- Well, it started well this morning, for the Dow Jones jumped more than a thousand points during the first hour, but, like the S&P and Nasdaq, they all fell for the day into deep negative territory. At least it's not another major wipeout today.
- The new wave of Trump tariffs will become effective at midnight. More than 80 countries have indicated a desire to negotiate. China remains defiant.
- Talks will begin this weekend with Iran about their nuclear program.
- The Supreme Court is more and more ruling to support most of Trump's deportation and federal employee firing matters.
As you know, 18-year old Barron Trump is at New York University, and is 6'7" tall.- Has a swarm of protective secret service agents dressed like students, and even follow him into a bathroom.
- Is enrolled in the Stern School of Business. While of course still a freshman, this school costs around $200,000 for a 2-year MBA degree, including expenses. Is ranked 11th in the nation and 17th worldwide.
- The round trip voyage will be more than 68 million miles.
- If you plan it right (when our planets are closest to each other, the distance is 34 million miles--meaning the travelers would need to spend around 26 months on Mars) that's only 1415 times around Planet Earth, but the actual trip would be longer because of timing and trajectory. That 34 million mile distance is if the spaceflight is only for a few days.
- A one-way journey will take 9 months, for the distance covered will be more like 250 million miles, so that 68 million miles one-way mentioned above will be closer to 500 million mile round-trip in reality.
- Trump has said he would like the USA to put boots on Mars in January of 2029. Sure, why not his boots?
- Musk: Believes Mars represents humanity's answer to inevitable existential threats, including rogue asteroids, nuclear warfare or cataclysmic natural disasters.
- He has said that SpaceX aims to launched an unmanned Mars-bound spacecraft in late 2026 to coincide with this orbital synchronization period.
- If successful, then astronauts to Mars during the next launch window 26 months later, or between December 2028 and January 2029.
- Most other experts believe the timing will not coincide with the technology to develop spacesuits and such, so three decades make more sense.
- The main problem with travel there and life on Mars is space radiation.
- Also, humans lose about 1% bone mass/MONTH in space.
- Suni Williams' hair became significantly grayer after 286 days on the International Space Station.
- Finally, the U.S.'s last crewed human mission to Moon, Apollo 17, was way back in 1972. That was more than half a century ago. The first human Artemis landing on the Moon is scheduled for April 2026. The Biden administration thought this would be a woman. Trump?
- NASA's current human plans are linked to the Artemis campaign on the Moon.
- They have spent more than $15 billion just in SpaceX, but nothing at this point regarding Mars.
- The Moon is 0.25 million miles away. At closest approach, Mars is 140 times further.
- NASA's annual budget is $25 billion, less than one-half of 1% of all Federal spending.
- NASA's new administrator, Jared Isaacman is a 42-year old billionaire who had led two private missions on SpaceX rockets.
- And, yes, China is back in the discussion. An enemy is always necessary to increase the NASA budget. For Apollo, we had the Soviet Union. Supporters of NASA funding now keep remarking that they fear China first getting humans to Mars
My feelings about outer space travel have drastically changed since the days of the Apollo Project.
- I happened to be in Florida when I saw Apollo 11 on the pad at Cape Canaveral.
- I wasn't there when the astronauts actually went to the Moon, but was visiting the Florida Solar Energy Center when they had their operations only around 10 miles from the space center. As far away as we were, the ground shook, quite a bit, when a rocket was launched.
- Getting to the Moon in 1969 before the Soviet Union was crucial to world politics, for it helped bankrupt our enemy to end the Cold War.
- Like most Americans, I was enamored of space travel for most of my life.
- Project Cyclops.
- This began to change when I spent a summer at the NASA Ames Research Center on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
- On 13December2023 I posted on WHY WE'LL NEVER LIVE IN SPACE.
- I had earlier written GOD, EVOLUTION AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, where it became obvious that evolution would continue, and someday, AI would be the key to outer space travel:
In other words, we should imagine future intelligence billions of years into the future not in human bodies, but some form of silicon or other molecules or the ether. Humanity's greatest achievement could well be to create our successors. Is this what God intended? Or maybe there is no God. Or could the ultimate AI be God?
- Why waste money sending humans to the Moon today?
- We've already done this.
- Mind you, the USA is the only country to ever do so. So it might be worthwhile for China, say, to become #2.
- But Mars? Certainly in time....but today?
- For one, it would cost too much. That first Mars mission itself could cost a trillion dollars. Even Elon Musk has speculated that building a Mars city might cost as much as $3 trillion. For what?
- Musk has a point in that we might need to find another place to live someday.
- Yes we are currently paralyzed by the thought of a nuclear winter and irreversible cataclysmic climate heating. The first, a worry, and maybe Musk might be right. The second, we will someday come around to do something about this, and, in fact, it would be far, far more sensible to spend that trillion or more on this problem rather than going to Mars for a very few.
- Among the more improbable are asteroid impact, super volcano eruption, anti-matter annihilation, gamma ray burst (right), invading black hole and so forth. But the potential is very, very low. Watch this video.
- Forget about artificial intelligence conquering Homo sapiens. This will no doubt occur, but AI will find us on Mars and kill us anyway.
- What does make sense, though, is to increase research funds to intensify the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Said Frank Drake:
I fully expect alien civilization to bequeath to us vast libraries of useful information, to do with as we wish. This Encyclopedia Galactica will create the potential for improvements in our lives that we cannot predict. During the Renaissance, rediscovered ancient texts and new knowledge flooded medieval Europe with the light of thought, wonder, creativity, experimentation, and exploration of the natural world. Another, even more stirring Renaissance will be fueled by the wealth of alien scientific, technical and sociological information that awaits us.
- Here is a 1 hour 43 minute video of The Unbelievable True Story of the Apollo 13 Rescue.
- I then thought, perhaps I should find the movie, Apollo 13, with Tom Hanks.
- It was on Netflix.
- Rotten Tomatoes scores of 96/87.
- Directed by Ron Howard and written by Jim Lowell, the character played by Hanks. Also starred Bill Paxton, Kevin Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris.
Then there was that Space Shutter Challenger cataclysm.- On January 28, 1986, the Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into flight, killing all seven crew members.
- This was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft while in flight.
- The mission was to deploy a commercial communications satellite and study Halley's Comet.
On board was a schoolteacher, Christa McAullife, which drew media attention. Many schools were watching when the flight lifted at 11:39AM.- The cause was weakening of an o-ring caused by a record low temperature for a space launch. Dropped to 18F during the night.
- This disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus of the program.
While the Apollo Project only returned the space capsule, the Space Shuttle left and landed.- So I watched the Netflix 2020 documentary, Challenger: The Final Flight. Four episodes. Rotten Tomatoes 85/91.
I then thought, what about the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia?- No film.
- But there is a 2024 series, The Final Flight in three episodes by CNN. No Rotten Tomatoes rating. On Fandango, Max and Prime.
- Here is a 29-minute CNN video on this documentary.
Considering all the possible dangers, it is amazing that there have only been four serious accidents and disasters in spaceflight history.
- Soyuz 1 Parachute Failure, 1967: Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when the spacecraft parachute failed to open.
- Apollo 13, 1970.
- Space Shuttle Challenger, 1986.
- Space Shuttle Columbia, 2003.
-
Comments
Post a Comment