The equivalent of a bad motel on a trashy beach – Unless you learn how to time travel, if you take your next vacation in a spacecraft, your destination may be a rather barren-looking space rock, a place where you’re not likely to make any exciting new friends.
read more
But that’s not why we’re not returning to the moon – Obama cancelled the moon landing program because it’s too expensive, so even if there is life and water on the moon, we won’t be flying up there to do some moon mining any time soon. Another problem is that the moon contains the coldest place in the solar system! If we did go, our astronauts would have to stay away from the northern shadowed craters up there.
read more
Take a vacation on Mars in the future? Forget it: scientists tell us there is too much radiation, even if your spacecraft is shielded. Alas, we need to learn much more before we’re ready to travel into space.
NASA has been discussing going to one of the moons of Mars and going to the planet itself from there. In New Scientist, David Shiga quotes planetary scientist Pascal Lee as saying, “I, for one, would go to Phobos or Deimos in a heartbeat, even without any hope of landing on Mars.”
read more
Sending craft out from the earth to explore space is an expensive proposition, and one of the most expensive parts of it is the rocket fuel needed to escape gravity. If we could set up a space station on the moon or on another planet (such as Mars) it would be much easier to escape gravity. It would be especially cost effective if we could manufacture the FUEL needed on that planet as well (and we’re not talking about watermelon hooch, either)!
Scientists are working her on earth to develop just such a fuel and they think they’ve come up with one. It has the “consistency of toothpaste” and is less damaging to the environment. Made of aluminium powder and ordinary ice, it’s known as Al-ice, or ALICE.
read more