Daily Archives: June 28, 2017

SpaceFlight Insider

June 27th, 2017

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. SpaceFlight Insider is proud to announce it has joined Patreon, a crowdfunding website that is a simple way for our loyal audience to contribute every month to our coverage of the space industry and get exclusive rewards in return!

For the last four years, we have been endeavoring,with a team of hard-working individuals, to produce daily content in the form of stories, exclusive interviews, a photographic library, videos, live webcasts, and more. In total, more than 100 pieces of content are produced each month along with coverage of launches from around the world.

In working to make our audience an insider regarding all things space, the SFI team has created one of the best launch calendars currently in existence, an ever-expanding gallery of photographs and video packages, a mission monitor page, that, unlike most, provides all the essentials to track missions in one central location and a database of launch vehicles, spacecraft and centers called the Hangar.

At present, SpaceFlight Insider is the only comparable media outlet to host live webcasts during launches at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. We hope to expand that to other locations in the near future.

However, providing these services is a labor of love for the SpaceFlight Insider team. Regular travel expenses, equipment procurement, and maintenance, as well as paying editors, writers, and photographers, consumes much of what funds SFI has managed to acquire so far. All of these efforts require a great deal of infrastructure, manpower, and coordination to achieve.

We at SFI want to create a place where people can turn to for all the information they want regarding space exploration and development. The team aims to deliver high-quality video, audio, still imagery, and much more to give you an insiders view of the whole industry and we take your questions directly to those officials within NASA and other space-related organizations who can answer them.

SFI offers all of its services for free, but we could use your help to keep it that way. We ask those of you who are able, to help us not only maintain what we have doneso far but also to take even larger, bolder steps. We believe that with Patreon, this will allow us to truly make you the insider our name implies.

You can pledge any amount you want for as long as you feel comfortable. However, at five dollars, were going to start giving back to you. Head over to our Patreon page to see what we offer and what works best for you. Contribute what you feel is fair. If only one-third of our daily viewers were to contribute one dollar a month, thats just 12 dollars a year SpaceFlight Insider would finally be able to bring you the level of access that weve envisioned and that you deserve.

Our team has decades of experience covering the space program and we are focused on providing you with the absolute latest on all things space. If we cant pay the bills, let alone our staff which currently consists of mostly volunteers and hard-working space enthusiasts then we cant do everything we can to share the thrill of space exploration with the world.

If you like space and want more space news, launch videos, images, and podcasts, then help us by becoming a Patron of SpaceFlight Insider.

Tagged: Lead Stories Patreon SpaceFlight Insider

SpaceFlight Insider is a space journal working to break the pattern of bias prevalent among other media outlets. Working off a budget acquired through sponsors and advertisers, SpaceFlight Insider has rapidly become one of the premier space news outlets currently in operation. SFI works almost exclusively with the assistance of volunteers.

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SpaceFlight Insider has joined Patreon! - SpaceFlight Insider

Editors note: Canada Day 2017 marks the sesquicentennial of Confederation. While the anniversary is a chance to reflect on the past, The Conversation Canada asked some of our academic authors to look down the road a further 150 years - or Canada +150. What will our world and other worlds be like in 2167? Scientist Michael Dixon suggests there will be a distinctly Canadian advantage when it comes to growing crops on Mars.

Canadian researchers are leading an effort to grow crops in space, paving the way for humanity to live on other worlds and push the frontiers on Earth.

Food is the main obstacle to long-term space exploration. It limits how far away from Earth we can travel and how long we can stay in space.

We can stock enough food for inhabitants of the International Space Station or even for travel to the moon and back. But if we are to travel to Mars and support long-term exploration missions, we need bio-regenerative, self-sustaining food production systems. Or, in simpler terms, space farms.

Farming in space is probably one of the biggest challenges we will have to overcome if we are ever going to spend extended periods on the red planet within the next 150 years. But its a challenge Canadians can definitely lead in tackling.

Although people have signed up to be a part of the first human settlement on Mars, our next home planet is more likely to be one with fewer environmental challenges.

Mars has a miserable climate. Its average temperature is below -60, its atmospheric pressure is less than one per cent of Earths and made up largely of carbon dioxide, and it can be rather windy and dusty for long periods. There are also the dangers of radiation exposure, and without a molten core like ours on Earth meaning virtually no magnetic field the planets environment would have to be significantly altered if we were to ever live there.

However, thats not to say we wont be hanging out on the red planet. When Canada turns 300, we will have hundreds of space explorers spending decades searching for life on Mars. I say decades because a round trip takes two-and-a-half years, so when we do go, we will want to make it worth our while. This means setting up enclosed housing, research facilities and space farms. This is where controlled environment systems will come in.

Canada is among the worlds leaders in biological life support research and technology development. This is because when it comes to farming, the severe conditions of space are similar to those in the northern parts of our country. Trying to grow a tomato on Mars is much like trying to grow a tomato in a snowbank: You cant without creating a controlled environment.

At the University of Guelph, we are moving toward growing crops in space with the research we are conducting on controlled environment systems. Our ongoing work in this area has revealed that plants can function under some strange environmental conditions such as very low atmospheric pressures and much less oxygen than on Earth. This means we dont need enclosed structures that precisely replicate Earths atmosphere for plant-based life support systems on Mars.

In 150 years, we will grow food on Mars in inflatable structures. Inside, everything will be designed to ensure the highest crop yield. The intensity of light and even its colour or spectrum will be tailored for each individual crop. Air flow and pressure, temperature, nutrients, carbon dioxide levels and humidity will be strictly controlled to create the ideal atmosphere in which plants can thrive.

We will grow a conventional array of crops associated with a balanced and nourishing vegetarian diet. Most of the vitamins and minerals we need are available in plants and we will get our protein from soybeans and similar crops.

This huge variety of plants, or candidate crops, will be neatly packed or layered into a small space the opposite of the expansive Canadian prairies. These compact crops will be produced using limited amounts of water and zero waste, because away from Earth, you cant afford to throw anything away. We must learn to recycle everything, as it will be a matter of life and death extreme agriculture at its most challenging.

The work we are doing at Guelph is designed not only for space, but for Canadians and others worldwide who may live in places where food security is a problem and extreme agriculture is the only way to address it.

Today, we spend millions of dollars flying perishable food to Northern Canada, such as buying strawberries from Mexico for sale in Yellowknife. This doesnt make sense.

Sustaining our presence in the North depends on food production in the same way that sustaining our presence on Mars will. By creating these systems, we will be able to inhabit challenging parts of Canada, such as the North, and other parts of the world, such as the deserts of the Middle East.

Space exploration generates invaluable technology on all fronts. For food production, space exploration will enable us to learn how to grow crops almost anywhere and with as little impact on the environment as possible.

By the time Canadas 300th birthday rolls around, we will have overcome the challenge of living on Mars and the huge advancements we will have made to get there will serve not only space exploration but our own survival here on Earth.

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Space farms will feed astronauts and earthlings - The Conversation CA