This Week’s Stories Discussed
The following stories are discussed by our readers on Facebook. These are posted as anonymous names. Robert Brand of Echoes of Apollo is our resident space science expert. If you have questions, please ask him.
China’s ambitions to conquer space will take a big leap forward this year, as the country embarks on the most extensive space development programme in the world in decades. The aim is to fire China towards its two long-held space dreams – to land a man on the moon and to set up a space station by 2020.
Robert Brand: Great for the Chinese and the world to have more space explorations. It may also serve to get the US public motivated to spend more on space rather than ending up in second place!
Kevin: What do you think about private companies such as Virgin Galactic opening space exploration to the public, not to mention, advancing space exploration?
Robert Brand: Virgin Galactic? I think that they have simply bought other peoples’ technology and sold tickets to the public. No science of any consequence so far. Yes, we need space taxis to the ISS and several launch companies may evolve to do that eventually. The ones that will be used for science will most likely be the ones capable of earth orbit. The lower the cost the better as we can do more science with the money. One of the new rocket systems only uses about 12 people to do the launch. Do you know how many thousands it takes to launch a shuttle? Did I say thousands? Try tens of thousands with the recovery, refurbishment, payload loading, tile testing, fueling, etc, etc.
Yes, the commercialisation of space is here right now and we will see both massive change and evolution over the next 10 years with some newly created dinosaurs falling beside the way. Virgin Galactic may do well. It will be all for the good of the industry, but I still think that we are in test phase with all the launch systems and passengers will be part of that test and that risk until we prove the systems.
Dan: It will be interesting to see if they put a program together that has Quality Assurance and crew safety first ahead of scheduling.
Robert Brand: I think that they understand the issues of failed missions – they always cost more in the long run – safety is always expensive, but produces better results money-wise.
Ricardo: The more, the merrier….it’ll give our good ol’ U.S. of A. a pretext to finally go back to the Moon ourselves. We should never have retreated from that hard-won frontier….now we have to start from scratch.
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Tokyo (UPI) Jan 2, 2009 – A deep lava tube discovered on the moon could shield human colonists from harsh temperatures and meteorites, Japanese scientists said.
Sue: But what happens when the lava comes through the tunnels?
Robert Brand: These are ancient formations. There are no active volcanoes on the moon. The moon has long ago cooled to stop volcanic activity. The ability to use the lava tubes as protection from solar radiation and the hot and cold of the sun and space is very enticing. It is likely to be a long way from the water that we have found and thus a big trade-off between water and protection. I have explored many lava tubes here on earth and they are usually very tubular (round) and thus very stable and strong. The age and stability of these tubes promises protection from meteor strike as well – The smaller ones of course.
Note that this question was posted as a humorous statement as the writer knew the answer, but it did allow us to answer the obvious question about active volcanoes on the moon.
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Happy Birthday Sir Isaac Newton. Your calculations helped put men on the moon. Dec 25th
Bobby: Riemann and Einstein told us that space and time are not linear…..so we keep learning an will extend our knowledge and hopefully go further. I hope!
Reina: Sr.Isaac Newton and his theory of gravity, the three laws of motion, described in Principia Mathematica in 1687, went against traditional ideas and will remain a true pioneer indeed!
Robert Brand: Bobby, you are so right. That is science – adjusting and learning. I noted in a recent documentary about gravity, Sir Isaac was a little bit out in his equations and the distance he calculated for the moon was a bit out – He was not aware of the work by a chap named Einstein. It seems the moon is moving or something!! Sir Isaac did not know that it would put his equations into error. I guess he couldn’t wait for Einstein to be born!
Bobby: And so will Riemann, who taught us that parallel lines intersect in real time-space…I love pioneers and Newton, Riemann and Einstein were true pioneers! Gauss was too…
Robert Brand: Just to be clear, Sir Isaac’s birthday is actually Dec 25th. This is a rather belated celebration.
Ricardo: To think he could have died of the plague and gravitation wouldn’t have been formulated at that time—and the exploration of space would’ve had to wait too….
Robert Brand: Sometimes it makes little difference. If Darwin had not published, others were very ready to do so on the same theme. There was a rush of understanding. If Sir Isaac had not, it is likely that it would not have been long before others came along. Well they didn’t! So again, happy belated birthday!
Ricardo: Agreed–but then the set of circumstances fueling the space race would quite likely not have permitted a moon landing in the late 20th century. One curious detail, now you’ve mentioned a replacement for Darwin: Back in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, a man who’d never heard of Einstein developed the theory of relativity, complete with formula, on his own. When he was told somebody had got there first, he hanged himself….
Robert Brand: Ouch – yes, interesting. It sometimes means that things develop faster too, but rarely. It depends on the politics and the reaction to the discovery. The second place person often stops developing and that can means further discoveries were not made.
————————–
January 4, 2010: NASA‘s Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets.
Silvia: Great! But how can we know the temperature of the exoplanet only from the characteristics of the star it orbits and the planet’s orbital period??? This is amazing.
Robert Brand: If we know the temperature of the sun, we can work out its size. If we know the timing of the orbit we can know the distance. Since the mass of the planet does not control the distance from the sun (only the velocity and the size of the sun does this), we can calculate distance. From these simple bits of information we can know the temperature assuming the planet has an atmosphere or no atmosphere There are many other issues regarding the ability to support life. We know that our moon and our tilt makes the temperature more stable across a larger part of the our Earth’s surface. Knowing the approximate temperature helps, but knowing other factors would help even more.
Without our moon and the tilt we would have very cold poles and a very hot equator and the bands in between would be tight. Not conducive to life except in a couple of narrow bands.
————————–
Mars rover Spirit will mark six years of unprecedented science exploration and inspiration for the American public on Sunday.
Bob: Spirit will live on, although stuck in a hole it has many projects it may still accomplish.
Robert Brand: Yes, but only if it can survive the winter. There is a tipping point where the heaters may fail and the the whole system shuts down, never to recover. It is essential that if it is stuck, they must get the best tilt on the solar panels to improve the amount of sunlight getting turned into electricity.
Bob: It has accomplished so much, they merely need to dig a little deeper.
Robert Brand: Yes, I understand, but until it happens, I remain concerned. There is not a good likelihood that they will get the tilt they need and the solar panels are covered in dust. I cannot say strongly enough that angle to the sun is important. The panels must be perpendicular to the sun average angle Too shallow an angle and the heaters will fail and the battery will be useless. Yes, the batteries are kept warm by their own current. Without that current, they become useless. This was one of the reasons that they has such a short predicted lifetime of 90 days. Getting past the winter was not part of the initial criteria. If Spirit manages to get a wind to clean off the dust, it may still survive another year.
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Russia is considering whether to launch a spacecraft capable of moving a huge asteroid called Apophis in a bid to protect Earth from the remote chance of an impact.
Mark: That makes a lot of sense.
Tom: Russia has a habit of proposing grand space missions and then never being able to fund them. I can’t help but wonder if this a case of something getting lost in translation. The Russians might just be considering a mission to study Apophis, a mission well worth undertaking, rather than actually attempting to change the orbit of Apophis.
Mark: Good theory.I can’t think of any other real reason to launch such an expensive project.Why change the orbit of something that poses no real threat?It just doesn’t make sense at all. …….unless they want to see if they actually can change it’s orbit and to what degree.
Tom: Why would the Russians change the orbit of something that poses no real threat? Possibly to have Apophis captured by Earth and then mine it. The new space station that the Russians are planning is supposed to be more focused on construction in space and it should be complete by the time Apophis comes near Earth.
I doubt that is the Russian plan. It is rather ambitious and they would first have to find out if Apophis has anything worth mining. Someone with more knowledge about Apophis and orbital mechanics might be able to comment on how feasible it would be to get Apophis captured by the Earth.
Tom: Let’s not forget that ESA is (was?) planning the Don Quijote mission to Apophis. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/NEO/SEMZRZNVGJE_0.html
The Russians might just be planning a similar mission or maybe they want to join with ESA on the mission. It will be interesting to watch this develop.
Readers Discuss This Week’s News
This Week’s Stories Discussed
The following stories are discussed by our readers on Facebook. These are posted as anonymous names. Robert Brand of Echoes of Apollo is our resident space science expert. If you have questions, please ask him.
China’s ambitions to conquer space will take a big leap forward this year, as the country embarks on the most extensive space development programme in the world in decades. The aim is to fire China towards its two long-held space dreams – to land a man on the moon and to set up a space station by 2020.
Robert Brand: Great for the Chinese and the world to have more space explorations. It may also serve to get the US public motivated to spend more on space rather than ending up in second place!
Kevin: What do you think about private companies such as Virgin Galactic opening space exploration to the public, not to mention, advancing space exploration?
Robert Brand: Virgin Galactic? I think that they have simply bought other peoples’ technology and sold tickets to the public. No science of any consequence so far. Yes, we need space taxis to the ISS and several launch companies may evolve to do that eventually. The ones that will be used for science will most likely be the ones capable of earth orbit. The lower the cost the better as we can do more science with the money. One of the new rocket systems only uses about 12 people to do the launch. Do you know how many thousands it takes to launch a shuttle? Did I say thousands? Try tens of thousands with the recovery, refurbishment, payload loading, tile testing, fueling, etc, etc.
Yes, the commercialisation of space is here right now and we will see both massive change and evolution over the next 10 years with some newly created dinosaurs falling beside the way. Virgin Galactic may do well. It will be all for the good of the industry, but I still think that we are in test phase with all the launch systems and passengers will be part of that test and that risk until we prove the systems.
Dan: It will be interesting to see if they put a program together that has Quality Assurance and crew safety first ahead of scheduling.
Robert Brand: I think that they understand the issues of failed missions – they always cost more in the long run – safety is always expensive, but produces better results money-wise.
Ricardo: The more, the merrier….it’ll give our good ol’ U.S. of A. a pretext to finally go back to the Moon ourselves. We should never have retreated from that hard-won frontier….now we have to start from scratch.
————————————————-
Tokyo (UPI) Jan 2, 2009 – A deep lava tube discovered on the moon could shield human colonists from harsh temperatures and meteorites, Japanese scientists said.
Sue: But what happens when the lava comes through the tunnels?
Robert Brand: These are ancient formations. There are no active volcanoes on the moon. The moon has long ago cooled to stop volcanic activity. The ability to use the lava tubes as protection from solar radiation and the hot and cold of the sun and space is very enticing. It is likely to be a long way from the water that we have found and thus a big trade-off between water and protection. I have explored many lava tubes here on earth and they are usually very tubular (round) and thus very stable and strong. The age and stability of these tubes promises protection from meteor strike as well – The smaller ones of course.
Note that this question was posted as a humorous statement as the writer knew the answer, but it did allow us to answer the obvious question about active volcanoes on the moon.
————————————————-
Happy Birthday Sir Isaac Newton. Your calculations helped put men on the moon. Dec 25th
Bobby: Riemann and Einstein told us that space and time are not linear…..so we keep learning an will extend our knowledge and hopefully go further. I hope!
Reina: Sr.Isaac Newton and his theory of gravity, the three laws of motion, described in Principia Mathematica in 1687, went against traditional ideas and will remain a true pioneer indeed!
Robert Brand: Bobby, you are so right. That is science – adjusting and learning. I noted in a recent documentary about gravity, Sir Isaac was a little bit out in his equations and the distance he calculated for the moon was a bit out – He was not aware of the work by a chap named Einstein. It seems the moon is moving or something!! Sir Isaac did not know that it would put his equations into error. I guess he couldn’t wait for Einstein to be born!
Bobby: And so will Riemann, who taught us that parallel lines intersect in real time-space…I love pioneers and Newton, Riemann and Einstein were true pioneers! Gauss was too…
Robert Brand: Just to be clear, Sir Isaac’s birthday is actually Dec 25th. This is a rather belated celebration.
Ricardo: To think he could have died of the plague and gravitation wouldn’t have been formulated at that time—and the exploration of space would’ve had to wait too….
Robert Brand: Sometimes it makes little difference. If Darwin had not published, others were very ready to do so on the same theme. There was a rush of understanding. If Sir Isaac had not, it is likely that it would not have been long before others came along. Well they didn’t! So again, happy belated birthday!
Ricardo: Agreed–but then the set of circumstances fueling the space race would quite likely not have permitted a moon landing in the late 20th century. One curious detail, now you’ve mentioned a replacement for Darwin: Back in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, a man who’d never heard of Einstein developed the theory of relativity, complete with formula, on his own. When he was told somebody had got there first, he hanged himself….
Robert Brand: Ouch – yes, interesting. It sometimes means that things develop faster too, but rarely. It depends on the politics and the reaction to the discovery. The second place person often stops developing and that can means further discoveries were not made.
————————–
January 4, 2010: NASA‘s Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets.
Silvia: Great! But how can we know the temperature of the exoplanet only from the characteristics of the star it orbits and the planet’s orbital period??? This is amazing.
Robert Brand: If we know the temperature of the sun, we can work out its size. If we know the timing of the orbit we can know the distance. Since the mass of the planet does not control the distance from the sun (only the velocity and the size of the sun does this), we can calculate distance. From these simple bits of information we can know the temperature assuming the planet has an atmosphere or no atmosphere There are many other issues regarding the ability to support life. We know that our moon and our tilt makes the temperature more stable across a larger part of the our Earth’s surface. Knowing the approximate temperature helps, but knowing other factors would help even more.
Without our moon and the tilt we would have very cold poles and a very hot equator and the bands in between would be tight. Not conducive to life except in a couple of narrow bands.
————————–
Mars rover Spirit will mark six years of unprecedented science exploration and inspiration for the American public on Sunday.
Bob: Spirit will live on, although stuck in a hole it has many projects it may still accomplish.
Robert Brand: Yes, but only if it can survive the winter. There is a tipping point where the heaters may fail and the the whole system shuts down, never to recover. It is essential that if it is stuck, they must get the best tilt on the solar panels to improve the amount of sunlight getting turned into electricity.
Bob: It has accomplished so much, they merely need to dig a little deeper.
Robert Brand: Yes, I understand, but until it happens, I remain concerned. There is not a good likelihood that they will get the tilt they need and the solar panels are covered in dust. I cannot say strongly enough that angle to the sun is important. The panels must be perpendicular to the sun average angle Too shallow an angle and the heaters will fail and the battery will be useless. Yes, the batteries are kept warm by their own current. Without that current, they become useless. This was one of the reasons that they has such a short predicted lifetime of 90 days. Getting past the winter was not part of the initial criteria. If Spirit manages to get a wind to clean off the dust, it may still survive another year.
———————————
Russia is considering whether to launch a spacecraft capable of moving a huge asteroid called Apophis in a bid to protect Earth from the remote chance of an impact.
Mark: That makes a lot of sense.
Tom: Russia has a habit of proposing grand space missions and then never being able to fund them. I can’t help but wonder if this a case of something getting lost in translation. The Russians might just be considering a mission to study Apophis, a mission well worth undertaking, rather than actually attempting to change the orbit of Apophis.
Mark: Good theory.I can’t think of any other real reason to launch such an expensive project.Why change the orbit of something that poses no real threat?It just doesn’t make sense at all. …….unless they want to see if they actually can change it’s orbit and to what degree.
Tom: Why would the Russians change the orbit of something that poses no real threat? Possibly to have Apophis captured by Earth and then mine it. The new space station that the Russians are planning is supposed to be more focused on construction in space and it should be complete by the time Apophis comes near Earth.
I doubt that is the Russian plan. It is rather ambitious and they would first have to find out if Apophis has anything worth mining. Someone with more knowledge about Apophis and orbital mechanics might be able to comment on how feasible it would be to get Apophis captured by the Earth.
Tom: Let’s not forget that ESA is (was?) planning the Don Quijote mission to Apophis. http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/NEO/SEMZRZNVGJE_0.html
The Russians might just be planning a similar mission or maybe they want to join with ESA on the mission. It will be interesting to watch this develop.