Category Archives: Moon Colonization

First Friday is jam-packed in June. Thats the bottom line for planning your itinerary, and while we definitely recommend the various grand-opening celebrations in 40 West, there are other options.

You can follow the rhinos during RiNos Rhino Week festivitieswhile hitting art events at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Alto and Dateline galleries, Lane Meyer Projects and (on Saturday) the Globeville Riverfront Arts Center. Or you can just follow your heart and visit your favorite Denver art haunts.

Heres some help:

Jody Guralnick, Noetics, 2022, oil and acrylic on panel.

Jody Guralnick, Michael Warren Contemporary

DeMarcio Slaughter holds down the main stage at Denver PrideFest.

Courtesy of DeMarcio Slaughter

Tara Kelley-Cruz and Ashton Lacy Jones make mischief at D'art Gallery.

Courtesy of D'art Gallery

Michael Hedges and Karine Lger Space Gallery, 400 Santa Fe DriveFriday, June 3, through August 20Opening Reception: Friday, June 3, 6 to 9 p.m.Space Gallery presents a summer run by gallery artists Michael Hedges, whose work corrals blasts of color in rapidly painted marks that leave a lasting impression of movement, and Karine Lger, a collage artist who defies the rectangle by joining subtly colored shapes into changeable compositions.

Belgin Yucelen, Power of Harmony, 2016, bronze.

Belgin Yucelen, courtesy of BMoCA

Guadalupe Maravilla, Disease Thrower #17, 2021, gong, steel, wood, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route.

Courtesy of Guadalupe Maravilla and P.P.O.W, New York

Brazilian artist Clarrisa Tossin looks upward, leaving Candianis sounds of the earth far behind, propelling into space to explore the desire to groom the moon or the planet Mars for colonization. "The 8th Continent," a trio of large-scale tapestries representing mineable resource areas on the moon, lends a focal point to Falling From Earth, which also includes commissioned works of sculpture incorporating repurposed industrial materials and meteorite powder, NASA satellite images, tree bark and clay. Finally, the 62-foot-long silicone sculpture "Death by Heat Wave (Acer pseudoplatanus, Mulhouse Forest)" basically mourns the slow death of precious trees.

Finally, Salvadoran Guadalupe Maravilla wrestles with the issues of migration and the harm it can bring to the mind, body and sense of belonging. Central to Purring Monsters With Mirrors on Their Backs is a trio of what Maravilla calls "Disease Throwers," sculptures that compris metal tubing, gongs and plastic representations of human organs that reference his own battle with colon cancer. Accenting the overall narrative of the exhibition are a Tripa Chuca mural (meaning dirty guts, after a childhood game played in El Salvador) and a retablo painting.

Luca Rodrguez, Untitled III, 2019, oil on panel.

Luca Rodrguez

Speaks hangs new art from the streets at Dateline Gallery.

Devin "Speaks" Urioste

John Lake, Juan Fuentes and Colby Deal hang together at Lane Meyer Projects.

Lane Meyer Projects

40 West Colfax Art Crawl/The Hub Grand Opening Celebration 40 West Arts District, West Colfax Avenue Corridor, from Lamar Street to Wadsworth Boulevard, and the Hub at 40 West Arts, 6501 West Colfax Avenue, LakewoodFriday, June 3, 6 to 11 p.m.If you have to choose one place to park yourself on First Friday, head to 40 West, where an orchestrated game of musical chairs has placed numerous art-district galleries in new homes, making way for others to also move into the area.

The biggest celebration is at the new Hub at 40 West Arts, a former Denver Drumstick restaurant in the shadow of Casa Bonita thats been renovated as a home to multiple galleries, including 40 West, Core, Edge, Kanon, Next and Lakewood Arts. Meanwhile, 40 Wests former building now welcomes the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, ending that gallerys long search for a new home after being priced out on Santa Fe Drive. 40 West enlisted professional party planners the Fantastic Hosts to dress up the district with DJs, art acts, aerial dancers and more for this evening. Pirate, by the way, isnt moving anywhere, but there will be live music there, at 7130 West 16th Avenue. More on the moving galleries below.

Aloria Weaver, Integrity, Piercing the Veil of Obscuration, a portrait of Alicia Cardenas.

Aloria Weaver

Demeri Flowers sees through a child's eyes for Trips Around the Sun.

Demeri Flowers

Eric Havelock-Bailie, "Abandoned."

Eric Havelock-Bailie

Kym Bloom pixelates Prince at Kanon Collective.

Kym Bloom

Dona Laurita, Blue Angel.

Dona Laurita

Dairy Block Summer First Friday Art WalkDairy Block Alley, 1800 Wazee StreetFriday, June 3, 5 to 9 p.m.The Dairy Block brings back open-air First Friday Art Walks in the alley for the summer, with changing group art exhibitions curated by Inside Her Studio. Artists for June include Richelle Cripe, Jessie Blisle and Emily Christyansen. Summer First Friday Art Walks continue monthly through August.

Gregory Forber, Louise, mixed media on canvas.

Gregory Forber

Doug Karhoff, Dirty, mixed media

Doug Karhoff

Out There Art Fest 2022Globeville Riverfront Arts Center (GRACe), 888 East 50th AvenueSaturday, June 4, 3 to 9 p.m.GRACe, the Globeville-based phoenix that rose from the ashes of Wazee Union off Brighton Boulevard, continues in the same communal vein, harboring more than seventy artists in dozens of studios and throwing gallery shows, as it has now for more than five years. Recognizing that its not the easiest place to find, the residents of GRACe annually throw an open house and art show, with live music, demonstrations, food trucks and the whole shebang. Meet the artists and get a feel for how many artists lie under the radar in the Denver metro art scene.

Artist James Holmes is all smiles at a Yard Art event.

Courtesy of Yard Art Contemporary

Ninth Annual Park Hill Art Festival Park Hill Masonic Lodge, 4819 Montview BoulevardSaturday, June 4, and Sunday, June 5, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. dailyAnother summer tradition, the Park Hill Art Festival will open for business this weekend with a solid, juried inventory of original fine art in various categories, as well as photography, jewelry, fiber and wood, from ninety artists and artisans. Visit the website for an artist preview.

Young filmmaker Andrew Carr tells Denver photographer John Davenport's story in a new short documentary.

Andrew Carr

Social Justice Thru the Arts: Amending and A-mending HistoryNancy Richardson Design Center, 522 West Lake Street, CSU Campus, Fort CollinsSunday, June 5, through June 12; Opening Reception: Sunday, June 5, 1 p.m.Visual Arts Building, 551 West Pitkin Street, CSU Campus, Fort CollinsMonday, June 13, through August 15The exhibition Social Justice Thru the Arts results from a one-week student workshop on the subject at Colorado State University, where participants studied with CSU faculty and Fort Collins-based multimedia artist Louise Cutler. The show opens with a reception and a weeklong stay at the Nancy Richardson Design Center, then moves to CSUs Visual Arts Building, where it will become part of the campuss Engaged Art Walk, an arts-based community building project and exhibition space with rotating installations.

"El movimiento sigue (The movement continues)," a sculpture at BMoCA by the Los Seis de Boulder Sculpture Project and Jasmine Baetz.

Courtesy of BMoCA

Primavera City of Thornton Gallery, Thornton Arts & Culture Center, 9209 Dorothy Boulevard, ThorntonTuesday, June 7, through August 26Reception: Friday,June 17, 6 to 9 p.m.This CHAC Group Show in Thornton represents the hope of springtime and changes at one of many venues that supported the arts group during its search for a new home.

Interested in having your event appear in this calendar? Send the details to [emailprotected]

Go here to read the rest:
Art Attack: Where to Find Art on First Friday Weekend in Denver - Westword

Keith Scramble Campbell is an artist-in-residence at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. For the past 22 years, hes been a mainstay at the venue, documenting its shows through abstract acrylic paintings of the performances. Likening his brushes to an instrument on stage, he takes cues from the musicians around him, harnessing the same improvisational mindset as the jam bands he works with, such as Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident.

The music really dictates how the show goes on, says Campbell. If it's an acoustic show where theyre just playing, it can be a very stiff painting that doesn't have a lot of movement inside of [it]. But if it's Nine Inch Nails, it's big, it's angry. And if you're channeling something that is going fast, youre going to be fast and physical. However, it's not just from a physical standpoint. Sometimes I'm looking for a slower song to tighten up the painting, because when its fast, its very abstract and very impressionistic. I could do a better painting if I just sat in a chair and did the painting, but that's not fun.

Just as musicians on stage contend with the elements of an outdoor venue pressed against the windy slopes of the Dakota Ridge, so must Campbells art. When you're out there with the elements, you either embrace Mother Nature or you collaborate with it, says Campbell. I was pelted on with hail last year for Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. The whole planet was underwater, and I had to go through with it because I couldn't be put up in someplace that was dry. [The paintings] are gonna be an authentic capture of the show, and everybody that went to that show got wet. What resulted was a vibrant cascade of colors that pour off the canvas, not through artistic license, but because his wet acrylics had to contend with a bombardment of water and ice.

Campbell's paintings take cues from the musicians around him

Scramble Campbell Facebook page

It was special coming out to a sold-out show at Red Rocks, never even having been through there, and going through the backstage and seeing all these pictures of all these musicians from throughout time," he recalls. "And then you're walking out to a sold-out show, painting on one of the planters. It was surreal. In 2004, he and his wife, Shay Berry Campbell, made the move out to Colorado permanently.

From 2000 to 2005, he became friends with members of the String Cheese Incident, Blues Traveler and Leftover Salmon, becoming a frequent painter at their Red Rocks shows. Upon seeing a Bill Kreutzmann art exhibit with Grateful Dead photographer Jay Blakesberg in the newly opened Red Rocks visitor center, Campbell realized he had an opportunity. In 2005, he proposed an exhibition of his own at the visitor center, which was accepted. Since then, hes hosted the annual Scramble Campbell Red Rocks Experience, which is now in its seventeenth year.

Campbell designed the experience to be more than just viewing his art and seeing the topographical properties of acrylic paint that are lost in photographs. This year's display is no exception, and hes integrated various forms of technology to make the exhibit more exciting and educational.

We're starting to use QR codes, where you stick your phone right up to it and it brings you to the website or brings you to a video, bringing you into the experience, says Campbell. Normal tourists going through the exhibit arent going to know who String Cheese Incident is, but they can pop on this thing and watch a minute video. My wife and I had a video camera early on in the 80s. We've been together 27 years, so she's been videotaping a lot of these paintings getting done since early on.

In some ways, he says, the exhibit provides a different way to see his work. While most people who see him paint at concerts won't see the finished project until the show, those who didnt attend the concert are able to see the finished work first and then experience the music. These unique contexts have always driven Campbells career, whether thats touring around with jam bands or painting at raves in the early 90s.

Campbell had his crack at the formal art world, being a vice president at the Orlando Museum of Art. However, he prefers the expression of the music industry: You know, the art world can be stuck up. I like the music business much better. It's more my peeps.

The 17th Annual Scramble Campbell Red Rocks Experience runs through June 26 at the Red Rocks visitor center, 17900 Trading Post Road.

Excerpt from:
Scramble Campbell on His Two Decades as Red Rocks' Artist-in-Residence - Westword

NASA

To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether humans should colonize space, go to ProCon.org.

While humans have long thought of gods living in the sky, the idea of space travel or humans living in space dates to at least 1610 after the invention of the telescope when German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote to Italian astronomer Galileo: Let us create vessels and sails adjusted to the heavenly ether, and there will be plenty of people unafraid of the empty wastes. In the meantime, we shall prepare, for the brave sky-travellers, maps of the celestial bodies.

In popular culture, space travel dates back to at least the mid-1600s when Cyrano de Bergerac first wrote of traveling to space in a rocket. Space fantasies flourished after Jules Vernes From Earth to the Moon was published in 1865, and again when RKO Pictures released a film adaptation, A Trip to the Moon, in 1902. Dreams of space settlement hit a zenith in the 1950s with Walt Disney productions such as Man and the Moon, and science fiction novels including Ray Bradburys The Martian Chronicles (1950).

Fueling popular imagination at the time was the American space race with Russia, amid which NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) was formed in the United States on July 29, 1958, when President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law. After the Russians put the first person, Yuri Gagarin, in space on Apr. 12, 1961, NASA put the first people, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the Moon in July 1969. What was science fiction began to look more like possibility. Over the next six decades, NASA would launch space stations, land rovers on Mars, and orbit Pluto and Jupiter, among other accomplishments. NASAs ongoing Artemis program, launched by President Trump in 2017, intends to return humans to the Moon, landing the first woman on the lunar surface, by 2024.

As of June 17, 2021, three countries had space programs with human space flight capabilities: China, Russia, and the United States. Indias planned human space flights have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they may launch in 2023. However, NASA ended its space shuttle program in 2011 when the shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21. NASA astronauts going into space afterward rode along with Russians until 2020 when SpaceX took over and first launched NASA astronauts into space on Apr. 23, 2021. SpaceX is a commercial space travel business owned by Elon Musk that has ignited commercial space travel enthusiasm and the idea of space tourism. Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin have generated similar excitement.

Richard Branson launched himself, two pilots, and three mission specialists into space [as defined by the United States] from New Mexico for a 90-minute flight on the Virgin Galactic Unity 22 mission on July 11, 2021. The flight marked the first time that passengers, rather than astronauts, went into space.

Jeff Bezos followed on July 20, 2021, accompanied by his brother, Mark, and both the oldest and youngest people to go to space: 82-year-old Wally Funk, a female pilot who tested with NASA in the 1960s but never flew, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands. The fully automated, unpiloted Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launched on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and was named after Alan Shepard, who was the first American to travel into space on May 5, 1961.

The International Space Station has been continuously occupied by groups of six astronauts since Nov. 2000, for a total of 243 astronauts from 19 countries as of May 13, 2021. Astronauts spend an average of 182 days (about six months) aboard the ISS. As of Feb. 2020, Russian Valery Polyakov had spent the longest continuous time in space (437.7 days in 1994-1995 on space station Mir), followed by Russian Sergei Avdeyev (379.6 days in 1998-1999 on Mir), Russians Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov (365 days in 1987-1988 on Mir), Russian Mikhail Kornienko and American Scott Kelly (340.4 days in 2015-2016 on Mir and ISS respectively) and American Christina Koch (328 days in 2019-20 in ISS).

In Jan. 2022, Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE) announced plans for a film production studio and a sports arena in space. The module will be named SEE-1 and will dock on Axiom Station, which is the commercial wing of the International Space Station. SEE plans to host film and sports events, as well as content creation by Dec. 2024.

In a 2018 poll, 50% of Americans believed space tourism will be routine for ordinary people by 2068. 32% believed long-term habitable space colonies will be built by 2068. But 58% said they were definitely or probably not interested in going to space. And the majority (63%) stated NASAs top priority should be monitoring Earths climate, while only 18% said sending astronauts to Mars should be the highest priority and only 13% would prioritize sending astronauts to the Moon.

The most common ideas for space colonization include: settling Earths Moon, building on Mars, and constructing free-floating space stations.

This article was published on January 21, 2022, at Britannicas ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.

Read more from the original source:
Pro and Con: Space Colonization | Britannica

It's the year 3000. Having used up all of Earth's natural resources, humans have become a spacefaring race and established colonies on the moon. Vast, sealed domes cluster across its surface, housing cities populated by hundreds of thousands of people. This cold, gray rock has somehow become humanity's new home.

Of course, this is pure science fiction. But no vision of the future is complete without an extraterrestrial colony of humans, and since the moon is the closest celestial body to our planet, it's the easiest to imagine as our futuristic home.

But does this vision align with reality? Will the moon one day be a hot property, and if so, how many people could its unwelcoming landscape realistically support?

Related: Why Is It So Hard to Land on the Moon?

One way to answer that question, simplistically, is to consider the area of the moon. The moon's surface area is about 15.9% of Earth's overall land area (excluding the area of Earth covered by oceans). Technically, if we packed this areaat the density of Earth's most populous cities (opens in new tab), we'd be able to fit trillions on the moon's surface.

But how many people could fit on the moon's surface is a very different question than how many people that world could sustainably support. And in that regard, the moon is definitely Earth's poorer cousin.

"It's a pretty barren place," said Darby Dyar, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona and a professor of astronomy at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. "Every species seeks to expand its ecological niche. But the new 'niche,' which is the moon, is very inhospitable for humans," Dyar told Live Science.

Unlike on Earth, water doesn't rain down freely on the lunar surface and collect into bodies we could drink from. Crucially, the moon also lacks an atmosphere with breathable air. Neither does Earth's natural satellite have existing ecosystems that could conveniently support fields of agriculture. The moon is also vulnerable to solar storms, eruptions from the sun's surface that send out electromagnetic radiation, which the moon without the protection of a magnetic field can't deflect. There are also huge temperature extremes, and long, alternating periods of darkness and light, Dyar said.

All this may make life on the moon seem impossible. Yet surprisingly, it isn't. In fact, the essentials for human existence air, water, food and shelter theoretically aren't as unattainable on the moon as you might expect.

Related: Why Does the Moon Keep Flashing Us?

Take air. To support a starting population of a few hundred people on the moon, we'd have to start by transporting air to the lunar surface, pumping it into sealed structures in which humans would live. That seems unsustainable, but in the short term, it would actually be fairly cost-effective, said Markus Landgraf, the moon project manager with the European Space Agency. "People don't use much air, and for a long time, we will not need to make the air on the moon. We can bring it in," he said. "Transportation costs for that are still manageable."

If that population grew to tens of thousands, however, we'd need to synthesize oxygen on the moon, an expensive process. But Landgraf said the growth of space exploration in the coming decades could make the process more economical.

That's because propelling spacecraft requires oxygen, so if the demand goes up, "it makes more economic sense to build oxygen generators on the moon for rocket propellant, rather than for drinking water and air for people," Landgraf said. That would drive down the production cost, making it cheaper to produce air for moon dwellers.

What about water? Until a few decades ago, researchers believed the moon was completely dry. But now they know there's a surprising amount of liquid spread across the lunar surface.

"We think water is left over from when the moon formed. And we know that comets, which are basically dirty snowballs, periodically impact the moon's surface," Dyar said. "There's good evidence to suggest that those [craters] where comets impacted the surface still have ice reservoirs in them."

Another water source, she said, comes in the solar winds that roar across space; charged with protons, these collide with electrons on the moon, forming hydrogen.

All this adds up to a decent amount of lunar water, perhaps enough to support a sizable population. And we've already developed technologies on the International Space Station to recycle drinkable water from astronaut's shower water, urine and sweat. This can even use the moisture from their breath. On the moon, that technology could create a closed-loop water source for inhabitants.

But even with recycling, Dyar said, those water reserves wouldn't be infinite; recycling water over and over again does come with some loss, so reserves would need to be topped up once in a while. What's more, extracting the moon's water by crushing lunar rocks and dredging up ice from deep craters, would require huge, costly amounts of energy, Dyar pointed out.

"My personal feeling is that colonization of the moon is going to depend on us bringing hydrogen there," she said. Transporting that would be costly, too: around $220,000 per kilogram, Landgraf said.

Related: Does Anyone Really Think the Moon Landing Was Faked?

Without knowing how much water is currently on the moon's surface, it's also difficult to estimate how many people it could support. But we do at least know that it's possibly enough to provide a relatively sustainable water source. In any case, Landgraf estimated that lunar pioneers wouldn't need to tap the moon's water resources for at least the first five to 10 years of settlement; it will be cheap enough to transport water up there and recycle it for the dozen or so humans who are first likely to call moon their home.

As for lunar agriculture, we could mimic Earth's growing conditions with "almost-ecosystem-like closed domes," Landgraf said. Nurtured by long bouts of sunlight and showered with recycled water, lunar agriculture could feasibly scale up to feed thousands. There's already plenty of research to suggest that growing crops in space will work.

There are still multiple unknowns about how we'd do all this in practice. But theoretically, natural resources could support tens of thousands, even millions, of people on the moon. So then, why aren't there already hundreds of us up there, gazing down at Earth?

Because the biggest constraints to colonizing the moon aren't necessarily limits to natural resources, Landgraf said, but the huge cost of transporting people up there by spacecraft. Doing it more economically would require bold technological leaps like the invention of space elevators. If we had those, "then we're talking about tens of thousands of people on the moon," Landgraf said. "So, really, water isn't the constraint here. It's transportation."

There's another caveat, and this is where we return sharply to reality: For now, colonizing the moon isn't actually the goal. Sure, we could view the moon as a kind of Noah's ark in the event of an earthly apocalypse. But currently, international space agencies see the moon not as an outpost from disaster, but as a research hub and a potential base from which to explore the rest of our solar system.

Related: Who Owns the Moon?

With that approach, Langraf said we could look to Antarctica for clues about human habitation. Probably the most lunar-like habitat on Earth, the Antarctic is home to fluctuating, seasonal population of between one and four thousand researchers who battle freezing, dry conditions to do their work. Since research currently drives planning on lunar habitation, that gives us an idea of how many people might realistically live on the moon in coming decades: a few thousand at a time, rather than millions or billions.

Even this population would probably taper off, replaced by cheaper, more efficient robots over time, according to Dyar. "As technology gets better, there's very little reason why you really need to send a human to do scientific research," she said.

However, that doesn't mean our dreams of lunar citizenship are over. There's one other factor: humanity's unquenchable drive to explore. That could compel future generations to colonize the moon in the millions or use it as a launching pad for other expeditions into space.

"Humans are one of the few species that are always exploring, even if there's no need," Landgraf said. "[We've] been very successful with this strategy. Would it make sense to change that? I don't think so."

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct a statement about the area of moon compared with the area of Earth, which had not specified it meant the area of Earth that is not covered by oceans.

Originally published on Live Science.

The rest is here:
How Many Humans Could the Moon Support? | Live Science

Read Time:2 Minute, 3 Second

Photo: pixabay.comNASA has announced the date of sending the unmanned spacecraft Orion to the Moon

NASA announced that the first unmanned flight of the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, planned as part of the Artemis program (Artemis), will take place in August 2022. This was announced by the head of the US space agency, Bill Nelson, during a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Budget Appropriations, Interfax writes.

At the moment I'd say August. As part of a mission lasting about thirty days, all systems for unmanned flights will be tested & # 187;, & # 8212; he answered a question from a member of the commission about the launch of the mission.

It is noted that before launch, the launch vehicle must successfully pass a bench test. At the same time, specialists will simulate the procedures that will be necessary for a successful launch, check the operation of systems, interfaces and software.

It is known that on March 18 this year, a 98-meter SLS rocket with the Orion spacecraft was taken out of vertical assembly shop to launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. But the test has not yet taken place due to a number of technical problems.

As part of the Artemis 1 Orion mission, it will head towards the Moon and stay in its orbit for several weeks. After that, he will return to Earth. The descent capsule will splash down in the Atlantic.

As part of the Artemis 2 mission, a crew of four astronauts will go to the Moon. This flight is scheduled for 2024. Then Orion should fly around the natural satellite of the Earth and also splash down in the Atlantic.

As part of the Artemis 3 mission, American astronauts are scheduled to land on the moon.

Note that the Artemis program became known to the public in September 2020 . Her goal is the return of American astronauts to the lunar surface in 2025, as it was 50 years ago, as well as the construction of a near-lunar station and preparation of conditions for the possible colonization of the Moon.

Recall that the agreement on participation in the Artemis program was signed on October 15, 2020 8 countries USA, UK, Italy, Canada, Australia, Japan, United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg. Ukraine has also joined the program.

Natasha Kumar has been a reporter on the news desk since 2018. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times Hub, Natasha Kumar worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my natasha@timeshub.in

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NASA has announced the date of sending the unmanned spacecraft Orion to the Moon - The Times Hub

Yoon may have intended that trip to set the first button for smoother future relations, but two 2018 South Korean Supreme Court decisions suggest that the problem goes back to 1965. Those verdicts directly challenged Japans interpretation of the 1965 Claims Agreement, the foundation for post-war Japan-South Korea relations. How the two countries resolve this fundamental issue will impact not only the future of bilateral relations but also the success of the United States Indo-Pacific strategy. The potential ways forward, however, appear bleak without an extraordinary shift in position from Tokyo, Seoul, or both. President Joe Bidens trip to the region in late May presents an important opportunity for Washington to nudge its allies toward a resolution.

In 1997, two South Korean plaintiffs filed suit in Japan against Nippon Steel Corporation for forced labor that occurred during World War II when Japan ruled over Korea. They argued that they were recruited under false advertisement, were not paid their due wages and were subjected to unsafe working conditions. The lower court dismissed the suit in 2001, and the Japanese Supreme Court denied the final appeal in 2003. The courts held that, while the company (described here as Old Nippon Steel, later reorganized into Nippon Steel) mistreated the plaintiffs as they described, Nippon Steel did not carry Old Nippon Steels liability. The courts added that, in any case, the plaintiffs claims were extinguished by the 1965 Claims Agreement. The plaintiffs later pressed the same claims in South Korea, where lower courts in 2009 also dismissed the suit, citing the Japanese rulings and the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Since 2001, the Japanese government has reiterated its courts argument regarding the victims claims. The government asserts that under Article I of the Claims Agreement, Japan was required to provide South Korea with $300 million in grants and $200 million in loans, and that under Article II, the problem concerning property, rights and interests as well as claims between the two countries and their nationals were settled completely and finally and no contention could be made regarding those claims. Some scholars have noted that the scope of these claims also encompassed the eight items explicitly raised by South Korea during the Claims Agreement negotiations, one of which related to amounts receivable, compensation, and other rights of claim of drafted South Korean workers.

However, the 2005 release by then-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyuns administration of the Claims Agreement negotiation records led to a different interpretation. A private-public commissions review of the records found that the agreement was not primarily intended to address reparations for Japanese colonial rule, but rather to settle the financial and civil claims and debt relations between the two countries pursuant to Article IV of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. In other words, unlike Japans treaties with other countries like Indonesia, China and Myanmar after World War II, which used the word reparations to address the damage and suffering caused by Japan, the Claims Agreement was silent on any wrongdoing and, therefore, meant only to address the settlement of credit and debt relations, such as insurance and deposits. The commission added that, because the Japanese government refused to recognize any legal obligation to provide reparations for forced labor, the Korean government pursued political compensation based on the historical fact of losses from affliction.

Commentators have explained that the two governments at the time negotiated the Claims Agreement to be ambiguous on key issues including how to characterize Japans colonization of Korea (legal versus illegal), which claims were being settled (government versus individual claims, torts against humanity) and what the money was for (economic assistance versus reparations) so that the two sides could normalize relations, secure economic benefits and go back to their people and tell two different stories. The commission also underscored that the South Korean government had a moral responsibility to use a considerable portion of the Japanese funds it received from the agreement to compensate the forced labor victims, but that the compensation payments made between 1975 and 1977 were inadequate. This finding led the Roh administration to enact additional compensation legislation in 2007.

The reassessment of the 1965 agreement ultimately led to a major shift in South Korean court decisions. In landmark rulings in May 2012, the South Korean Supreme Court decided that the individual claims against Nippon Steel Corporation (and the claims of another group of plaintiffs against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) were not extinguished by the agreement. Underscoring that Japans colonization of Korea was illegal, the court rejected the lower courts deference to Japanese verdicts because it would violate South Koreas constitution. The court also drew on the commissions findings to hold that the agreements failure to acknowledge the illegality of Japanese colonialism meant that it was merely a political agreement to settle economic and debt relations between the two countries, rather than compensation for Japans illegal occupation. Lastly, the court held that the statute of limitations for raising claims had not expired due to legal obstacles that prevented the plaintiffs from exercising their right to raise claims. After the cases were remanded, the lower courts ordered the two Japanese companies to compensate the South Korean plaintiffs.

In late 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court affirmed the damages awards and reaffirmed its previous ruling that the agreement did not extinguish individuals claims for reparations. The court stated that Article I, which described the Japanese governments payment, said nothing about the specific purpose of the payment other than being conducive to the economic development of the Republic of Korea, and had no relation to the claims described under Article II. Even Japans position at the time, the court noted, was that the payment was only for economic assistance and not reparations. Most importantly, the court characterized the plaintiffs claims as seeking compensation for emotional suffering caused by the Japanese corporations unlawful acts rather than for lost wages to ensure that the claims fell out of the agreements scope concerning property, rights and interests. Using this logic, some scholars have also argued that the eight items raised by South Korean negotiators in 1965 also did not include mental harm.

The 2018 court decision quickly created a fissure in bilateral ties. In July 2019, Tokyo imposed tighter export controls on chemicals used by South Korean manufacturers to produce semiconductors and removed South Korea from its white list of preferred trading partners. Although Japan attributed this move to security concerns based on South Koreas inadequate management of the chemicals, then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe admitted that the 2018 court decision was the primary reason. South Korea countered with its own measures, including dropping Japan from its white list, initiating dispute resolution proceedings at the World Trade Organization over the export controls and threatening termination of the bilateral General Security of Military Information Agreement.

Since then, South Korean lower courts have muddied the waters by producing contradictory rulings (legal precedents are not binding in South Koreas civil law judicial system). In three cases last year, the Seoul Central District Court decided against South Korean laborers. That same year, however, district courts in Daejeon and Daegu approved the sale of Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel assets to allow South Korean victims to collect. In April 2022, the Daejeon District Court ordered the sale of a Mitsubishi patent to compensate a forced labor victim. With the South Korean Supreme Courts dismissals of Mitsubishis appeals in the first Daejeon case in September and December 2021 and the likelihood that the Seoul Central District Courts decisions will be reversed based on the 2018 decision, the Japanese side appears to be running out of legal recourses.

There are several potential paths forward regarding the forced labor claims, though none are encouraging. The Japanese companies have already rejected the first option of abiding by the South Korean Supreme Courts decisions and compensating the victims. With many similar lawsuits pending in South Korea, complying with the courts decisions could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in additional liabilities for Japanese companies. More important, this move would be tantamount to admitting that Japans colonization of Korea was illegal.

A second path would uphold Japans position but require a political, legislative or judicial act by South Korea that undermines or supersedes its supreme courts rulings. This type of move is possible but would be unpopular in South Korea and kick the victims rights can down the road. In addition, if a judicial act is perceived as politically driven for example, former South Korean Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae was arrested in 2019 on charges of delaying a final verdict on the laborer cases it could diminish the integrity of South Koreas judicial independence.

In 2019, then-South Korean President Moon Jae-ins government sought a third path that could satisfy Japans concerns while also not undermining the 2018 court rulings. It proposed establishing a joint fund managed by the two governments using voluntary contributions from South Korean and Japanese companies to compensate the victims. This fund would resemble the mechanism that Germany, amid a wave of lawsuits in U.S. courts against German companies, devised in 2000 to compensate former Nazi-era forced laborers. Japan rejected Moons proposal arguing that all claims had already been settled. It also felt chagrined by Moons dismantling of a similar fund created in 2015 to address the concerns of Korean comfort women women who were forced to work in brothels run by the Japanese military before and during World War II. The Yoon administration could also propose a joint fund, but it will need to ensure the Japanese governments buy-in and that victims concerns are addressed.

A fourth potential path is arbitration. Article III of the Claims Agreement calls for any disputes that cannot be settled through diplomatic channels to be referred to an arbitration board. Japan initially sought arbitration in 2019, but South Korea demurred as it tried to exhaust diplomatic solutions that would address the victims claims with greater certainty. Today, with no diplomatic solution in sight, the two sides could still choose to pursue arbitration as a legally binding option. However, the risk of a negative ruling remains for both sides. Another legal recourse would be to pursue a decision by the International Court of Justice, but South Korea would first need to accept the courts jurisdiction.

The most controversial, and least likely, option would be to revise the Claims Agreement. This path would be a nonstarter for Japan, and perhaps South Korea as well, but it could offer potential benefits. Rather than cede control of the agreements interpretation to arbitration boards or domestic judicial systems, this approach would afford both governments equal agency and responsibility to directly confront and resolve the 1965 agreements fundamental flaws for some, ensuring that the bilateral relationships first button finally finds its correct place.

Absent any of the five measures above, the situation will worsen. South Korean courts will allow Japanese companies assets to be seized and liquidated; the Japanese government will retaliate, prompting South Korean countermeasures; bilateral tensions will fester; and the Northeast Asian link in the latticework of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will grow weaker.

U.S. leadership can help avoid this outcome. Strengthening U.S. alliances in the region is one of the Biden administrations highest foreign policy priorities. Washington will want to avoid the appearance of meddling or favoritism, but the history of South Korea-Japan relations shows that the United States has always weighed in discreetly, and sometimes openly, with considerable influence. In 2014, then U.S. President Barack Obama called the comfort women tragedy a terrible, egregious violation of human rights and encouraged Japan to recognize the past honestly and fairly. The current environment may be amenable to similar prodding since both Yoon and Kishida will be more flexible on this issue than their predecessors.

When Biden meets the two leaders, improving South Korea-Japan relations must be one of the top agenda items. The fund proposal may be the best option because it allows both governments to influence the outcome and, if designed well, the victims concerns to be settled. A sustainable solution requires addressing the victims claims and grievances in a fundamental and comprehensive way.

Sang-ok Park is a former justice on the South Korean Supreme Court.

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South Korea and Japan Need to Reset Relations. Can the United States Help? - United States Institute of Peace

Thanks to Magee for this suggestion.

History - Detonating a thermonuclear weapon on the moon? It sounds like the bizarro scheme of a deranged comic-book villainnot a project initiated inside the U.S. government.

But in 1958, as the Cold Warspace racewas heating up, the U.S. Air Force launched just such an endeavor. Called Project A119, it harnessed the talents of some of Americas top scientists.

How could this happen?

Blame Sputnik, the beach-ball-sized satellite slung into space by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, which jolted U.S. officials and citizens alike into a state of high alert. As the two Cold War superpowers duked it out for postwar world dominanceframed by many as a titanic struggle between freedom and tyrannythe prospect of Americas arch-enemy gaining any measure of military-industrial advantage seemed chilling indeed.

So the United States needed to reclaim the narrative and prove to the world that it hadnt lost the space race before it had even begun. Americans needed a reassuring sign that the Communists didnt have a permanent upper handand that Sputnik wouldnt soon be followed by Soviet nuclear missiles raining down onto U.S. soil.

America needed to show the world it was squarely in the race. And it needed something biglike nuking the moon. Never mind that the project had no practical purpose, no discernible national-security goals and its sole design was to show the world that the U.S.A. could do something ambitiously spectacular.

Sometime before May 1958, the U.S. Air Force asked the ARF team to investigate something truly out of the ordinary: the visibility and effects of a hypothetical nuclear explosion on the moon. The Air Force wanted to surprise the Soviets and the world: Hey, look at what we can do. We can blow the hell out of the moon.

But it wasnt just fear that inspired physicists, chemists, biologists, astrophysicists and others to join university laboratories, private industries or government institutions working on aerospace and defense research. Many of these scientists were patriots. Some were WWII refugees who had seen tyranny firsthandand barely escaped it. They, too, believed in what they were doing. The Cold War was a fight to the deathor at least for the future of the free world. These men and women had a skill set that was integral to national, and potentially global, security.

The program was ultimately scrappedbut the final reason is still unclear. All we have is speculation from multiple (knowledgeable) sources. Some say the Air Force canceled the program because of the potential danger to people on earth (in case the mission catastrophically failed the way so many of the early U.S. attempts at spaceflight sadlyand sometimes humorouslydid). Others say the scientists were concerned about contaminating the moon with radioactive material, preventing any future mission to land a man on the surface (or even lunar colonization). Or it could be that the mission was scrapped out of a worry that the best-laid P.R. plans of the Air Force would be thwarted when the public saw this as an abhorrent defacement of the moons beauty instead of a demonstration of American scientific prowess.

Original post:
Watch This When You're High - Why The Air Force Almost Blasted The Moon With An H Bomb - Barstool Sports

After the success of "Star Wars," everyone was looking for the next big sci-fi blockbuster, and the Walt Disney Company was no exception. Nearly 35 years before they'd simply buy the whole enterprise, Disney tried their hand at their own outer space adventure, and the result was the 1979 adventure "Black Hole." Starring Maximillian Schell, Joseph Bottoms, Anthony Perkins, and Robert Forster, the movie follows the crew of the USS Palomino, on a deep space exploratory mission when they encounter an older starship, the USS Cygnus, thought lost 20 years before.

Now orbiting a black hole, they find one man aboard:Dr. Reinhardt, one of Earth's most brilliant minds, who says he's the last man alive after the ship became damaged. Along with a crew of human-like robot drones he claims to have built himself, he has continued to study the titular black hole. But while exploring the Cygnus, the crew of the Palomino realizes that Reinhardt is hiding something, and there's more to his robot army than meets the eye. A surprisingly disturbing sci-fi adventure for a Disney picture, never became as well known as "Star Wars," nor did it ever become it spawn a franchise, but thanks to its impressive special effects and intriguing story it has since become a cult classic.

Read more:
30 Most Underrated Space Movies You Need To Watch - Looper

A new study says that growing plants on the Moon is possible. But it causes a massive amount of stress on the plants. The researchers published their findings in Communications Biology. Its the first study to show success at growing plants in lunar soil returned from the Apollo missions all those years ago.

Because of the level of stress that the plants experience, scientists say farming on the Moon isnt happening anytime soon.

One of NASAs biggest pushes right now is to put humans back on the Moon. The space agency is already working with some companies to create new lunar rovers, and it is already sending a spacecraft around the Moon later this year.

But, if we ever want to progress to the point of living on the Moon, we have to be able to provide for the people who live there.

This is why scientists have spent countless hours, days, and even years trying to grow plants in lunar soil. But now that weve proven that plants can grow on the Moon, we have to tackle another difficult issue. Making that growth easier on the plants.

It might sound silly to worry about how much stress a plant is taking on. But, its actually a very serious issue. Even when talking about potted plants in your home, there are ways you can stress them out. This stress can then lead to weaker growth and other issues with the plant. If were going to use terrestrial life to help generate life support and food on the Moon, we need to get those stress levels down.

Still, even taking this first step is absolutely astounding. The soil on the Moon is nothing like the soil that you can find on Earth. Its sharper, more abrasive, and doesnt contain any organic elements.

Further, there are certain chemical states in lunar soil that you just wont find in our own planets soils. And that doesnt even cover the weak atmosphere and radiation that constantly bombards our Moon.

So yes, while it does seem possible to grow plants on the Moon, theres still a lot of legwork to do before we send our favorite plants to occupy the lunar surface. The researchers say that the plants grew, but they didnt do fantastically well. There were signs of low volume, slow growth, and even some discoloration. All of which are signs that the plant is extremely stressed.

So, before we go planting things on the Moon, were going to need to do more research. Especially if we want to be able to grow plants in locally sourced soils. Otherwise, well need to find ways to move thousands and thousands of pounds of Earths soil to the lunar surface. Which would be costly and time-consuming.

But growing plants on the Moon is a noble idea and one that just makes sense in the grand scheme. Plants provide oxygen, which could be used to help create atmospheres that are breathable within lunar colonies. Further, plants can provide food for astronauts and colonists living on the Moon.

This would help cut down on expenditures of bringing food and oxygen from Earth to those lunar colonies.

Still, were a long way off. This new research is a huge step in the right direction, no doubt. And it will be intriguing to see where scientists take these attempts next. Perhaps, if were lucky enough, theyll find a way to reliably grow plants on the Moon without overstressing the plants sometime in the future. If not, space colonization is going to be a terribly expensive endeavor.

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Researchers found a new roadblock in the quest to inhabit the Moon - BGR

Get ready for your horoscope to change its scope.

For centuries, human beings have searched the stars to help them navigate the earth and understand themselves. Ancient Babylonians were among the first to record the constellations along the ecliptic, the path the sun appears to make through the sky.

These OG astrologers recognized that different constellations would rise from the horizon line at sundown during different times of year.

The Babylonians, who already had a 12 month calendar based on the phases of the moon, assigned a constellation to each month. They applied myths, based on earlier Sumerian beliefs to these constellations and thus the zodiac wheel was born. Scholarship is divisive but it is generally understood that Egyptians refined the zodiac, and the Greeks cast it into the form we recognize today. The Greeks also gave it a proper name, zodiac is derived from the Greek for circle of animals. These oracle heeding, robe loving folk borrowed myths from earlier iterations and added some of their own gods and heroes for good measure. Later, the Romans in their eternal imperialism, replaced the Greek names with Latin.

Astrologers use two primary zodiac systems to divine meaning from the cosmos; sidereal and tropical. In both tropical and sidereal systems, the zodiac wheel is divided into twelve signs. The primary difference between the two systems is where those signs are placed in the sky. The sidereal system is based on the current position of the constellations while the tropical system is based on where the stars were around 0 AD. In essence, the dates of the sidereal zodiac change over time and the dates of the tropical zodiac do not.

There was a time when the two systems aligned but they diverged around the year 285 AD; coincidentally, this was also the year that the Roman empire split into two factions and began its fated decline. From that point, due to conquest and colonization, and as well explore a bit later, aversion to math, tropical astrology became the predominant system in the Western world. Sidereal meanwhile remained, and remains the governing system of Vedic astrology. Read more about Vedic astrology here.

We can thank the mathematician Ptolemy for the static positioning of the tropical zodiac. He suggested that the vernal equinox, and thus the start of the zodiac be set at 0 degrees ofthe Aries constellation each year to ensure continuity between zodiac signs and the progression of seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.

Sidereal astrology, by comparison, is a touch more technical. Just as time marches on, children age and cities fall, so to do stars shift. Sidereal astrology recognizes that the earth sits on a skewed axis that contributes to the ever changing distances between earth and the constellations above, a movement know as the procession of the equinoxes which sounds like but is in fact not, the title of a George R.R. Martin book.

To account for this procession, sidereal employs a corrective system of equations or ayanamsas to more precisely determine the current position of each zodiac sign. Part of the reason the tropical system is predominant is because humans are lazy and math is hard. The most widely used of these equations is the Lahiri ayanamsa. Under this corrective, the Sidereal Zodiac recognizes an apparent backward movement of fixed stars of about 1 degree every 72 years. Meaning there is a 24 degree gap between the tropical and sidereal systems, making them roughly an entire zodiac sign apart.

Given the degree of discrepancy between tropical and sidereal systems, an individuals birth chart will vary according to which system is applied. While the dates of the respective zodiac signs are differ between systems, their qualities and influence are much the same. You can find your sidereal sign and birth chart using an online sidereal calculator like this.

Another important discrepancy between tropical and sidereal astrology is planetary rulership and influence. Unlike tropical astrology, sidereal astrology does not acknowledge the influence of Uranus, Neptune or Pluto on the individual or the individuals birth chart.These outer planets are not visible to the naked eye and their distance from earth lessens their effect of life on it.

Astrology 101: Your guide to the stars

The validity of sidereal versus tropical is a subject of hot debate and as with all things, a matter of preference and resonance. The tropical system is not a true reflection of the present sky and its allegiance to seasons is fraught because they are inverted between the Northern and Southern hemisphere. In terms of sidereal astrology, even with calculated adjustments, the constellations do not line up exactly with their corresponding signs and thus the starting point of the zodiac is itself matter of constant contention.

At its most essential astrology is about observation, recognizing patterns and seeking understanding. As Morris Jastow writes of the Babylonians, The theory upon which astrology rests is the assumption of a coordination between occurrences on earth and phenomena observed in the heavens Astrology makes no attempt to turn the gods away from their purpose, but merely to determine a little in advance what they propose, so as to be prepared for coming events. Whether you believe in one god or many or bow simply to the god that you are, astrology offers yet another reason to stare up and look ever forward.

AstrologerReda Wigleresearches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a girls guide to strip clubs and the weirdest foods available abroad.

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What is sidereal astrology: everything to know about the alternative zodiac - New York Post