Category Archives: Moon Colonization

Last week it was reported that on August 14 NASA will begin accepting applications to become its new Planetary Protection Officer.

The job post, which notes a cushy six-figure salary, immediately kicked off a spate of sensational headlines, though the positions actual responsibilities mostly consist of preventing the transfer of microorganisms from Earth to other planets and vice versa to prevent biological contamination during space missions.

For some, the discovery that, rather than activating cosmic shields to defend against alien invasions, the Planetary Protection Officer will more likely be focusing on keeping spacecrafts spotlessly clean, might seem disappointing. Its actually refreshing.

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In an article in New York magazine, The Uninhabitable Earth, journalist David Wallace-Wells prophesizes a litany of potential global warming disasters, including lethal heat waves, global drought, and perpetual war.

Other oft-predicted doomsday scenarios have involved nuclear holocausts, genetically-engineered diseases and, in a particularly sci-fi-oriented example, machine uprisings.

What all of the above scenarios have in common is their roots in human innovation and adventurism.

American astronaut Joseph Tanner during a space walk as part of the STS-115 mission to the International Space Station, September 2006. NASA

Indeed, while our species may not actually bring about the Apocalypse, its hard to claim humanitys ambition has ever been tempered by an abundance of caution.

From land explorations to military conflicts to science and technology, our history has generally been long on hubris and short on humility. In some cases, the dangers were not even foreseeable.

Could the pioneering inventors and engineers of the Industrial Revolution, for instance, ever have imagined the potentially catastrophic effects that oil, coal and gasoline would have on the environment?

Today, as we continue to make ever greater strides in technological innovation, even some prominent tech leaders have expressed reservations. Teslas Elon Musk, for example, has repeatedly warned of the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence, likening A.I. to a demon being summoned by a guy with a pentagram who inevitably wont be able to control it.

In Silicon Valley, his concerns have mostly fallen on deaf ears, though the notion that our technology is outpacing our abilities to contend with it is hardly new. Biologist E.O. Wilson perhaps put it best when he described the essential human problem as follows: W e have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

Meanwhile, Musks anxieties have fueled his mission to colonize Mars via his aerospace corporation, SpaceX, in the hopes that humanity may eventually become, in his words, a multi-planetary species.

Stephen Hawking, fearful Earth is on its way to becoming uninhabitable, also urges space colonization as a means for long-term survival. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is confident this planet will always remain our home, but is convinced that colonizing space (including the moon) will enable our continued existence here. He aims for his own spaceflight company, Blue Origin, to be part of that process.

If a new Space Age is indeed upon us, it is essential that this new frontier be one area in which human beings know our proverbial place.

In this context, NASAs Planetary Protection Officer emerges as an unlikely hero and an important example for private spaceflight companies like Musks and Bezoss to follow.

In contrast to the fifteenth century European colonialists who visited disease and destruction upon the Americas, NASAs Planetary Protection Officer represents a careful and considerate explorer, intrepid in all the right ways, for all the right reasons.

Of course it can be argued that protecting planets from microscopic organisms is trivial stuff in comparison to close encounters with intelligent extraterrestrial beings. That is correct, and precisely what makes the task so important. It is undoubtedly in the care and concern over the minutia of interplanetary exploration that we set the tone for the entire enterprise.

Our relationship to space is unpredictable and still in its infancy, and an emphasis on responsibility, especially at this stage, is paramount. In that light, the Planetary Protection Officer is no less important than the title implies.

This summer saw the fourth hottest June in record-keeping history. In mid-July, an iceberg the size of Delaware broke off from Antarctica.

If, as many people fear, weve already damaged this world irrecoverably, its not too late to be more responsible with others.

Joseph Helmreich is the author of The Return (St. Martins Press, 2017), a science fiction novel about interplanetary conflict.

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It's No Joke. NASA Needs Someone to Stop Us Polluting Outer Space - Newsweek

The Chinese government has selected a desert rife with red cliffs as the location for its simulated Mars colony. Here, future astronauts will prepare for survival in a frigid world with world-spanning dust storms.

The official press agency of the Peoples Republic of China, Xinhua, announced Tuesday that the government will build a base in the high Tibetan Plateau in north-central China. Specifically, the base will be set in the Qaidam basin, a stark, remote land that looks quite Martian. In the image provided by Xinhua (above), the area looks like an extremely arid badlands country, with few plants and no water.

The base will include both a Mars community and a Mars campsite. Its intended for scientific colonization research, but to also stoke the Chinese publics interest in their deep-space ambitions. Its somewhat similar to the NASA Kennedy Space Centers Summer of Mars tour, currently whipping up Martian intrigue along the East coast. But this is a much gnarlier simulation, set in a place that compares to the stark, red planet.

The research component of the Chinese Mars base will likely be similar to NASAs Mars simulation colony, situated some 8,200 feet up on the active Hawaiian volcano, Mauna Loa. At such a high altitude, it is a chilly, barren land, blanketed in lava rock. Called the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, crews of six live in a domed habitat for up to a year. These simulations allow scientists to understand how Martian crews set in tightly constrained and resource limited environments hold up both psychologically and physically.

For now, Chinese deep-space ambitions are dependent upon the success of its heavy-lifting Long March 5 rocket, which is currently in testing and production. At 187 feet tall and supplemented by four boosters, it is designed to launch 55,000 pounds into lower Earth orbit and send about 18,000 pounds to the moon.

In early July, the rocket failed about six minutes into its flight, for reasons the Chinese government identified as an anomaly. Before this launch disappointment, the Long March 5 was scheduled to send two landers to the moons surface in November, one of which would return back to Earth with moon rocks.

Its unclear if this rocket setback has derailed Chinas 2020 robotic endeavor to Mars. The Chinese rover looks similar to NASAs roving explorers, with six rugged wheels and a high mounted camera. It will carry a ground penetrating radar to study the soil and look for water and ice.

Chinese astronauts, once theyre finished training in high red deserts of the Tibetan Plateau, will need to know where to find reliable sources of ice. Theyll have to dig it up and melt it down if they hope to survive in a land more forbidding that any region on Earth.

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China's Simulated Mars Colony Is its First Small Step to the Red Planet - Inverse

Imagine trying to take a leak, say, in the inhospitable environment of a Martian winter. Or getting your crops to grow when the temperature outside your moon colony is a crisp -153C. The environment in which you work and live obviously has to stand up to the severity of the alien environment outside your habitat. Architects and designers have been contemplating how we will live in alien environments for a while now; but the new push to send astronauts to Mars has lent this question new urgency.

The bare-bones infrastructure needed to keep people alive in space is not enough. Humans are social animals; we need to stay tethered to our home and our culture in some way to keep us sane while we push the boundaries of space travel.

From the cramped quarters of the Nostromo in Alien to the ill-fated Icarus II of Danny Boyle's Sunshine, fiction is littered with accounts of extraterrestrial spaces that work against the crew. The challenge for designers of new off-world habitats is to avoid these pitfalls and design a harmonious environment for those that will live there.

Image: NASA

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin proposed a solution at the 2013 edition of the Humans to Mars Summit for colonizing the Red Planet: deploy a fleet of robots to Mars orbit and have them assemble the components of a living structure. Then guide it down to the surface in segments, assemble it, and prestoinstant Mars habitat.

However, it seems reasonable that the first wave of settlers to set up shop in a Mars colony, for example, are going to need a glimpse of the familiar every now and again to prevent their Earth-bound psyches from going completely off the rails. According to Jessie Andjelic, a guest lecturer at the University of Calgary and an architect at the Spectacle Bureau of Architecture and Urbanism, that requires three things: the use of building materials from home, some kind of a view of the familiar, and a way to preserve and maintain privacy.

Image: Brian Boigon

"The research is pretty varied," said Andjelic in a phone interview, "but what we heard from other experts and people who've spent time in space is there's a lot of pressures when you're involved in a mission like that. Physically it's exhausting, but mentally it's really exhausting as well. You have people who have high expectations for your mission where you're testing out certain technologies or certain scientific experiments and their work is really resting on your performance."

One of the best ways to clear your mind on the ISS, for example, is to gaze out the window to a glorious view of Earth. On Mars the situation is not so simple. "On the ISS you have this amazing panorama of Earth where you can see quite a bit of detail, you can see that there's no borders, it kind of changes your worldview," said Andjelic. "When you're on Mars, Earth is a star, so the connection is much more tenuous."

The next step is to design a culturean established way of doing things that can transmit the "values" of the new settlement from one wave of colonizers to the next. That tactic is on full display in Matt Damon's portrayal of a Mars-bound survivalist in The Martian, wherein the protagonist goes toe-to-toe with the harsh landscape to grow crops. He rigorously attempts to replicate a small corner of the Earth in his botanical facility.

But this "colonization" of the new world could eventually lead to problems that the first wave of settlers could never anticipate. Adopting an "imperial" attitude of imposing the laws of Earth on Mars, for example, could dull the creative impulses of settlers, leaving them unable to improvise effectively on the native terrain of their brave new world.

Image: Credit: Brian Boigon

Brian Boigon, a professor in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto, has been working on the philosophical underpinnings of alien habitats for many years. His latest project, a multimedia extravaganza called Interopera, is described as a portal into a hypothetical civilization that exists 5,000 years from now, based on the narrative structure of The Canterbury Tales.

He says the key to successfully adapting to an environment that has no connection with Earth is to avoid adopting a "colonial" attitude, in an attempt to "civilize" the alien environment. Instead, Boigon suggests we "reinterpret our lives there in a new way." He says we should re-think our environment rather than attempt to reproduce what we already know. "My idea would be that if you're going to go to another place that has nothing that's familiar, that you try to learn from that environment and generate new portals of experience."

Like a well-designed habitat here on Earth, a successful, productive colony on Mars, the Moon, or possibly a far-flung exoplanet will have to not only withstand the rigours of an extreme environment, but must also provide succor for the lonely souls who will be living there alone for years at a time. Spiritual and emotional wellness will be key considerationsnot just knowing how to irrigate crops in a place where it could rain liquid methane.

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How Space-Based Design Will Keep Martians and Moon-Dwellers Sane - Motherboard

The Mars Mission is uppermost in the mind of #Elon Musk, and he plans to launch his SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket hopefully by November. It can carry a load of around 140,000 lb to low-earth orbit and is intended to lift huge loads of cargo and transport human beings to the Moon and Mars to establish colonies on distant planets.

The purpose of this exercise would be to gain confidence because it will have to, finally, take human beings to other planets as a part of #colonization plans. The rocket will take off with four million lbs (1.8 million kg) of thrust from NASAs Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Daily Mail UK reports that Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has said the Falcon Heavy rocket would provide a means to lift large amounts of cargo into space at a relatively low cost.

Initial estimates are $85 million for each flight of the rocket whereas the corresponding cost with Space Launch System of NASA, which is more powerful, will come to around $500 million per launch.

To demonstrate the workings of the reusable rocket from launch to return to Earth, he has released a video. He is proud of it and has described it as 'the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.' He has his eyes on Mars and its colonization plans and is promoting the concept.

The short video clip shows the craft as it covers the stages from lift off to landing back to Earth and ready for reuse. The landing could be in the ocean because it may not be feasible to land it back on the ground. The landing site is immaterial but, it is a plus point for him because he has tested and proved that the rockets need not be of the one-time-use types but can be reused.

That helps in reducing the cost and is a major positive for him.

Elon Musk knows that to transport humans to the Moon or Mars as a part of the colonization plans; the rocket must have the capacity to lift a large enough load that will house the crew, the spacecraft, and cargo. The rocket will be equipped with engines that can generate nearly 2.32 million kg of thrust at liftoff and be able to carry more than 140,000 pounds of payload to low-Earth orbit.

The flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket has already been delayed. The original plan was to fly it in 2013, but teething problems led to delays. However, Elon Musk is a visionary, and The Telegraph reports that he is confident that a vast Martian city could be established this century it would not just be an outpost, but a fully functioning society with iron foundries and pizza joints. #Spacex Falcon Heavy

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Elon Musk is focused on the colonization of Mars - Blasting News

The rise of the private space industry may be what's needed to kickstart humans' journey to the final frontier; the pursuit of profit is often a fantastic spur for innovation. Just how this will all play out is anyone's guess, but the wheels are most definitely in motion.

In September 2016, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took the stage at the annual International Astronautical Congress conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, to outline his vision for invading Mars. The plana combination of technical specificity and operational vaguenesswould make us a multi-planetary species by pre-stocking Mars via unmanned supply missions that leave Earth every 26 months when the two planets align in their respective orbits.

These initial one-way trips will take around 80 days with today's technology, but Musk believes they can eventually be shortened to 30-day voyages. Once Mars is properly supplied with a bounty of necessary Earth stuff, humans will blast off for the Red Planet. If all goes according to plan, SpaceX's first robotic landers will touch down on Mars in the early 2020s.

Musk's interplanetary blueprint received a lot of attention, but it's not exactly unprecedented. In the last century, earthlings have proposed space colonization plans of varying degrees of seriousness. In the 1960s, Wernher von Braun, the father of rocket science and first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, predicted that a future incarnation of the Saturn rocket would begin sending humans to Mars by the 1980s.

Around the same time, the Soviets were developing plans to construct a moon base known as "Zvezda," also by the 80s. Then the Cold War lost its urgency, and those theoretical missions collided with economic reality. Since then, a few private space organizations have formulated colonization plans of their own, but they've resulted in little more than a few sparsely attended conferences here on Earth.

Yet even after all those decades of space disillusionment, Musk's plan feels refreshingly tangible. Perhaps it's because he has a well-earned reputation as a closer, an industrial-scale macher who sets bold goals and has the technical, financial, and operational prowess to make them a reality. But space colonization is starting to feel less like inconsequential space-nerd pondering and more like something that can be turned into a viable space-nerd business.

Given the majesty of discovery and the fact that colonization is our best insurance policy should the Earth get into a bar fight with an asteroid (just ask the dinosaursoh wait, you can't), it might seem odd to focus on space's economic promise. But when it comes to making money up there, the sky is literally not even the limit. Space is the ultimate technology platform, teeming with opportunity and ripe for ethically uncomplicated exploitation. Some have predicted that it will be the first industry to produce self-made trillionaires. The privatization of space and the establishment of private outposts far from the watchful eye of mother Earth might prove to be one of history's most important developments.

SpaceX isn't the only organization going to Mars. NASA has scheduled a manned mission to orbit ol' Red in 2033, followed by "boots on Mars" in a subsequent but as-yet-undefined mission.

The agency's Martian plans haven't received nearly as much attention as those from SpaceX. This is probably because NASA's post-Apollo record of manned exploration has been an evolving disappointment, with timelines shifting from administration to administration and budget to budget. But perhaps that lull was just part of the process the science had to go through before it got real.

Trailblazing scientific inquiry (which NASA has spent the last half century absolutely crushing) doesn't come with the expectation that it will immediately result in anything usefulpragmatic applications built on scientific discovery typically come later, sometimes decades down the line. Nobody could have guessed that quantum physics would one day bring about the iPhone, or that networking research computers over telephone lines would eventually lead to Twitter.

Of course, in order for a science to become a business, it needs to make money. And lots of money will be necessary to get to Mars. A recent Wall Street Journal expose questioned SpaceX's finances and its ability to pay for the Mars project (the company was dealt a serious blow following a pair of launch failures in June 2015 and September 2016). But that same report revealed SpaceX's plans to supplement the costs of its "Interplanetary Transport System" by becoming a satellite-based ISP. The company has also entered the space tourism game with a deal to launch a pair of unnamed space tourists around the moon next year for an undisclosed (but surely hefty) fee.

It's a viable plan; over the past 16 years, various people of means have paid tens of millions of dollars to Russia's Federal Space Agency for tickets to the International Space Station, including video game pioneer Richard Garriott, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, and the man responsible for Microsoft Office, Charles Simonyi (twice).

Musk has promised to reveal more about how the company will fund its Martian aspirations soon. But to be sure, there will be lots of ways to make money in spacemost we probably haven't even imagined yet. A more pressing question is who will get there first.

Like SpaceX, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin aims to slash the cost of launches by developing reusable rockets and supplementing the effort through tourism. Richard Branson's tourist venture Virgin Galactic was recently joined by a sibling B2B company Virgin Orbit, which will launch small satellites into orbit. Paul Allen's Stratolaunch Systems recently unveiled a 385-foot wingspan plane from which it will launch rockets from high altitudes, starting in 2020.

Like traditional aerospace powerhouses (Orbital ATK, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin), many of these new space startups depend on contracts from NASA, the Department of Defense, and other public agencies. But unlike those old-school aerospace titans, these new startups have an aura of urgency, innovation, and gleeful disruption. It's perhaps not surprising that many have been seeded by libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley money monsters looking to stake their claim in this most disruptive of technologies (it also doesn't hurt that this particular technology has the added allure of being super sci-fi cool).

Given the current state of space tech, imagining anything resembling A Space Odyssey coming about in our lifetimes may be difficult. But history shows that big technological paradigmshome computing, the internet, mobile techhave similar origin stories: They quietly emerge from the ether as glorified science projects no one really takes seriously before finding their groove and exploding exponentially.

The rush of space startups already amassing concrete engineering accomplishments suggests that we may be witnessing the beginning of one of these exponential ascensions, albeit at a slower pace. Space is the hardest and most dangerous technological barrier humanity has ever had to overcome, but there's very little reason to think we won't get there. The lure of history and potential for obscene profit are just too tempting for someone not to figure it out.

Planetary Resources is a Redmond, Washingtonbased startup with a unique business model: mining asteroids for profit. The company has been seeded by a cadre of Silicon Valley elites (Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, as well as X-Prize co-founder Peter Diamandis, among them) and already has plans to send a swarm of unmanned, river-tube-size "Arkyd 200" satellites to a nearby asteroid in 2020 to prospect it for desired materials.

The company stays afloat via corporate and government contracts and licensing of its proprietary technology. In addition to developing prospecting satellites, the company is working with partners on space-based 3D printers that will shape construction-grade metals like iron, nickel, and cobalt, which are abundant in asteroids. These theoretical printers will be able to build machines, tools, and possibly even habitats and ships directly in space, therefore avoiding the great expense of shipping the materials from Earth.

But perhaps more important, Planetary Resources will be prospecting for water. Once water is mined from an asteroid or comet (probably in solid ice form), electric currents generated by space-based solar panels can break it down to its atomic building blocks. The hydrogen and oxygen can then be recombined into a powerful propellant (i.e., rocket fuel), establishing a network of celestial gas stations and making the solar system a lot smaller.

Planetary Resources takes advantage of technology previously designed for scientific missions, but it is an unabashedly for-profit enterprise.

"You start an asteroid-mining company with the support of a lot of visionary people who have the capacity to take some risk in their business ventures, but it was certainly their demand that we create a businessnot just something that is spending money for a very long time," CEO (and former NASA engineer) Chris Lewicki told me last year. With the Arkyd 200 expeditions, "We're not trying to figure out how old the solar system is or find out how we all came to be; we're asking a very simple business question of, 'Is there enough water on this asteroid for us to go back?'"

That question becomes particularly interesting when you consider the potential windfalls. In 2015, President Obama signed into law the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act, (which passed with assistance from lobbyists working on behalf of Planetary Resources); it states that any citizen has the right to engage in the "commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource" without any interference from the US government.

Lewicki believes some precious metals excavated in space will be so valuable that it will be worth the cost to bring them back home. The company's future will mostly take place far from Earth, though, servicing a not-yet-existent space industry and the humans who work, live, and play in the outposts that support them.

Spacegetting there and living thereisn't easy. We haven't even touched on how future Martian colonists will go about protecting themselves from solar radiation (there's no protective ozone layer on Mars), securing sources of oxygen and water (the good news is there are indications of reserves of water just below the Martian surface), or grow their own food (Matt Damon's character in The Martian resorted to planting potatoes in his feces). These first pioneers will have to be a hearty bunch.

Elon Musk thinks a ticket to Mars can be brought down to around $200,000close to the median home price in the US todayvia a system whereby workers would pay off their debt over many years or even decades.

"Not everyone would want to go. In fact, probably a relatively small number of people from Earth would want to go, but enough would want to go who could afford it for it to happen," Musk writes. "People could also get sponsorship. It gets to the point where almost anyone, if they saved up and this was their goal, could buy a ticket and move to Marsand given that Mars would have a labor shortage for a long time, jobs would not be in short supply."

Terms like "indentured servitude" don't land very well on contemporary ears (which is probably why Musk opted to use "sponsorship"). But is it really all that different than going to work every day to earn money to repay a mortgage? This model is analogous to how some of the first English colonists in North America covered the cost of their intercontinental journeyby agreeing to become indentured servants with contracts that lasted anywhere between three and seven years. (Or perhaps it's like Dr. Fleischman's service-for-education agreement on the TV show Northern Exposure, if that's how you roll.)

For some, the promise of adventure in a new worldno matter the costwill be reason enough to make the interplanetary leap. But for others, Mars's endemic labor shortage might be the motivating factor. There's a very real possibility that in the future, we won't have enough jobs for people on Earth, thanks to automation. Mass "technological unemployment" is far from universally accepted gospel, but a number of people will be willing to leave the Earth to work in SpaceX Citypossibly for the rest of their lives.

These space pioneers will lay the foundation for a literal whole new world, but they might also play an important role supporting those of us who remain here on Earth. Civilization is under threat from asteroid impacts, global warming, and nuclear war; but it's also facing increasing pressure from a few centuries of unprecedented human progress. And colonization might be just the key to keeping it all goingon this planet and the ones that follow.

While cable news traffics in war, terrorism, and tragedy, the world is actually quietly enjoying a golden age.

Consider the following: Despite some troubling hot spots, we are seeing some of history's lowest rates of war deaths around the globe. According to The World Bank, childhood mortalitydefined by children under 5 who die per 1,000 live birthshas fallen from 182.7 in 1960 to just 42.5 in 2015; and last year, for the first time ever, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty (those living on less than $2 a day) fell below 10 percent.

That last one was a very big deal that didn't receive nearly enough attention. Not only has extreme poverty plummeted to historic lows, but it happened in the blink of history's eye. The World Bank also reports that extreme poverty plummeted from 37 percent of the globe in 1990 to just 9.8 percent last year, which is even more remarkable considering how the global population has continued to balloon since the Industrial Revolution.

There's little reason to think these trends won't continue, which leads to a very interesting problem: How will the world respond when communities that have finally risen above mere subsistence begin to expect (if not demand) things like nutritious food, clean water, electricity, access to information, and maybe even McMansions, SUVs, and bountiful backyards?

While technology helps us do more with less, a proliferation of middle class societies will place additional stress on a planet that is already long overdue for a vacation. Throw into the mix the prospect of a swelling population, climate change, and increased job competition, and you can see how things might get messy fast.

One possible countermeasure is physical expansion. Past expansions have managed to boost parent and colonial societies. "If you start moving people from where land is scarce and costly to where it is abundant and cheap, you're going to raise their standard of living and also generate a growing output per capita that will benefit the economies of both societies," explains Jan de Vries, professor emeritus of history and economics at the University of California at Berkeley. "One is benefited by less population pressure on their resources, and the other is benefited by high productivity for the new arrivalsand trade allows them both to become better off."

According to de Vries, in order for the motherland (or mother planet, in this case) to see any real economic benefit, the "transaction costs" have to come down. Mars is far away, but history shows that it's well within our abilities to shrink barriers that once seemed insurmountable. It took a couple of months for Columbus to cross the Atlantic; by the 1830s, the steam engine sliced the time to five days; and a century later, Charles Lindbergh flew from Long Island to Paris in just 33 hours.

Our ability to shorten the gap between Earth and its outposts will become increasingly consequentialwe need only look to the revolutionary founding of this country to understand why. After Europe's expansion into the New World, the two societies remained physically close enough to facilitate trade but were far enough apart that the colonies eventually began to think of themselves as something else. That philosophical break cleared the way for experimental forms of self-rule, which eventually had an impact on both sides of the Atlantic. We can only speculate about the impact of a similar interplanetary break.

Colonialism is a potent force that has the power not only to build new nations but to transform existing ones. The post-Columbus colonial expansion fueled the rise of powerful nation-states in Europe, which ousted the volatile feudalism that ruled the continent since at least the 10th century. The European nations that benefited the most in the Age of Discovery were those with access to the most advanced maritime technologies; but in the Age of Discovery 2.0, those with the most advanced space technologies probably won't be European, American, Russian, or Chinese. They might not be nations at all; SpaceX City could represent the beginning of a whole new political paradigm.

Nobody can predict how it will all shake out at this point, but consider the prospect of billions and trillions of space bucks flowing unfettered into highly organized corporate structures thatnot to get all #FeelTheBern on youhave spent the past 30-plus years untangling themselves from government oversight. (As mentioned above, we've already seen the private space industry successfully lobby US regulators to loosen control over the nascent extraterrestrial economy.)

It's not difficult to imagine how a corporate-run outpost far from the Earth might trend dystopian, but there's reason for optimism as well. Absent a global calamity leading to widespread desperation, there's little reason to believe that people won't continue to expect certain unalienable rights. Any authority that attempts to tell them otherwise will have a fight on its hands.

In fact, human dignity's best chance for survival in space is a multitude of colonies that are close enough for trade and travel but far enough apart that they don't directly compete for resources. In this scenario, if you didn't like the way things run in SpaceX City, you could make a case of your usefulness to Planetary Resource's floating armada to buy your contract (like what T-Mobile will do today to get you out of your contract with Verizon). Once your debt is paid, you'd be free to try out Blue Origin Town on the moon of Europa. Or if you're feeling entrepreneurial, maybe even go out and start your own homestead. Just like a marketplace of nations.

Once a multitude of peacefully coexisting outposts is established, some intriguing possibilities arise. Just as the European colonies in the Americas ran real-world experiments featuring new forms of government, future space colonies would be free to experiment with novel societal models of their own. Some of these models will fail and some will flourish, but they'll all have the ability to learn from each other's missteps and improve over time. Free-market kumbaya.

On the other hand, anyone suckered into moving to space might be enslaved by an AI-infused uber-Musk that inhabits a giant kill-bot made from repurposed Falcon Heavy rockets. The colonists will be forced to do his bidding as he wages an unending galaxy-wide war against an army of Bezos cyborg clones.

Humanity's future in space is too far away to predict with absolute clarity. But it's close enough that it's worth our time to carefully observe it as it takes shape. And it's worth our collective effort to make sure it gets done right.

This story first appeared in the PC Magazine Digital Edition. Subscribe today for more original feature stories, news, reviews, and how tos!

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Welcome to SpaceX City: The Ultimate Startup - PCMag India

Installation view of Adrin Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance (all images Panos Kokkinias, Courtesy NEON unless otherwise indicated)

ATHENS How do you define your national identity? Adrin Villar Rojass new installation/intervention, The Theater of Disappearance (2017) at the National Observatory of Athensseems to ask just that, prompting thoughts about what the soil beneath our feet contains and represents, and how far we should dive into the depths of our own past.

The Greeks have a very deep past to dive into, of course. To stand on this land is to stand within the cradle of Western civilization. History lives here in plain sight.The National Observatory is no exception; situated on the Hill of the Nymphs, it has an unrivaled view of the Acropolis. I am informed that it is difficult to build on or excavate this land, in case anything precious in the soil is disturbed. As the installations commissioner, NEON director Elina Kountouri, states in the exhibition catalogue, establishing the observatory in 1842 was fiercely opposed. It was argued that any digging would disrupt the tranquility and the architectural purity of the hill. Thus, Greek people lay their identity in earth that remains loaded with the debris of past events. Who should have authority to excavate it, I wonder: any of the archaeologists, politicians, or astronomers who have previously made their mark here, or an artist like the Argentinian-born Villar Rojas?

An additional subtext to The Theater of Disappearance is Greeces current national debt. Athens is a city that reveres its past, yet fears for its future. Meanwhile the other, concurrent large-scale art exhibition set in Athens, documenta 14, has been heavily criticized. Complaints leveled against Crapumenta include calling out the insensitivity of hosting an expensive festival in a place where residents are suffering financially, plus their initial underrepresentation of Greek artists. Villar Rojas is brave for questioning the foundations of national identity in the midst of this crisis.

Essentially, Villar Rojass Theater manifests itself in three ways: a large-scale landscaping of the observatory gardens, a complete re-staging of the observatorys interior, which is now a museum, and a transformation of wasteland at the back of the building into what can only be described as a dystopian, outdoor museum. Villar Rojas developed it over a four-month period, with the assistance of a large crew sourced locally and from his studio in Argentina.

Upon entry, I was surprised to encounter a lush vegetable garden. Athens is arid at this time of year; yet, plump, fleshy stalks of corn tower over beds of artichokes, pumpkins, and asparagus. The original gardens have disappeared, replaced by 46,000 edible plants. Yet he hasnt dug directly into the earth. Instead, a meticulously planned second level of soil sits on raised, irrigated beds. He spent at least two months clearing out dead trunks and leaves in preparation. Would the importance of this process of transforming a fiercely protected heritage site into a theater of food production be understood as acutely in any other city?

On the very top of the hill, the observatorys dome gleams in the sunlight. Inside, it is church-like: cool, very dark, and soundproofed by heavy grey curtains covering every wall and window. Again, some of the original archive has disappeared, edited down to a spare selection of objects placed carefully in each room one large telescope, a case of books, a clock. By peeping through a slim gap in the drapes, you can see the nearby Pantheon a Greek emblem and a grand backdrop that clearly indicates the locale. Villar Rojas is stage dressing. In the foyer, a plaster white, 3D-printed model of the observatory as it was in 1842 reminds visitors of the rocky hill it used to sit on before any landscaping an origin story, if you will. Villar Rojas is directing our attention to what he wants us to see, albeit things from the past that were already there, but now beheld in sharper focus.

Onwards, and Im instructed by an assistant to follow a winding path around the back of the building. The terrain suddenly becomes sandier and more precarious where am I heading? I start to see glass vitrines, embedded at impossible angles on a steep outcrop. Various objects are preserved behind the glass: the Curiosity Mars Rover, guns from the Falkland Islands war, medals from the Ottoman Turkish Empire, iPod wires, charred bones, tattered flags, a graffitied statue of what looks like the goddess Nike. The relics are placed on top of and within layers of pink and terracotta archaeological stratification, as if just unearthed. The work manages to be culturally sensitive and incendiary at the same time, bringing together familiar echoes from the past like mythology and rather more grubby ones that wed rather forget the Falklands, for example, which saw 649 Argentinian soldiers and 255 British soldiers die over just 74 days in the early 1980s.

The overall effect of The Theater of Disappearance the changed gardens, bare museum and somber vitrines is initially bewildering. Yet the longer you spend on this hill, the more that Villar Rojass piece prompts you to consider history, autonomy, and identity. Yes, this is already a site of historical importance, but the artist has directed our focus to questions about what is chosen to be preserved, and why the references made to the Space Race, recent armed conflict, defunct technology, and dead soldiers imply mans aggression, and how selective we can be in deciding which histories to cherish.

For example, one vitrine contains a deflated replica of Neil Armstrongs space suit, Ottoman military emblems, and a layer of moon dust: theres a footprint in the dust, and one plastic bag of seeds signifying mans colonization of the moon. Colonization is embedded in the Greeks development they founded outposts from Italy to North Africa, and were themselves under Turkish rule for 400 years. Theirs is a saga of magnificent achievement, and also of failure and death. The Greeks, says Villar Rojas in a public talk later that evening, have a dual history of being colonists and refugees. He paraphrases an anthropologist: When we dig, we find the enemy. When we dig, we also decide what ancestral experiences are significant to our personal and national identity important enough to conserve. My impression of Greeces history, from this exhibition, is one that is as complicated and contentious as my own British one. There are things that lie within my countrys soil cultural artifacts, gold, bones, blood that symbolize both pride and shame. I can relate.

I also get the impression that The Theater of Disappearance is unresolved. It is one of four exhibitions sharing the same title, showing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (April 14October 29), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria (May 6August 27), and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles (October 22February 26, 2018). Seen together, these theaters might give more insight into Villar Rojass views on history, autonomy, and identity. In short, this artist hasnt finished digging yet.

Adrin Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance continuesat the National Observatory of Athens, (Lofos Nymphon, Thissio, Athens) Greece until September 24.

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Adrin Villar Rojas Excavates Greece's National Identity - Hyperallergic

The interior of the Moon may be hiding a surprising secret, new research suggests (sorry, conspiracy theorists its not an underground lunar base).

Scientists for years thought our nearby satellite was a dry and barren place. Opinions changed in the 1960s although it wasnt until 2008 that scientists confirmed their newfound suspicion with the discovery of small amounts of water trapped within beads of glass found in lunar samples collected during the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 missions in the early 70s.

Researchers at Brown University recently analyzed satellite data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 probe. As Space.com highlights, the instrument measures reflected sunlight at visible and near-infrared wavelengths.

Geologist Ralph Milliken, lead author of the new study, notes that different minerals and compounds absorb and reflect light in different ways. By isolating the reflected sunlight from the thermal energy emitted by the Moons surface, they were able to spot regions where H2O and OH absorb light.

The water they observed was in pyroclastic deposits on the surface of the Moon. Since these types of deposits are the result of volcanic eruptions, it means they likely originated deep within the interior of the Moon. Milliken notes that their findings suggest most of the mantle of the Moon may be wet.

How the water got there to begin with, however, remains a mystery. Earlier theories suggested most of the water on the Moon came from asteroids and comets carrying liquid.

If accurate, the findings could bode well for future colonization efforts as bringing water from Earth would be both heavy and expensive.

See original here:
New research suggests the interior of the Moon may contain an abundance of water - TechSpot

Elon Musk speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, D.C. on July 19, 2017.

Aaron Bernstein/Reuters

Its been less than a year since Elon Musk announced his plans to settle humans on Mars during a talk in Guadalajara, Mexico. On stage at the International Astronautical Congress, the billionaire invoked the lore of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Battlestar Galactica while describing a massive passenger ship loaded with the essentialsyou know, like a movie theater and a restaurant. SpaceX hoped to launch these breezy cruises to the red planet in the early 2030s.

Plot twist: Musk's original vision is no longer canon in his universe. On Wednesday, Musk took questions during a keynote discussion at the International Space Station R&D conference in Washington, DC. In between dad jokes about tunnel digging , a staple artificial intelligence threat assessment , and a spirited attempt to unpack the potential for interplanetary war, he candidly revealed a series of obstacles for SpaceX and its plan to build a city on Mars. SpaceX is rebooting its colonization plan, and may pivot to focus on a moon base that would aid that effort.

The Hawthorne, California-based spaceflight company has spent years touting propulsive landing technology for the next version of its Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX expected to equip the Dragon V2, rated for crew and cargo, with four small SuperDraco engines and deployable landing legs to allow for a guided surface touchdownfirst on the Earths surface, and then, maybe, on Mars. SpaceX was confident enough in the design to propose a variant of the vehicle Musk claimed would be able to land anywhere in the solar system.

The pitch for those uncrewed Red Dragon missions to Mars included a collaboration with NASA to gather landing data, test communications, and plan for potential contamination from Earth-based microbes. The space agency, of course, has its own boots-on-Mars ambitions, and hopes to send astronauts to the red planet aboard the Orion spacecraft by 2040. Musk would later compare Red Dragon launches to a train leaving the station, delivering cargo and science to Mars in preparation for a human mission.

But now, SpaceX has pulled the plug on its prologue to an interplanetary future.

Musk explained that Red Dragon was no longer in line with the evolving vision SpaceX has for getting to Marsspecifically, the part where you have to land on Mars . The company is hitting pause on the development of its propulsive landing technology on the Dragon V2 spacecraft. Musk argued that while the technology works, SpaceX would be put through the wringer trying to meet NASAs safety standards for landing a human crew on the ground. It doesnt seem like the right way to apply resources right now, Musk said. Im pretty confident that is not the right way, and that theres a far better approach. He later tweeted that SpaceX would still land with propulsive thrusters on Mars, but with a larger spacecraft.

SpaceX has had a busy year adding to its growing arsenal of recovered rockets while launching more times than any other year since its founding. The company also managed to re-fly both its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule . In the flurry of praise surrounding rocket landings and Mars concepts, the fact that SpaceX has yet to attempt or complete a deep space mission of any kind still weighs on the companys future. Red Dragon would have been SpaceXs first toe into the deep end of the pool.

Its journey would have begun atop the triple-booster Falcon Heavy rocket, the famously-delayed launch vehicle that Musk claims has over twice the payload capability of a single Falcon 9 rocket, able to easily deliver 100,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit. At the ISS R&D conference, Musk invited the audience and those watching the livestream to witness the launch of the vehiclecurrently projected for this fallfrom Kennedy Space Center. But he followed with an uneasy disclaimer: Real good chance that vehicle doesnt make it to orbit.

That uncertainty doesnt bode well for Musks original Mars ambitions. Musk argued that the Falcon Heavy was impossible to test on the ground due to the machines complexity. And he said that development was far more difficult than SpaceX expected, admitting that the company was naive in its original projections. The simultaneous firing 27 orbital engines notwithstanding, launching a Falcon Heavy includes changing aerodynamics, heightened vibration, and an enormous thrust that pushes qualification levels of the flight hardware to the limit. Musk admitted on Wednesday that limited damage to former Apollo 11 Pad 39A would be a win in the aftermath of the Falcon Heavy test flight. Along with Musk, the audience laughed nervously.

According to Musks keynote this week, SpaceX is planning to scale down its Mars-bound spacecraft to a size suitable for a wider range of missionsmissions that would help pay for its development costs. A size reduction would certainly have a large economic impact on manufacturing, but savings could be augmented by focusing all efforts on a single reusable vehicle that could serve both low-Earth orbit and deep space. And Musk also offered that building a base on the moon is essential to getting the public excited about space again and would be an excellent stepping stone toward Mars.

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Tiny, Laser-Beaming Satellites Could Communicate With Mars

But is that a suggestion to another company? To NASA? Or is SpaceX going to unveil plans for a moon base as part of their updated Mars architecture?

Elon Musk has said that he would offer priority seating to NASA for missions to lunar orbit. SpaceX was the first private company to dock with the space station and the success between the federal space agency and the spaceflight company could point to a continuing partnership that expands beyond low Earth orbit. The ISS wont be around forever, and with NASA shifting toward deep space exploration, the opportunity to give the agency a lift is there. Especially if NASA wants to return to the moon.

But that doesnt mean SpaceX is abandoning its Mars ambitions; far from it. SpaceX owes much of its financial and development success to its partnership with NASA, and theres no doubt Musk will pursue that partnership beyond low-Earth orbit. That means that NASA astronauts could one day be flying on these deep space missions under lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts. Before then, SpaceX will have to fully prove its technology, along with life support systems and radiation protection for crewed missions.

Just a week ago, Musk dispatched SpaceX VP Tim Hughes to make the case for deep space in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science & Technology. Hughes used the success of SpaceX and NASAs commercial resupply missions and the governing Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program to make a case for partnership in deep space exploration. "To this day, Americas achievement of landing men on the moon and returning them safely to Earth likely represents humankinds greatest and most inspirational technological achievement, he said. Now, other nations like China seek to replicate an achievement America first accomplished 48 years ago. Maybe SpaceX can add private companies to the roster.

See original here:
SpaceX's Mars Plans Hit a Pothole. Up Next: the Moon? - WIRED

Some Republican senators, like Dean Heller of Nevada, should be gearing up for fights with Democratic challengers next year, but instead are trying to duck primary threats inspired at least in part by a president of their own party.

The professional deficits have been topped with dejecting personal tragedies. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has spent the better part of the last six months racing around the world defending a generation of American international positions, announced Wednesday night that he had brain cancer. The third-most-powerful House Republican, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, lingers in a hospital bed, recovering from gunshot wounds sustained during a mass assassination attempt this summer.

Instead of preparing for a month at home of crowing about the accomplishments of a unified government, Republicans have been diminished to trying to confirm relatively minor nominees Democrats are stalling them and getting a spending bill or two passed. They have been forced to cut their August recess short, all because they have nothing particularly positive to celebrate.

Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was seen gliding through the Capitol on Thursday, normally loquacious on all matters of party strategy, politics and the possibilities of moon colonization, had nothing to say. He stared straight ahead when asked about Republican woes.

Things are starting to feel incoherent, said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, reflecting on the health care efforts, which have turned many Republican senators against one another as efforts to negotiate the future of the Medicaid program have caused large rifts.

With no small measure of understatement, Mr. Corker conceded, Theres just not a lot of progress happening.

While congressional Republicans problems stem largely from the chaos at the White House, many reflect fissures within their party over government spending, social issues, immigration and the role of America in the broader international order.

And once again, rather than trying to forge bipartisan alliances with moderate Democrats, Republican leaders appear determined to go it alone with one-party bills that must unite the hard right with the center right.

For example, a spending bill passed by House appropriators that would provide millions of dollars for Mr. Trumps proposed wall on the Mexican border sets up a potential fight on the floor with Republicans in the Senate, who earlier this year rejected a similar effort.

A nearly $700 billion appropriations bill that would fund the Pentagon faces an impending battle over an amendment, championed by Representative Vicky Hartzler, Republican of Missouri, that would end the Obama-era practice of requiring the Pentagon to pay for medical treatment related to gender transition. (Transgender service members have been permitted to serve openly in the military since last year.)

The same measure narrowly failed on a broader defense policy bill passed recently by the House, as some Republicans joined Democrats to reject it.

Some members of the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom were originally elected on a platform of reined-in federal spending, have said they will not vote for a bill that does not include substantial wall funding, as well as the transgender amendment, drawing fault lines around Mr. Trump within the party.

What we havent been able to figure out is how to meld people with such different policy positions together to get the consensus, the majority it takes to pass bills, Representative Bradley Byrne, Republican of Alabama, said.

Republicans blame Democrats for many of their woes: for slowing down nominations with procedural tricks because of their ire over health care, for not helping them to repeal the Affordable Care Act and for passing it in the first place. But increasingly, Republican senators are suggesting it would be better to work with the minority party to fix the laws flaws.

Even in the House, Republicans and Democrats joined, at least momentarily, over the issue of congressional approval for authorizing war. The effort was led by Representative Scott Taylor, Republican of Virginia and a former Navy SEAL, who joined forces with Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, demonstrating that foreign policy in the Trump era has provoked even more desire for a legislative role.

I feel very strongly that Congress is handing over its war making authority to the executive branch, said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. It did so under Obama, and it is doing so under Trump. In their desire to spare their members from tough votes, the leadership of both parties have weakened the power of Congress. This belief is widely shared by the rank and file in both parties.

Appropriators in the Senate are also working in a friendly and bipartisan manner on bills, but it remains to be seen how the process will play out on legislation that will require 60 votes to pass. Still, some Republicans are using optimism as oxygen as they head home after yet another week of chaos and disappointment.

We will continue to focus on the priorities that restore hope and create opportunities for the economically vulnerable, Senator Tim Scott, the ever-buoyant Republican from South Carolina, said. Our focus, not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans, is our future.

Emmarie Huetteman contributed reporting.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on July 21, 2017, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ambitious Agenda Stalls in Cruel Summer for Republicans.

Continued here:
In a Cruel Summer for the GOP, 'Things Are Starting to Feel Incoherent' - New York Times

Elon Musk's name is associated with Tesla, SpaceX and of course Mars colonies, but what about other planets andobjects in space? At a talk at the International Space Station Research and Development conference in Washington D.C., Musk said he believes having some sort of moon base would help further his mission to the Red Planet.

On stage Wednesday he told Kirk Shireman, ISS program manager, that getting a base on the moon would help get people fired up about space. If we wanna get the public real fired up, weve got to have a base on the moon, after pausing for some applause from the crowd he said, That would be pretty cool, and then going beyond that getting people to Mars.

Read: 8 Photos That Show What SpaceX And Elon Musk Think Traveling To Mars Will Look Like

In the detailed plans to visit Mars that Musk has revealed in the past at conferences and in writing, the moon was never really mentioned. The moonalso played no part in a video of the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System that Muskrevealed at the International Astronautical Congress last year.

But on Wednesday when Shireman asked Muskwhat he believes the future of commercializedspace travel will look like he brought up the moon. Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body, which would the kind of moon base and then getting people to Mars and beyond. And you know thats the continuance of the dream of Apollo that people are really looking for, he said on stage.

Musk also said that he is hoping to discuss how his plans to reach Mars have changed since his presentation last year at the upcoming International Astronautical Congress. So its possible that some sort of plans for a moon colony or base could be included in those new Mars plans.

Read: Mission To Mars: Will NASA Or SpaceX And Elon Musk Get There First?

During the ISS R&D conference Wednesday he only mentioned that the plans had evolved quite a bit and that the key thing SpaceX had figured out was how to pay to go to Mars. Plans to downsize the Mars vehicle and make it capable of doingEarth-orbit activity as well as Mars activity would hopefully help with the sky-high travel costs. Musk also said that the revised plans are a little more realistic, I think this ones got a shot at being real on the economic front, he said with a slight laugh to sum up.

While fielding questions from the crowd Musk said he saw a way for his Boring Company to overlap with colonization plans. Its unclear whether this will also be involved in the updated plans he hopes to present at the next IAC.

You can watch his talk with ISS Program Director Kirk Shireman below:

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Moon Colony? Elon Musk Now Wants Lunar Colonization Before Mars - International Business Times