Space colonization

[Sigmetnow]

Findings like this will accelerate development of artificial gravity for prolonged space flight (by spinning the ships).

An Alarming Discovery in an Astronaut’s Bloodstream
A study has turned up a newly found side effect of human spaceflight: low bloodflow in the jugular vein resulting in the blood clotting there.

Seeing stagnant blood flow in this kind of vein is rare, she says; the condition usually occurs in the legs, such as when people sit still for hours on a plane. The finding was concerning. Stagnant blood, whether it’s in the neck or in the legs, can clot. Blood clots can dissolve on their own or with the help of anticoagulants, but the blockages can also cause serious problems, such as lung damage.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/11/astronaut-blood-clot/602380/

[Sigmetnow]

We’re going to move to Mars and it will change life on Earth forever

The technology developed to achieve the monumental feat of landing and settling on Mars will also be used to improve life back on our own planet – and there’s a precedent for this because NASA’s Apollo missions led to the creation of several major technologies which are still in general use today.
…
…‘One of the most exciting things about working on this project was realising how much of the technology developed for a mission to Mars will have very relevant Earth applications.
‘The Martian habitats will have to generate zero waste and use low energy, high yield farming systems, for instance.
‘This feels very pressing given our own situation on Earth.’
…

We’re a long way off building a Martian habitat, but Nasa has already launched a bid to work out how to construct basic buildings on the Red Planet. It recently named the winner of a competition called the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, which asked companies to devise a robotic system capable of building structures without human intervention.  The $500,000 top prize went to New York-based AI SpaceFactory, which devised a way of using the Martian ‘regolith’ to print structures whilst in residency at The Autodesk Technology Center in Boston. Regolith is the material covering a planet and, on Mars, contains the volcanic rock basalt.

AI SpaceFactory combined basalt with a biopolymer called PLA that’s made from a plant extract found in corn or sugar cane. This allowed them to produce a material that is stronger than concrete and does not require vast quantities of water – a substance in short supply on Mars.

It’s already demonstrated the technique of printing out structures using Martian regolith during the Nasa competition and is working on its first buildings on Earth – with a small structure in upstate New York expected to be be opened to visitors by March next year.

Best of all, its innovative basalt fibre material is recyclable, meaning old buildings can be pulled down and the materials used again.
…
He’s also excited about the first Earth development built using the technique, which will be called Tera. ‘It’s the literal transformation of space technology for Earth applications,’ Malott added. ‘We were printing in the woods recently and it was so quiet you could hear the crickets. ...

https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/25/going-move-mars-will-change-life-earth-forever-10913234/

[Sigmetnow]

SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare will test the tools needed to build space stations in orbit

“As a member of the Outpost program team, Maxar will develop a new articulating robotic arm with a friction milling end-effector for this mission. This friction milling will use high rotations per minute melting our metal material in such a way that a cut is made, yet we anticipate avoiding generating a single piece of orbital debris.

The mission is targeting a Q4 2020 dedicated rideshare mission, will fly on an ESPA ring, and will activate after the deployment of all other secondary payloads is complete. As our mission commences, we will have 30 minutes to one hour to complete the cutting of three metal pieces that are representative of various vehicle upper stages, including the Centaur 3. Nanoracks plans to downlink photos and videos of the friction milling and cutting.”

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon-9-rideshare-space-stations-test/


Nanoracks Books CubeSat Rideshare and Habitat Building Demonstration in Single SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch

Recently, Nanoracks announced the Company’s first in-space Outpost demonstration mission in a letter from CEO Jeffrey Manber. Nanoracks, in collaboration with Maxar, will be building and operating a self-contained hosted payload platform that will demonstrate the robotic cutting of second stage representative tank material on-orbit. This test will be the first of its kind to demonstrate the future ability to convert spent upper stages in orbit into commercial habitats – a long-term goal of Nanoracks. ...

http://nanoracks.com/rideshare-habitat-building-demonstration/


Nanoracks Announces In-Space Outpost Demonstration
http://nanoracks.com/in-space-outpost-demonstration/

[Sigmetnow]

Successful Falcon 9 launch and Cargo Dragon deployed to orbit just a few minutes ago!  Expected to reach the Space Station just after 5am Eastern US Time Sunday morning (11am UTC).

SpaceX cargo mission combines mighty mice, fires and beer research – Spaceflight Now
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/12/03/spacex-cargo-mission-combines-mighty-mice-fires-and-beer/

SpaceX CRS-19 Research Overview: Mighty Mice in Space
On SpaceX CRS-19, the Jackson Laboratory is sending to station female mice, including a few that lack the gene for producing myostatin, a growth factor that normally acts to limit muscle growth in both mice and humans. Microgravity induces rapid muscle and bone loss, providing accelerated models of disease for research aimed at improving therapeutics for patients on Earth.

[Sigmetnow]

Scientists Are Contemplating a 1,000-Year Space Mission to Save Humanity
Relocating the human race to a more hospitable planet would mean that multiple generations would be born in-transit

Even by generous estimates, traveling one light year in a vessel large enough to transport humans will take centuries; reaching a planet in the range of Proxima b would take a thousand years or more.

This means that no one cohort of crew members would be able to survive the journey from start to finish, so those on the craft for the launch would have to pass on the torch to the next generation, and the next, and the next, and the next.

While it might sound like science fiction, a small network of researchers is tackling the problem of multi-generation space travel in a serious way. “There’s no principal obstacle from a physics perspective,” Andreas Hein, executive director of the nonprofit Initiative for Interstellar Studies — an education and research institute focused on expediting travel to other stars — tells me in a call from Paris. “We know that people can live in isolated areas, like islands, for hundreds or thousands of years; we know that in principle people can live in an artificial ecosystem like Biosphere2. It’s a question of scaling things up. There are a lot of challenges, but no fundamental principle of physics is violated.”

As one might expect from such an undertaking, the difficulties are many and broad, spanning not just physics but biology, sociology, engineering, and more. They include conundrums like artificial gravity, hibernation, life support systems, propulsion, navigation, and many problems that are nowhere near to being solved. But even if we never make it to Proxima b, in the process of exploring the question of how to escape Earth, some of the scientists involved in the work may stumble upon solutions for surviving on our planet, as resources like energy and water become increasingly scarce. ...

https://onezero.medium.com/scientists-are-contemplating-a-1-000-year-space-mission-to-save-humanity-70882a0d6e47

[TerryM]

The author apparently believes that Biosphere 2 experiments proved that "humans can live in artificial ecosystems". While cockroaches and "crazy" ants multiplied, vertebrates died off along with the pollinating insects.
Biosphere 2 certainly proved Barnum's observation correct when Ed Bass spent $150,000,000 on the $250,000,000 project that he eventually placed under Steve Bannon's management - yea that Steve Bannon!

Even injecting oxygen and providing food from outside for the hungry 8 "biospherians" couldn't rescue the project.
If you drive to Tucson it's worth at least drive by. I think UA owns the property now, but it was in a sad state of disrepair the last time I dropped by.


The Biosphere 2 story has been known for decades. I'd be leary of anyone claiming that it was a success.
Terry

[kassy]

Plus there is the non trivial task to figure out a target that is hospitable too life. We can more or less work out it the planet is in a goldilocks zone and we can see maybe some organic compounds but that still leaves a lot of unknowns.

Just around the corner on Mars digging holes is harder then we thought because of the soil properties...

 

[TerryM]

I once thought we'd "Expand Humanity to the Stars"


That was before I learned about AGW, and how little time we have left.


To have any chance at all the world needs to concentrate her resources on solving the problems we've created here on earth.
The time for childish fantasies is over, ask Greta. She travels by sailboat, not Gulfstream!
Terry

[Sigmetnow]

A refrigerator could also include a fully unabridged guide to rebuilding all of civilization.

This 3D-printed Stanford bunny also holds the data for its own reproduction
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/scientists-used-dna-to-store-blueprint-data-for-3d-printed-stanford-bunny/

[Sigmetnow]

Thinking ‘outside the box’ — outside the planet — results in benefits here at home.

AI SpaceFactory (@AISpaceFactory) 1/8/20, 6:34 AM
While we were designing for sustainable life on Mars, we realized our materials and technology had the potential to be leaps and bounds more sustainable than traditional construction (especially concrete and steel). It could transform the way we build on Earth.

https://twitter.com/aispacefactory/status/1214872891860365312
Image below.

[Tom_Mazanec]

https://365tomorrows.com/2020/01/12/the-obvious-choice/

The Obvious Choice
by submission | Jan 12, 2020 | Story | 0 comments

Author: Katlina Sommerberg

Everything started with a star burping out an interesting tidbit. Buried amongst the electromagnetic radiation hiccups the same messages on repeat, looping endlessly. One species tamed this red giant, a fiend who swallowed half its planets, into the galaxy’s most creative loudspeaker.

Five years after its discovery, the collective work from thousands of scientists twisted the translation out of the ultraviolet spectrum. The other light bands remain, but this one was trivial.

“This system holds the ancient ruins of our pre-space civilization, and this star all our philosophical lessons. Be warned, once you cut the tether to your planet, your species will never be the same. Ours cannot go back.”

Plastered on every newspaper, the entire world inhaled the message and choked on its implications. Articles cranked out of every news source, from the most prestigious journals to the smallest internet bloggers, and millions of children revoked their career choice of ‘astronaut.’ Questions peppered government officials, from city council members to United Nations janitors.

Everyone wanted to know, but few knew what they wanted to know.

Space programs revived under new waves of funding, expanding to personnel counts higher than in their heyday before Climate Change. Piece by piece, the rest of the message unraveled in secret rooms. The masses lost interest in the century’s strangest puzzle, but those invested in the message never lost their drive.

When Earth lost the last of her bees, the message was unraveled at last. The world raced to hear the news, eyes running quickly across the words detailing the scientists’ arduous process. All eyes stared fixed on their screens and papers when they reached the aliens’ philosophy.

“We regret ruining our world, only to chase the dream of a paradise across the stars.”

[Sigmetnow]

Elon Musk drops details for SpaceX Mars mega-colony
SpaceX CEO wants to put a million people on the Red Planet by 2050.

Musk doesn't just want to launch a few intrepid souls to Mars, he wants to send a whole new nation. He tossed out a goal of building 100 Starships per year to send about 100,000 people from Earth to Mars every time the planets' orbits line up favorably.

Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 17, 2020

A Twitter user ran the figures and checked if Musk planned to land a million humans on Mars by 2050. "Yes," Musk replied. The SpaceX CEO has suggested this sort of Mars population number before. This new round of tweets give us some more insight into how it could be done, though "ambitious" doesn't do that timeline justice. Miraculous might be a more fitting description.

The distance between Earth and Mars gets reasonably close roughly every 26 months. Musk's vision involves loading 1,000 Starships into orbit and then sending them off over the course of a month around prime time for a minimal commute. Travelers would still be looking at spending months on board before reaching the Red Planet.

Loading the Mars fleet into Earth orbit, then 1000 ships depart over ~30 days every 26 months. Battlestar Galactica …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 17, 2020

Expanse fans, rejoice. Musk said there will be plenty of jobs on Mars. When asked how people would be selected for the Red Planet move, Musk tweeted, "Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don't have money." ...

In the meantime, Musk is stockpiling money for a reason. "Helping to pay for this is why I'm accumulating assets on Earth," he tweeted. His anticipated Tesla pay package should give him a nice boost.

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-drops-details-for-spacexs-million-person-mars-mega-colony/

[Bruce Steele]

“We regret ruining our world, only to chase the dream of a paradise across the stars.”

[Sigmetnow]

“We regret ruining our world, only to chase the dream of a paradise across the stars.”

What if we don’t ruin our world?  What if we figure it out and turn ourselves around... only for the earth to be obliterated by an asteroid a few decades or millenia later?  A cataclysm will occur eventually; it makes sense to have a resource saved elsewhere for backup.

——-
Edit: related Reddit thread:
@elonmusk: Needs to be such that anyone can go [to Mars] if they want, with loans available for those who don’t have money - spacex
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/eq2u6y/elonmusk_needs_to_be_such_that_anyone_can_go_to/

One reason cited for going to Mars:  to reduce one’s footprint on earth.

[kassy]

Local menu: several interesting flavors of what we would call sand here?

[ArcticMelt2]

Iran also wanted be space civilization

[philopek]

Iran also wanted be space civilization

Of course they can't have it that once they rule the exhausted and overpopulated planet earth, that the infidels conquer and rule the universe [sarc]

[Sigmetnow]

Iran fails in satellite launch attempt
February 10, 2020

A Simorgh rocket lifted off Sunday from Iran but could not place its satellite payload into orbit.

Iranian government officials admitted Sunday that an attempt to place a small Earth-imaging satellite into orbit was unsuccessful, the fourth consecutive launch failure for the country’s space program. ...

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/02/10/iran-fails-in-satellite-launch-attempt/

Edit:
Iran's failed Zafar launch: where did it go?
https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2020/02/irans-failed-zafar-launch-where-did-it.html