Category Archives: Mars Colonization

One Minute on Mars
First light of my Modified T3i,full spectrum. Mars 3-21-14 1am Est. 8 inch nexstar8se with an orion eyepeice projection kit, 14mm lens.All done on my front w...

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One Minute on Mars - Video

There is a second reality series project devoted to chronicling a mission to the Red Planet. Leslie Greifs Thinkfactory Media (Hatfields & McCoys, Gene Simmons: Family Jewels) has partnered with The Mars Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet, on an unscripted TV project that would document Mars Societys year-long Mars simulation in the Canadian Arctic. Thinkfactory had been working with the Mars Society on the project for the past four months. It took the series out to networks last week, with two outlets interested and currently in discussion with the production company. Tentatively titled Mission To Mars, the series is one of two Mars colonization reality projects in the marketplace, along with Lionsgate TVs untitled series done in collaboration with Lansdorps Mars One, the international Mars mission backed by Dutch billionaire entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp.

Related:Reality Series From Lionsgate TV & Roy Bank To Chronicle Mission To Colonize Mars

According to Thinkfactory EVP Adam Reed, their project is further along, with a six-person habitat already built on Canadas Devon Island in the Arctic, and it has NASAs cooperation. After a lengthy location search, with its harsh climate the deserted island, which features a 14-mile crater, was deemed the closest environment to Mars that can be found on Earth. About 200 scientists around the world applied to be part of the yearlong experiment, with 60 of them moving to the next round of the selection process. The final six will move into the two-story, 1,000-square-foot complex, which includes sleeping quarters, a bathroom, a science lab for conducting experiments, engineering space as well as simulated air locks. It has everything six scientists would need for a year, Reed said. The six, who will be wearing space suits when venturing outside, will be followed by TV cameras in the vein of Big Brother but the only communication with the outside world they will have during their stay will be with mission control, which will be based out of the NASA AMES center from where the Mars exploration Rover mission is run. Chris McKay, who is working on the Mars Rover Mission, also is helping the Mars Society with their project.

Ideally, Reed, who calls Mission To Mars a true social experiment, envisions the series filming the yearlong experience for a 12-episode docu series, with each episode chronicling a month in the Mars-like habitat. Thinkfactory is interested in continuing its collaboration with the Mars Society on the next phase of organizations plans for establishing a settlement on Mars though that appears further down the line.

TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.

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Thinkfactory Media Shopping Mars Exploration Reality Series

February 19, 2013

Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Mars colonization has been a topic of discussion for decades. Especially since man landed on the moon in 1969, people from a variety of professional backgrounds including astronauts, sci-fi writers, entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors, video gamers, academics and journalists have pondered the possibility of colonizing Mars. But just how far in the future is the first Mars colony?

One particularly promising example of a possible Mars colonization endeavor comes from SpaceX, a private spaceflight company founded by the South African billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. In November of 2012, redOrbit reported about Musks designs for a Mars colony in the next 20 years.

In his plans, Musk said [the initial Mars colonization effort] would start with a pioneering group of less than 10 people who would be transported through a reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane. This first group would literally build a sustainable colony from the ground up, including housing, crops, buildings and everything needed to sustain life on Mars. Eventually, Musk said he would like to have 80,000 colonists by the 20-year mark. Of course, at an estimated price of about $500,000, a one-way ticket to the Red Planet is still pretty steep.

Another group interested in colonizing Mars is a nonprofit organization from the Netherlands that is planning a settlement by 2023. Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp is leading a group of his countrymen putting together its plans for the Mars One settlement.

Mars One will establish the first human settlement on Mars in 2023, the group said in a statement on its website. A habitable settlement will be waiting for the settlers when they land. Then every two years thereafter, the group said a new crew will arrive on the Mars colonization to replace previous occupants.

Both of these groups are working feverishly to find funding, participants and suppliers. However, these are not the only hurdles that they face. Discovery explains five hurdles that must be conquered before colonizing Mars.

1. Terraforming: Colonizing Mars will require a great deal of scientific finesse in order to manipulate the Red Planets atmosphere, gasses, ecology and UV levels from the sun into conditions that would be hospitable to human life.

2. Cost: As the SpaceX plan has pointed out, given current technologies and energy requirements, a trip to Mars will not be cheap, which means that the issue of equal access may not apply to Mars colonization.

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Colonizing Mars: Just How Far Away Are We? - Space News ...

SpaceX, Elon Musks poster child of the commercial space travel revolution, is about to attempt the first ever soft landing of a heavy space launch vehicle. On March 16, SpaceX mission CRS-3 will lift off from Cape Canaveral on a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Usually, the massive primary stage of the rocket would fall into the Atlantic ocean after launch but in this case, it will sprout some metal legs and use whats left of its rocket fuel to slowly return to Earth. This is perhaps the single most important step in SpaceXs stated goal of reducing the cost of space travel by a factor of 10, eventually leading to the human colonization of Mars.

The Falcon 9 is very large. Simply throwing them away into the ocean is rather wasteful.

One of the primary reasons that the human exploration of space is moving so slowly is cost. Yes, you can argue that space agencies like NASA and ESA should receive more funding, but at the end of the day its still excruciatingly expensive for humanity to send stuff into space. For heavy lift vehicles, which are required to lift large satellites, equipment, and supplies into space, it costs somewhere in the region of $10,000 to lift a single pound ($22,000/kg) into orbit around the Earth. It costs even more if you want to propel that mass out of the Earths gravity and over to Mars. For sending astronauts into space, though, NASA currently pays around $70 million per seat aboard the Soyuz space capsule. (A crewed version of SpaceXs Dragon capsule, DragonRider, is in development, which will reduce the cost per seat to $20 million but it wont launch until 2015 at the earliest.)

Now, its always going to be expensive to lift stuff off the Earths surface (blame gravity!), but there are some big changes we can make that will reduce the cost significantly such as re-using the launch vehicle. Currently, for all space launch vehicles, the initial rockets and fuel tanks are jettisoned usually into the ocean, never to be seen again. This is incredibly wasteful; according to theSpace Development Steering Committee, those rockets cost in the region of $100 million, and we throw them away after a single use. Enter SpaceXs reusable launch vehicle (RLV) technology.

How to maneuver a very long cylinder with just a single point of thrust: Gimbals!

SpaceX originally debuted its RLV tech on the suborbital Grasshopper rocket in 2013 (video above). If the tests were successful which they were the plan was to take the same tech and scale it up to the full-size Falcon rocket. Basically, after the first stage detaches from CRS-3, it will use its Merlin rocket engines to slowly return to Earth. For this flight, the first stage will still land in the water but once SpaceX is confident that it can do so safely, future launches will see the first stage fly all the way back to to the launchpad. After that, SpaceX will start bringing the second stage back to the launchpad, too.

The eventual goal, according to SpaceX, is to create a launch system that is reusable within single-digit hours. Basically, SpaceX would give these rockets a quick once-over, fill them back up with fuel and off they go again. The fuel is still very expensive, but its nothing compared to the cost of the hardware. If everything goes to plan, the total cost per pound to launch into Earth orbit could drop to $500 or less one twentieth of what todays unreusable rockets cost. Suffice it to say, if SpaceX manages to undercut every other space launch company in the world including the Russian and Chinese governments it could suddenly find itself in a very powerful and lucrative position.

The launch of CRS-3 will take place on March 16 at 04:41 EDT (early Sunday morning). There will be a live NASA feed, which will hopefully show the first stages powered descent into the ocean.

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SpaceX prepares to take the biggest step towards affordable space travel: Soft landing the Falcon 9 rocket

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It's time to talk trash! Space trash, to be specific. Trash collection has never really seemed like an enviable job to most of us. But, what if you were collecting trash from outer space? That sounds like what could be the coolest job in the galaxy.

Tethers Unlimited, (TUI) a 15-employee company based in Bothell, Washington, aims to begin cleaning up space junk later this year by launching their "Terminator Tether" into space aboard AeroCube-5 satellites. Once the tether attaches itself to an object - an obsolete satellite, for example, it then unfurls a long fiber or wire. The tether collects electrons as it drags through the Earth's magnetic field at orbital speed, creating a voltage called "Motional EMF." The resulting drag from the electrons collected on the tether can then deorbit the satellite, causing it to fall back to earth. According to TUI's website:

"This module uses active electron emission technologies to greatly increase the electrodynamic forces, enabling it to deorbit most LEO spacecraft with in a period of several months. The Terminator Tether modules will typically mass less than 2% of the host spacecraft's dry mass."

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Rob Hoyt, a physicist and inventor, came up with the idea seventeen years ago, while working out of his house. There are currently over 21,000 pieces of space junk larger than a grapefruit circling the Earth, threatening any manned or unmanned spacecraft up there. Hoyt proposes that TUI's method of satellite removal would be a fraction of the cost of using rocket fuel to deorbit the object.

In 2007, the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space adopted a set of space debris mitigation guidelines, which included a 25-year deorbit requirement for satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Hence the need for Hoyt's company.

Tethers Unlimited is well on their way to astronomic success, if their concepts prove viable. Hoyt expressed his optimism by telling the Puget Sound Business Journal:

"There's a lot of cool stuff going on here in the state, and we're rebuilding the space industry here. We're getting more of the new space companies and organizations taking hold here. We could still use better support from the state."

Tethers Unlimited is also working to develop a rocket engine that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which it would then use as fuel. That's right - a rocket that runs on water.

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Finally! A Trash Collector For Space Junk!

Feature Article of Friday, 7 March 2014

Columnist: Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame

2014 Independence Day Special

By Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, Ph.D. CPP, USA

Part I

Introduction. That Kwame Nkrumah is the founder of modern Ghana is not debatable; yet, there are still some guilty and misguided individuals among us who would clothe themselves in an oblong missile and blast it from Mars into a fortified round hole. Since the late President Arthur Mills declared Kwame Nkrumahs birthday as a statutory Founders Day in Ghana, certain resentful, misguided and ill-informed individuals have been blowing their shattered trumpets from Mars about their so-called founding fathers by way of distorting and turning Ghanas political history upside down. So far, they have failed to provide any cogent argument/s to underscore their hodgepodge position. By their imprudent logic, all leaders of the anti-European intruders, anti-Gold Coast Crown colony, pro-self-government Fante confederation, anti-AWAM (European merchants), anti-draconian indirect rule, cocoa hold-up, as well as ethnocentric, terrorist and secessionist crusaders, from 1482 to March 6, 1957, are founding fathers. But going by the American benchmark, Founding Fathers, refers to a group of individuals (men) with shared political philosophy and ideology, vision and socio-economic values, who struggle, revolt, and/or fight together to overthrow their foreign overlord to found a nation based on a constitution. In the case of Ghana, can the so-called founders fathers meet this criterion? Aside from their sabotaging and domestic terrorist tactics (including bombing, shooting, and hunting down supporters of the CPP), parochial objectives and secessionist goals, none of the names that often pop up played any role, identified or associated themselves with Kwame Nkrumah and his CPPs political ideology, Pan-African vision, strategy and tactics, which galvanized the common people and some chiefs to rally behind Kwame Nkrumahs struggle for a unified country from 1949 to the 1954 and 1956 general elections. It was consequent to the victory of Nkrumah and his CPP (the first and only political party in all the four independent territories under the British colonial administration) in the 1956 general election that modern Ghana was founded on March 6, 1957. As the subsequent discourse shows, not only did the champions of barefaced ethnocentrism, parochialism and secessionism ferociously try to sabotage Ghanas independence, but they also oppose the name, Ghana, when Kwame Nkrumah proposed it. So, why are they Founding Fathers?

Origin of the UGCC. In the aftermath of the so-called World War II and the collapsed of the British economy, the British colonial government limited import and export licenses to the Association of West African (Europeans) Merchants (AWAM). Feeling marginalized, some of the African merchants led by George Paa Grant (a wealthy Sekondi merchant), Awoonor-Williams (a Sekondi-based lawyer) and others formed the Gold Coast League as a pressure group to advance their economic and political interest. Concurrently, the upshot of Dr. J. B. Danquahs connection with the ritual murder of Odikro of Akyea Mensah of Apedwa brought him (Danquah) into conflict with Governor Allen Burns. As a result, J. B. Danquah, Erick Akufo Addo, Ako Adjei and others in Accra formed the Gold Coast National Party to oppose the Burns Constitution. The irony here is that in Governor Burns constitutional reform in the late 1930s, Dr. J. B. Danquah pressed for the creation of an Office of Minister of Home Affairs for himself. As well, Dr. Danquah had wholeheartedly embraced the Burns Constitution by representing the Joint Provincial Council of Chiefs in the Burns Legislative Council in 1946.

Dr. J. B. Danquahs personal contradictory positions notwithstanding, the economic and political interest of these two pressure groups resulted in a marriage of convenience and became the United Gold Coast Convention in Saltpond in August 1947, under the leadership of George Paa Grant. The main objective of this self-selected Gentlemens Club, comprising lawyers, merchant, wealthy cocoa farmers, and other similar-minded individuals was to advance their economic and political interest through political power sharing with the Colonial Government. Most critical was their call for the replacement of Chiefs on the Legislative Council with educated persons. The important thing to note here is that the UGCC was a loose, [Gentlemens Club] without program of action, funds and bank account.

Because of its self-appointed mandate, the UGCC avoided designating itself as a political party; thus, seeing themselves as rightful rulers, its original initiators detested the idea of political parties. Secondly, as bourgeoisies, they took politics to be a leisure activity. Their elitist outlook also prevented them from reconciling themselves with the people. Hence, they needed Nkrumahs kind of leadership and organizational skills to bring some of the chiefs and people into their fold, and turn the UGGC into a popular movement to oppose and upset the Burns Constitution. The big question, however, is, if the UGCC was truly a movement struggling for independence (as some apologists have claimed), why did its initiators not give up their private business and professional endeavors as Vladimir Lenin, Nelson Mandela, Augustino Neto, Mahatma Gandhi and others did, rather than search for another citizen (Nkrumah) outside the territory with special leadership and organizational skills to become its general secretary?

Kwame Nkrumah as the Antidote to the UGCC Handicaps. Ako Adjei, who recommended Kwame Nkrumah as the antidote to the UGCCs inadequacies, knew about Nkrumahs anti-colonial crusade and Union of West African States agitation in the US, as well as his unique organizational kills and leadership roles during and after the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester. To test the waters, Ako Adjei wrote to ask Nkrumah if he would consider returning to the country to become the General Secretary of a newly formed UGCC. Without waiting for his response, Awoonor-Williams wrote a letter, and signed by Paa Grant, to Nkrumah, offering him the job of General Secretary, a monthly salary of one hundred pounds and a car. Dr. J.B. Danquah followed it up his letter urging him to accept the position. So, who was the opportunist here, as some functional illiterates and boorish individuals try to impute in their hoaxed writings? Clearly, they wanted to use Nkrumah to attain their selfish goal, namely to replace the Chiefs on the Legislative Council with themselves, self-styled elites.

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Kwame Nkrumah: The one and only founding father of Ghana

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How future generations will make the voyage from our earthly home to the planets and beyondand what it means for our species

The Science Of The Next 150 Years: 150 Years in the Future

When space shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop in 2011, it did not mark, as some worried, the end of human spaceflight. Rather, as the extinction of the dinosaurs allowed early mammals to flourish, retiring the shuttle signals the opening of far grander opportunities for space exploration. Led by ambitious private companies, we are entering the early stages of the migration of our species away from Earth and our adaptation to entire new worlds. Mars is the stated goal of Elon Musk of PayPal fortune; polar explorers Tom and Tina Sjogren, who are designing a private venture to Mars; and Europe's privately funded MarsOne project, which would establish a human colony by 2023. The colonization of space is beginning now.

2014 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

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How Humans Will Evolve on Multigenerational Space Exploration Missions

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Kicking Off Everywhere is drawn from an interesting book by Paul Mason, Why Its Still Kicking Off Everywhere. He summarizes his thesis here (2013; reinforced here):

What is underpinning the unrest that has swept the globe? In reality its reducible to three factors. Firstly, the neoliberal economic model has collapsed, and this has then been compounded by persistent attempts to go on making neoliberalism work: to ram the square peg into the round hole, thereby turning a slump into what looks like being a ten year global depression. Secondly there has been a revolution in technology that has made horizontal networks the default mode of activism and protest; this has destroyed the traditional means of disseminating ideology that persisted through two hundred years of industrial capitalism, and has made social media the irreversible norm. Thirdly, there has been a change in human consciousness: the emergence of what Manuel Castells calls the networked individual an expansion of the space and power of individual human beings and a change in the way they think; a change in the rate of change of ideas; an expansion of available knowledge; and a massive, almost unrecordable, revolution in culture.

What we are seeing is not the Arab Spring, the Russian Spring, the Maple Spring [Quebec's Printemps rable], Occupy, the indignados. Were seeing the Human Spring.

Perhaps. Although we might consider firstly that the the 0.01% is doing quite well under a collapsing neo-liberalism, thank you very much; secondly that social media can be used by bad guys as well as good; and thirdly that a change in the way they think is just that: Change, much as speed is only speed, and not velocity. We might remember, also, that oligarchs and heads of state are Human, all too human; as are fascists.

So, in this post, I want to gently interrogate Masons theses, by using the following Real News Network interview as a forcing device; Im going to take the entire transcript and interweave other examples of unrest with it, along with commentary. The RNN interview also has the advantage of covering Venezuela in some detail, which our famously free press is not doing, and so is useful for that purpose alone, besides being an armature for discussion. And, readers, I hope youll chime in with additions, corrections, and refinements; Ive blogged a lot on unrest, ever since the Tahrir Square, but that, and an appropriate level of cynicism realism, are my only qualifications!

Paul Jay of the Real News Network interviews Miguel Tinker-Salas, professor of History and Latin American studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and Alexander Main of CEPR:

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. Im Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.

Both pro- and anti-government forces are rallying in Venezuela today ahead of a peace conference called for by Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro.

Now joining us to discuss this are two guests.

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What, Exactly, Is Kicking Off Everywhere, Whether in Venezuela, the Ukraine, or Thailand?

KELOWNA - A Kelowna scientist is joining the crew of a NASA-funded simulated mission to Mars after beating out hundreds of applicants from around the world.

Ross Lockwood and five others will spend four months inside a sealed environment high on the slopes of a Hawaiian mountain.

The main purpose of the mission, starting March 28, is to help the space agency develop psychological guidelines that will be used to select future astronauts capable of making a real trip to Mars.

``It's incredibly exciting to participate in a research project that will be used to help in space exploration,'' Lockwood said.

``I'm really looking forward to this, but I'm also a little bit nervous as well.''

Lockwood, 27, is doing his doctorate in condensed matter physics at the University of Alberta.

Along with his longtime interest in space-related research and astronomy, Lockwood has worked in educational programs at the University of Alberta Observatory.

His scientific background and experience in various university leadership roles helped him succeed in his application to participate in the simulated Mars mission, which is led by Cornell University and the University of Hawaii.

The researchers will enter the 11-metre diameter dome built in an old rock quarry at an elevation of 2,500 metres on the slopes of Mauna Koa.

Inside the habitat, they will spend several hours a day taking psychoogical tests and continuing with their own research endeavours as part of the venture dubbed HI-SEAS, for Hawaii Space Exploration and Analog Simulation.

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Kelowna scientist joins NASA funded simulated mission to Mars on Hawaiian mountain

Packing Of Mars
Packing Of Mars. . . . . mars colonization, mars human exploration, mars exploration curiosity, mars exploration timeline, mars exploration missions, mars ex...

By: s.v.p vijayalakshmi

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Packing Of Mars - Video