Planets and the Outer Rings as fast as shipping is today. Three blocks have developed in the centuries in-between. Earth, now ruled under a global government of the United Nations, overpopulated, with most of the population living on a sort-of UBI, reeling under the effects of Climate Change but still a superpower. Mars, colonized by scientists and soldiers who have become a semi-authoritarian, militarized but wealthy technocracy, pursuing the dream of terraformation. And finally, the Belt, all the planetoids, moons, and large asteroids settled by millions of the castaways of the castaways who have developed their own cultural and national identity and live having their resources exploited by Mars and the Earth, including the two most important in that environment: Water and air. As the series begins, just as political tensions grow between Earth, Mars, and the Belt, humanity makes First Contact with an alien entity, a quantum-blob known as the Protomolecule that could doom or boost humanitys future. Of course, a bunch of corrupt politicians and trillionaires start tinkering with that shit.

The Expanse, like any great speculative fiction, is about our times. It couldnt be any clearer what the intentions of the writers are because its not even a metaphor, its just a projection of our times 300 years into the future: The Earth embodying the United States and other first world countries, Mars as China or other superpowers built around a single purpose (like the USSR back in the day) and the Belt as the underserved and exploited diversity that is the Developing World. Its not a metaphor without nuances that also reflect our times: Earth/The U.N. is unable to provide for most of its inhabitants more than the bare minimum; Mars is fanatical, paranoid and is built on staggering corruption; and the Belt well the Belters are awesome, but having defined so much of their identity in opposition to the Earth and Mars, they risk sabotaging themselves.

Its not an entirely bleak scenario. For one, it seems that gender and race equality has been achieved, mostly, but the exploitation of humans by humans persists in its base forms: Imperialism and class struggle. Then theres the fact that Mars was settled by competent people who actually want to further humanity instead of our timeline, where the ones attempting it will be a bunch of billionaires and their hangers-on, all of whom will die miserably from calcium deficiency.

Wait, thats a good thing.

Also, you can barely see any pets in Mars and the Belt, so that blows.

The Expanse is a choral narrative that gives us a realistic politics-driven plot, naturalist social commentary, brutal (and accurate) space warfare, and an ensemble cast that deserves more things like this in the future (specially Cara Gee, who actually invented the smoky eyeshadow. OK, she didnt but no one has done it better than her playing Carmina Drummer). In fact, the scientific realism is used as a plot-device that defines the relationship of the characters to their world and their actions: Scarcity, the vacuum of space, time-delays, they are more than a gimmick, for once. This is science-fiction that doesnt fall into the clich of technology progresses but humanity remains the same, something which has been false since agriculture, but we have also experienced ourselves after a decade of social media. One of the main theses of The Expanse is that technology changes everything and it also changes nothing if the exploitation logics remain in place.

Because, with its wonderful collection of characters that are flawed, broken, and sometimes downright chaotic neutral, The Expanse is about empathy. Its ultimately is about ethics and mutual responsibility when facing threats that could bring down a civilization. So of course, The Expanse is about Climate Change, but its not even a metaphor: It is the very effects of the former that drove humanitys expansion through the Solar System. By eschewing the metaphor, The Expanse reminds us that most humanitys problems are of our own making, Climate Change among them.

In only six episodes, the final season of The Expanse somehow manages to drive home a coherent thesis about social ethics while making use of all the plotlines they left dangling. Continuing the story from the previous season, we see the crew of the Rocinante, the UN, Mars, and Carmina Drummers band of Belter pirates trying to put an end to Marco Inaros, a Belter leader waging a fanatical and genocidal war on the Inner Planets. Inaros has caused hundreds of millions of deaths on Earth and Mars by hurtling asteroids covered in stealth materials just to make them feel what Belters have felt. He has become perhaps the greatest monster in human history, and yet, as Drummer says, a person like him was inevitable. Inaros, Osama, every tin-pot tyrant in the Global South they are all the logical byproducts of colonialism and making subalterns out of entire human populations, be it continents or planetoids.

This season is a war story, but its also a story about people running into the limits of redemption and forgiveness, about how sometimes the ethical choice and the strategic choice coincide in a decision that will have a cost, political, monetary or in resources. That decision is the only one that will guarantee everyones survival. It is also about how science and technology could actually save us all. But science and technology alone cannot really improve if they do not include the subaltern; otherwise, they can only expand subjugation.

There is a series that cast a shadow over The Expanse, a shadow under which it never managed to become mainstream, but which ironically helped it become a better piece of media: Game of Thrones. Many comparisons were made between both franchises, mostly deeming the latter as the sci-fi counterpart of the former (more to the point, each chapter of the novels is told from the perspective of a single character), but if GoTs quality collapsed spectacularly in the last three seasons, The Expanse either got better or remained just as good as in the first three. Almost as a taunt, the series epilogue is also set around a negotiation table with all the surviving characters. In the following scenes, The Expanse will have James Holden, an Earther who is ostensibly the lead character of the series, actually showing up as an ally to the Belters. Holden could be considered as a white or white-passing man, who has been the pervasive lead in most of Sci-Fis history. His final act underscores the central point The Expanse has been making since chapter one: Humanity will not progress or survive unless the privileged step up (or aside) for the subalterns.

That is the genius of The Expanse; it actually dares to challenge the colonialist foundations on which human exploitation and, ultimately, Climate Change persist. That tackling existential threats (or any other that we are able to understand) is an ethical decision on how much suffering we are willing to allow, how much are we willing to actually recognize dispossessed humans and countries as subjects of rights. The fact that they managed to deliver this idea on freaking Amazon Prime is a commendable achievement by the writers room.

All of that against the worst possible odds. In a very meta way, the fate of The Expanse as a series reflects its own ideas on how to build a worthy universe out of scant resources: It had a big budget, but not in the scale of extravaganzas such as Foundation or even Star Trek: Discovery. It premiered on the SyFy channel, immediately undermining its reach and respectability in the radar of Peak TV. The final season order was shortened to just six episodes. And yet they delivered spectacle through restrained but valuable use of VFX. Nurturing a small but devoted fanbase that managed to give it a better home, and by writing the best ending possible out of six episodes while leaving enough teasers open for follow-ups.

Just like the original Star Trek through syndication, I hope The Expanse grows in popularity through sustained streaming viewership. We the fans dont need it to become as a massive franchise, but maybe a couple of limited series or film anthologies.

And Hollywood needs to start casting more Cara Gee in everything.

'Weird Al' Biopic Staring Dan Radcliffe In The Works from Funny Or Die |The Gutting of the A.V. Club is an Embarrassment to the Industry and a Horrible Sign of its Future

Image sources (in order of posting): Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video

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The Expanse's Final Series Is About Ethics in the Face of Mass Suffering - Pajiba Entertainment News

With the advent of developing space companies and recent conversations surrounding the habitability of Earth, this years Ten Years Hence series uncovers profound reflections not only for the business world, but for the entirety of our current generation. Life Beyond Earth is the theme of the 2022 lectures, offered by the Mendoza College of Business. Christian Davenport, staff writer for the Washington Post, launched the first of the seven scheduled talks by sharing insights regarding the commercialization of space.

Author of, The Space Barons: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos (2018), Davenport related how the quest for the cosmos is intricately tied to the plight of the wealthiest individuals in the world.

The quickest way to go to space is to become a billionaire, Davenport said. And the richest among us are plowing big parts of their fortune into space.

He further explained his reference to the Space Barons in his books title, we have businesses competing in a way that governments used to, Davenport said.

Ten Years Hence course instructor Professor James ORourke notes that enlightened self-interest is the driving force behind this new space race.

The vision of the space barons is similar, but unique in nature. Both Elon Musk and Jeffery Bezos plan to bridge the largest gap dividing Earth from space: costs. While Elon Musk concerns himself with a backup for humanity, with Mars standing as the best candidate for such an option, Bezos philosophy is to preserve Earth and instead move industry to space.

When he founded Amazon, the resources he needed for the business to succeed were there: the credit card, post office and internet, for instance of course, for space, there is no infrastructure yet, Davenport said. Perhaps we are dawning an era of economic dynamism that creates a whole new market, similar to what the internet did to the world when it was first created.

Leading spectators through history, Davenport elucidated how the aura of hope for space travel now burns even brighter. He recalled the desolation of the Challenger space shuttle explosion and traced the quest to build a reusable, cost-efficient rocket, from events like the historic landing of Space Xs Falcon 9 in 2015 to the Starship launch for orbit scheduled this year.

With a multiplicity of companies such as Boeing, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, along with the ranks of astronauts proliferating, an unprecedented era of space exploration appears to be within reach. NASAs plans to construct a new International Space Station and their recent launching of the James Webb Space Telescope are further accomplishments which cannot be overlooked, as they will continue to enlighten the universes great unknown.

Davenport even touched upon an eventual return to the Moon, remarking that the reason we havent been beyond earth orbit for a while now is because of different, conflicting government administrations. NASAs Artemis project, adequately named after the mythological twin sister of Apollo, endeavors to brave through this feat once more. With the knowledge of there being water on the moon, Davenport noted there is even a potential for it to become a gas station to space.

Apart from the lecture, Davenport noted the importance of discussing these subjects in general, emphasizing his goal to explain the issues of our time to people, including how the government is administering tax funded programs, and place that in a broader historical context; to inform the citizenry of this interesting time we hope to introduce in space, and how it might play a bigger role in peoples lives, he said. We must understand the advantages as well as the ethical challenges related to this.

Professor ORourke added that the series itself is designed to encourage students to ponder about major relevant issues of the near future. In ten years, everyone in the room will need to adapt and/or adopt an intervention strategy for the challenges and opportunities that emerge. These are topics you wont encounter in an accounting or marketing course, and you get the chance to meet interesting, important and smart people along the way.

Interesting people will indeed appear throughout this series, featured among them a NASA Astronaut and U.S. Air Force test pilot, a mission manager for Blue Origin, scientist from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and beyond. A full program for this stellar course may be found at the Mendoza College of Business website.

The rest is here:
Twentieth 'Ten Years Hence' series discusses the future of space travel - Observer Online

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/rJkJNFPcdBkDQKqtkgHSjA/4ab4fea1-e811-4a48-97b2-98db952be827.jpg/r4_0_5924_3345_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg When you hear the word alien, what do you picture?

A six-legged dog? Small dinosaurs? Alien fish? Bacteria? This view doesnt come from science, but science fiction. Movies, TV shows, and novels have created and built up this stereotype, embedding it into our culture. When H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in the late 19th century, Wells created a view of aliens that has stuck with us to this day.

Humans are a very self-centred species we think a lot of ourselves. We think that the world, and by extension other worlds, revolve around us. Therefore, we think that all life on other planets must look, act, and think like us. They would also want we have, and it is up to us to defend ourselves. In War of the Worlds, big-headed creatures with tentacles that operated machines came from Mars to colonise Earth. The book was rooted in science, but also a critique of the world at the time.

Moreover, you may think of a hostile race, that wants to come to Earth to take over. Maybe it is for our resources, maybe it is to colonize, or maybe we do know why, but we should fear and fight them. Most likely, you pictured some human-like figure, maybe with a big head, big eyes, and green or grey skin. Why is this the image we always jump to when we hear aliens.

War of the Worlds is using the idea of beings from other worlds as a way to tell and critique what is happening in the world. We should actually fear ourselves. Wells was strongly against British colonialism and the issues, especially for indigenous peoples around the world, it created. In one passage, Wells even refers to Tasmania, saying that why should Earthlings condemn the Martians when we have done similar things on Earth, using Tasmania as an example.

Even prominent scientists like the late Stephen Hawking have warned we should not contact an alien species as they are likely to be hostile. We worry about aliens, but should we? This view, both physically how aliens look, and how they act, is repeated over and over in science fiction. From Independence Day to Mars Attacks. Even in films like Arrival, the aliens look similar to classic portrayals and, while not meant to be hostile, we automatically assume they are. When aliens seemingly visit us here on Earth, they are hostile creatures out to harm or take over our planet. When we Earthlings travel and explore other worlds and meet aliens there, we are innocent explorers. How come it is not the reverse? It is a matter of projection we are projecting our own worries and fears, not necessarily scientific ones.

Link:
Are there aliens in space and should we be afraid? | The Canberra Times - BollyInside

Mars is the place of hope for many astronomers. Its very far away for us: the average distance is roughly 54 million kilometers. But the distance is nothing for the unfathomable distances that traverse the Universe.

Whats for sure is that long ago, there were floods of water on Mars, similar to how it happens on Earth. Those times are far gone, but the Red Planet still poses interest for astronomers today. The reason is that humanity might have a chance to colonize it, although its highly unrealistic to believe that it shall be possible in the near future.

However, scientists continue to take steps towards understanding in a better way how habitable or inhabitable Mars is. Its indeed great to see that astronomers keep struggling to uncover the Red Planets secrets!

According to ScienceAlert.com, scientists reveal that by using the Perseverance rover of NASA, organic molecules were discovered in rocks and dust from the Jezero Crater of Mars. A new instrument of the rover was used for the discovery: the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC for short).

While were not talking about the first time when organic compounds have been found on the Red Planet, the new discovery is important because it suggests the ability of Martian rocks to preserve organic compounds well. This leads to the idea that biological organic material can also be preserved.

Luther Beegle, a planetary scientist of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA from Southern California, explained as cited by ScienceAlert.com:

What SHERLOC adds to the story is its capability to map the spatial distribution of organics inside rocks and relate those organics to minerals found there.

But celebration could still be far away, as the same scientist says as quoted by the same source:

This helps us understand the environment in which the organics formed. More analysis needs to be done to determine the method of production for the identified organics.

Therefore, organic molecules exist on Mars, but finding any complex life dwelling there is still unlikely, at least for now.

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NASA's Perseverance Rover Confirms the Presence of Organic Molecules on Mars - Why the Discovery Could Be More Important Than Ever - Optic Flux

It is time once again to look back at 2021 to see what happened and how my predictions panned out.

- There were two major items influencing the IT world in 2021. One was the chip shortage and the other was of course Covid-19. My prediction about the need for a Covid passport for travel came true and for many countries is still very relevant. The Omicron variant may change that, but for the moment vaccine passports will remain.

- I was correct about the increasing collection of all types of personal data but wrong about any of the social media giants being broken up. If anything, they seemed to have gained even more power across the globe. As for the usual assortment of hardware, there was nothing other than incremental upgrades. Hard drives did hit 20TB, but only 18TB in the regular consumer market, so I'll give myself half points. Standalone monitors via Bluetooth or wireless also became quite affordable this year. As predicted the 1TB microSD became affordable and still the biggest easily available size. While 2-4TB thumb drives did appear, there were also a lot of fake ones in that range on eBay and elsewhere. Hint, a 2 or 4TB thumb drive does not cost 500 baht.

- Despite some crazy assertions of it affecting people's brains, 5G technology spread more widely this year but not as much as I expected. New smartphones from the mid-range and up support this technology for faster data transfers, but I didn't get a 5G connection all that often. I did see some general connectivity issues working from home but not as many as I thought. The main letdown was from applications like Outlook and Teams having multiple problems throughout the year. As expected, we did see many companies finding the work from home model works well enough to share time in the office with some at home. This helped many with office accommodation requirements and costs.

- Also as expected many small to medium companies did not survive a year of Covid, while many of the larger companies thrived. Social media giants and others doubled their revenues in 2021. The travel industry took a big hit and some airlines have either collapsed or are in trouble. I made some predictions about the Amazon Halo Band. This did not spread as widely as I expected so that prediction failed.

- Finally, as far as my predictions, the vaccine rollout ended up causing more problems than it solved and we have had more than my predicted single variant in the past year. Vaccine manufacturers had a year of stellar profits and they are unwilling to see that money train slow down. So, all in all I did about usual, a bit above 50% but not all that well, particularly with the chip shortages.

- In a trial at Brown University using a transmitter in a human brain, a patient was connected to a computer to control robotic limbs with thought alone, ie, by imagining their movements. This is very promising for those with spinal cord injuries. A private citizen, Richard Branson became the first to reach space in his own spaceship. Others followed throughout the year but that was a great achievement. So was the Mars rover Perseverance using Moxie, or the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, to convert some of the Mars atmosphere into oxygen. This is a first step in the colonisation of Mars.

- Proving yet again that Einstein was right, light was observed for the first time coming from behind a black hole. El Salvador was the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the US dollar. Other countries have announced their own cryptocurrency initiatives to add one to their current banking system but not necessarily Bitcoin, rather a country controlled one. China was one of the first to announce this. The industry seems to have some concerns about this direction so we will see where we are in a few years.

- A piece of digital artwork named Everydays: The First 5000 Days by the artist Mike Winkelmann was sold by the auction house Christie's for US$69.3 million (about 2.3 billion baht). This also marked the first time that cryptocurrency was accepted as a form of payment. Since we also need to include the not-so-nice uses of technology, according to a UN report the first autonomous drone was used to hunt down and kill human targets in Libya. This would be the first example of the forerunner of Skynet-like technology where an AI based system was given control to hunt humans. Plarium's RAID: Shadow Legends won worst mobile game for the year.

- Before you do any travel, you may want to turn off Google's tracking. Login to your google.com account, click on your icon letter top right and then on Manage your Google account. Now click on Privacy & personalization then Things you've done and places you've been. Now inside the History Settings box click on Location History opening Activity Controls. Under Location History, click the button on the right that reads Turn off and in the pop-up windows scroll down and click Pause. This prevents Google from storing location markets linked to specific actions and the storing of information collected from searches or other activities. See how easy they make it? Happy New Year.

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Prediction hits and misses for 2021 - Bangkok Post

As per usual, TIME sat down with this years honoree for a lengthy profile, which covers anything from Musks dreams of widespread EV adoption to his opinions on vaccine mandates and whether it is right for one man to be worth billions of dollars when millions of people around the world go without food or potable water, and his hopes of colonizing Mars. Well focus on that last item on the list now.

Among the reasons TIME chose Musk as the recipient of the Person of the Year title is his aspir[ation] to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit. Well, that, and poop-tweeting, which, though admittedly juvenile, is a thing few other people of his standing would even dare to consider.

And the magazine is right; Musk does plan to take us to another planet, as anyone whos been following the developments over at SpaceX knows. NASA, the mag says, has more or less abdicated its position as the leader in space exploration, leaving the spot open for Musk. Electric vehicles might be a passion of his and his biggest source of revenue, but its space travel that gets him the most excited.

Musk says hes positive the first landing on Mars should take place within the next five years. After that, colonization will take place, resulting in what he calls the first self-sustaining city on the Red Planet. SpaceX will then ship animals there because Musk is dead serious about relocating the human race to another planet since weve already pretty much destroyed the one were currently occupying.

The goal overall has been to make life multi-planetary and enable humanity to become a spacefaring civilization, Musk says. And the next really big thing is to build a self-sustaining city on Mars and bring the animals and creatures of Earth there. Sort of like a futuristic Noahs ark. Well bring more than two, though its a little weird if theres only two.He does make a valid point. Pairs of two mightve worked for Noah, but Musk cant afford to lose one half of a pair on the way there or, you know, have it refuse to mate. This detail, as funny as it might seem, proves Musk is serious about his colonization plans and has been so for a very long time.

Until that happens, Musk and his SpaceX will continue to work hard to further space exploration. I think we can do a loop around the moon maybe as soon as 2023, Musk casually remarks in the same interview.

To catch up with Musk and see what makes him such a fascinating public figure, heres the video that accompanies his Time Magazine profile.

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Elon Musk Will Build a Futuristic Noah's Ark to Help With Colonizing Mars - autoevolution

Posted:

December 14, 2021 02:34 GMT

According to the companys CEO, Elon Musk, the new technology will also be important to Mars.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on December 13 that his space company intends to extract satiate from the atmosphere and convert it into rocket fuel.

SpaceX begins a program to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into rocket fuel. Please join us if you are interested. Starch The businessman via his official Twitter account, adding that the new technology It will also be important for Mars.

We must remember that Musk never gives up on an idea colonization of the red planet and goals Builds By 2050 there is a self-sufficient city with a population of 1 million. those People will come to Mars In the Starship Spacecraft, a reusable planetary craft being developed by SpaceX.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization alerted In October of this year, greenhouse gas concentrations reached a level New record Last year it increased at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade. The agency, which is based on the United Nations, noted that these trends occurred despite a temporary reduction in emissions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, has reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 The report declared it to be 149% of the pre-industrial level. On the other hand, the organization also noted that the ability of terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems to serve as sinks for carbon dioxide could become less effective in the future due to its sensitivity to climate change.

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SpaceX begins a program to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into rocket fuel - Amico Hoops

The front of the SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

In late September, aformer communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees raised concerns about the culture at the company, highlighting issues such as sexism in the workplace. Writing on the Lioness website, Alexandra Abrams and the unnamed employees wrote that Blue Origin "turns a blind eye toward sexism."

The essay ignited a wildfire of criticism about the working environment of Blue Origin, even extending to concerns about the safety of the company's vehicles. In the wake of the essay's publication, the Federal Aviation Administration launched an investigation of these safety allegations.

Now the conflagration has spread to SpaceX. On Tuesday, Lioness published another essay byAshley Kosak, a former mission integration engineer at SpaceX. This essay has fewer anonymous co-signers (only two) and is more tightly focused on sexism rather than the company's broader culture. But in regard to harassment, its allegations are no less worrisome.Kosak writes about multiple occasions of feeling sexually harassed and her belief that SpaceX's management did not do enough to intervene.

Kosak noted that SpaceX's mission is no less than to settle other worlds, but she muses about whether such a world would be a utopia, given the workplace culture of SpaceX.

"These conditions would be disturbing anywhere, but in this particular workplace, we are blazing a trail to settle a new planet," she said. "What will life on Elon's Mars be like? Probably much like life at SpaceX. Elon uses engineers as a resource to be mined rather than a team to be led. The health of Earth is rarely a consideration in the company's projects. Misogyny is rampant."

SpaceX declined to comment. I have spoken to more than 100 SpaceX employees over the years as a reporter covering space. In those discussions, the biggest concern about the company's work environment has been its demanding pace and long working hoursa tone clearly set by Musk, who nearly asks the impossible of his employees.

And notably, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell has always been described as a defender of women in aerospace. But clearly all is not well, given the concerns expressed by Kosakand other women who have left the company.

Shotwell and Musk appear to have taken note. This weekend, in advance of the publication of the Lioness essay, Shotwell sent an internal email to employees announcing an independentaudit of the company's human relations procedures. The company, Shotwell wrote, "can always do better."

The harsh reality is that the space industry, which grew largely out of military operations in the United States, has been male-dominated since its inception. Figures for the diversity of private companies are not available, but even NASA, which strives for a diverse workforce, had a two-to-one male-to-female ratio of employees in 2020 (see diversity report). At the senior level of management, the ratio was more than four-to-one.

The mission-driven environment of spaceflight also may help to foster an environment of sexism. Florida Today explored this dynamic in a lengthy report on harassment published earlier this fall.

"According to experts and whistleblowers, the idealistic nature of space explorationand sharpfocuson 'the mission' adds to adangerous dynamic in which women, already a minority in the high-tech workplace, might be willing to put up with unacceptable behaviors to achieve success," the publication wrote. "If left unresolved, insiders are concerned this culture could someday extend to astronauts on assignment or deep space colonization efforts."

Efforts by whistleblowers in Lioness are helpful in that they shine a light on problems that have existed from the beginning. Such illumination helps to expose bad behaviors. Welcome, too, is the recent creation of organizations to support young women and minorities in the space industry through fellowshipssuch as the Brooke Owens Fellowship and the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship.

These organizations help aerospace students find strong mentors and peers in the space industry. The hope is that students will not feel isolated and will instead be empowered to speak up for their needs and rights. Space should welcome all who are called to its vast potential.

Read more:
Concerns about sexism in the aerospace industry land at SpaceX - Ars Technica

Earlier this month, a group of 60 prominent scientists and engineers met behind closed doors at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their agenda: Mars colonisation.

Organised by Elon Musks SpaceX and attended by members of Nasas Mars exploration programme, the goal of this inaugural Mars workshop was to begin formulating concrete plans for landing, building and sustaining a human colony on Mars within the next 40 to 100 years.

This workshop signals the growing momentum and reality behind plans to actually send humans to Mars. But while SpaceX and partners ask whether we could live there, others still ask whether we should.

A Pew Research Centre survey carried out in June asked US adults to rank the relative importance of nine of Nasas current primary missions. Sending humans to Mars was ranked eighth (ahead only of returning to the Moon) with only 18% of those surveyed believing it should be a high priority.

We have known for some time that the journey to Mars for humans would be hard. Its expensive. It's dangerous. It's boring. However, like so many advocates of Mars exploration, I've always thought the sacrifice was worth it.

But to test this belief I wanted to look at the case against Mars; three reasons humans should leave the red planet alone.

It is hard to forget the images six months ago of Elon Musk's midnight cherry Tesla floating through space. Launched atop the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX hoped to shoot the Tesla into orbit with Mars. A stunt, for sure but also a marvellous demonstration of technical competence.

But not everyone was happy. Unlike every previous craft sent to Mars, this car and the mannequin called Starman sitting behind the wheel had not been sterilised. And for this reason, some scientists described it as the largest load of earthly bacteria to ever enter space.

As it happens, the Tesla overshot its orbit. At the time of writing, it is 88 million miles from Mars, drifting through the darkness of space with Bowie on an infinite loop. But the episode illustrates the first argument against human travel to Mars: contamination.

If humans do eventually land on Mars, they would not arrive alone. They would carry with them their earthly microbes. Trillions of them.

There is a real risk that some of these microbes could find their way onto the surface of Mars and, in doing so, confuse perhaps irreversibly so the search for Martian life. This is because we wouldn't be able to distinguish indigenous life from the microbes we'd brought with us. Our presence on Mars could jeopardise one of our main reasons for being there the search for life.

Furthermore, there is no one way of knowing how our microbes may react with the vulnerable Martian ecosystem. In Cosmos, the late Carl Sagan wrote, If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes the preservation of that life must, I think, supersede any other possible use of Mars.

Of course, one easy way to minimise the risk of contamination is to send robots to Mars instead of humans the second argument against a manned trip to Mars.

Robots have several inherent advantages. They are much cheaper than humans because they don't require a vast support infrastructure to provide things like water, food and breathable air. They are immune to the risks of cosmic radiation and other dangers inherent to space travel. And they won't get bored.

Over the last 40 years, the international space community has an extraordinary legacy of robotic missions to Mars.

A few weeks ago, the European Space agency's Mars Express identified liquid water buried in the south polar region of Mars.

The Curiosity Rover recently celebrated its sixth birthday with the discovery of organic molecules and methane variations in the atmosphere both positive signals of life.

And while most of its targets are chosen by humans, Curiosity also uses artificial intelligence to autonomously analyse images and choose targets for its laser detection system.

With the rapid pace of progress in robotics and AI, it is likely that the effectiveness of these non-human explorers will only increase. Robots on Mars will be to able to carry out increasingly complex scientific research, accessing craters and canyons that humans might find too difficult to reach and perhaps even drilling for Martian microbes.

The most polarising issue in the Mars debate is arguably the tension between those dreaming of a second home and those prioritising the one we have now.

Before his death, Stephen Hawking made the bleak prediction that humanity only had 100 years left on Earth.

Faced with a growing list of threats climate change, overpopulation, nuclear war Hawking believed that we had reached "the point of no return" and had no choice as a species but to become multi-planetary starting with the colonisation of Mars.

Elon Musk has also said on numerous occasions that we need a backup planet should something apocalyptic like an asteroid collision destroy Earth.

However, not everyone agrees. In the Pew survey mentioned earlier, a majority of US adults believed that Nasas number one priority should be fixing problems on Earth. The billions if not trillions of dollars needed to colonise Mars could, for example, be better spent investing in renewable forms of energy to address climate change or strengthening our planetary defences against asteroid collisions.

And of course, if we have not figured out how to deal with problems of our own making here on Earth, there is no guarantee that the same fate would not befall Mars colonists.

Furthermore, if something truly horrible were to happen on Earth, its not clear Mars would actually be an effective salvation. Giant underground bunkers on Earth, for example, could protect more people, more easily than a colony on Mars.

And in the event of apocalyptic scenario, it is possible that the conditions on Earth however horrific may still be more hospitable than the Martian wasteland. Let's not forget that Mars has next to no atmosphere, only one third gravity and is exposed to surface radiation approximately 100 times greater than on Earth.

The arguments above show that we are perhaps not ready to go to Mars at least, not today.

We need to first update our policies on planetary protection and apply them fairly to both public and private sector entities. We need to understand humans' unique role in exploration, beyond robots. And we can't lose sight of challenges on Earth, nor use the promise of Mars as an opportunity to deflect responsibility from Earth.

But for me, the issue comes down to timing. The technology will not be ready to send a human to Mars for at least another 10, perhaps even 15 years. This is a good thing. We should use this time carefully to make sure that, by the time we can go to Mars, we really should.

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The case against Mars colonisation | Mars | The Guardian

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Companies have until February 19 of next year to come up with a concept that can sustain life support systems, conduct research and support exploration and colonization on Mars

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There hasnt been a man on the moon in almost 50 years but NASA has revealed a new plan that, if successful, could see human beings live on the Moon long-term in the near future.

Along with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the space agency put out a request on Friday, November 19 to American companies to pitch concept designs of a fission surface power system as part of its Artemis programme to put people back on the Moon, and eventually, Mars.

The hope is to design a reactor that could be launched and running on the Moons surface within the decade. And, if all goes well, astronauts could eventually spend up to two months at a time living on the Moon, using it as a jumping-off point for missions further into the solar system..

Fission surface power in conjunction with solar cells, batteries, and fuel cells can provide the power to operate rovers, conduct experiments, and use the Moons resources to produce water, propellant, and other supplies for life support, NASA said.

The agencys call for proposals includes some ideas of what a potential reactor could look like. For now, the system would have to be small and lightweight, easily transportable, and be able to generate up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power, enough to cater to the electricity demands of several average households.

The power would be used to run life support systems, charge lunar rovers, landers and conduct research.

On top of it all, the reactor would have to be fully autonomous. It cannot rely on any external power or robotic support, nor astronaut involvement for system startup, shutdown, operation, or maintenance, NASA stated .

In the future, the systems would need to be able to produce at least 40 kilowatts of energy, enough to power approximately 30 households for up to 10 years, according to NASA.

As a result, the produced energy should be able to sustain a lunar presence and also support exploration and potential colonization of Mars.

Companies interested in submitting a pitch have until February 19, 2022, the brief states, after which NASA and DOE will select the ones that look most promising and help develop them over the next year.

The feedback and enthusiasm we continue to see for space nuclear power systems has been very exciting, and understandably so,says senior engineer Sebastian Corbisiero, the Fission Surface Power Project lead at the DOEs Idaho National Laboratory in the press brief.

Providing a reliable, high-power system on the Moon is a vital next step in human space exploration, and achieving it is within our grasp.

The announcement comes after NASA to launch DART, a SpaceX rocket that will crash into an asteroid at high speed to deflect it away from Earth, as its first-of-its-kind planetary defence, Tuesday night.

For tonights test, DART will target an asteroid whose size is a tiny fraction of the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and most of the planets animal species. It is not on a path that will cause it to hit Earth in the foreseeable future.

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NASA puts out call to U.S. industry partners to design a nuclear reactor to run on the Moon - National Post