You are browsing the archive for Humans in Space.
14 July 2009
Book Review: Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Red Mars” is, in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, “The best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written… It should be required reading for the colonists of the next century.” I read it back in 2002 during the summer between high-school and college, and then promptly went back to the library to check out “Green Mars” and “Blue Mars”, the two other …
13 July 2009
Review: Moon
Last night I went to see “Moon“, starring Sam Rockwell. It was excellent, both as a fascinating sci-fi story and for its relatively accurate science. The premise is that, in the near future, the moon is being mined for Helium-3 to fuel fusion power plants back on Earth. Sam Bell (played by Rockwell) is an astronaut just finishing up a 3-year stint on an isolated mining base on the far …
6 July 2009
Student Questions about Mars Exploration
A few months ago, a class of 6th graders at JFK Middle School in Hudson, MA contacted the astronomy department at Cornell. They were doing an egg-drop project, modeled after the Mars rovers, and their teacher had them each write questions to Steve Squyres about the rover mission. Steve was out of town (and is always extremely busy), but he suggested that many of the questions could be answered by …
1 July 2009
Volcanic Explosion Seen From Space
This is completely awesome: (Courtesy of Ian O’Neil and Richard Drumm)
28 June 2009
Buzz Says: Aim for Mars
Buzz Aldrin, of walking-on-the-freakin’-moon fame recently wrote an editorial for CNN about the future of NASA. I’ll let you follow this link to the full article, but here are a couple of excerpts: More than just exploring a hostile new world, Apollo 11 was about bold vision and great risk, about the obstacles a great nation could overcome with dedication, courage and teamwork. It was about choosing a goal that …
8 June 2009
Carnival of Space #106
Hello folks, apologies for the lack of posts lately. I have been keeping busy trying to write up a draft of a paper on the Gale crater landing site for MSL, which is taking a very long time and becoming very large. I don’t anticipate having lots of time to post here this month. Even as I work on the draft, I will be traveling out to Los Alamos National …
1 June 2009
How to get Mars funding
On a related note, my fellowship, which involves vaporizing rocks with a high-powered laser, was renewed last month. (Click for the full comic)
22 May 2009
What Ever Happened to Space Colonies?
There’s a very interesting article up at The Space Review, taking a look at the optimistic view of the future of space exploration that people had in the 70s and discussing why it never caught on. Where are the space colonies depicted in movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey? Go read the article to find out. Here’s a sample: Asimov’s article, “The Next Frontier?” and illustrated by Pierre Mion, was …
21 May 2009
Hubble Servicing Mission Pictures
Last weekend, NASA astronauts rendezvoused with the Hubble space telescope and repaired and upgraded the observatory in a series of five extremely challenging spacewalks. Their mission is now accomplished, Hubble has been set free to continue orbiting and doing cutting edge science, and the shuttle will be landing tomorrow morning. On Monday, the Big Picture had an awesome series of photos of the launch and the mission. And if that’s …
18 May 2009
Weird Rover Prototypes
Last week when the news about Spirit being stuck in the sand came out, my friend Lisa Grossman, a science writing intern at Wired, contacted me to see if I had any ideas for a fresh angle on the story rather than just repeating the press release. I suggested that she check out some of the awesome rover prototypes that JPL is working on and find out how future rovers …
