Category Archives: Moon Colonization

1. Universe Today - 7 Questions For 7 New Planets Artist's concept of the TRAPPIST-1 star system, an ultra-cool dwarf that has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

2. Universe Today - Rise of the Super Telescopes: The European Extremely Large Telescope

3. Supernova condensate - If only there was an Earth-like planet conveniently nearby for us to actually visit...

4. Supernova condensate - Exactly how big is the TRAPPIST-1 system?

5. Universe Today - Some Active Process is Cracking Open These Faults on Mars. But What is it?

6. Universe Today - What the Oldest Fossil on Earth Means for Finding Life on Mars

7. Nextbigfuture - An inflatable structure(s) can generate a magnetic dipole field at a level of perhaps 1 or 2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss) as an active shield against the solar wind and allow the Martian atmosphere to thicken overtime.

Mars atmosphere would naturally thicken over time, which lead to many new possibilities for human exploration and colonization. According to Green and his colleagues, these would include an average increase of about 4 C (~7 F), which would be enough to melt the carbon dioxide ice in the northern polar ice cap. This would trigger a greenhouse effect, warming the atmosphere further and causing the water ice in the polar caps to melt.

By their calculations, Green and his colleagues estimated that this could lead to 1/7th of Mars' oceans the ones that covered it billions of years again.

"A greatly enhanced Martian atmosphere, in both pressure and temperature, that would be enough to allow significant surface liquid water would also have a number of benefits for science and human exploration in the 2040s and beyond," said Green. "Much like Earth, an enhanced atmosphere would: allow larger landed mass of equipment to the surface, shield against most cosmic and solar particle radiation, extend the ability for oxygen extraction, and provide "open air" greenhouses to exist for plant production, just to name a few."

These new conditions on Mars would allow human explorers and researchers to study the planet in much greater detail and enable a truly profound understanding of the habitability of this planet. If this can be achieved in a lifetime, the colonization of Mars would not be far away.

The proposed Lagrange point system would not require massive amounts of superconducting cable with gigawatt generators. It would be a much smaller shield between the Sun and Mars. 2 Tesla magnets are easily produced.

8. Nextbigfuture - In 2014 at a SF and comic convention Joe Flanigan (who played John Sheppard on the Stargate Atlantis show) revealed that he and a group of investors tried to lease the rights to the Stargate Franchise.

There was an verbal agreement on terms for a ten year deal but it could not be concluded because of the bankruptcy of MGM.

It would have been 20 episodes filmed in Europe with rights pre-sold. They would then come back to the American Networks.

9. Nextbigfuture - SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration. Spacex expects to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and Spacex expects more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results.

Spacex would like to thank NASA, without whom this would not be possible. NASAs Commercial Crew Program, which provided most of the funding for Dragon 2 development, is a key enabler for this mission. In addition, this will make use of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which was developed with internal SpaceX funding. Falcon Heavy is due to launch its first test flight this summer and, once successful, will be the most powerful vehicle to reach orbit after the Saturn V moon rocket. At 5 million pounds of liftoff thrust, Falcon Heavy is two-thirds the thrust of Saturn V and more than double the thrust of the next largest launch vehicle currently flying.

10. Nextbigfuture - Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelows company makes in-space habitats. One (the BEAM adds 16 cubic meters of living area to the ISS) is now attached to the International Space Station and he and his company are developing permanent, stand-alone habitats to serve as private space stations in orbit around the Earth, ready to house private astronauts.

Bigelow has talked with United Launch Alliance Chief Executive Tory Bruno about using the company's Atlas V 552 rocket, which has an extra-wide payload fairing, to deliver the B330 into orbit.

United Launch Alliance is developing an advanced upper-stage vehicle, ACES, to provide in-space propulsion.

Two ACES in tandem could be used to move the B330 into a low lunar orbit. They orbit within 75 kilometers of the lunar surface

Bigelow has spoken SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell about using the company's Dragon 2 spacecraft to transport astronauts to the B330 in deep space.

By 2020, NASA and commercial astronauts could be living and working in lunar orbit inside a functional space station that would be about half of the volume of the international space station.

It is time for America to return to the Moon this time to stay, Bezos said in response to emailed questions from The Post. A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this.

Blue Origins proposal, dated Jan. 4, doesnt involve flying humans, but rather is focused on a series of cargo missions. Those could deliver the equipment necessary to help establish a human colony on the moon unlike the Apollo missions, in which the astronauts left flags and footprints and then came home.

The United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has also been working on plans to create a transportation network to the area around the moon, known as cislunar space.

The Blue Moon spacecraft could carry as much as 10,000 pounds of material and fly atop several different rockets, including NASAs Space Launch System, the United Launch Alliances Atlas V or its own New Glenn rocket, which is under development and expected to fly by the end of the decade, the company said.

12. Nextbigfuture - Total global satellite plans could have around 20,000 satellites in low and mid earth orbits in the 2020s

The FCC had given companies until March 1 to disclose whether they also had plans to use the same V-band that Boeing had applied for in November of last year.

The five companies SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat, O3b Networks and Theia Holdings all told the FCC they have plans to field constellations of V-band satellites in non-geosynchronous orbits to provide communications services in the United States and elsewhere. So far the V-band spectrum of interest, which sits directly above Ka-band from about 37 GHz to the low 50 GHz range, has not been heavily employed for commercial communications services.

* Boeing has a proposed global network of 1,396 to 2,956 low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for providing connectivity. * SpaceX, for example, proposes a VLEO, or V-band low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of 7,518 satellites to follow the operators initially proposed 4,425 satellites that would function in Ka- and Ku-band. * OneWeb told the FCC it wants to operate a sub-constellation of 720 LEO V-band satellites at 1,200 kilometers, and another constellation in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) of 1,280 satellites. * Canada-based Telesat describes its V-band LEO constellation as one that will follow closely the design of the Ka-band LEO Constellation, also using 117 satellites (not counting spares) as a second-generation overlay. * a 2015 proposal from Samsung outlined a 4600-satellite constellation orbiting at 1,400 kilometers (900 mi) that could bring 200 gigabytes per month of internet data to "each of the world's 5 billion people"

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Carnival of Space 499 - Next Big Future

Excitement has been building all afternoon about an announcement by Elon Musk and SpaceX, and the story is finally out: two private citizens have contracted with SpaceX to be the first humans to make a deep-space trip in 45 years. The mission will be the second crewed use of the SpaceX Dragon Crew vehicle, following two tests to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program -- an un-crewed test later this year, followed by taking a crew early in 2018.

SpaceX already has a contract with NASA for three cargo and one crewed mission a year.

Unlike the NASA missions, this lunar circumnavigation will use SpaceX's Falcon 9 Heavy booster, which SpaceX developed privately. It will be launched from Pad 39A, the same pad used by the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.

This announcement seems to steal a march on NASA and the acting head of NASA, Robert Lightfoot. On February 15, Lightfoot announced a study to determine whether the first test of the Orion and Space Launch System could be used to send two people to the Moon:

Continued here:
Elon Musk and SpaceX Announce Return to Moon - PJ Media

What thorny ethical issues await us once we make it to Mars? A composite image of the red planet, composed by processing about 1000 Viking Orbiter red- and violet-filter images have been to provide global color coverage at a scale of 1 km/pixel.

Every summer for the past 20 years, Pascal Lee has traveled to the remote Canadian Arctic to pretend hes on Mars. This cold, dry, pockmarked and essentially lifeless environment is one of the closest to the red planet that you can find on Earthmaking it a great practice ground for driving Mars rovers.

Lee, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute in California, is the director of the NASA Haughton Mars Project, where he uses this analog Mars environment to investigate scientific questions concerning how humans might threaten life on other planets we colonize.

For example, if humans travel to Mars, would microbes transferred from our bodies thrive on Martian soilthreatening native Martian microbes and disrupting native ecosystems? Recent results from Lees research suggest the answer to that is no, at least not on the surface of Martian soil: Mars harsh climate and high UV radiation would kill off many of the microbes we may accidentally bring from Earth.

But the Haughton Mars Projectalong with other Mars analog study sites in Antarctica and the Atacama Desert in Chilealso inadvertently bring to light numerous ethical questions of how we should behave as interplanetary colonists. As humans accelerate their space travel capacity and aim tocolonize Marsin the next several decades, these questions are becoming less lofty and more immediately urgent.

Here's another scenario: If humans were to land on Mars and were somehow lethally threatened by Martians, should humans attack the Martians? In his personal opinion, Lee says the answer would be yes. If at some point it came down to either me or the microbe on Mars thats going to survive, Im probably not going to hesitate, he says.

Yet these are not simple questions to address, and are not within the realm of the Haughton Mars Project to answer. The International Council for Science, consisting of 142 countries, has organized a Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) to help answer some of these questions and a United Nations Outer Space Treaty, in place since 1967, also helps streamline some of the ethical and legal implications that this issue raises.

But the treaty is meant to protect the safety of humans and scientific evidence of life on other planets, not to protect the environments or ecosystems of those planets. Moreover, the contents of the treaty are just guidelines: They are not laws, and the legal implications of not following them remain unclear, says Catharine Conley, head officer at NASAs Planetary Protection Office.

The peer pressure approach has, up until now, worked, she says, explaining that its in space agencies best interest to work together since they often rely on each other for collaboration and advancement. But now, as more private companies like SpaceX enter the field to visit Mars, the playing field has changed.

When you have other entities included that dont have those same long term science objectives, it gets more complicated, says Conley.

Under the current treaty guidelines, federal governments are responsible for the behavior of both their space agencies and nongovernmental space entities in their country. So a company like SpaceX must be authorized to launch by a government agency before lift offbut if it accidentally or intentionally fails to comply with the treaty guidelines at some point in flight, another country could theoretically sue the U.S. government or take other legal actions, says Conley.

Despite general good intentions and hard work to keep spacecraft free of contaminants, Conley says the biggest threat humans pose to other planets is what we dont knowor what we think we know, but dont. While research from the Haughton Mars Project suggests limited microbial transfer from rovers to Mars soil, other dynamics could exist on Mars or other planets that researchers havent even thought to anticipate.

For certain types of Earth organisms, Mars is a gigantic dinner plate, says Conley. We dont know, but it could be that those organisms would grow much more rapidly than they would on Earth because they have this unaffected environment and everything is there for them to use.

So far, most of the attention to these ethical issues has focused on Mars, the most realistic subject of colonization in the near future. But other types of planets may bring up new concerns. You can invent all kinds of scenarios, but the problem is currently its all open because no one has explored these things before, says Conley, referring to the legal implications of contaminating Mars or another planet. So until you have a case, you cant decide what to do. But of course from the standpoint of planetary protection, as soon as you have a case, something has already gone wrong.

There are also dangers that fall beyond the realm of planetary protection. Take energy production: In order for humans to live on another planet, we will need to develop a way to produce electricity. A substance calledperchlorateexists in relatively high quantities on Mars (and also on Earth in bleach and other substances), making up about 1 percent of all the dust on the red planet. This highly energetic salt could potentially offer a good source of energy for humans on Mars, but not if humans accidentally introduce a microbe that eats it up before we have a chance to use it, says Conley.

Unfortunately, the guidelines put in place by the Outer Space Treaty wont necessarily prevent this type of mistake from happening. The guidelines are strict on keeping spacecraft clean when looking for life on other planets, but less stringent for spacecraft traveling to a celestial body for other reasons. This is because planetary protection guidelines exist to preserve scientific evidence of extraterrestrial lifenot the environments of other planets, saysGerhard Kminek,the planetary protection officer at the European Space Agency.

Working groups of COSPAR, including thePanel on Potentially Environmentally Detrimental Activities in Space, do explore how space activities might disrupt other planets environments. These panels report to the United Nations with their findings. But again, they only offer guidelines, not laws, says Kminek. So its up to international space agencies to recognize the importance of building best practices in spacecraft sanitation and keeping up with the sometimes onerous standards set by the Outer Space Treaty.

If you do it badly once, that might be enough to compromise any future investigation related to life, says Kminek. And thats why there is strong international consensus making sure there are no bad players around.

The standards for travel also differ from one celestial body to another. For instance, Mars atmosphere is thick enough that it will burn off certain microbes upon entryallowing spacecraft sanitation standards to remain laxer than they would be for vehicles landing somewhere with a very thin atmosphere, like Jupiters moon Europa, Kminek says.

That is, at least based on our understanding of these celestial bodies right now. During the Apollo missions to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s, we learned how unforeseen obstacles can cause critical problems in space travel. On the Moon, the threat lunar dust posed to astronauts was underestimated until it started getting stuck in the crevices of their face and in their zippers, jeopardizing the integrity of their spacesuits, saysMargaret Race, a colleague of Conleys at the SETI Institute.

Had they been up there a little longer, their spacesuits would not have worked, Race says.

Late astronaut and engineer Eugene Cernan, the last man to have walked on the Moon, stated the enormity of the dust problem during anApollo 17 technical debriefin 1973: I think dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the Moon, he stated. We can overcome other physiological or physical or mechanical problems except dust.

Humans also didnt do a good job limiting the transport of material from Earth to the Moon or vice versa, says Race. The Moon is lifeless, so this had little consequence on either celestial body. But if the Moon harbored life and a transfer of species did occur, the consequences would have been far greater. If there were life on the Moon, we would have it here now, she says. We did the best we could at the time, but we didnt understand.

While space engineering has come a long way since the Apollo missions, plenty of work remains to determine the best practices in protecting life on other planets from humans, says Conley. And when we do finally land on Mars, the advancements will need to continueeven if it appears that scientists have sufficient knowledge of human threat to other planets.

My response to that is, as soon as you eat your first candy bar, do you stop brushing your teeth? says Conley. We should keep doing it. Because, in the end, what we dont know willend up being the most dangerous threat humans pose to these other worlds.

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When Humans Begin Colonizing Other Planets, Who Should Be in Charge? - Smithsonian

Sick of gravity? Over Earth? Bored with "conventional" art in galleries where you can conveniently breathe oxygen without a mask when all you really want is the risk of death when consuming culture? Well, do I have some truly ideal news for you! People are now trying to build an art gallery on the moon to meet all your space art viewing needs! That's right, an art gallery!

The museum has already been established as 'The Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon', or MoCAM. It represents, according to artists Julio Orto and Joey Cannizzaro, an "anti-capitalist future" necessary for authenticity in art to survive and thrive.

Because Orto and Cannizzaro believe colonization of the moon is "inevitable", they've already bought a 20 acre plot of land on everyone's favorite satellite. Cannizzaro explains the art gallery would be both an answer to the current political landscape and to oppose "governments and private entities are (who) working on tourism and colonization of the moon".

Cannizzaro writes in an essay that, "at the dawn of Trump's aggregate neoliberal-fascism... it's impossible for the creative community to dodge accountability for this lack of imaginative futures".

Why move to New Zealand to escape Trump's America when you can (likely very soon) move to the moon and look at art to your heart's content?

[h/t Dazed] Image via YouTube

Original post:
People Are Building a Museum on the Moon Because "Art" - Papermag

Two young women join a dangerous expedition combing through the rubble left behind from countless past solar system civilizations in "Revenger" (Orbit, 2017), the latest book by prolific science-fiction writer Alastair Reynolds. The book was released today (Feb. 28) in the United States.

Although Reynolds is known for his hard science fiction and space opera, "Revenger" takes on a more fantastical tone, featuring space pirate protagonists and inscrutable alien technology. Space.com talked with Reynolds about how the book developed, the constellation of tiny solar system worlds he depicted (and its inspiration) and what the future might hold for human space colonization. [Best Space Books and Sci-Fi: A Space.com Reading List]

Space.com: How is "Revenger" different from your other science-fiction stories?

Alastair Reynolds: "Revenger" is my 14th or 15th novel, depending on how you count them. I had written a lot of science fiction over the years that's very I suppose you could say is quite strongly grounded in semiserious speculation about physics and cosmology and engineering and space travel, because I have a background in space science. For "Revenger," I wanted to do something that was a little bit looser, that was more in the direction of science fantasy.

Alastair Reynolds, author of "Revenger," is a former space scientist and prolific science fiction writer.

It's very, very far future, it deals with a cast of characters that don't fully understand the rules that govern their universe: They have some theories, but they're not entirely sure about how some things work and why things behave the way they do. And they're living in a culture where they're human, or humanoid, but there've been many, many previous civilizations that have come and gone, and every time one of these civilizations comes and goes, they leave behind relics and technologies and artifacts that stick around for millions of years, and they can be found and reutilized by the characters in the book. But they don't always quite understand what they're using, or the dangers. It's a pick-and-mix culture that lives off the relics and detritus of past civilizations.

The technology that the humans have direct access to is never that advanced; it approaches the level of wireless sets and early radar maybe some television but it never goes beyond that. Although they're doing space exploration, it's all very perilous, because the ships are only held together by spit and prayer.

Space.com: How did that setting come together with the space pirate adventure story?

Reynolds: About 10 years ago, I started writing little notes to myself about a possible future project which would involve teams of explorers who have this occupation where they have a limited amount of time to break into some sort of alien structure or artifact where they have to get in quickly, get the treasure, but they're not really sure how long they've got inside before the doors shut again. It's a sort of "Indiana Jones"-type scenario where you've got to raid the tomb and then get out quickly. I thought that could be fun but I couldn't quite find the right way into the story.

And then a few years later, completely unrelated to that, I started writing notes about an adventure series that would be set in our own solar system, but so far in the future that all the planets have been dismantled and reforged into tiny little asteroids little independent worlds that have their own ecosystems and gravity, drifting around the sun in a Dyson swarm of microplanets. I thought that could be fun, because you can have millions of different cultures and civilizations, much as you would in the "Star Wars" universe, but you wouldn't need hyperdrive to get from A to B. You can just use existing space-navigation technology ion drives or solar sails because nothing would be that far apart.

But again, I didn't really do anything with it; I just had the notes festering on my computer for a few years. And then I finished a big trilogy that was very much grounded in fairly plausible speculation about near-future exoplanets and relativistic star flight and things like that. I felt like doing something different and I realized, actually, I've got two separate ideas here that I couldn't make work on their own, but if I combined them, I might have a basis for a novel. [Science Fiction Barely Ahead of Space Exploration Reality]

Space.com: Was writing from a more first-person perspective very different from your usual process?

Reynolds: I've done quite a few short stories over the years, and I've used various voices and viewpoints in my short fiction, but I'd never really written a novel from a first-person viewpoint, and I've never written a novel from the viewpoint of a teenage girl, either.

[It was a challenge] to tell the world from her point of view, through her eyes I tried at all points to think, Well, what would she know at this point in the story? What would really concern her and what would she not be that bothered about?

One of the dangers of science fiction, particularly bad science fiction, is that you have these scenes where the characters turn to a blackboard and start explaining how this faster-than-light drive works, or something like that. We never really have those conversations in real life. That's not part of the way we interact as human beings. I try to avoid that in my fiction, but I was particularly determined to avoid it with "Revenger." There's going to be things in there that don't seem to make sense or are not clear. But if you go with the flow, then hopefully the wider setting and its rules will start to come into focus.

Space.com: The characters seem to have little understanding about how the alien tech they encounter works. How much of that did you fully work out?

Reynolds: if you're creating a whole universe, even if it's a universe squeezed into a solar system, you have to use a little bit of sleight of hand. I liken it to one of those old-time Wild West stage sets where the shop fronts look quite convincing, but when you walk around the back, it's all just plywood it's propped up, and it's all quite rickety. That's how I approach world building as such I try to shore up the bits that really matter and then try to bluff my way around the rest, because it would just be completely impractical to completely work out every single aspect of an invented world. That's not what attracts me to fiction, anyway. Some things you just have to take on the fly and almost deceive the reader into thinking that you know things better than you do.

I just trust that, if there's alien technology behind it, and it doesn't violate the laws of physics, then there's an explanation somewhere.

Space.com: Do you think that a community of microworlds could really develop in the future?

Reynolds: I read a nonfiction book a long time ago that I've picked up on a few other science fiction writers who've also read the same book, because we're riffing off some of the same ideas in it. [That book is "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps" (Little, Brown and Company, 1992) by Marshall Savage] I don't think the guy ever wrote anything else It's a nonfiction book, but it's also a kind of pedagogical manifesto-type book where the guy is trying to lay out his ideas for what future human civilization should look like. It's all a bit cultish, in a way you read it with a slightly skeptical frame of mind, because it's very utopian and cultish in the way he describes things.

But one of the things an image in that book that really struck me was the idea that he's talking about energy utilization in the very far future. And he says that if we're serious as a civilization about expanding and moving into space, his hobbyhorse is that we need to actually expand the human population massively. As he says, the more billions of us there are, then the more geniuses there will be. He's all for creating trillions of human beings around the sun far more than the Earth could sustain. He has this idea that we move into the solar system and take all the rubble and reforge it into lots of little planets that have their own ecosystems, and they're like little glass balls with forests inside them, basically, and everyone lives in these little balls and moves around between them.

The vision that stuck with me, that really left a mark, was that he said that if you surrounded the sun with enough of these things, then it would actually filter the starlight, so that from a distance, the sun wouldn't look yellow anymore, it would start to look green, because you're seeing the sun's light passing through effectively a vast wall of foliage, vegetation. [Dyson Spheres: How Advanced Alien Civilizations Would Conquer the Galaxy (Infographic)]

Space.com: If humans were to spread out on a large scale beyond Earth, do you think humanity is more likely to be constrained to the solar system or to establish far-off outposts?

Reynolds: I used to be a strong believer that we would eventually colonize the solar system the way it's been done in science fiction many, many times: bases on the moon, Mars colonized, move out to the outer planets, then we go to the next solar system and build a colony there. I don't know now I'm not as convinced that's the way it's going to pan out. I just think space exploration it's not that it's difficult, as such, it's not that we couldn't do it, but my suspicion is that we will be demotivated, we will be less and less motivated to colonize interstellar space as we mature as a civilization.

As our collective knowledge base increases, we may reach a point where we say, well, actually, we don't need to go anywhere, because the information is with us. We can do what we like with the information; we can inhabit these worlds through virtual reality if we choose, we don't actually need to be physically present. And if we do need to go and extract samples, we can send robots, and it doesn't matter if they take 1,000 years to get there, they can report back when they arrive. I'm a little bit less inclined to believe the grand science-fiction dream of interstellar colonization. I think it's still an interesting idea to play with in fictional terms, but if I had to put my money on it, I'd say it's probably looking less likely now than when I started my career, even though it's only 15 years.

My take on it is we'll probably expand into the solar system to some degree as a human civilization, because it's within our realistic, feasible technological capabilities to do so. But I'm not terribly convinced that we will be strongly motivated to move beyond the solar system, even if we have the technical means. I think we may just decide that that's something we no longer ... when you're an adult, there are things that you really, really wanted to do as a child, but you're no longer interested in doing. I think that may apply to us as a civilization; some of the goals we have now may seem largely pointless to us as we mature. ['Alien Megastructure' Star Being Investigated By UC Berkeley (Video)]

Space.com: And there's plenty in the solar system already.

Reynolds: Why would you need to expand beyond the solar system, if you already have access to all the information you need, and you've essentially insulated yourself against a planetary apocalypse? Maybe that's enough. And the solar system's a huge place, anyway. It's a truly mind-boggling place that's one of the disservices that science fiction has done to us, particularly in the last few decades is make the solar system seem cramped and homely and not particularly interesting. But the solar system is enormous, and we don't have a clear sense of how far out it goes, anyway. Pluto is by no means the end of the solar system: There's vast tracts of trans-Neptunian space beyond Pluto, and then there's the Oort cloud, which is like a tenth of the way to the next solar system. So there's a hell of a lot of real estate there that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of.

This interview has been edited for length. You can buy "Revenger" on Amazon.com, andread an excerpt here.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Relics of the Ancient Past: Q&A with Author Alastair Reynolds on 'Revenger' - Space.com

Sometimes around the SnapMunk offices, we like to place bets on whats going to make the news that week. Recently there are two people weve stopped taking bets on: one is Donald Trump and the other is Elon Musk. Recently the worlds favorite CEO made an announcement about his SpaceX program that turned a lot of heads: His latest plan is to launch two people around the moon.

Now before you mention how weve done this thing before, lets break it down.

SpaceX has a long list of successful launches under its belt to low-earth orbit, and weve already written about Musks intention to begin colonization of Mars last year. So at some point, his company would have to leave the low-earth orbit limit. To accomplish this, the next logical step would be a trip to the Moon if he wishes to reach his larger benchmarks of Mars colonization within the next ten years. For the record, the low-Earth limit hasnt been breached by man since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

The goal of the trip is to take two pilots in late 2018 on a round trip from Earth to the Moon and back without landing on the moons surface. During that voyage, the route that they will take will exceed previous milestones.Im guessing probably distance-wise probably 300,000 to 400,000 miles.According to Musk. This projection exceeds the current maximum distance humans have traveled from our planet as the current record sits at 248,655 milesheld by the crew of the Apollo 13. Yes, that Apollo 13.

Image courtesy williamdparker.com

We know little about the two people who intend to take the flight. We do know they are private citizens who approached Musk last year with interest to make the trip. Since then theyve begun taking extensive health and fitness tests. Also, he admitted that the two would pay for the flight but was quick to report they were not Hollywood celebrities. We arent sure why thats even a factor, but it helps us narrow it down. I think theyre going in with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here, Musk said. Were doing everything we can to minimize that risk, but its not zero.

Its also important to remember that the SpaceX program has yet to launch with humans actually inside it. In turn, the Falcon Heavy rocket intended for this journey has yet to fly. So at this time, the only part of this endeavor we know works is the launchpad, which is the same one used in the Apollo missions.

Musk has stated that if NASA wished to partner with SpaceX, he would allow it, insisting that the agency would have priority over the two passengers. Given the projected date and the current status of the project itself, were pretty sure theyll put a hard pass on this one.

SnapMunk is dedicated to providing readers with all things interesting, exciting and entertaining in the world of tech news, startup companies and startup culture. With a broad lens feeding a highly curated stream of content, SnapMunk offers thought-leading perspectives and unique insights into technology current events, new business ideas, cool new technology and exciting investment opportunities. It is our goal with SnapMunk to ensure that those who are interested in technology and startups are not only well-informed but intellectually inspired and thoroughly entertained.

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SpaceX Is Sending Two People On A Round Trip to the Moon, Hopefully - SnapMunk

The instantly iconic image of a barely ruffled American flag, perched proudly at the top of the Lunar Flag Assembly, ran on the front page of LIFE magazines August 8, 1969 issue. The photograph, part of a series taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, wasnt just for American eyes. It was a masterful piece of propaganda that heavily implied the United States had taken a permanent lead in the space race by claiming the moon in much the same way it had claimed Hawaii a decade earlier. But no country owns the fifth-largest natural satellite in the solar system. And, unless changes are made to international laws, no country will own Mars even if NASA arrives on schedule in the 2030s.

Futurists have been talking about colonizing Mars since the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher got excited about a plan in the 17th century. But implicit in the idea of colonization is a premise that may not apply. Colonization connotes sovereignty and ownership. Those concepts define nations and international relations on Earth, but map poorly to the Martian surface for economic and legal reasons. Resources on Mars are limited and inefficiencies are massively expensive. Free markets arent likely to emerge rapidly. There are plenty of places Antarctica, Diego Garcia where similar constraints have led to the creation of more martial installations. But this process is much more complicated on Mars, because international treaties make it illegal for parties to claim land. (Flags can be planted, but they are just flags.) Given the high value of a scientific or military Martian installation and the lack of legal means to protect it, countries and private entities aiming for the red planet are taking a leap of faith in the adaptability of Earths political and culture technologies.

They are betting, in short, that Mars wont become a battlefield and, furthermore, that Martian conflicts wont result in crises on Earth. Its unclear if thats a smart bet.

The countries and companies (including SpaceX, NASA, the United Arab Emirates interested in colonizing Mars do have more to go on than optimism. They have the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was created in the midst of the Cold War as a framework for dealing with potential conflict in space. And it hasnt exactly made a smooth transition into the 21st century. The treaty is not only 40 years old and outdated, but represents the product of a negotiation between two hostile and neurotic superpowers looking to avoid nuclear holocaust, not share unclaimed territory.

Russia was worried that the United States was going to claim areas of space as their own, explains Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist with Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. The U.S. was worried that [the USSR] was going to do the same. Both sides were worried that nuclear weapons might get placed into orbit or even on the moon.

The result? A treaty that creates a protocol for planetary protection, bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit, and explicitly forbids military installations beyond the atmosphere. Then there is the diciest part: Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

But neither America nor SpaceX want outer space as such. They want continuous access to Helium-3, precious metals which are increasingly rare on Earth, and access to ice or liquid water which could be used in sustainable spaceflight technologies.

Theres an ambiguity in how you interpret the Outer Space Treaty, Haqq-Misra says. Its precisely this ambiguity that permits the U.S. and Luxembourg to justify the mining of resources in space. They claim states and companies operating under the purview of their states are not claiming sovereignty over land, merely claiming resources.

Haqq-Misra thinks its critical for the international community to have new ideas about space governance. He says this is especially important because private companies are likely to play a role going forward that no one envisioned in the late 1960s. Hes far from alone in thinking that the treaty is dated, but the solution to that problem remains unclear. As Frons von der Dunk, a space law expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, points out, scrapping the whole thing might be throwing a lot of baby away with the bathwater given that it does not explicitly empower or disenfranchise any single entity. Ambiguity, however unintentional, allows for progress while avoiding a potential Martian land rush and the conflicts likely between the U.S. and Russia that could be provoked. And theres not a clear demand for an alternative because there is no emerging consensus on what international space law should look during the second space age. States are not rushing to sit down and hash the issues out.

I do not see that readily happening, says von der Dunk.

Which means that its time to get creative about governance. Haqq-Misra does that by working backwards from specific, plausible scenarios. As an example, he describes a Chinese mission to Mars following on the heels of the successful creation of a SpaceX outpost. Would China want to avoid, say, anything within a 200-kilometer radius of Elon Musks biodome? Probably not and they wouldnt have to either.

They are free to land within SpaceXs exclusive economic zone and, in fact, might do so because going to space is really difficult, says Haqq-Misra. They would probably need direct support from others who are already there.

This only presents a problem if China seeks to extract resources from lands cultivated whatever that looks like by SpaceX workers. Within a system built on traditional ideas of sovereignty and land rights, this wouldnt make much sense. Within a system he calls Cooperative Sovereignty, Haqq-Misra believes the interests of both parties, and humanity writ large, can be preserved. Along with his colleague Sara Bruhns, Haqq-Misra proposes a Martian economic system that seeks to encourage the type of scientific endeavors NASA and others want to pursue while providing incentives and rules to foster trade, mining, and habitation development. Every Martian colony would basically have an exclusive economic zone within a bounded radius of a given installation. Other nations could land in that area, but not claim it.

Its not simply that that land could host valuable resources under the surface. Any colony thats looking to do more than simply kick back in the minus 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures and enjoy a gravity thats one-third of Earths would need space for water treatment plants, greenhouses for growing essential plants and vegetables, structures that can house massive 3D printers used to build more structures, communications equipment for chatting with friends back on Earth, facilities that can generate fuel from Martian methane, a place for Martian robots to be built and programmed, and so much more. We havent even begun to touch on what will be needed for recreation (imagine playing soccer or football on the red planet), religion (Martian church on Sunday, anyone?), schools, administrative headquarters, etc.

Cooperative Sovereignty takes its shape from protocols outlined by the Antarctic Treaty System and the Convention on the Law of the Seas, both of which allow nations to claim resource access without claiming land. The history of international conflict on the high seas is not particularly encouraging nor is the regular violation of the Law of the Seas but the limited history of human conflict in Antarctica is.

Not many people want to live there, says Haqq-Misra. Youve got a bunch of science bases and people, for the most part, cooperate. Theres no violence. Theres very little military presence. Theres a moratorium on industrial mining or any sort of resource extraction for I think another 30 or 40 years. A lot of scientists like that model and, to some extent, we are loosely in that mode of operation with space today. You have free access if youre a scientist in any nation to do research in space.

Still, its important to remember that Antarctica is almost devoid of valuable resources. There are some deposits of iron ore, gold, copper, nickel, and platinum, and even some reserves of coal, but theres not enough there to justify the expense of setting up an extensive mining operation built to withstand difficult conditions. Mars may prove similarly lacking in mineral riches, but Martian land could prove valuable in other ways, such as providing a base of operations for asteroid mining, or the development of extremely novel technologies that can only be made in a low-gravity setting. The Antarctica model works neatly when theres not much to fight over.

When there is, things can get problematic. The notion of Martian economic zones is derived from the ability of nations to claim resources within a certain distance of sovereign shorelines. In theory, fleets from other nations cannot fish in those waters. In reality, its not always so simple. Over the last decade, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, an incredibly important trade route, have become disturbingly common. Because the United Nations has no way of actually enforcing any rulings it makes, countries China in most cases have been allowed to pursue extralegal agendas.

There is unlikely to be a U.N. peacekeeping force on Mars.

To resolve disputes on Mars, Haqq-Misra and Bruhns came up with a mediating body modeled after the fairly weak Antarctic Secretariat, which helps manage disputes between nations who are fighting in the South Pole.

David Collins think this plan is naive.

Collins, a law expert at the City University of London, believes Mars has capitalism coming. Hes bullish on the idea of allowing private parties to lay sovereign claims to Mars, arguing that a strict motivation of profit could best facilitate productive development of Martian colonies.

In a 2010 paper, Collins wrote that common ownership and sharing of lands and resources disregards the unequal burden of costs, and associated risks discouraging investment and productive use. In his view, the incentive to make these productive uses of the land of Mars necessitates non-communal ownership because private property rights encourage the maximization of a resources potential because of the prospect of higher individual gains.

The rise in interest in Mars among private companies, however, makes profit a potential catalyst for both science and human progress. However, capitalist expansion could well lead to the proliferation of Earth problems inequality, war, oppression, corruption on another planet. It might make homo sapiens a multi-planetary species quickly, but it will not facilitate the sort of cultural or psychological transcendence that artists have often suggested lies among the stars.

And theres the third way, the rejection of government and market expansion in favor of true independence. It should not be taken as a given that Mars will be populated one outpost at a time. If terraforming goes well and self- sufficiency becomes possible either through the export of valuable goods or through local production of essentials, Mars could be its own country. Being Martian could take on a new meaning and the government of that country could form itself to suit the sentiment of the governed.

There are two narratives that arrive at this end. In the first, the planet is always independent and land is never claimed until it is claimed by a local government. In the second, the planet frees itself from Earth colonists.

At some point in the future [Martian colonists] may start rebelling against a faraway terrestrial government still claiming jurisdiction over them, says von der Dunk. Imagine the tea party but with titanium and magnetite. Because space war is impractical and wildly expensive, the ultimate result of that decision might be a contested claim of sovereignty. Chinas relationship with Taiwan might be a model of the future unhealthy Martian relationship with an Earth country.

Or maybe not.

I dont think it would take very long before you started to see the emergence of a new form of Martian society that is still very human, but a new type of human, says Haqq-Misra.

Photos via Imgur, YouTube, Robert Murray/Mars Society

Neel is a science and tech journalist from New York City, reporting on everything from brain-eating amoebas to space lasers used to zap debris out of orbit, for places like Popular Science and WIRED. He's addicted to black coffee, old pinball machines, and terrible dive bars.

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Martian Politics Are a Mess and We Haven't Even Arrived - Inverse

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Its safe to say that Michael Policellis career goals are pretty ambitious: supporting the effort to launch manned missions to Mars in a quest to colonize our neighboring planet.

But Policelli, a Penn State graduate with a masters degree in aerospace engineering and bachelors degree in materials science and engineering, doesnt see it that way. Policelli, now a propulsion development engineer for SpaceX, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, uses his background in engineering to tackle the task one step at a time, regardless of its challenges.

Materials science and engineering gave me the background to be able to analyze a problem critically and come to a solution, said Policelli.

Thats an important skill because much of what SpaceX does, quite literally, goes where no one has gone before.

Policelli landed the competitive job in 2014 after completing an internship with the company, where he tested rockets at their McGregor, Texas, facility. He said his aerospace engineering background and his work with the Penn State Lunar Lion Team a student team developing a rocket system for lunar exploration to expand humanitys knowledge of the Moon bolstered his resume. But his materials science background really stood out.

While working at the Applied Research Laboratorys Laser Processing Division and the Penn State Lunar Lion Team, Policelli became comfortable troubleshooting concepts using 3-D printing and modeling using metal alloys. When vying for an internship, he stressed his experiences at Penn State and how he was actually making things instead of just talking about concepts.

Ultimately youre going to have to do a lot of learning when you get to any job, and this one is no different, said Policelli. So, if you can demonstrate that you can go out and teach yourself what you need to succeed at a task and then iterate until you succeed, thats what theyre looking for.

Policelli has been working on SpaceXs Merlin engine for the second stage of the companys Falcon 9 rocket, in support of several missions including one where he was able to see all of Earth from the viewfinder.

You see the ground shrinking away and the edge of Earth with a thin little layer of atmosphere and get that perspective of what its like to be in space, and its pretty breathtaking, said Policelli.

He said its an exciting time to be working for a company that plans travel to Mars within a decade. SpaceX is already delivering cargo to the International Space Station, and is slated to begin human flights there as early as 2018.

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, launched via the Falcon 9 rocket, on Thursday delivered 5,500 pounds of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station four days after launching from the Kennedy Space Center. Michael Policelli, a Penn State graduate with a masters degree in aerospace engineering and bachelors degree in materials science and engineering, works on stage two of the Falcon 9 rocket.

Image: Photo provided/SpaceX

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, launched via the Falcon 9 rocket, on Thursday delivered 5,500 pounds of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station four days after launching from the Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX recently launched ten Iridium NEXT satellites into space and plans more commercial launches for the communications company and for NASA during the next year.

Space is a big place, and were going to need a lot of players. Were going to need a lot of people working to build the future of space exploration and, ultimately, colonization, said Policelli. Its a pretty amazing opportunity and I definitely appreciate the path it took to come here and to be able to work with all the people that I do. I have an amazing team and its been very satisfying. Everyone is working hard and trying to do their very best to accomplish the mission.

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EMS alum working for SpaceX says travel to Mars within reach - Penn State News

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NASA approved a new robotic mission to Jupiters icy moon Europa after a major internal review.

NASA will begin preliminary design and testing later this month, and the space agency intends to launch a probe sometime in the early 2020s.

The Europa Clipper probe will investigate the icy moons potential for human colonization and alien life. Europa probably has water oceans below layers of ice that are likely kept warm by complex gravitational interactions. The moons core may also keep the oceans warm.

NASA officials previously found clay-like minerals associated with organic matter on Earth on the moons icy crust.

President Donald Trump wants NASA to focus on eliminating bureaucratic waste and cutting back environmental science research in favor of more ambitious goals, like sending humans to Mars and robots to Europa two of the best places to find alien life near Earth.

Former President Barack Obama requested NASAs mission to Europa receive only $49.6 million in 2017, far less than the $175 million the mission got from Congress in 2016.

Obamas budget earmarked money not spent on the probe to global warming research. A rival proposal from the House allocates $260 million to fully fund the mission for the next year.

The Obama administration wanted more than $2 billion for NASAs Earth Science Mission Directorate to improve climate modeling, weather prediction and natural hazard mitigation. The directorates goal is to help NASA meet the challenges of climate and environmental change. Obama repeatedly attempted to cut other NASA directorates budgets to fund global warming science.

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Trump's NASA Definitely Going To Jupiter's Icy Moon - Daily Caller

Universe Today

United Arab Emirates Has a Plan to Colonize Mars with 600,000 ... Universe Today During the 5th World Government Summit, the United Arab Emirates announced a bold plan to build a permanent settlement on Mars. and more »

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United Arab Emirates Has a Plan to Colonize Mars with 600,000 ... - Universe Today