BITCOIN: Cryptocurrency is for criminals, says inventor of worlds leading computer code – Express

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Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup invented the language C++ in 1985. Even now, 34 years on, it remains the one of the most commonly used codes woven into systems throughout the world.However, Stroustrup now says his one overwhelming regret over the last four decades is that his work went on to become the code upon which bitcoin is based. When you build a tool, you do not know how it is going to be used, he lamented.

Im very happy and proud of some of the things C++ is being used for and there are some other things I wish people wouldnt do.

Bitcoin mining is my favourite example it uses as much energy as Switzerland and mostly serves criminals.

The 68-year-old a managing director at Morgan Stanley in New York has spoken before about his dislike of cryptocurrency, but this is the first time hes expressed remorse over his code being used in the creation of BTC.

Speaking on the highly popular Lex Fridman podcast, the University of Cambridge graduate enthused over the great achievements made with computer science, but he turned his ire upon bitcoin when he discussed regrets, highlighting concern over environmental issues and criminality.

Almost half of all bitcoin transactions have, according to some studies, connections to criminal activities. It has also been suggested that almost a quarter of BTC users are also involved in illegal activity to the tune of $72 billion a year.

Bitcoin also attracts criticism for its negative environmental impact, using up a mind-boggling seven gigawatts of electricity a year and accounting for 0.21 percent of the worlds supplies.

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BITCOIN: Cryptocurrency is for criminals, says inventor of worlds leading computer code - Express

This week in Cryptocurrency – Born2Invest

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Crypto has had a big week, a number of big names in the finance space have weighed in on the viability of cryptocurrency and there have been a number of big regulatory shifts surrounding ICOs, while Europe is positioning itself to become the global cryptocurrency leader.

If youre in a rush the Born2Invest business news mobile app helps readers digest the crypto news summaries in small digestible chunks, helping them be up to date with the newest information in this field. Our team of experts puts the most important cryptocurrencies news at your fingertips.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said that President Xi Jinpings approval of blockchain would have a positive impact on the global cryptographic industry. According to Tom Lee of Fundstrat, Bitcoin will go through the same stages of development as technology companies from Silicon Valley and the Creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, believes that the shift from transaction fees, once block fees stop being issued, will create a number of significant security and verification problems for blockchains that utilize Proof-of-Work (PoW).

Joseph Lubin, founder of the Consensys startup, expressed his hope that the Chinese digital currency will interact with many blockchains, including the ethereum. While Mark Yusko, CEO of the Morgan Creek Foundation, believes that it is time to resume buying Bitcoins now. He stressed that investors should give up Amazon shares and increase capital investments in the first cryptocurrency.

John Macafee made a statement that cryptocurrency companies are not obliged to supervise everything that happens in the cryptographic industry. According to him, the fight against criminals should not fall within the remit of cryptocurrency companies.

The creator of the C++ programming language, Bjrn Straustrup, complained that his brainchild plays a key role in the functioning of Bitcoin. Speaking in Lex Freedmans podcast, Straustrup said that mining uses too much energy and that Bitcoin serves criminals. This opinion appears to be shared by the former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, it makes no sense for central banks to issue their own digital currency.

In contrast Bobby Li, co-founder of the Chinese cryptocurrency exchange BTCC believes Bitcoin will be able to grow in price up to $1 million, and the market capitalization of the first cryptocurrency will reach $8 trillion.

Almost half of the financial experts believe that Bitcoin will become the most efficient asset next year. This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted by the analytical company Chainalysis.

Willy Wu, a well-known analyst, has prepared a chart that clearly shows which assets have the largest volume today. According to his estimation, more than 99% of all cryptographic assets on CoinMarketCap are illiquid.

The Weiss rating agency has published a series of posts on Twitter, where it tried to explain why the Cardano network is better than EOS.

Binance plans to add 180 new fiat currencies to its platform. Binance and HTC intend to release a cryptocurrency smartphone with Binance Chain blockchain support. The Exodus 1 Binance Edition smartphone will allow access to the decentralized Binance DEX exchange through a trusted execution environment called Zion Vault. Also, the Binance page in the Chinese social network Weibo has been blocked due to violation of the law.

Bittrex decided to return the frozen cryptocurrency funds to customers in jurisdictions where its services were banned. Bithumb Global has announced the release of a native token for the Bithumb Chain blockchain exchange. Bitfinex plans to expand its product range with options on cryptocurrency and digital staple coin secured with gold.

Several ICO-projects, which raised together about $40 million in 2017, failed to fulfill their obligations under the agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies agreed to return the money to investors or provide greater transparency in exchange for lower fines, but failed to comply with these requirements within the specified time frame.

The French central bank is looking for a blockchain analyst and engineer to deal with digital currencies and the application of blockchain to banking services.

The European Union will become a leader in the crypto sphere if it will develop a unified approach to regulating relations in the industry, as it is stated in the study of the Association of Financial Markets of Europe. The authors of the report emphasize that European countries need to speed up the work on creating a single legal framework, as the U.S. and China also want to become leaders in this area.

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(Featured image byAndr Franois McKenzieviaUnsplash)

DISCLAIMER: This article was written by a third party contributor and does not reflect the opinion of Born2Invest, its management, staff or its associates. Please review our disclaimer for more information.

This article may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words believe, project, estimate, become, plan, will, and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks as well as uncertainties, including those discussed in the following cautionary statements and elsewhere in this article and on this site. Although the Company may believe that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, the actual results that the Company may achieve may differ materially from any forward-looking statements, which reflect the opinions of the management of the Company only as of the date hereof. Additionally, please make sure to read these important disclosures.

First published in coinspot, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

Although we made reasonable efforts to provide accurate translations, some parts may be incorrect. Born2Invest assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions or ambiguities in the translations provided on this website. Any person or entity relying on translated content does so at their own risk. Born2Invest is not responsible for losses caused by such reliance on the accuracy or reliability of translated information. If you wish to report an error or inaccuracy in the translation, we encourage you to contact us.

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This week in Cryptocurrency - Born2Invest

Op-ed | Living off the land: Lunar water is key to crewed space exploration – SpaceNews

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The moon has formed the isolated backdrop for a new era of space exploration. As you read this, there are teams of exploration advocates around the world striving to reach its surface. This goal may be accomplished as early as next year.

This new age is one that is being led not by spacefaring superpowers seeking to fly flags and footprints but instead by numerous private companies, each vying to demonstrate their capability to fly 385,000 kilometers through the vacuous darkness of space and safely soft-land on our celestial neighbor. The rise of such companies follows the renewed focus on the moon by space agencies around the world, spurred on the by the Global Exploration Roadmap, as we prepare once again for crewed deep space exploration. This resurgence of lunar exploration has reached fever pitch and soon these private companies will provide the capability to deploy scientific and commercial payloads to various locations on the moons surface for the first time in history.

The price tag to perform such a magnificent feat of engineering? About $1 million per kilogram. Think about that for a second; thats the mass of just 1 liter of water.

As the space industry continuously vies with the worlds biggest issues for its share of public support (and funding) it is imperative that we do everything we can to lower these costs and deliver milestones that truly benefit those of us left here on Earth. So, with such price tags on our most basic amenities, how could we ever possibly afford to permanently expand humanitys presence further into space?

The answer lies in going back to the roots of human existence; living off the land. The moons barren surface was once described by Buzz Aldrin as magnificent desolation and it appears to be exactly that at first glance. But lying within the unmoving surface layers is a treasure trove of resources adequate to nurture a settlement of future explorers.

Among the plentiful resources on the moon are various metals trapped as oxides in the surface material (regolith). These oxides can be used in the coproduction of oxygen and pure metals to provide astronauts with breathable air and sturdy 3D-printed structures in which to shelter from micrometeorite impacts and the constant stream of potentially lethal cosmic rays that emanate from supernova explosions far outside our solar system.

Looking much further ahead, rare Earth metals may also be extracted for use in our advanced electronic devices or even Helium-3 for fuel in our yet-to-be-built fusion reactors. But the most immediate, and to me the most exciting, avenue for resource utilization on the moon is lunar ice.

Water has long been theorized to exist on the lunar surface due to a unique quirk of the entwined orbital geometry between the Earth and the moon. Due to this very stable set up, which has existed for billions of years, the moons axis is tilted only 1.5 degrees relative to the suns incoming rays. This means that at the lunar poles there exist regions within deep craters that are utterly untouched by sunlight.

This, coupled with the fact that there is little-to-no atmosphere, means that there are extreme temperature differences between light and dark on the moon, upward of 150 degrees Celsius. These unlit regions within craters, referred to as permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs, are now known to host vast quantities of water ice that have been lying in perfect isolation for hundreds of millions of years. Although an exceedingly difficult number to quantify, it is commonly believed that the quantity of water in these PSRs exceeds 100 million tons.

Companies and agencies around the world are already investigating if this lunar water can be successfully and efficiently harvested. If so, it will unlock untold possibilities for our future in space.

The beauty of lunar water is that it may prove to be remarkably easy to harvest with robotic technologies. ESA already has plans to demonstrate this through a proposed mission called Heracles. By utilizing a new NASA-led space station around the moon, the Gateway, which is slated for construction in 2024, astronauts can tele-operate a rover and collect lunar samples for eventual return to Earth. Whats more, many of the transportation companies that intend to fly to the moon within the next few years seek to demonstrate roving capability once on the surface. This means that within the next decade there may be tens of companies with the ability to harvest water robotically in preparation for the return of humans to the surface.

A mission profile which relies heavily on precursor robotic utilization, although perhaps not as exciting as watching a human bounce gleefully across the dusty lunar surface in low gravity, will reduce risks for astronauts. If enough water can be harvested in advance by their robotic companions, astronauts can arrive at a rudimentary base with preliminary supplies, thereby reducing the amount of propellant used at every step in the mission.

With access to lunar ice, we can finally realize our vision of sustainable, affordable expansion beyond low Earth orbit. Of course, the most obvious examples of this are purifying lunar ice through a simple boil-off procedure into drinking water. Or one could use solar arrays to harness the suns energy to electrolyze the ice and form oxygen for astronauts to breathe; a practice which is already commonplace aboard the International Space Station. Water will allow us to begin cultivating fresh food, which will have huge benefits for astronauts physical and mental health during future missions.

The list goes on. Water is even vital when not being consumed. Due to its high hydrogen content, it can be utilized as an efficient radiation protection to help shield astronauts from the never-ending stream of cancer-inducing space radiation.

In the far future, it will also be possible to convert lunar ice into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to form a rocket propellant with impressive characteristics. By leveraging the moon, or more precisely cislunar space, as a refueling station on the highway to deep space it may be possible to drastically lower the price of space exploration as we would no longer have to lift hundreds of tons of extra propellant off the surface of the Earth. This point, I should note, is heavily contested due to the difficulties in storing liquid hydrogen over long durations. However, the skeptics would appear to be betting against the worlds richest man, Jeff Bezos, and his space company Blue Originit is no coincidence that their lunar lander, Blue Moon, will rely on a newly developed engine fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Skeptics aside, there is no doubt in my mind that the moon is the ideal next steppingstone on our global exploration journey. And by utilizing the available resources in-situ, we will gain the ability to greatly reduce the costs of exploring the moon and work toward a truly sustainable and permanent outpost in space. Over the coming decades, and with the right nourishment from national agencies, new deep space industries will mature, and a lunar economy will be born: an economy with lunar water at its heart.

Calum Hervieu is a mission analyst at Planetary Transportation Systems GmbH (formerly PTScientists GmbH), a Berlin-based company that aims to land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon.

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 21, 2019 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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Op-ed | Living off the land: Lunar water is key to crewed space exploration - SpaceNews

SpaceXs Starship Craft For Space Exploration Blows Its Top During Test – Forbes

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SpaceX's Starship prototypen before the explosion on Wednesday.

The top of SpaceXs Mk1 Starship appears to have blown off during a pressure test of the prototype rocket. Livestream cameras set up by third parties to watch the spacecrafts construction captured footage of the explosion.

The companys CEO and founder Elon Musk downplayed the incident, replying to a Twitter comment about what this means for the spacecrafts development by saying, This had some value as a manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different.

In an emailed statement, the company said, The purpose of todays test was to pressurize systems to the max, so the outcome was not completely unexpected. There were no injuries, nor is this a serious setback.

Starship is the space companys next-generation program for space exploration, which it intends to use to provide service to the Moon, Mars and possibly elsewhere. On a conference call organized by NASA earlier this week, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell stated that the company could land a Starship craft on the Moon as early as 2022. Its not clear yet if this incident would impact that ambitious timeline, but the companys emailed statement indicated that its Starship team is focused on the Mk3 builds, which are designed for orbit.

This isnt the first time that SpaceX has experienced failures, either in testing or on the launch pad. It suffered a failure of a commercial Falcon 9 launch in 2016 as well as the failure of a test of its crewed Dragon spacecraft earlier this year. But the company tends to take such failures in stride, seeing them as part of the iterative process to improve its products.

For example, the company first successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket in 2016, but not until after multiple failures that the company celebrated in a highlight reel called How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster on YouTube. That video has since been viewed over 14 million times.

This article has been updated since publication to include comment from SpaceX.

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SpaceXs Starship Craft For Space Exploration Blows Its Top During Test - Forbes

The Most Exciting Moments About Space in 2019 – Interesting Engineering

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2019 has been a very exciting year for space-related events. Here we explore some of the most notable space missions of the past and explore the most notable and exciting space moments of this year.

Trust us when we say the events detailed below are far from exhaustive.

RELATED:5 TECHNOLOGY TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2019

We are living through an exciting and vibrant time in space exploration. Events are happening at a break-neck speed, and news change almost daily.

For this reason, any declaration of the "latest" space mission would quickly become redundant.

There are many current and in-development space missions by various private and public space agencies around the world. For up to date news on missions it is recommended you sign up to and follow each organization on social media and via their websites.

But, taking NASA as an example, their website is the best place to find the latest news of their ongoing and planned space missions.

This is something of a personal choice, but there are some very significant events in space exploration over time. Some notable milestones in our exploration of the heavens are as follows:

1. The very first satellite in space - In October of 1954, the Soviet Union launched humanity's first artificial satellite in history - Sputnik 1. This was not only a triumph for humanity in general but it almost single-handedly led to the creation of NASA.

2. The first human in space - Another amazing achievement by the Soviet Union. In 1961,cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin, onboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, became the first human in space.

3. The first lunar landing - In a classic game of one-upmanship, NASA pulled out all the stops to plant the very first human beings on the Moon. Apollo 11 stands as one of man's greatest technological achievements of all time.

4. The Hubble Space Telescope - Launched in April of 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been a gift that keeps on giving. Offering unprecedented views of the universe around us, Hubble has led to many discoveries beyond all the hopes and dreams of its designers.

5. The first private spacecraft - In June of 2004, SpaceShipOne was designed and built by an aerospace development company known as Scaled Composites. Flown by a South-African born American, it actually managed to fly past the boundary of space.

This laid the foundations for the current explosion in private enterprises turning their hand to space exploration. As more and more private enterprises enter the market, humanity's future in space will undoubtedly get better, cheaper and more accessible to private citizens in the future.

Here is a summary of the past and future events in all things space in 2019. A lot has happened this year and, as such, the following is just a hand-picked sampling of the most notable events of the year.

On New Years Day of 2019, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft completed its journey to Ultima Thule. This was the furthest object that we've ever managed to visit in our Solar System.

Scientists pored over the first images received but will have to wait for a little longer for the rest of the probe's data to arrive on Earth.

China was also hoping to land its Chang'e-4 lander on the far side of the Moon in January. On the 4th of the month, all their hard work paid off with the lander touching down on the mostly unexplored side of the Moon.

The probe returned some interesting images and very exciting data for astrophysicists to sift through at their leisure.

NASA's Mars Insight Lander's HP3began drilling the Red Planet's surface at the beginning of the month. They plan was to reach about 5-meters in-depth to take important measurements on the internal surface temperature of the planet.

But, for some as yet unknown reason, it hit technical issues and couldn't penetrate beyond 30 cmin depth.

This month, Israeli private non-profit, SpaceIL launched their first Moon lander onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The team hoped to plant an Israeli flag and make some magnetic readings if they successfully completed their landing sometime in April of 2019 (more on this later).

The Moon itself also made a show for Earth-bound spectators this month. On the 19th of February, it passed closer to the Earth than usual to provide a Supermoon in the night's sky.

This same month, the Juno probe was planned to make a sweeping visit to Jupiter. True to form, the probe got some great images of the gas giant. Further flybys were also scheduled for May, July, and September of the same year.

Japan also made its attempt to collect samples from the asteroid Ryugu this month. The probe called Hayabusa2, successfully fired a pellet at the asteroid's surface to gather some of the asteroids material for analysis.

Further sampling attempts were planned for later in 2019.

In March, SpaceX launched and tested one of their crewed Dragon 2 spacecraft in the rigors of space. the craft, called Demonstration Mission 1 (DM-1), wasn't actually crewed but the data they gathered would guide future crewed flights.

After months of delay, it successfully reached orbit and made its way to the ISS.

Boeing also planned to test its brand-new CST-100 Starliner this month. The craft is currently under development to provide a vehicle to transport crews and materiel to the ISS.

Sadly it was plagued with delays and rescheduled for April.The test was to be uncrewed, and following its successful completion, a crewed test would be attempted in August of 2019.

This has since been revised again, with current estimates for an unmanned test flight in December of this year.

April started out brilliantly with a close approach of NASA's Parker Solar Probe to the Sun. This followed other approaches in late 2018 and will not be the last for many years to come.

This month also spelled the end of a contract with Russia and NASAfor delivering people and stuff to the ISS using their Soyuz spacecraft. This contract was established following the unfortunate retirement of their own Space Shuttle program in 2011.

For this reason, NASA has been busy working with Boeing and SpaceX to find an alternative logistics solution. But it was announced in February of 2019 that NASA may still consider using Russian Soyuz craft until alternatives are found.

April was not the best month for the team behind the Israeli gambit to put a probe of their own on the Moon. SpaceIL, a private venture, had teamed up with Elon Musk's SpaceX to attempt to plant an Israeli flag on the lunar surface.

Sadly, all contact was lost with the Beresheet lunar lander in the afternoon of April the 11th as it crashed into the Moon's surface. Despite the setback, the team is hoping to send a second Moon lander in the not too distant future.

Also this month, SpaceX had hoped to make a test flight of their Starship craft. "Starhopper" managed to perform a short, tethered, engine test leading to future plans for untethered testing later in the year.

SpaceX also successfully tested another of its Heavy Falcons this month. Not only was the launch a success, but they also managed to recover all three of its booster rockets.

May was a quieter month for space exploration. But there were some notable events.

The first was the Eta Aquarid meteor shower on the 6th of May. This is a fairly regular event that peaks around early-May every year.

The meteors are actually debris leftover from Halley's comet when it passes close to Earth on its rare visits.

On a more dramatic note, SpaceX's Dragon Crew Capsule was confirmed to have exploded during another test this month. This was the very same capsule, DM-1, that had proved successful back in March of 2019.

Astronomers also released an interesting report on the recent asteroid impact on the Moon's surface this month. Leaving a crater about 15-meters wide, the collision was reported in theMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

In other news, a rocket designed by a team of students from the University of Southern California (USC) Rocket Propulsion Lab (RPL) successfully launched a small rocket that reached the edges of space. The tiny 8-inch (20.3 cm) diameter, 13-foot (3.96 m) tall rocket, called Traveller IV, is the first student-designed craft to ever do so.

Towards the end of the month, an asteroid also made a 'close' approach to our beloved home planet. The mile-wide (1.6 km) rock with its own small moon, passed around 3.5 million miles from Earth.

Also this month, a Soyuz rocket was hit by lightning with no ill-effects on the 27th of May.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took some impressive images of Mars this month. Using it'sHigh-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment(HiRISE), the orbiter captured images of an impressive and supposedly newly formed crater on Mars.

Also this month, NASA announced that their Curiosity rover had detected high levels of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This sparked much debate about the likely source and potential for finding life.

By far, one of the most spectacular Space events this month was the Strawberry Moon. Many people around the world who were able to catch a glimpse were left awestruck around the world.

In the middle of June, a new study was released that pointed to the fact the Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, might have saltwater comparable to Earth's oceans under its icy crust. Using data fromHubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectograph (STIS)the team reported they've picked up the spectral signature of irradiated sodium chloride.

This month, SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon Heavy Rocket. What was different about this event was the fact that, for the first time, the company successfully resued one of their booster rockets from previous launches.

But it came at a cost. They failed to recover the central core unit.

Towards the end of June, scientists announced they had found an exoplanet that bears a striking resemblance to Earth.TheCARMENESsurvey team announced that the planet that orbits Teegarden's star, the 24th closest star to our own, is only 12 light-years away.

Airing on the 29th of June, the "Apollo 11" documentary premiered on CNN. The film was edited and directed by Todd Douglas Miller and was compiled from hours of real NASA archive footage of this history-making event in human history.

Earlier in the month, researchers revealed that there may be a way for black holes to form without the need for a collapsing star. The theory, called 'direct collapse' was proposed by two researchers at Western University in Ontario, Canada.

Also at the start of July, the first total eclipse of the Sun since 2017 was enjoyed by onlookers in South America. Parts of Chile and Argentina were treated to one of the most spectacular events the heavens have to offer.

Researchers also put to bed any notion that the now infamous'Oumuamua asteroid was actually an alien spaceship. Much to the disappointment of many excited members of the public.

Deployed into space in late June, the Carl Sagan inspired LightSail2 solar sail spacecraft was reported to be operational and ready to deploy its innovative propulsion device (which it did later in July). If successful, this will provide a proof of concept for the tech for future applications.

In mid-July, a United Arab Emirates spy satellite failed to make it into orbit and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. It appears a serious rocket failure occurred only two minutes after liftoff.

The bad news was not exclusive to the UAE in July. The European Galileo GPS satellite system suffered a major outing in July too. Costing over 3 Billion Euros to date, a mysterious technical issue left Europe relying on American satellites until service was restored.

In late July, India also made its own attempt to launch a Moon lander and rover to the Moon. CalledChandrayaan-2, it had originally been planned for launch in January but was delayed for several months following technical issues.

In early August, researchers revealed they had detected the highest energy photons ever recorded from the Crab Nebula. The team was unable to explain how they are created by the nebula, however.

Also in early August, NASA announced they had found a new "Hot Earth" exoplanet. The space agenciesplanet-hunting satelliteTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, orTESS for short, spotted the new planet as well as two others orbiting its parent star.

Also this month, an "Ultra-Massive" black hole was discovered in the universe. With an estimated mass of over 40 billion suns, this new black hole is one hell of a monster.

SpaceX's space-bound Roadster made it's the first orbit of the Sun this month. Launched onboard a Falcon Heavy rocket test in February of 2018, the Roadster has been a tour of our solar system over since.

It won't come close to Earth again until November 2020. We say close but it'll be somewhere in the order of32.2 million miles (52.8 million km) away by then.

On the subject of SpaceX, a Chinese private space company, LinkSpace, also announced the third successful launch of its reusable rocket. The Beijing-based company reported it reached 300-meters in height before safely returning to its launchpad 50 seconds later.

Also on the subject of SpaceX, Elon Musk announced it might be a good idea to nuke Mars to prepare it for human settlement. Although it might sound a little gung-ho, there is some merit to his suggestion.

Back onto the subject of black holes, scientists revealed they had evidence of one swallowing a neutron star. The event appears to have occurred 900 million years ago,and must have been an impressive thing to have seen if you were close enough at the time.

On a lighter note, the hyped "Storm Area 51 Event" that was planned on the 20th September 2019, turned out to be a bit a flop. But it was fun to watch some of the attendees attempting to "Naruto run".

In September, SpaceX revealed its candidate landing sites for future Mars missions by the private space company. These sites appear to have been penciled in for their Starship once its development is complete.

Probably the main news event this month was the announcement of a million-dollar prize for the first image of a black hole. The team of eight at EHT split the 3 million prize between them.

On a completely different subject, researchers also announced they had made cement in space for the very first time. A recent series of experiments on the ISS discovered it was actually possible to get cement to solidify in microgravity.

India's Chandrayaan-2arrives at the moon but contact was lost with its lander, called Vikram, creating serious doubts about the mission's success.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the team behind the apparently ill-fated Vikram Lunar landerdid later announce that they had found it. The team was still unable to make contact, but they announced that it appeared to be operational and was expected to complete its planned 7-year mission.

Water vapor appears to have been discovered on an exoplanet for the first time, according to findings released in September. What's more, the exoplanet also appeared to be in the habitable zone of its parent star - - could it harbor life?

Our solar system was visited by another interstellar tourist in September.C/2019 Q4,believed to be a comet, was spotted by an amateur astronomer and got many stargazers very excited indeed.

Just at the close of the month, Elon Musk announced that he wants to put SpaceX's "Starship" into orbit within the next six months. Whether they can achieve it or not is anyone's guess.

There was some very exciting news earlier this month. Scientists announced that they had potentially discovered the existence of the basic ingredients for life on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

NASA also announced earlier this month that the Juno probe was ready to jump Jupiter's shadow. The maneuver was needed to prevent the probe's solar panels from being obscured by the gas-giant blocking the sun.

Astronomers announced they had found twin baby stars growing amongst gas and dust in October.The remarkable find sheds new light on the earliest phases of the lives of stars.

There was also some good news for people hoping to one day colonize the Moon. Oxygen and metal were found to be present in Lunar soil. Analysis of samples of regolith found that it was around 40-45% oxygen by weight.

A NASA engineer revealed information about a new form of propulsion that could achieve 99% the speed of light. Called an EmDrive, it requires no propellant and could prove to be the future of space exploration.

Scheduled for launch between October 15th and November 14th, the ESA plans to launch their own planet-hunting mission. CalledCHEOPS(Characterising Exoplanets Satellite), it will look for planets orbiting bright stars close to our Solar System.

Uranus(don't, just don't) is also scheduled to make its closest approach to Earth this month. This will mean it will look a little bigger and brighter than usual.

On the 2nd of November, the Moon will pass in front of the ringed planet Saturn. skywatchers in New Zealand will get the best views but it should still be impressive from other locations around the Earth.

On the same day,Northrop Grumman will launch the Cygnus NG-12 cargo mission. It will resupply the ISS.

On the 11th of November, Mercury is set to transit the Sun as viewed from Earth.This won't happen again until 2039 so be sure to check it out.

If you are hoping to see this amazing event, make sure you use special equipment. It is, after all, extremely dangerous to look directly at the Sun.

Sometime in November, SpaceX is also planning to send its first crewed Crew Dragon mission to the ISS.This will be the Crew Dragon's first test flight with astronauts on board following the uncrewed DM-1 mission in March.

SpaceX will need to ensure any issues they've uncovered with DM-1's untimely explosion earlier in the year have been rectified.

During the festive season, Japan'sHayabusa-2 spacecraft is scheduled to depart the asteroid Ryugu andreturning to Earth in December 2020. It will bring its valuable cargo of samples for rigorous analysis on Terra Firma.

December also means it's time for theGeminids meteor shower. This shower is caused by debris from an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon.

On boxing day 2019, we will be treated to a rare annular solar eclipse. But only, that is, if you are in the right place at the right time.For an annular eclipse to happen, the Moon has to be at its furthest from the Earth, so it doesn't quite cover up the Sun.

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The Most Exciting Moments About Space in 2019 - Interesting Engineering

NASA’s Orion spacecraft to arrive Sunday and undergo environmental testing in Sandusky – News 5 Cleveland

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SANDUSKY, Ohio The next stage of human space exploration will start this weekend right here in Ohio at NASA's Plumbrook Station in Sandusky when the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft arrives for environmental testing.

According to NASA, the Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft is "built to take humans farther than theyve ever gone before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities."

Artemis 1 Orion left the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday and it and its crew will arrive at Mansfield Lahm Airport, 2000 Harington Memorial Road, on Sunday afternoon. The Artemis I Orion will be delivered via NASA's Super Guppy aircraft.

The airport will be open to the public for anyone interested in watching the spacecraft being unloaded. Anyone who plans to attend should arrive no later than 1:30 p.m. The Super Guppy is scheduled to land at 2:30 p.m.

Astronaut Doug Wheelock will make an appearance at the main airport terminal office and be available for autographs from 4 to 4:30 p.m. Additionally, there will be exhibits and activities from noon to 5 p.m.

NASA will use a 135-foot-long truck to take the Artemis I Orion to its Space Environments Complex (SEC) at the Plumbrook Station. According to the agency, the SEC "houses the largest and most powerful space environment simulation facilities in the world."

To see a virtual tour and find more information about NASA's Plumbrook Station, click here.

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NASA's Orion spacecraft to arrive Sunday and undergo environmental testing in Sandusky - News 5 Cleveland

Out Of This World: Is Space A New Twist On Frontier Investing? – MarketWatch

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The term frontier markets typically refers to international diversificationthat is, investing outside United States bordersand specifically nations that are developing economically and newly open to investment. But what if we were to widen that definition out a bit, from international to interplanetary? Would that be the final frontier in investing?

Richard Bransons space-tourism company, Virgin Galactic Holdings SPCE, -9.85%, had its initial public offering (IPO) in the last week of October 2019, making it one of the few pure-play, publicly traded companies in the space industry. If you want to hitch a ride, a single round trip will set you back $250,000and no, theres no one-way rate.

Is that price tag out of your budget? There are other ways to push toward the heavens, namely by launching your portfolio into space.

Michael Fairbourn, education coach at TD Ameritrade, noted there are two ways to look at investing among the stars: Space tourism and space exploration. Space tourism companies such as SPCE are officially called suborbital space tourism because they remain in the earths atmosphere. The privately held Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, +0.63% founder Jeff Bezos, is in the space tourism business but is also developing a variety of technologies, including vehicles to access suborbital and orbital space.

The second type of space-related investing focuses on traditional space exploration that goes beyond the earths atmosphere. According to Fairbourn, the driving force for space exploration investments is what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] invests in. "It has the knowledge base and the spending. But the funny thing is, SpaceXs activity is what really prompted NASA to get back on board and start looking again at exploration, Fairbourn said, referring to the company owned by Tesla Inc TSLA, -6.14% founder Elon Musk.

Privately held SpaceX falls into the space exploration category because it aims to deliver satellites into space. The company received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval in March 2018 to deliver 4,425 satellites into space. In October, the company and the FCC filed paperwork for another 30,000 satellites with the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations entity.

With so many satellites approved for launch into space, interested investors may want to look at companies manufacturing satellites. There are four publicly traded companies in this industry: ViaSat, Inc. VSAT, +0.48%, Intelsat SA I, +0.57%, Iridium Communications Inc IRDM, -1.75%, and Teledyne Technologies Inc TDY, +0.99%.

Another category for space exploration is companies involved in rocketry, which delivers both space tourists and payloads into orbit. Some names better known for their work in the defense sector spring up here, including Northrop Grumman Corporation NOC, +0.27% and Lockheed Martin Corporation LM, +0.31%. Some of these companies are devoting significant research to rocket science, such as LMT, which gets 18% of its total net sales from space.

There are fewer of these companies, but it could potentially be a growing division because of what NASA is looking to do with increased exploration, Fairbourn explained. But he was quick to add that the outlook could change at any time.

Boeing Co BA, +1.34% also has significant money tied up in space. The firm is creating the X-37 Orbital Test Vehicle as well as the Space Launch System, which is designed to carry people and cargo into deep space.

Not a recommendation. For illustrative purposes only.

NASA is also looking at moon exploration. Maxar Technologies Inc MAXR, +3.00%, a newer company in the space industry, was awarded the first propulsion system contract from NASA for the Artemis program that aims to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024. MAXRs system drives the spaceships to the moon and navigates back to Earth. The firm is also assisting in the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, a U.S.-European spacecraft.

Another smaller company involved in the moon mission is Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc AJRD, +1.06%, which develops propulsion and power systems for space vehicles.

Some companies are using their space ties to help push boundaries back home on terra firma. Sports equipment and apparel maker Adidas (otcmkts:ADDYY), for example, is launching an effort with the International Space Station to test productsincluding sneakers, soccer balls and compression garmentsin a gravity-free environment, in hopes of optimizing performance.

Speaking of apparel, astronauts cant go into space without protective gear. Earlier this year, SPCE teamed up with Under Armour Inc UAA, +2.59% to supply passenger outfits. And for the rest of us? News reports mention that UA said it would offer a capsule collection in 2020 featuring flight jackets, base layer pieces, and hoodies to wear on Earth. So even if you cant afford $250,000 for a trip to space, you can go boldly and dress like youre taking a suborbital vacation.

And who knows? It was only a generation ago that intercontinental air travel was a luxury reserved only for the well-heeled among us. Perhaps by the end of the next decade, well all be accustomed to standing in line at the Space Transportation Safety Administration, removing our moon boots as we walk through the X-ray machine, and grabbing our assigned seats, preferably not middle seats in the coach section.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

2019 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Out Of This World: Is Space A New Twist On Frontier Investing? - MarketWatch

Bill Nye shares the future of space exploration at Houston’s annual SpaceCom – InnovationMap

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Looking for some help navigating an innovation-filled month in Houston? Look no further.

November is jam packed with Houston business and innovation events from huge conventions like SpaceCom and Global Corporate Venture taking over downtown on the same days to the Digital Fight Club battling it out in Houston for the first time and The Houston Innovation Summit planning a week of programming.

If you know of innovation-focused events for this month or next, email me at natalie@innovationmap.com with the details and subscribe to our daily newsletter that sends fresh stories straight to your inboxes every morning.

Houston is full of entrepreneurial women and this event aims to bring women together and give access to top female entrepreneurs and passionate women in local businesses. They will share their 'why,' their stories, challenges, successes, tips, and answer your burning questions about local entrepreneurship. Join us for a panel and lunch in a closed setting where we discuss what it takes to be a successful female entrepreneur.

Details: The event is from 11 am to 1 pm on Tuesday, November 5, at Houston Exponential (410 Pierce St.). Learn more.

Rice Alliance's Texas Life Science Forum brings together members from industry, emerging life science companies, academic, and investors. This is the "must attend" event for anyone in the life science industry in Texas or affiliated with innovation at the life science academic institutions.

Details: The event is from 8:30 am to 5 pm on Wednesday, November 6, at BioScience Research Collaborative (6500 Main St.). Learn more.

Details: The event is from 11:30 am to 1 pm on Wednesday, November 6, at The Cannon (1336 Brittmoore Road). Learn more.

In honor of Lung Cancer Awareness Month, JLABS sitting down with experts at The Lung Cancer Initiative at Johnson & Johnson and MD Anderson Lung Cancer Moon Shots as well as innovators in the field to present on and create dialogue around the core challenges faced by innovators in the field, new discoveries, emerging technologies, and potential solutions.

Details: The event is from 11 am to 1:30 pm on Wednesday, November 6, at JLabs @ TMC (2450 Holcombe Blvd.). Learn more.

TMCx's annual medical device cohort celebrates the end of another program as the participating entrepreneurs take to the main stage to pitch their solutions. During the event, 16 medical device startups will showcase the progress they have made on their solutions, and what they have planned for the future.

Details: The event is from 1:30 to 8 pm on Thursday, November 7, at TMC Innovation Institute (2450 Holcombe Blvd.). Learn more.

CareSet presents the second annual Health Equity Hackathon using newly available data that will help address innovations for the underserved community in the U.S.

Details: The event is from November 8 through 10, at United Way of Greater Houston (50 Waugh Dr.). Learn more.

Rice University is planning to develop 16 acres around Houston's Wheeler Station to create a neighborhood centered around technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. To demand that the developers sign a Community Benefits Agreement, we are establishing the Houston Coalition for Equitable Development without Displacement (HCEDD). All individuals, community groups, advocacy organizations, and supporting businesses/organizations who are interested in supporting this initiative are invited to attend.

Details: The event is from 6 to 8 pm on Tuesday, November 12, at Wesley AME Church (2209 Emancipation Ave). Learn more.

In collaboration and partnership with Equinor Technology Ventures, BP Ventures, Shell Ventures, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, and Cannon Ventures, hear the latest trends in upstream technology implementation.

Details: The event is from 5 to 8 pm on Wednesday, November 13, at The Cannon (1336 Brittmoore Road). Learn more.

The Topcoder Innovation Summit is the premier innovation event for industry leaders. At the Innovation Summit, you'll have the opportunity to speak with industry leaders, attend panels on innovation and emerging technologies, and meet with the Wipro and Topcoder executive teams.

Details: The event is from 8 am to 4:45 pm on Thursday, November 14, at InterContinental Hotel (6750 Main St.). Learn more.

JLABS and the University of Houston Technology Bridge present a special installment of Startup Pains, a monthly talk given by entrepreneurs who share their journey of launching a company and overcoming unanticipated obstacles in order to find success in their industry. This month's focus is to arm those contemplating entrepreneurship with a road map for navigating the startup waters, specifically focused on therapeutics.

Details: The event is from 5:30 to 7 pm on Thursday, November 14, at JLabs @ TMC (2450 Holcombe Blvd.). Learn more.

Tilting the Grid is the conference where you can eavesdrop on what the most daring companies in the REP space are doing and discuss what the next "big" thing might be. Ready to learn what big data can reveal about customer behavior? Prepared for a deep dive into the latest customer acquisition trends?

Details: The event is from noon to 5 pm on Friday, November 15, at Whitehall Hotel Houston (1700 Smith St). Learn more.

For the third year, Houston's innovation ecosystem is taking over the city for a week of events and programming coordinated by Impact Hub Houston. To check out the panels, meetups, and all other programming, click here. Note: Some of the specific events will also appear in this curated list of Houston events.

Entrepreneurs and experts are taking the stage or in this case ring to battle out their ideas on tech and innovation in Houston. The high energy debate will take place across five fights and networking opportunities. Secure your tickets it's expected to sell out.

Details: The event is from 6 to 10 pm on Wednesday, November 20, at White Oak Music Hall (2915 N Main St.). Learn more.

Join JLABS @ TMC and explore the mind and motivations of Dr. Billy Cohn, the renowned surgeon, inventor and innovator.

Details: The event is from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm on Wednesday, November 20, at JLabs @ TMC (2450 Holcombe Blvd.). Learn more.

SpaceCom, America's Commercial Space Conference and Exposition, addresses the strategic issues impacting the commercial space industry that will enable your business to set a clear course to gain a competitive advantage in the coming trillion-dollar space economy. SpaceCom is operating under a Space Act Agreement with NASA. In 2019, the Department of Commerce's Office of Space Commerce and the Department of Energy's Office of Technology Transitions join NASA and the commercial space industry in collaborating on the development of the show.

Details: The event is from Wednesday, November 20, to Thursday, November 21, at the George R. Brown Convention Center (1001 Avenida De Las Americas). Learn more.

Never has the energy industry been more vulnerable to disruption, but as open to change. The world's leading energy and transportation companies are using venture capital to invest in, and help deploy, new technologies and business models that will fundamentally change the way we generate, distribute and use energy.

Details: The event is from Wednesday, November 20, to Thursday, November 21, and takes place at various locations throughout the two-day conference. Learn more.

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Bill Nye shares the future of space exploration at Houston's annual SpaceCom - InnovationMap

Teslas Cybertruck is made of the same stainless steel alloy that SpaceX is using for Starship – TechCrunch

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the much-anticipated Cybertruck electric pickup in LA on Thursday, and the vehicle is obviously getting a lot of attention for its eye-catching and unique design. It looks more like a rover designed for space exploration than a truck and the analogy in this case is particularly fitting, because the Cybertruck is clad in the same stainless steel alloy that Musks other company SpaceX will use as the skin of its forthcoming Starship spaceship.

It is, it is literally bulletproof to a nine millimeter handgun, Musk said onstage during the unveiling. Thats how strong the skin is its ultra-hard, cold-rolled stainless steel alloy that weve developed. Were going to be using the same alloy in the Starship rocket, and in the Cybertruck.

Musk had previously revealed at an event unveiling the full-height Starship Mk1 prototype that it would go with stainless steel for the outer shell, with an additional glass tile covering layer for the half of the space craft that will endure the highest heat from re-entry (the ship is designed to essentially belly-flop down through Earths atmosphere prior to landing). The Super Heavy booster that the Starship will ride atop during its exit will be clad entirely in stainless steel. The reasoning for going with that material was a combination of cost and effectiveness, as its actually remarkably good at withstanding and shedding high heat.

Using the same stainless steel alloy across both Tesla and SpaceX will obviously provide some cost efficiencies especially if the Cybertruck manages to become a high-volume production vehicle (unlikely because of its controversial design, but perhaps possible based on the economics if Tesla can stick to the price points it revealed onstage). Theres another way that the Cybertruck could benefit SpaceXs work, and Elon alluded to it on Twitter ahead of the event Mars will need ground transportation, too.

Yes, Musk said in a tweet that the pressurized edition of the Cybertruck will be the official truck of Mars. As always with Elon, sometimes its difficult to suss out exactly where the line is between jokes and actual plans with what he tweets, but I think in this instance he actually means this literally, at least at this stage in the game.

A Cybertruck rover for astronaut use on Mars could theoretically benefit both Tesla and SpaceX because of efficiencies in cross-production and engineering, and as the stainless steel alloy case illustrates, one of the big benefits of designing things for space has always been that the resulting technology often turns out to have really beneficial applications on Earth, too.

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Teslas Cybertruck is made of the same stainless steel alloy that SpaceX is using for Starship - TechCrunch

What If the Space Race Had Never Ended? A Q&A With Garrett Reisman – USC Viterbi School of Engineering

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In the alternate universe of For All Mankind, the Nixon administration seeks to demonstrate that American women should explore space alongside men. Photo Credit: Apple TV+.

Garrett Reisman, who joined the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in June 2018, has been a NASA astronaut and director of space operations at SpaceX. But in addition to his professional and academic career, Reisman is no stranger to Hollywood, having been an advisor on several space-themed productions, including last summers Ad Astra and Apple TV+s newly released For All Mankind.

Created by Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Outlander, Star Trek: the Next Generation), For All Mankind posits the question: What if the global space race never ended?

With input from Reisman, the new series explores an alternate history where the Soviets are the first to land on the moon and what this means for the future (or, in this case, the past) of human space exploration.

Heres some insights from Reisman on the new show, which debuted on November 1, 2019.

Garrett Reisman/ Photo Credit: NASA

One day, I received a call from Ron Moore who said that he was thinking about a new TV show about space and wanted to pick my brain and bounce a few ideas off me.

I have tremendous respect for Ron. As a big fan of Star Trek, Outlander and Battlestar Galactica, I definitely consider myself a Ron Moore fanboy, so I was thrilled. He came down to SpaceX one day, and I gave him a tour of our rocket factory which was a lot of fun for both of us; and then we had lunch in the SpaceX caf.

Over lunch he said that he had two ideas for the new show. One would be a period drama set at NASA in the 1970s. Kinda like a Mad Men but with less advertising, much wider lapels and more space stuff. I thought that sounded cool, but then he told me his other idea an alternate history where the space race kept going at the same pace we experienced during the Apollo era. What would have been different in the world? Where would we be today? My eyes lit up, and I thought it was an amazing premise for a TV series.

I told him that the Soviets were actually much closer to attempting a moon landing than most people know. I described seeing prototype flight hardware for a lunar lander in a large dusty hall in Moscow, and I told him that Alexei Leonov, the first spacewalker, had been selected to command the mission. Only the failure of their monster N1 rocket prevented them from seriously challenging the U.S. in the race to put a man on the moon.

Soon thereafter, he pitched the alternate history version to Apple, and they liked it too.

Yeah, being an astronaut has been very good to me! For example, there was the one day that I got to be a Colonial Marine on Battlestar Galactica.

Let me explain. My Expedition 16 commander, Peggy Whitson, and I are big fans of that TV show. Before a mission, the behavioral support group at NASA will offer to arrange celebrity interviews for the crew of the Space Station as a morale boost. When my turn came, instead of naming Scarlett Johansson or Steve Carell or someone like that, I asked to have a video conference with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators and producers of Battlestar. When we got back to Earth, Ron was kind enough to invite us up to Vancouver to visit the set.

I got to meet some really cool people (thats Ron Moore in the yellow shirt).

Garrett Reisman with the cast of Battlestar Galactica and series creator, Ronald D. Moore. Photos courtesy: Garrett Reisman.

I was having so much fun that I stayed on the set until 1 a.m. This was a bit of a problem since I had a 6 a.m. flight out of Seattle. I drove through the night, didnt bother to check in at the hotel and just went straight to the airport. About 24 hours later, after connecting through Houston and Dallas I found myself in a bar in New York City, when it hit me suddenly that trip used to take me about 10 minutes.

Well, I think I would have gone further into space than low-Earth orbit. Dont get me wrong, flying on the shuttle and the space station was incredible, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to have those experiences along with amazing crew-mates to share them with. But walking on the moonor Mars? I dont want to seem greedy, but thats got to be even better.

In fact, the desire to do more, to go further and faster is one of the main reasons why I eventually left NASA and started working at SpaceX. Im proud of all SpaceX has accomplished, and in part due to this companys success, other private companies and NASA itself are becoming increasingly ambitious, and I think that we as a country are on a better trajectory today with regard to furthering the cause of human spaceflight then we were just a decade ago.

For All Mankind imagines a different 1969 where the Russians are the first to land on the moon. Photo Credit: Apple TV+.

Theres always the chance that another space race will occur between us and China, for example, motivated by geopolitical conflict just like Apollo, but I dont think thats necessary. I think that all thats required is success. If we are successful in returning to the moon, or better yet, sending astronauts to Mars, and we capture the public imagination, then perhaps we will find the political will to increase government spending on human spaceflight. Most people dont realize that we are spending only about one half of one percent of our federal budget on NASA. We could double that and still only be spending one penny of every taxpayer dollar on this investment in our future. That shouldnt be so hard to justify.

In our alternate universe, the Nixon administration feels the need to demonstrate that American women should explore space alongside men. I hope people tune-in to see the series of events to shift the history I dont want to spoil the moment, which is pretty great.

In reality, a number of women were selected and tested as potential astronaut candidates as part of the Lovelace Medical Clinics Women in Space Program in the early 1960s. This privately-funded project made a good case for including women in the U.S. space program, but unfortunately due to the times, this would not be the case until much later.

Hmmmthat would probably be when I was asked what women with long hair do while performing a spacewalk. Do they use a Scrunchie or a hair clip? Pony tail?

This was a difficult question for me to answer. If you know me, or even have just seen a picture of me, you know why. Fortunately, I was able to phone a friend and get the right answer to this question. Which, if you are curious, is: pony tail.

During my training for my flight on the International Space Station, I spent over two years living in Russia, and I got to learn the language and get to know the Russian people and their culture. So while For All Mankind is framed from the American point of view, my experiences in Russia really helped me contribute to that aspect of the show.

One particular serendipitous aspect was the fact that I got to know the real Alexi Leonov quite well along with his daughter who lived for a while in Los Angeles. Alexi was unwell during the filming of our TV show and would pass away just before it aired, but I really enjoyed telling his daughter that her father was the first man on the moon, in our show anyway, and last summer we watched the trailer together which depicted Alexi stepping on the moon. She told me that she would let her father know, and I hope that he was able to get a good chuckle out of it.

2020. Both SpaceX and Boeing are getting very close to flying NASA astronauts on the Crew Dragon and the Starliner, respectively, under NASAs Commercial Crew Program. Were going to be back in business and better than ever within months from now.

Thats true, but everyone involved in For All Mankind wants to make it seem as real as possible to the viewer so that makes it really fun for me and challenging too! Fortunately, Im not the only technical advisor on the show. Michael and Denise Okuda have been helping Ron Moore out with technical advice going back to his Star Trek days, and they have been very helpful on this show too.

But I did push for a few things that I thought were important. Its hard to tell you exactly what they were, since these episodes havent aired yet, and I dont want to let any spoilers slip out. But when you watch the episodes near the end of season one, check out the orbital mechanics!

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What If the Space Race Had Never Ended? A Q&A With Garrett Reisman - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Point Counterpoint: Under President Trump, the universe is the limit – UW Badger Herald

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Under the Trump administration, space exploration has reached unprecedented heights. President Donald Trump has modernized our space policy to eliminate the out-of-date policies previously in place. From establishing the Space Force to planning a future mission to Mars, its clear that Trump has a bold vision for the U.S. in space.

Under the Obama administration, our space exploration programs made little progress. The administration cut funding for numerous space programs, leading to decommissioned crafts and missions. As a result, NASA and Americas space progress failed to reach its full potential. Not to mention, President Barack Obama delayed the journey to Mars date back to the 2030s, essentially putting it on the back burner.

Meanwhile, Trump has shown unparalleled leadership when it comes to space policy as he plans to return astronauts to the moon by the year 2024. Moreover, Trump has bigger ambitions than just the moon he wants the moon to be a launch pad to send Americans to Mars. In the presidents own words, The moon is not so exciting, and for the first time ever, an American president has set realistic sights on sending Americans to Mars.

To do this, he plans to rejuvenate companies in the private sector, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, owned by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos respectively. By leasing the NASA space facilities to these private firms, the journey to Mars will be significantly accelerated.

Science politicization, funding fights leave researchers in limboFor University of Wisconsin astrophysics postdoctoral researcher Adam Schaefer, grant funding is absolutely critical. Schaefer studies galaxy evolution from a Read

The president also expressed his desire to get astronauts to Mars on Twitter.

The president recently said NASA has been making tremendous progress toward Mars. The Moon to Mars journey seems more attainable now than ever before.

In addition to Mars, Trumps Space Policy Directive-4 sets the framework for the Space Force, which will be a new brand under the U.S. Air Force. Vice President Mike Pence has long been a champion of space exploration and recently announced the new U.S. Space Command.

The United States Space Force will ensure that our nation is prepared to defend our people, defend our interests, and to defend our values in the vast expanse of space, Pence said.

UW astrobotanist paves way for deep space explorationFor the last decade, astrobotanist Simon Gilroy and the Gilroy Lab have spearheaded the University of Wisconsins research on outer Read

The Space Force will send a strong message globally that the U.S. has the upper hand when it comes to military in space. The Trump administration has plans to train next-gen warfighters to compete in this new domain by maximizing fighting capability, while also minimizing bureaucracy.

Despite the fact that Trump has rebuilt our military to the strongest it has ever been, he has shown no signs of complacency with his vision to expand the American military into outer space. As our adversaries become increasingly competitive in this realm, it is increasingly important for the U.S. to establish a presence in space, as it could be a significant threat to our country in the future.

Trumps space policy will bring together both the Department of Defense and our intelligence community to take massive strides in our space capabilities. Space exploration has the potential to be one of the great legacies of the Trump presidency. No man has been to the moon in more than 40 years, and Trump has promised that the next person on the moon will be an American woman. Its clear that the president is on a mission to protect the people of this nation, and under Trump, the universe is the limit.

Christian Karabas ([emailprotected]) is a freshman majoring in real estate and finance. He is also the outreach director of the College Republicans of UW-Madison.

Read about the College Democrats views on space policy here.

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Point Counterpoint: Under President Trump, the universe is the limit - UW Badger Herald

Space Wars: Are We Ready for Intergalactic Conflict? – PCMag

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The US plan for a so-called Space Force made headlines earlier this year, but efforts to establish intergalactic rules of engagement date back to at least 1967 with the Outer Space Treaty (OST).

The OST was a "fairly ambiguous" agreement, according to Dr. Joan S. Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College, given our evolving knowledge of space at the time. But as our capabilities, and those of other countries, have improved, potential global conflict could be fought on off-world battlegrounds.

Ahead of a speech this week on national security at Yale University, we spoke to Dr. Johnson-Freese about the future of space exploration, the role of China, and why she has her eye on Alpha Centauri. Here are edited and condensed excerpts of our conversation; her comments are her own and do not reflect the opinions of the US government, Defense Department, or US Navy.

Dr. Johnson-Freese, I came across your research while interviewing Dr. Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She indicated that the Doomsday Clock status of global destruction depends partly on staying out of space wars. There are checks in place, specifically the Outer Space Treaty (OST), could you summarize this for us? [JJF] So it is important to put the Outer Space Treaty in context, in terms of when it was signed (1967) and the current environment. In 1967, there were very few countries with space capabilities, particularly launch. The provisions of the treaty were largely drawn up in fairly ambiguous terms. How, for example, do you define the "peaceful" uses of outer space concept so heavily referenced in the OST? Or protect the interests of the US/Soviet Union?

But the situation is very different today, almost 30 years after the end of the Cold War. Yes, today there are many countries with launch capabilities or access to commercial launch capabilities, complicating the provisions. Also, the OST is based on international law, and there are no enforcement capabilities. Actually in international law there are more provisions that address potential conflicts in space AFTER it begins, than those for providing "checks" against conflict.

So the OST, in my opinion, provides some parameters for state actions in spaceno weapons of mass destructionbut even that depends on how WMD is defined, and no apportionment of heavenly bodies, but all in terms that can be debated by any two lawyers.

Dr. Joan S. Johnson-Freese

'No apportionment of heavenly bodies' means no nation can say 'we own the moon' and start parceling out real estate contracts. But what about mining asteroids?The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, to spur private aerospace competitiveness and entrepreneurship, said US companies could mine asteroids for profit, [and] many European space lawyers felt this violated the Outer Space Treaty.

For clarity, Article IV of the treaty bans WMDs from orbit. It doesn't ban one being launched from, or into, space?Right, and as I said before, it doesn't define what a weapon of mass destruction is. Would that include, for example, the "Rods from God" concept that has floated around for years?

The rumored US Air Force's Project Thor kinetic bombardment?Yes. The "Rods from God" would send titanium rods to Earth from space with the force of a nuclear weapon, but without the nuclear fallout. Isn't that a WMD?

Along those lines, the most recent United Nations Conference on Disarmament, China and Russia showed a willingness for a treaty to ban space weapons, but the US has not entered negotiations. Can you help us understand the US position?The Russian-Chinese proposal is gratuitous, in my opinion, in that it only bans types of space weapons that they don't haveor at least that they aren't admitting to. Further, while many countries have voted in support of the Russian-Chinese proposal, they may well have felt able to do so knowing the US would veto it, thereby making their vote "safe"they could rhetorically support a ban, while knowing that the particular ban in question would not go through.

Also, on a side note, in 1978 the US and Soviets were talking about banning anti-satellite weapons (ASATs). The No. 1 item on the Soviet list of ASATs was...the space shuttle. Their rationale was that the robotic arm gave it the capability to pick items out of orbit and put them into the shuttle cargo bay.

You co-authored the research published in June that said 'the United States and several other countries appear to be on a path toward the overt weaponization of space,' and proposed amendments to the treaty 'as a way to slow down or abate what seems a fast-moving policy train.' Could you summarize these suggestions for us?I would not want to amend the treaty as opening it offers too great a possibility of scrapping it for those countries, including the US, that would see benefit in doing so. Instead, codicils could simply be added, pertaining to issues such as the prohibition of deliberately creating space debristhe No. 1 threat to space developmentand the long-term sustainability of the space environment for everyone's use. And keeping "safe" distances from other space objectsif an object gets any closer, intent can be inferred as unintentional but dangerous, or nefarious, and self defense is allowed. There are a number of "new" issues ripe for consideration, and areas where the institutionalization of transparency and confidence-building measures would be useful.

The big issue with the proposed Space Force is where it sits within the military structure. Can you speak to that?The issue is that space is primarily a "capability," though now it is also considered a warfighting domain. Traditionally space assets have been part of an information chainproviding critical command, control, communications, and intelligence information to give advantage to the military and prevail in conflicts. It's only recently that we've been thinking about space assets as more active than passivewith planetary defense, mining asteroids, and space weapons.

What checks are there in place against a trigger-happy leader of the free (or otherwise) world?Very few. Until recently, it was just common sense. The US worked very hard not to cross the Rubicon of overtly developing and potentially deploying space weapons, feeling that if the US weaponized space other countries would feel compelled to so the same. Now, Pentagon officials are openly talking about wanting to test a space weapon, under the rationale that weaponization is inevitable.

This is the neutral particle beam in orbit.Yes. The plan is to test that by 2023, apparently.

Let's get some backstory on you. After a PhD in Political Science and International Relations at Kent State University, you carved out a much-lauded academic career in national security affairs, including postings at the Maxwell Air Force Base; International Space University in France; the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Japan; and, since 2010, the US Naval War College. What inspired you to get into this field?It was totally serendipitous. I was a faculty member working on arms control at the University of Central Florida, the closest university to the Kennedy Space Center, and asked to host a visit by a (then) West German visitor, Dr. Hermann Strub. He was the head of their space program. He became a mentor and got me grants to work on US-Europe space cooperation issues.

In your role today at the US Naval War College, how much of your time do you spend on kinetic versus non-kinetic cyber warfare studies now, and when did you see that shift?There has been a clear shift in US policy toward the overt weaponization of spacespace warfare doctrine is now a fast moving train. That began in 2013 with the Chinese launch of a "space science" mission that the US saw as potential anti-satellite weapons to high altitudewhat we call the sanctuary orbit. Sadly, there is even less attention to diplomatic ways to address space issues than in the past.

As an expert on the Chinese space program, can you give us your insights into their progress?The difference between China and the US is the story of the tortoise and the hare. When the US is energized there's nothing stopping us. But the Chinese play a very long game; they've studied NASA's programs extensively. However, it's important to note they've not taken over the US in terms of space technology. I find that irritating when people assume that, because it's not true. But the Chinese are very aware of the prestige potential of space. With the dark side of the moon mission, they're very intent on getting into the record books. They realize that prestige translates into strategic influence.

And it's your opinion that they'll have a human lunar spaceflight program?Yes, in fact at one time I was convinced that the next voice transmission we hear from the moon would be in Mandarin. Now, however, I think there's a chance it will be Englishbut through a private company rather than NASA program.

Aside from national heroics, space is a fertile spot for innovation.Yes. My optimism right now is on the NewSpace development efforts, who are leading commercial space industry advocacy, as a key enabler to space settlement. Essentially there are two parallel trends in space going on right now: one is the potential for conflict, but the other is the development of space through the NewSpace companies. In my opinion, the private sector is doing the real cool, gee-whiz stuff right now. That's where the real innovation is taking place, and where we've had true breakthroughs in launch technology. Hopefully, they will influence the military in terms of not destroying the space environment.

Finally, there's a lot of talk about the moon and Mars, but where else are you looking in terms of space exploration innovation?I'm very interested in the plans to reach Alpha Centauri. The Breakthrough Starshot, part of the NewSpace wave, is a privately funded initiative that is trying to put together a multi-national, multi-disciplinary team to send the first spacecraftactually very small Star Chipsto Alpha Centauri, using a very high-power laser array to propel many Star Chips on their way using a solar sail, toward having one or more surviving the journey.

I've co-authored a paper called "Leaving Earth's Driveway," which is currently under review for publication. In that paper we explore moving beyond the same basic rocket technology we've been using since the 1950s, and moving into exciting areas like directed energy propulsion. Of course, even using this technology, it will still take us 20 years to get to Alpha Centauri. But at least we'll have moved out of "Earth's Driveway" and really start exploring our solar system, and beyond.

Dr. Joan S. Johnson-Freese will discuss her research at Yale University on Friday, Nov. 22 at noon.

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Space Wars: Are We Ready for Intergalactic Conflict? - PCMag

Washington DC Ground Transportation Service, Connect, Provides a List of the Top DC Tours to Take This Year – PRNewswire

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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Washington DC is a must-see destination filled with rich history and amazing sites. There are many tours that can help you enjoy the monuments, buildings, and museums our nation's capital has to offer, so you don't miss a single thing. Washington DC ground transportationservice, Connect, provides a list of the top DC tours that you should take this year.

Monuments by Moonlight. The Monuments by Moonlight is a unique guided trolley tour that takes place at night. The unique view of some of the nation's most important monuments in the moonlight is something that will be remembered long after the trip is over.

The Capitol Building and Capitol Hill Walk.Capitol Hillis known for its captivating architecture and important role in the United States' government. Taking a tour of Capitol Hill lets you see the Capitol building up close and teaches you everything you need to know about its role in US history.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Air & Space. Washington DC offers guided tours of one of the nation's most popular museums. The Smithsonian is full of displays and collections about the history of aviation and space exploration, including a display of Buzz Aldrin's famous space suit and a model of the International Space Station.

African American History Tour. Washington DC is home to many important monuments and sites that honor African Americans. Some important sites you can see on the African American History Tour include: the former home of Fredrick Douglass, Howard University, monuments honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and more.

The Politics & Pints Capitol Hill Tour. The Politics & Pints tour is ideal for those looking to explore the rich history of DC while enjoying some entertainment with friends. After a thorough tour of the US Capitol and Capitol Hill, you will head down to some of the local bars to enjoy beer and chat with other tour goers about past and present American policies.

About Connect: For over 30 years, Connect Coach Bus Rental Washington DChas been providing clients with a unique, memorable, and reliable transportation experience. Offering the highest quality luxury vehicles, in addition to less formal options for everyday transportation, our professionals are ready to work with you to plan around your local or national travel events. Due to our first class-class service standards, we promise an unparalleled level of service that respects both your safety and your time.

SOURCE Connect

http://www.bbcexpress.com

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Washington DC Ground Transportation Service, Connect, Provides a List of the Top DC Tours to Take This Year - PRNewswire

How Space Travel and Politics Will Shape Fashion in 2020 – Sourcing Journal

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In fashion, the year 2020 not only represents the deadline for Greenpeaces Detox campaign to eliminate hazardous chemicals from clothing production, it will also be a year that brings global politics and space exploration to the runway, according to Lyst.

In the Year in Fashion 2019 report, the global fashion search platform peered into its crystal ball to identify five cultural trends that will influence fashion in 2020.

Heres a look at the next year in fashion.

Similar to Y2K, the year 2020 has been a source of inspiration for sci-fi storytellers for decades. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that fashion is feeling futuristic vibes too. Holographic fabrics, outerwear that mimics the look of space suits and otherworldy styling are among the trends Lyst has identified as trends to watch for Spring/Summer 2020.

S/S 2020 Louis Vuitton

Expect the fashion trend to lift off, Lyst said, when testing of SpaceXs reusable rocket and new human-crewed spacecrafts begin testing in 2020.

If you think the past three years of trade wars and Brexit have been turbulent for fashion, just wait until the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle is in full swing. A turbulent political year, Lyst said, creates cultural tensions that affect consumer mindsets worldwide.

What those tensions will be is unknown, but now that cause fashion and fashion bearing political messages have become de rigueur on the runway and on high streets across the globe, expect to see designers voice their opinions on everything from equality to climate change.

With the upcoming U.S. elections, we predict to see even more political fashion statements from politicians, brands and retailers in 2020, Lyst said.

Every Olympics shines a spotlight on the host city, but what Sochi, Vancouver and even Athens lacked in style, Tokyo will more than make up for it. At least 600,000 overseas spectators are expected to visit Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic games, meaning they will have firsthand exposure to the citys unique style subcultures.

Tokyo street style

With all eyes on Japan 2020, prepare to be inspired by bold Harajuku street style and cult Japanese labels, Lyst said, naming Sacai, Undercover, Visvim and Neighborhood as among some of the most covetable names. Searches for Japanese brands, Lyst said, increased 8 percent this year.

The days of Jacquemus Le Chiquito bag, the 4.25-inch handbag that went from being meme fashion to becoming a coveted It item, may be numbered.

Jacquemus Le Chiquito bag was the It bag of 2019.

Following several seasons that saw handbag sizes shrink by 40 percent, Lyst predicts fashion will swing back to oversized handbags. Specifically, the supersized shopper from the early 00s. Lyst named soft leather styles by brands like Little Liffner and The Row as bags to watch.

While 2019 saw designers like Pyer Moss and Molly Goddard break out from flying under the radar, and heritage brands like Bottega Veneta enjoy a revival, a new class of brands is poised to emerge.

Based on fast-growing search terms over the past six months, Lyst suggests that 2020 will be a big year for ultra-feminine labels from Copenhagen like Rotate Birger Christensen, which has the party dress down pat, and Cecilie Bahnsen, a purveyor of peasant and baby doll dresses.

S/S 2020 Cecilie Bahnsen

Brands with a streetwear element factor in, too. Italian streetwear brand GCDS, minimalist label ALYX and Marine Serre, which got a stamp of approval by Beyonce this year when she wore the designers crescent top, leggings and boots to a basketball game, are picking up momentum, Lyst reported.

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How Space Travel and Politics Will Shape Fashion in 2020 - Sourcing Journal

Visualized: The Race to Invest in the Space Economy – Visual Capitalist

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Humans have long viewed outer space as the final frontier.

Our thirst for exploration has brought whole nations together to create more advanced technologiesall in the pursuit of discovering the outer reaches of the universe.

Todays infographic from ProcureAM highlights the exciting journey humans have taken into outer space, and the economic boom across industries as a result of this quest for discovery.

With an ever-expanding universe, how far have we gone?

Humans have been fascinated with space for millennia, using the planets and stars to navigate, keep time, and discover scientific facts about the universe.

Since the 1960s, humans have also been traveling into space and pushing the limits of our technological and physical boundaries with each excursion.

A Brief History: Humans in Space

Nations around the world have used these trips and technological milestones to drastically improve life.

Reusable rockets and advanced satellite technology enable greater innovation on Earth through higher-quality broadband internet, 5G cellular networks, and the Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices.

Three major sectors are dominating the global space economy today:

Can lower costs, new technology, and increased commercial activity make space the next trillion-dollar industry?

Investments in space-related industries have shot up in recent years, rising from US$1.1 billion in 2000-2005 up to $10.2 billion between 2012-2018.

This meteoric growth is due to fewer barriers in the space industry, which was previously restricted to governments or the ultra-wealthy. Private sector companies are responsible for much of the growth. Since 2000, Goldman Sachs estimates that $13.3 billion has been invested into newly launched space startups.

These companies, backed by titans such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, are pledging to support innovations from the practical to the fantastical, to boldly go where none have gone before:

And with recent technological advancements, these goals are edging closer to reality.

For example, take space tourism. While costs are still astronomical, Blue Origin and Virgin Atlantic are banking on the idea of the first space vacations taking place as early as 2020and growing in popularity from there.

Advances in satellite and rocket technology mean that costs are declining across the entire commercial space economy.

Because of this, the global space industry may jump light years ahead in the next few decades.

For the first time since our journey to the stars began, the final frontier is well within our grasp.

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Visualized: The Race to Invest in the Space Economy - Visual Capitalist

SETI Institute in the news October 31 – November 6, 2019 – SETI Institute

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Smart Gloves May Give Space Explorersa Helping Hand

The future of space exploration may well involve the use of drones to reach places that are difficult or dangerous for human explorers. Now the latest innovation in spacesuit technology would allow astronauts to control these robotic explorers with simple hand gestures. The NASA Haughton-Mars Project (HMP), SETI Institute, Mars Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Collins Aerospace, and Ntention announced their collaborative efforts have resulted in a successful field test of the "astronaut smart glove." Ntention, a Norwegian startup company, developed the smart glove technology and began collaborating with HMP after SETI Institute senior planetary scientist Pascal Lee saw a demonstration. Several outlets, including Inverse, covered the story:

"Astronauts on the Moon or Mars will want to fly drones for various reasons," said Lee. "For instance, to collect a sample that is out of reach or that needs to be isolated from contamination. Or to assist in a search and rescue operation. [W]e have been looking with NASA at how robotic flyers might assist astronauts in a variety of science and exploration tasks, including surveying, mapping, sampling, scouting, fetching, and inspecting."

Astronauts, limited by the mobility restrictions of protective pressurized suits, may find exploration less cumbersome and dangerous with the help of smart glove controlled drones:

"A smart glove-equipped spacesuit could be a solution," said Lee. "With it, astronauts could easily control a range of robotic assets, making science and exploration operations on the Moon, Mars and at other destinations more effective and productive."

How does one craft an interstellar message? Thats a question researchers have been working on since the early days of the SETI field. The Guardian ran a piece recently covering the challenges and insights that have arisen over the years:

The planetary astronomer Frank Drake undertook the first scientific attempt to determine whether we are alone in the galaxy at the Green Bank radio observatory in 1960. For four months, he spent several hours a day observing two nearby stars for any signs of intelligent life.

He came up empty-handed Still, Drake recognized the nascent search for extraterrestrial intelligence had a glaring blind spot. If we ever did hear from an alien, how would we go about designing a response?

For the next decade, Drake and some of the world's pre-eminent scientists devoted considerable intellectual energy to solving this problem.

Frank Drake, the creator of the Drake Equation, is frequently regarded as the father of SETI science for his pioneering early experiments in the field. Today he serves as Chair Emeritus on the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute, and the SETI Institute continues to explore this challenge:

Tomorrow, our messages will be even more sophisticated. The Seti Institute's Earthling project, for instance, is amassing a database of sounds submitted by users around the world, which will be electronically remixed to create unique songs that try to capture human music as a gestalt then broadcast into space.

You can learn more about the Earthling project and the creative behind it, composer and SETI Institute artist-in-residence Felipe Perez Santiago, at SETI.org.

Dr. Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor of astronomy, has suggested that alien life might be hiding quite close to home. Loeb thinks the surface of Earth's moon might be a prime target for researchers looking for extraterrestrial microbes. Lacking an atmosphere to destroy incoming meteors meteors that could contain alien life and because there is no geological activity, the surface of the moon is relatively pristine. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, weighed in on the idea in a recent piece featured in the Boston University News Service:

"One possibility is that life may have slammed into the moon from some other [planet], but if it was coming from farther away than our solar system, it becomes very difficult," said Shostak.

Biological organisms may be unable to survive the harshness of space in their journey across the universe to the moon, explained Shostak. "The desiccation, all the water would either be frozen or just escape as gas from the rock."

Then theres the space radiation, which would break organisms apart even more. These little microbes dont have life jackets, he said.

While Shostak is somewhat doubtful we'll find alien life on the moon, he acknowledges that we haven't seen sufficient evidence to rule it out either:

I think its good that he stimulates some thought on these things, said Shostak. On the other hand, you know, weve also got almost nothing on the moon. So, we dont really know.

Is Meeting our CosmicNeighbors a Bad Idea?

We are looking for extraterrestrials but are we ready to introduce ourselves? SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak appeared on TEDxMarin to present an "irreverent look" at whether introducing ourselves to the universe is such a good idea.

Big Picture Science

In last weeks episode, meet the powerhouse machines that lead the supercomputer pack in Supercomputer Showdown. In our previous week's episode, find out how the first exoplanet discovery led to 4,000 more and a Nobel Prize, in Nobel Efforts.

Facebook Live

Last time on Facebook Live, CEO Bill Diamond Interviews Science Advisory Board Chair Lucianne Walkowicz. Videos of all past Facebook Live events are on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SETIInstitute/

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SETI Institute in the news October 31 - November 6, 2019 - SETI Institute

Space Books and Gifts for Space Kids of all Ages – The Planetary Society

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Our own Emily Lakdawalla, Planetary Society Senior Editor and book lover, shares her 2019 list of space books for every age range, from infant to adult. She also presents a list of cool space gifts recommended by scientists and engineers. Bruce Betts provides a tantalizing tease for what could be a brief but massive shower of meteors. And theres much more to look for in the fall sky.

What is the new or relatively new name for the most distant object visited by a spacecraft?

The winner will be revealed next week.

Apollo 4 was the first launch of the Saturn V rocket.

Mat Kaplan: [00:00:00] Need a great space book? Emily has the list this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Mat Kaplan, of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. It's that time of year, Planetary Society senior editor, Emily Lakdawalla is back with her annual list of outstanding books for space nerds of all ages. She'll join me in moments to list just a few of her faves, and she'll read a few passages. You'll also hear my top picks, and we'll sample Emily's separate list of great gifts recommended by space professionals.

Bruce Betts is also ahead on this home team edition of our show. Here are three stories torn from the latest edition of The Downlink, the Planetary Society's weekly digest of space exploration and science headlines. Planetary Society editorial director [00:01:00] Jason Davis has more waiting for you at planetary.org/downlink.

Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft left asteroid Ryugu after spending nearly a year and a half collecting samples, creating an artificial crater, and deploying small probes. The spacecraft will return its two samples of Ryugu to earth in about a year. They might tell us more about the origin and evolution of the solar system.

Ultima Thule, no more. That wondrous Kuiper belt object, officially known till now as 2014 MU69, has been given the name Arrokoth by the International Astronomical Union. The Native American term means sky in the Powhatan/Algonquian language. The New Horizons spacecraft famously flew past it on New Year's Day, 2019. Ultima Thule was never more than a nickname provided by the mission team.

NASA's Mars Curiosity [00:02:00] Rover has detected seasonal changes in oxygen levels that scientists can't explain. The findings may be related to a similar ongoing mystery over fluctuating methane levels. There's a chance the changes could be linked to underground life. Though a non biological explanation is more likely, need we remind you that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Of course, I believe it's a grove of giant sequoias in the Valles Marineris with squirrels. Kidding. The Downlink has lots of links waiting for all of you who wanna explore these and other stories. No kidding.

Going now our friend and colleague, Emily Lakdawalla. I'll remind you again later, but all the books she recommends on her 2019 list can be found in the blog at planetary.org, along with the gift guide. Emily, like you, books have meant, right from the beginning, and still today, mean so much to [00:03:00] me. I remember, in fact, I still have the Life Science Library that my parents bought us. And my favorite volume in that library, the book simply called Space, uh, which gave me a good deal of my introduction to, uh, astronomy, and astronautics, and space exploration.

And then, uh, science fiction as well, not something that you cover, uh, except for the, I guess, the youngest kids, there's a little bit of fiction here, but I still have some, um, some old Robert Heinlein young adult books here. Books are that important to you too, aren't they?

Emily L.: Yeah, I've been a, a huge reader all my life. So it was a little difficult when I had children and I didn't have as much time as I used to, to just get lost in books. Um, like you say, fantasy, Sci-Fi, um, non-fiction. I used to devour everything. I remember a book that changed my life was The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker, which I read as an eighth grader, which had the gall to question established science and propose this revolutionary idea that dinosaurs might actually be [00:04:00] birds. And it's just been delightful to watch that whole thing unfold. So books are very important to me.

And you know, when I became a parent, I wasn't reading so many books intended for adults, but I was reading, consuming and reading aloud a great many books for children. And it occurred to me that I could have a little fun by, uh, suggesting to other parents books that would be good, that were about space, kind of, you know, dovetail both of my interests being a, being a parent and, and of course space exploration. The delightful thing about that is that after doing this for now, 11 years, I get shipped boxes and boxes of books all year long and it's like Christmas every day I get one of these, I get to open it up and see what's inside.

Mat Kaplan: Great fun. As you know, I, I get, uh, some of these as well, but they tend to be intended for adults. I had the best time, some of my best parental memories are of reading to my daughters who I am delighted to say are both avid readers now and, and very fine [00:05:00] writers. And I'm sure that that was very much tied to their exposure to books as young kids.

Emily L.: Oh, definitely. My kids are, are of course avid readers too. And um, it was really important to me that I read books to them that weren't just, you know, informative and had good a story, but the language had to be enjoyable as well. The word choices rich, the rhythm of the sentences, fun to read aloud. And so I, I always look for that in the books that I recommend to my annual book list.

Mat Kaplan: Well, so I don't think that we've ever thrown away a children's book because Adrian was planning for grandchildren right from the start. And so we have shelves downstairs. You have on this newest list, a bunch of, uh, books that, uh, probably belong on some of those shelves. Let's, uh, start going through some of these. And, and I know you've got them divided up by, uh, age range.

Emily L.: Yes. When I recommend book for, books for kids, I'm, I'm not kidding, I, I recommend books for all ages zero to 18. And so to help people out in selecting books for their own kids or their niblings or, whoever, um, I do divide them by age. It's [00:06:00] funny. D-, different years I get a more or less of different age range books. This year was a particularly good year for books for ages around four to seven. The kind that you read aloud to a child who's just beginning to learn to read for themselves. There were some great ones this year.

Mat Kaplan: Okay. And you start even younger than that as you said, zero to, what is it, zero to three?

Emily L.: Mm-hmm [affirmative]-

Mat Kaplan: Even infants, um, get 'em while they're young.

Emily L.: [Laughs]. I have to say some of the books in that category are really more for the parents than they are for the children, but they're good, uh, you know, durable board books. But let's begin, I think with a book from this four to seven year old range. Um, the first one I, I'd like to talk about is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I Know Exactly What You Are. Uh, which was written by, um, Dr Julia Kregenow, who's a, uh, actually an astronomer at Penn state, um, illustrated by Carmen Saldana. And this, as you might imagine, it's a retelling, a rephrasing of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star poem. But Kregenow has, has actually managed to [00:07:00] compress into that rhyme a huge amount of information about different kinds of stars across the galaxy. And, um, I'd like to read a little selection of it if I could-

Mat Kaplan: Please do.

Emily L.: So this is, uh, toward the middle of the book. Our sun's average as stars go, formed 5 billion years ago, halfway through its life so far, twinkle midsize, yellow star.

Mat Kaplan: [Laughs]. That's wonderful. What a perfect little [crosstalk 00:07:25].

Emily L.: Hold on.

Mat Kaplan: Oh, there's more?

Emily L.: There's more. I want to read a couple of stanzas. Two stars make a binary or a triple if there's three, some are so low, just like ours, twinkle, twinkle little stars. Quarter trillion stars all stay bound within the Milky way. Dusty spiral with a bar, twinkle galaxy of stars. Stars have planets orbiting rocky or gaseous moons and rings. Earth's unique with life so far, thank you to our precious star.

Mat Kaplan: Oh, that was lovely. Thank you. I think that's one for my, uh, [00:08:00] going on four-year-old grandson.

Emily L.: It's so enjoyable to read, because she's r-, she's really, uh, like, I said, packed a lot of information. Each page has a wonderful illustration with it. Each has some- some facts that'll really teach parents about stars, and yet it still has the proper rhythm, and is hugely enjoyable to read.

Mat Kaplan: For adults too. I mean, that's just fun to listen to and to read.

Emily L.: Absolutely. And that's what I... Those are the kinds of books that I really love, and- and pull off the shelf again and again.

Mat Kaplan: All right, any others for this age group, or do we move on?

Emily L.: Yeah, I had one other I wanted to recommend from this one. It's not inverse, uh, it's just a- a pro story written by Dean Robbins, illustrated by Sean Rubin. It's called The Astronaut Who Painted the Moon. And it's about Alan Bean-

Mat Kaplan: Hm.

Emily L.: ... the Apollo astronaut who became, uh, a space artist after he returned to earth. Robbins talked with Bean doing research for this. And so it's a, it's a very special story about, um ... It's about the Apollo mission, but it's really more about space art and how Bean wanted to use [00:09:00] art to communicate about the- the wonder of exploring the moon with the rest of the public.

Mat Kaplan: And, of course, we only just, uh, celebrated Alan Bean with the, uh, marking of the 50th anniversary of, uh, of Apollo 12.

Emily L.: And I- I'd like to read a selection from this one, too, if I could?

Mat Kaplan: Sure.

Emily L.: Alan's friends asked him about his time in space. "What was it like up there?" He tried to explain the moon's barren beauty, but words weren't enough, and his photographs just showed a grim and gloomy place. There was so much more to the moon than that. So much magic and mystery. How could Alan share his story so others would understand? He pulled out his paints and brushes. Alan knew he was the only artist ever to leave the earth. The only artist ever to see the moon up close. Maybe a painting could show how it felt to be in outer space.

Mat Kaplan: And of course, uh, since then, we've had a number of other artists, uh, follow Alan Bean into space. [00:10:00] And it's just, it's wonderful to think about not just the- the visual artist, but the musicians and others who've, uh, made it up to the international space station and elsewhere above our heads. It's... Does this book contain any of Alan Bean's actual work?

Emily L.: It does not. It, uh, contains, uh- uh, really wonderful illustrations by Sean Rubin, but it doesn't contain Alan Bean's art. It does, um, I think inspire, uh, parents who are pretty much all hyper-connected to the internet these days to, uh, maybe, Google and look for his really very unusual artworks. And it... The book does talk about how, um, his art is not representational, it's abstract. And it's about communicating the feeling of being on the moon, um, the, kind of, human experience of it, as much as it is about showing what the moon looked like to his eyes.

Mat Kaplan: Now I've always enjoyed his, um, his work as well. And I'm looking at the cover of the book and, uh, it's a great illustration by this, uh, Sean Rubin.

Emily L.: And I should mention that Dean Robbins wrote one of the books that I recommended last year, which was called Margaret and the Moon, about Margaret Hamilton. So [00:11:00] he's clearly a space fan, and I look forward to more from him.

Mat Kaplan: Nice, yeah, a return visit, that's great. Okay, let's move on.

Emily L.: Um, moving up a little bit, we're, uh, going up in age to, um, maybe, older elementary school, to kids who are, uh, reading chapter books, um, easy chapter books. And, so, they're looking for short, maybe exciting books with great illustrations. And I have an unusual one to recommend this time around. I'm always a little fearful when I'm contacted by somebody who self-publishes a book, because... Uh, it's not because people can't write well, if they, um, you know, aren't part of the writing establishment. But, um, often they try to publish their books without having any professional editing done. And that, I'll tell you, is a huge mistake.

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Emily L.: Editors save lives. And, so, um, when I'm contacted by amateur authors or, you know, people who are doing the self-publishing route, I always tell them, "You have to understand. Uh, first of all, I don't recommend you send a book to me that hasn't been edited by somebody who has some skill. And second of all, I almost never recommend [00:12:00] self-published books because they just don't meet that editorial quality."

But this one, uh, really favorably surprised me. It's written by a software engineer named Douglas Meredith, titled Generation Mars, illustrated by Luis Peres. It's a story of the first generation of children born on Mars, and it's intended to be the first in a series. And, I don't know, I have a memory of reading a book, kind of, similar to this, um, as a child that featured children protagonists, about my age, um, experiencing a- a very realistic science fiction future. And it really fired my imagination.

And I- I believe that this story can really do the same thing for kids of that age. Could put them in the boots of these children who are walking out on the martian surface for the first time. The first kids on Mars. And I think it's just a... It has the potential to be a really great and inspiring s- story for that age.

Mat Kaplan: Well that's exactly what Robert Heinlein was up to with his, uh, books for young adults, mostly written in the 1950s, that I certainly identified with. And it [00:13:00] drew me in better than, uh, any of the nonfiction space books that I had started out with, before I discovered Heinlein and the rest of science fiction. Have you got a sample from this one?

Emily L.: I do. So I thought that I'd read part of the book where, um, the child does, the main character, Cass , actually walks out on the surface of Mars for the first time. The outer door rolled open noiselessly, and beyond was the surface. Cass could see a flat red plain that stretched from the air-locked door into the distance. Here and there were round buildings, and rovers, and rover parts stacked neatly.

She stepped out of the air-lock and felt a moment of panic when she looked up the sky. It went on forever, and was not blue like the sky in the town. It was shades of yellow and tan, except for a hazy bluish area around the sun. The sun! That was the real thing! She'd seen pictures of all this, of course, but standing beneath it now for the first time, she felt small and scared. Her head swam and she looked down. "That's quite a sky isn't it, children," [00:14:00] said Sally. "It can be a little scary at first, I know, but come out, gather around, and we'll hold hands while we look."

And then I'll skip forward a little bit. Cass held the gloved hand of the kid to either side of her. She was afraid to look up. She focused on her breathing, counting three for in, and three for out, and looked at the ground to study herself. Her booted feet were huge. She scratched at the red dirt with one, dragging it forward and back slightly, then in a small arc, then in a big curve that became a C. She smiled. She looked up into that endless yellow sky. She let go of her classmates' hands, and she raised her arms up toward that sky, and she wooped. She-

Mat Kaplan: Huh.

Emily L.: ... opened her mouth and let out the loudest, wildest, craziest holler ever heard on the planet.

Mat Kaplan: That is wonderful! Nice work-

Emily L.: [Laughs]

Mat Kaplan: ... uh, Douglas Meredith.

Emily L.: Yeah, it's, uh, it's enjoyable, and I look forward to further installments in the series.

Mat Kaplan: And the cover of the book just happens to be, I- I assume it is a depiction of exactly this scene that you just, uh, [00:15:00] read an excerpt to, uh- uh, from, uh, as these kids in their- their v-, uh, [laughs] very, I don't know, maybe their 22nd century, uh, spacesuits, step out onto the surface of Mars.

Emily L.: Yeah, and I should mention that the illustrations in this book are really beautiful quality. They're full-color paintings, um, and they're just gorgeous.

Mat Kaplan: And those are by, uh, Luis Peres-

Emily L.: Yes.

Mat Kaplan: ... as I see in your list. Let me mention-

Emily L.: Oh ...

Mat Kaplan: ... one. It just happens to be one I'm familiar with, because it's by Sarah Cruddas, who, uh, with a forward by the astronaut, Eileen Collins, uh, The Space Race: The Journey to the Moon and Beyond. Also, really well illustrated. I was very happy to see it in your, in your, uh, list this year. Uh, and it's a great book. Sarah's much better known in the U.K. than she is here, because she's a, kind of, a- a science television, um, personality over there. Uh, but it's, uh, it's a terrific book. Uh, just called the Space Race. And now, please... Sorry for the interruption, Emily, but, uh, go on.

Emily L.: So I've got a great book for the middle grade group. It's, um, it's a young [00:16:00] readers' version of a autobiography by Astronaut, Leland Melvin called Chasing Space. And Leland Melvin is probably best known on the internet right now for a, a his astronaut portrait featuring his two dogs-

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]

Emily L.: ... who are jumping all over him, uh, as he's wearing his, his orange flight suit. His, uh, story is really quite remarkable. He was actually drafted into the NFL. He played briefly for the Detroit Lions before being sidelined by a hamstring injury. He was actually on the Cowboys, uh, briefly but was cut before the season started. And he went on to grad school and then became an astronaut. Flew two missions aboard Atlantis, and, um, is now, uh, retired from the astronaut work. But he's, uh, doing a lot of work touring all over the country, um, giving, uh, talks, uh, supporting STEM education, especially for Black youth.

And I have to say, his autobiography is just gripping. There are so many moments in his story that could have ended all hope of having any kind of [00:17:00] distinguished future. And then there are all these kind of moments of grace where things just line up and are lucky for him. And of course, he's skilled and intelligent and, and all of that. His writing is really excellent. But he never fails to give a huge amount of credit to all the people who helped him along the way. And so, it's just, it's a delightful read. I haven't read the adult, the originally version. This is the young readers' edition. Um, but I assume it's, it's just as exciting. This is a, a fast read. And I'm, I'm [laughs] sure it covers, um, uh, most of the same material.

Mat Kaplan: I'll note that the adult version of, uh, Leland's book is, uh, on your gift guide, which we will address in a few minutes briefly. Uh, it's, it's a great book. And, and, man, this guy has lead an amazing life. Almost, uh, lost the opportunity to become an astronaut for reasons that we won't go into. It would give too much away of the story. But, uh, I agree, it's great and, and just a, a very nice guy as well. He's visited us at the Planetary Society.

Emily L.: Yeah. He really is. And the stories that he [00:18:00] tells, you know, he's, he's certainly faced the same kind of discrimination, um, all throughout his life as any other African American does. And he's also gotten extraordinary opportunities. He was actually... He actually had to be, had to be talked into applying for a job at NA-, at NASA. And he actually decided he wasn't going to apply to be an astronaut, because he figured it was too long a shot.

Mat Kaplan: Uh-huh [affirmative].

Emily L.: And then one of his friends, uh, applied and became an astronaut. And he was like, "This five foot tall guy became an astronaut," or five foot four, whatever, "became an astronaut. Then surely I could do it."

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]

Emily L.: And so, um, there's, there's all these moments. It's really wonderful. I have two selections, uh, from this book to read.

Mat Kaplan: Go for it.

Emily L.: Okay. So, the first is, uh, just after he's been, um, selected as an astronaut and he is, is talking about moving to Houston. "I bought a house in El Lago, the neighborhood where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lived at the time of the first moon landing. El Lago City Hall has an Astronaut Wall of Fame with photos of all the astronauts who had lived there. 48 at last count, including me. The house I found was simple but [00:19:00] beautiful, and I remember thinking, 'I could get used to this.'"

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]

Emily L.: "On the other hand, some people had to get used to me. El Lago wasn't a place that had seen a lot of Black people, let alone many Black astronauts. The day I moved in, a woman across the street stared at me, her arms folded across her chest. 'Hi,' I said, and waved to her. She shook her head and walked back into her house. Thanks for the warm welcome, neighbor."

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]

Emily L.: So, that's, uh, that's the first selection. And then here's, uh, the second one, um, is coming at a time when, uh, is actually right after, really the moment after the space shuttle, Columbia, broke up on re-entry. "Everyone at NASA Headquarters was focused on one thing, taking care of our families. Every astronaut chooses what's known as a crew astronaut casualty officer, or CACO, when he joins the Corps. The CACO's job is to help the family interact with NASA in case of a disaster. That afternoon, I was asked to provide support to the parents of David Brown, the flight surgeon who had been [00:20:00] along the crew. I wasn't David's CACO, but he was a close friend. David had lead the investigation to find out what happened to my hearing in the NBL pool. He helped me through one of the most difficult periods of my life with a patience and grace that I'll never forget."

Skipping down a little bit. "'My son is gone. There's nothing you can do to bring him back,' David's father said to me. 'But the biggest tragedy would be if we don't continue to fly in space to carry on his legacy.' Judge Brown's comments, his grace in the midst of grief hit me in the heart. I knew he was right. We couldn't give up. I couldn't give up. His strength and conviction in the shadow of what I know was one of the darkest moments of his life changed how I felt about my place in the world and gave me a whole new understanding of what it means to think of others first. In that moment, I dedicated myself to doing everything I could to honor his words."

Mat Kaplan: Oh, that's very effecting. Very nice selection.

Emily L.: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Highly recommend it to both kids and adults. And actually, that's true for, um, all the [00:21:00] middle grade and, um, teen books I recommend. Several of them are not even in-, intended for children. They're just accessible to children. And I, I often find that, uh, uh, books that work well for young, younger readers are really often the best explainers of experiences, of, uh, events. And, um, they really kind of get to the heart of what happens in major events.

Mat Kaplan: I've got a great example of one of those that, uh, you also included in this age range of 11 to 13. And it's, uh, Visual Galaxy, which is just as spectacular as you would expect a book to be from National Geographic. Uh, and you point out that it's about [laughs] ... It's not just pictures of the Milk Way Galaxy and others. It's really about the contents of the galaxy, including our own solar system. And it, it is gorgeous.

Emily L.: Yeah. It's a whole planetary science textbook.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah. More of Emily and her list of great books is coming right up. But first, how about The Great Courses Plus? [laughs] One of my favorite ways to, uh, to learn. [00:22:00] And it makes learning so easy and accessible. Thousands upon thousands of lectures on pretty much every topic that you can think of, and you can do it at any place, lunch break, the gym, washing dishes if you want. And here is a personal recommendation for you. I highly recommend Apollo 11: Lessons for All Time. It is The Great Courses Plus special tribute to the 50th Anniversary of Apollo.

Four lectures, each one of them taught by a wonderful specialist in their field looking at the geopolitics of Apollo, the moon itself, what the moon taught us about the rest of the solar system and beyond. It's absolutely outstanding. And here is that special deal that is available to you listeners. You can go to thegreatcoursesplus.com/planetary and get a free month, not just for this course but every one of the hundreds and hundreds of courses offered by The Great Courses Plus. That's it, [00:23:00] thegreatcoursesplus.com/planetary to start your free month. Have fun learning. Where to now?

Emily L.: In the oldest age group, I'm recommending, um, several books that, like I said, they're not marketed at teens. They're marketed at adults, just accessible to teens. And I have a, a really unusual and fun book, um, by James Trefil and Michael Summers called Imagined Life. It's a book about astrobiology. So, it explains in very plain language, um, really easy to understand how we are looking for life in the universe, what we're looking for when we're looking for life in the universe, why we are looking for life that might look similar to ours, uh, to life on our own planet, and, um, the, some of the techniques that we're trying to use and some of the places, in particular, the places where we're looking for life.

But astrobiology is a, is a funny sort of field. [laughs] There's not a whole lot of data. In fact, we only have one planet where we know that life exists. And so, it's a, it's a little hard to look for, because we don't know exactly what we're looking for. And so, uh, more and [00:24:00] half of this book goes in, into a little bit more speculative territory, where, um, they discussed some different kinds of planets where life might exist and, and how that life might have originated, um, might, uh, thrive and live and consume, uh, energy and reproduce on these different kinds of exoplanets that we've discovered.

And it begins each chapter with a little paragraph introduction that's, that just a little snippet of science fiction. The wonderful thing about this book is that it, it really provides a handbook for people who are interested in basing their science fiction writing on good, strong scientific fact. And so I highly recommend this book as a resource for anybody who wants to write hard science fiction.

Mat Kaplan: I was not aware of this book until I saw it in your list, but I have many books on my shelf, science fiction and nonfiction, about astrobiology, about, uh, the possibilities of alien life. And, eh, from that book that I mentioned right up front, [00:25:00] the, uh, Life Science Library, uh, uh, volume called Space, what stuck with me more than anything in that book were the speculative drawings and paintings of possible aliens, including, uh, this beautiful color illustration of these floating furry gas bags with cat eyes that people speculate could live in the atmospheres of a place like, uh, like Jupiter or the gas giants around the galaxy. Who knows, until we go out and look for ourselves? But this is great stuff and, uh, I, I wanna pick this one up.

Emily L.: Yeah. You know, the, uh, a long time ago before we had all these wonderful space missions, we definitely had to employ more artistic imagination to imagine what was going on on, on other worlds. Now it, it may seem like there's less of opportunity for that, but one of the things I like to say the most about space exploration, and really, actually, any kind of science in general, is that in order to discover something, especially in space, you have to imagine what [00:26:00] might be there first. You have to select missions and instruments that are designed for worlds you've never seen. And so there has to be this speculative imagination among the people who intend to explore planets. And so it's really great to see people who, who write science fact, who write nonfiction, get that opportunity to do all of this imagining.

Mat Kaplan: Fun stuff. I love this kind of speculation. Do you have something to read, uh, to us? A little sample of the Imagined Life?

Emily L.: Yeah. I'd like to read to you the transition that goes from the more fact filled, uh, first third of the book and into the more speculative last part of the book. In what follows, we introduce each new world with a short fictional sketch that describes how a human being, suitably protected and provided with sensing equipment, might experience the environment he or she is encountering. We have chosen this way of introducing the planets for one simple reason, as we have repeatedly stressed terrestrial life is the only kind of life we know about. It constitutes, therefore, the only living [00:27:00] organisms whose response to the new environment we can guess that with some hope of success. With this in mind, let's take a look at a world that we will call Icehein.

Mat Kaplan: Hm.

Emily L.: You're in a long dark tunnel, walled with solid ice. The only light seems to be coming from a far off volcanic vent that is spewing molten material from the planet's interior into your tunnel. At your feet, you dimly spot a pipe leading toward the tunnel's end. The air around it is warm and humid, and you see that it is squirting hot water to melt a clear path from the vents to the exit. Your stomach rumbles. Your trip here has made you hungry. You notice that around the volcanic vent are fields of tube worms, white and red. You sample one, not bad. Perhaps they be-

Mat Kaplan: [Laughs].

Emily L.: Perhaps they could become a staple of your diet here on this strange planet called Icehein. And so they go on to explain that, that Icehein is a water world. It's a, it's a large world with a huge ocean that's, uh, covered with a very [00:28:00] thick layer of ice. So it's a little bit like, um, Europa, but, [laughs], icier, waterier, and a standalone world as opposed to a moon of Jupiter. They do get to Europa later on in the book, and to many other more, uh, unusual kinds of planets. So it's, it's a really an enjoyable read.

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Space Books and Gifts for Space Kids of all Ages - The Planetary Society

From ‘A Trip to the Moon’ to ‘Interstellar’: ‘Space on the Silver Screen’ explores it all – Duke Chronicle

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In 1902, a rocket landed in the moons eye, and audiences were in awe. Pirated versions of George Mlis silent black-and-white film A Trip to the Moon screened in theaters across the United States to rows of captivated eyes. That year gave birth to a new genre of film one that would later spawn multi-million dollar budget deals, elaborate theme parks and zeitgeist-defining, imagination-widening stories.

That year, the space movie began.

The genre has since rocketed to new heights in Hollywood. Since the space race of the 50s and 60s, when spaceships and moon-landings became reality, studios started churning out space movies, and they never stopped. Just this year, the tradition has persisted in blockbusters Star Wars, Ad Astra and Avengers: Endgame. As far as the eye can see, the space movie is here to stay.

So what makes a good space movie, then, in a world of so many? While there are certainly several factors, Duke professor and Science Communication program director Jory Weintraub wants us to think about about the science, or lack thereof, behind our favorite films.

For a few years now hes hosted a biannual event, Science in the Movies, that brings together science and film experts in a panel that dissects the science in various movie clips. In the past, the event has covered cinematic depictions of dinosaurs, mental illness and natural disasters. This Thursday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, a panel of three will tackle, for the second time, one of Weintraubs favorite topics: Space on the Silver Screen.

I just love this topic so much, Weintraub said. And especially since this is the year of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, I thought, Okay. Its been long enough lets do this one again.

The panel will include Tony Rice, a NASA ambassador and WRAL contributor, Dr. Rachel Smith, head of the Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Lab at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and Dr. Marsha Gordon, professor of film studies at NC State University and co-host of Movies on the Radio on WUNCs The State of Things. Weintraub will moderate, presenting clips from space movies through the decades beginning, of course, with the one that started it all: A Trip to the Moon.

A film doesnt have to be totally scientifically sound to have critical value. Take A Trip to the Moon, for example; it was made long before space exploration became a possibility, and it features anthropomorphized planets and insectoid lunar animals. Instead, Gordon appreciates its fantastical take on space travel.

What I like about [A Trip to the Moon] in the context of thinking about space movies is just sharing with a contemporary audience what a filmmaker dreamed up over 100 years ago as the way youd imagine getting from earth to the moon and back again, Gordon wrote in an email. Its really quite delightful.

Another movie that the event panel will discuss is Stanley Kubricks 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In addition to its dramatic aesthetic power, Dr. Gordon finds the film prescient in its imagination of artificial intelligence.

2001 raised questions about, for example, what might happen if computers could think and feel, Gordon wrote. It also raised the specter of AI taking control in a nefarious way that is a rather serious issue that we will all be confronted with in the relatively near future.

While many directors would openly admit to taking creative liberties in their depictions of science, a recent bevy of space-themed blockbusters have prided themselves on their scientific accuracy. In the making of Interstellar, Christopher Nolan enlisted astrophysicist Kip Thorne, and conversations about the wormhole-filled movies scientific authenticity abounded in popular culture. Nolan even followed up the films release with a book written by Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar.

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The general consensus in the scientific community is that Interstellar really does take inspiration from sound theoretical astrophysics although it certainly takes some creative license, as all movies branded as fiction necessarily do. But not all films that claim scientific accuracy are so well-researched. Weintraub wants to use these examples good and bad as a way of teaching the public what is true about space and space exploration.

I definitely am an unabashed science geek so Im not ashamed to say that, Weintraub said. But I think a lot of people you almost have to sneak [science] in in the form of entertainment.

Like the universe we live in, the audience of Space on the Silver Screen knows no boundaries it is for science geeks, film freaks and laypeople alike.

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From 'A Trip to the Moon' to 'Interstellar': 'Space on the Silver Screen' explores it all - Duke Chronicle

ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano will be Controlling a Rover From Space – Universe Today

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Update: The Analog-1 experiment was a complete success! Astronaut Parmitano completed all the requirements within the specified time frame (one hour). This test is the first step in validating the teleoperation technology.

NASA has been rather up-front about its desire to send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars in the coming years. They are joined by multiple space agencies (such as the ESA, Roscosmos, the CNSA and the IRSO) who also wish to conduct their first crewed missions beyond Earth. However, what is often overlooked is the role teleoperated missions will play in the near-future where humans and robots explore hand-in-hand.

For example, the ESA has embarked upon a series of experiments collectively named Analog-1, where astronauts control robots from space. Yesterday (Nov. 18th), ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano took control of a robot in the Netherlands from the ISS. This experiment and others like it will help prepare astronauts for future missions that will involve the exploration of hazardous or inaccessible off-world environments.

The rover (known as Interact) was created as part of the Multi-Purpose End To End Robotics Operations Network (METERON) project, which seeks to create communication networks, robot interfaces, and hardware to enable astronauts to remotely control robot explorers from orbit. These robots will be capable of scouting out landing sites for future missions, locating resources, and preparing habitats for astronauts.

The key to this process is a specially-developed space internet that can connect an operator to locations up to 10,000 km (6,200 mi) away either between orbit and the surface or in distant locations on Earth. This connection allowed Luca to remain in contact with the rover, as well as to see, and feel everything it experienced albeit with a time delay.

This is crucial when it comes to teleoperation since exploration targets are so far from Earth. To remotely-operate a lunar rover, mission controllers have to contend with delays that are seconds or minutes long. From the Earth to the Moon, signals only take a few seconds to get there and back. But for missions to Mars, the delay can be anywhere from 4 to about 24 minutes (depending on where Earth and Mars are in relation to each other).

In the end, conventional connections only allow mission controllers to send commands and receive data in return. The METERON project, on the other hand, allows controllers to see and even feel what the robot does in spite of a time delay. Control is provided using two laptops and a Sigma7 force-feedback joystick with six-degrees of motion. This haptic joystick lets the controller experience what the rover itself senses from its environment.

Connecting the rover and the operator is no simple task, seeing as how signals from the ISS make a round trip of about 144,400 km (89,725 mi). Meanwhile, the ISS is traveling around the Earth at a speed of 29,000 km/h (18,000 mph). These signals are sent to a series of satellites that are in orbits of up to 36,000 km (22,370 mi) from the surface.

The signals are then transmitted to a US ground station in New Mexico, to NASAs Houston, and then through a transatlantic cable to Europe. All of this leads to a rather significant time delay, but one which is manageable thanks to the advanced infrastructure built by NASA, the ESA, and other partner agencies.

The first sessions saw Luca driving the Interact rover through an obstacle course located in a hangar at Valkenburg in the Netherlands near the ESAs European Science Research and Technology Center (ESTEC). Backdrops featuring lunar landscapes were placed around the course, which consisted of a series of cones placed on top of soil designed to simulate lunar regolith.

The ultimate goal is to conduct this kind of remote control exploration from stations like the Lunar Gateway or the Mars Base Camp. These stations and the ability to teleoperate rovers on the surface is a key aspect of establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon and conducting crewed exploration missions to Mars aka. NASAs Moon to Mars plan.

The next step in the Analog-1 experiment will consist of a simulation scheduled to take place in about a weeks time that will involve a full-on simulated lunar environment. This test will assess whether or not a human-operated robot can carry out geological surveys and explorations of hard-to-access places.

A team at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, will act as a science team and monitor the experiment. To complete the illusion of a lunar mission, they will instruct and advise Luca on potential research targets, which will include whether the simulated lunar rocks encountered by the Interact rover merit further scientific analysis or should be discarded.

Similar Analog experiments are being conducted by engineers in Germany who are using the METERON system to control a rover in Canada. These experiments are not only validating the sophisticated technology involved; they are also demonstrating the value of human-robotic cooperation in space which will play a central role in future exploration plans.

Meanwhile, ministers from the ESAs member states will be convening later this month (Nov. 27th-28th) at the Space19+ in Seville, Spain, to discuss the Agencys scientific goals for the future. Given the importance of teleoperations and the technology behind it, METERON and the Analog experiments are sure to come up!

Be sure to check out this video of the Interact rover being teleoperated:

Further Reading: ESA

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ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano will be Controlling a Rover From Space - Universe Today

Houston can stay the Space City within medical and health innovation – InnovationMap

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Space has captured the imagination of mankind since we first looked up at the night sky. We've reached out to touch the stars, and now endeavor to inhabit them.

Earlier this month, a prominent collection of experts on space health attended the first Space Health Innovation Conference co-hosted by the University of California, San Francisco, and Houston-based Translational Research Institute for Space Health.

As NASA eyes a return to the moon with the Artemis Program, attendees of the Space Health Innovation Conference advanced a national discussion of human space exploration by seeking to manage the many health risks associated with humans during space flight. The event included NASA leadership, innovative companies, commercial space vendors, as well as leaders from the space health and life sciences communities.

The conference's goal is to inform, inspire and invite participation in the exciting challenge of optimizing health and medical management in space environments.

With its headquarters in Houston, TRISH partnered with the Human Research Program at Johnson Space Center to source and seed the best emerging health technologies to support NASA's space exploration. TRISH is based out of the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and is a consortium that includes the rich space pedigree of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. The Space Health Innovation Conference is the result of a grant by TRISH to UCSF. TRISH has also hosted Space Health focused events at the MIT Media lab and at Caltech.

TRISH's main charge is finding disruptive health technologies and new scientists to fuel the US Space Program. TRISH explores emerging areas of science that support health and human performance in the harsh environment of microgravity and high radiation. TRISH funds novel research in artificial intelligence, omics, human computer interfaces, behavioral health and beyond. Projects all share one goal: predicting and protecting future Mars explorers. And NASA leadership encourages TRISH to take the risks that could mean huge leaps forward.

Innovation and risk tolerance are hallmarks of Houston and its rich history. From the city's humble origins, to Jesse Jones's national financial leadership, to the building of the Houston Ship Channel, and to the explosion of the energy industry, Houston has always dared to leap forward. President John F. Kennedy's iconic speech entitled "Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort" declared the US ambition to embrace the new frontier of space and conquer the moon. Humble Oil donated the 1,620 acres for JSC to Rice University, who then sold the land to NASA for $20. (Humble Oil would later become Exxon Mobil.)

JSC housed flight control, space flight training, and the NASA Astronaut Corps. JSC gave Houston the nickname "Space City", which led to the naming of the local NBA team to be the Rockets and the local MLB team to be the Astros. JSC's support for the astronaut corps began with the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, which evaluated the Apollo astronauts upon return to Earth. And the Christopher C Kraft Mission Control facility has directed all crewed space flights since the early Gemini program. An American flag flies atop Mission Control at JSC every day that an American is in space. That flag has flown continuously since November 2, 2000.

Nearly two decades since Bill Shepherd first boarded the International Space Station, the conversation around supporting human health and performance in space continues. And Houston will continue to lead the way for all our sakes, in space and on terra firma.

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James Hury is the deputy director and chief innovation officer at Houston-based Translational Research Institute for Space Health.

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Houston can stay the Space City within medical and health innovation - InnovationMap