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Thursday, August 27, 2009

In Support of Space

I recently stumbled upon an IEEE Spectum magazine, (the issue from 6-09). I was surprised to find therein a number of pertinant concepts that I wanted to jot down. I will include the quote followed by my ideas on the concept.

"and a misguided belief that we must solve all our terrestrial problems before doing anything ambitious in space"
- I have friends that think like this, you know who you are. We will always have problems down here. That did not stop people from inventing the wheel.
"one thing that could redeem the moon as a steppingstone... Is if you could produce propellant on the moon to use in the rockets that went to mars"
- what part of rockets are a bad idea did you not understand? Neuks, do you speak!

"from their inception, US and Soviet apace agencies recognized the value in connecting with the public directly"
- an excellent idea. So let's stream all NASA video ops from space and inside the control rooms as well. I have an extra monitor. Work it out with stream cast or somesuch.

"in 2008 NASA authorization act ... Stipulates that the agency 'develope a technology plan to enable disemination of information to the public to allow the public to experience missions to the moon... By leveraging advanced exploration technologies"
- well said, so that stream cast network is up right?

Top answered to the survey of what would get you interested in and excites by Nasa: ... "having the ability to view what robots and astronauts are seeing in real time..."
- steamcast, do you speak it?!

"On short excursions, austronauts can loose up to 20% of their muscle mass; during multimonth missions, the figure can reach 50%."
- dammit, that is a large problem. Maybe it is time to start doing brain in the jar missions?

"chemical rockets are only marginally capable of getting people to Mara and back"
- neuclear propulsion, how I miss thee, by the time we realizes your potential, it had already been legislated away.

"researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.. Built a magnetic shield in the lab that was able to block a beam of heavy ions and protons"
- why are we still talking about radiation problems? How long will it take for NASA to prove thus tech? Oh that's right, thus has been researched in reactor cores for tens of years.

"even the space shuttle isn't really reusable, in that it costs more per flight than it would to buy a new expendable launch vehical of greater cargo capacity"
- thanks for the hints elon. For the rest of you, rockets need to travel slower when leaving earth when that have people on board. Payload seperate from people is the way to go from a cash standpoint.


"the measurements also came from an additional array of 96 closely packed 3-micrometer microelectrodes that actually penetrated the skull"
- I have the sneaking suspicion that all branes really need to communicate from one brain to the other is a physical connection linking the. maybe this technology will be the start of that.

"[young people] go into engineering because they've had their imaginations fired by a grand, awe-inspiring challenge. A challenge like going to mars for example"
- I could not agree more. NASA's past triumphs inspired two generations of engineers that helped grow this country into the technical powerhouse it is today. awe-inspiring missions like actually trying to work a global space program can do this again. Or just capture an asteroid and put it in orbit. I think that would suffice as well.