Monthly Archives: April 2024

Mars is fairly attractive as a potential future home for humanity. Its solid, with firm land underfoot. Its able to hang on to a little atmosphere, which is more than you can say about the moon. Its even got a day/night cycle remarkably close to our own. The only problem is its too darn cold, and theres not a lot of oxygen to breathe, either.

Terraforming is the concept of fixing problems like these on a planet-wide scale. Forget living in domeslets just make the whole thing habitable!

Thats a huge task, so much current work involves exploring just what we could achieve with todays technology. In the case of Mars, [Casey Handmer] doesnt have a plan to terraform the whole planet. But he does suggest we could potentially achieve significant warming of the Red Planet for $10 billion in just 10 years.

Handmer doesnt hope to give Mars a comfortable climate and fully breathable atmosphere in one go. Instead, the idea is first to warm Mars up significantly and release additional carbon dioxide. The hope is that this would help create a warmer blanket around the planet as a starting point for further terraforming works. His plan involves no nuclear reactors, chemical seeding, or big mining operations. Instead, its about maximising the amount of heat pumped into Mars for the lowest cost.

The concept is simple. By increasing the amount of sunlight falling on to Mars, its temperature can be increased significantly. That additional warmth would ideally release CO2 from cold storage in carbonate deposits already on Mars. This would further accelerate warming just as it does on Earth via the Greenhouse effect. Ideally, pump enough heat in initially to get that CO2 into the atmosphere, and our favorite greenhouse gas might just do the rest.

To get more sunlight on Mars, Handmer proposes using solar sails. Not just one, or two, or a hundred, but solar sails in their billions. They would use light from the sun to travel from Earth to Mars on a timescale of months. When arriving at Mars, they would be stationed at the Sun-Mars L2 Lagrange point, where the required orbital corrections would be at a minimum. From that point, the solar cells would position themselves to reflect sunlight on to the Martian surface to provide heating.

The sun already provides energy on the level of roughly 600 watts per square meter on the Martian surface. That sums up to about 21,600 terawatts across the entire planet. Compare that to the 8 gigawatts or so put out by our largest nuclear reactor, and its easy to see the sun is providing a lot more energy than we could hope to achieve with any kind of operation on the Martian surface. Reflect more of that sun, and that number goes up nicely.

Handmer notes that a reflector covering 1,000 square meters would reflect 600 kW of sunlight towards Mars. 1,000 sails of this size would effectively add a square kilometer of surface to Marss existing cross-sectional area of 36,000,000 square kilometers. Thats not really a whole lot.

As mentioned above, the key is to scale into the billions. The idea is that these simple solar sails could be manufactured on the cheap. Handmer posits that a 1,000 gram sail craft could cover the aforementioned 1,000 square meters. He estimates a production cost on the order of $100, roughly equivalent to a modern cellphone. For electronics, the sail would need a processor, a telemetry radio, a small solar panel, and a camera to act as a star tracker for navigation. It would then use LCD panels to act as reflectively-variable elements to change its direction under the influence of the sun. At that weight, launch costs would be around $2000. Add that on to the manufacturing cost, and youve got 1,000 square meters of Mars reflector for just $2100. Advances could shave manufacturing costs and weight down further, slashing launch costs which are heavily weight dependent.

If these solar sails could be manufactured with the same efficiency we churn out smartphones, we could churn out hundreds of millions of these craft in a few years. Handmer suggests a decade of launches could net 1.5 billion sails in position around Mars, which would be good enough for increasing energy input to the planet by 4%. In turn, Mars thermal radiation would have to increase by 4% to balance this extra energy input, which suggests its basic temperature would rise from 210 K to 212 Kor roughly -61.15 Celsius. He costs all this out at around $10 billion, which sounds awfully cheap in the grand scheme of things.

Okay, so that still sounds terribly cold. And it is! But that rise of two degrees isnt to be sniffed at. As Handmer points out, thats more than weve achieved here on Earth in 250 years of rampant fossil fuel use. He also notes that the shining solar sails would make for a brilliant view from Marss surface, though its perhaps unlikely many humans would be there to see it, at such cold temperatures.

Further gains could be made with some strategy. If cold deposits of stored carbon dioxide were spotted on the surface, the sail network could ideally be aimed to some degree to prioritize warming of those areas first. Done right, this could speed temperature rises on Mars quite significantly.

Its a brilliant idea, and one wed like to see explored further. At the same time, its unlikely to get real legs any time soon. Theres little will to terraform Mars right now, given we havent even sent a human over for look just yet.

Furthermore, even if Mars was warmed significantly, theres still the question of whether the atmosphere and environment could be made livable. Humans need oxygen, and we like a certain atmospheric pressure and lots of water. Getting Mars into the right ball park on all these measures would be tough, and maintaining it would involve countering the effects of the solar wind, which has stripped the planets atmosphere in the past.

The plan also glosses over some finer points of the engineering required. Its one thing to build 1.5 billion solar sails, and another thing entirely to launch them all and get them to Mars. Once there, theyd need to be very well organized to avoid crashing into each other and turning into one big tangled blob in orbit.

Handmer has put together a very compelling plan to warm Mars, and to do it on the cheap. Whether it would work is an open question, but this is the kind of wide-ranged blue-sky thinking thats required to solve the space-based problems of tomorrow. Terraforming an entire planet isnt something you do on the small scale; its something that requires the massed industrial outputs of entire societies. Thats a lesson we must learn, not just on Mars, but on Earth.

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Heating Mars On The Cheap - Hackaday

Mars' rusty red surface may have given it its famous "Red Planet" status, but it would also appear that thousands of white rocks are strangely littered on the Martian ground. NASA's Perseverance rover, a robotic geologist that has been exploring the Jezero Crater since early 2021, puzzled scientists when it delivered images of over 4,000 light-toned, pebble-sized rocks scattered all over the crater floor.

"These are very unusual rocks and we're trying to figure out what's been going on," Candice Bedford, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in Indiana and a member of the Mars 2020 science team, said at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LSPC) last month.

The announcement comes as NASA wraps up an architectural review of returning Martian rocks to Earth as part of the agency's ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program.

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover captures 360-degree view of Mars' Jezero Crater (video)

The imaged white rocks are what scientists refer to as "floats," meaning they have been removed and transported from their original habitats; some are smooth with pits while others appear to be an amalgamation of multiple layers. Initial analyses, conducted with Perseverance's onboard instruments, revealed the rocks are dehydrated not only in water content, but also in other minerals including iron, magnesium, calcium and sodium. "These are pretty depleted in a lot of things," Bedford said.

The team is particularly interested in the origins of these unusual rocks as their sources can reveal clues about the Red Planet's past, including precisely when water would've flooded the Jezero crater, which we see as an arid stretch of land today. Despite spotting more than 4,000 such rocks, Perseverance hasn't managed to see even a hint of what's known as an "outcrop" related to the rocks, which is essentially a bedrock of similar properties that'd jut out of the Martian surface.

The rocks' dehydrated nature suggests they were heated and metamorphosed by either lava flows or asteroid impacts elsewhere on Mars and later dumped onto the crater floor, said Bedford. Whatever the specific process may have been, she and her team suspect it would have occurred relatively recently in terms of Jezero Crater's geologic history.

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The Perseverance rover, which has driven more than 15 miles (24.8 kilometers) since its arrival on Mars, celebrated 1,000 days of science last December, which also marked the official completion of the mission it was originally designed to do. It has now filled 26 of its 43 Mars rock sample tubes, mission team members shared at LPSC. "Each sample has innumerable grains that we could potentially study for forever, essentially," said Benjamin Weiss, a professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Mars 2020 team.

As part of a bonus mission that kicked off this spring, Bedford said Perseverance began inching its way toward the Jezero Crater rim, and its long-distance camera has already imaged more light-toned rocks scattered in that area as well.

All of these puzzling rocks, however, are not the only reason why scientists are eager to get Perseverance to the crater rim and possibly beyond. There, they believe a unique geology exists, one that hasn't yet been encountered within the crater floor. That includes pre-Jezero rocks that may have records of the formation of Mars' crust and early climate. It may even hold evidence of biosignatures.

Scientists are currently tagging a variety of interesting sampling locations while mapping the rim itself in more detail, said Lisa Mayhew, a research associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Of much interest to scientists is a terrain adjacent to Jezero crater called Nili Planum, whose rocks they think would have formed in warm conditions during a time when life most likely evolved if it ever existed on the now-barren world, that is. Sampling such rocks "would provide huge added scientific value to the cache that's already existing on Perseverance," said Mayhew.

That scientific value, however, can only be fully realized after those rocks are returned to Earth.

Scientists need to time-date them using equipment on Earth, without which they wouldn't have a precise timeline for when the Red Planet was habitable and when it became parched. "It doesn't overstate to say it will revolutionize our understanding of Mars," said Weiss.

Questions remain about the MSR program, which NASA is spearheading, including when and how the agency plans to return collected samples to Earth. Last October, NASA commissioned a response team (MIRT) to evaluate alternative approaches to MSR after an independent review board (IRB) found the current architecture would lead to overruns in cost and schedule.

"Much of the work is already complete," said Meenakshi Wadhwa, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University and MSR's principal scientist. The MIRT's recommendation report for a new approach was expected by the end of March, followed by a revised plan and budget by NASA sometime in April, she said.

The agency's fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, made public March 11, allocated $2.7 billion for planetary science but the funding for MSR remained "TBD." NASA's budget this year and next will be announced in April after the MIRT review is completed, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters at the time.

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Thousands of strange white rocks found on Mars. Will they ever be brought to Earth? - Space.com

Mars has long captured the attention and imagination of scientists, writers, and stargazers alike. Scientists have observed Mars with telescopes and rovers to study major questions like how planets in our solar system formed and what is necessary for the development of life. However, scientists are limited in what they can observe without landing humans on the red planet itself. The need for better measurements and data has driven NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars as early as the 2030s. But before astronauts can make the trip to Mars, they must test and approve safety, mechanical, and logistical protocols, and decide what to pack on the spaceship.

When planning for space travel, engineers carefully balance how much fuel a rocket can carry with how much weight that fuel can move. If a rocket carries too much weight, it can run out of fuel before it reaches its final destination. Because of this weight budget, the engineers must consider how much different experimental and survival tools weigh. Scientists have proposed creating building materials and products on the planet itself, rather than carrying them from Earth. Theyve developed ways to create essential materials using human blood, sweat, and other products mixed with Martian dust, called regolith. Now scientists are looking to create even more materials by growing lightweight microbes.

A team of researchers at the University of Cagliari, Sassari, and the Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia, Italy, investigated whether the nutrients and minerals in astronaut pee and Martian regolith can be used to grow a group of microbes called cyanobacteria. These microbes use photosynthesis like plants and produce many chemicals and nutrients useful to humans and other life forms.

The team mixed synthetic regolith and synthetic pee that mimic actual Martian and astronaut materials to create a liquid called the Martian Medium, or MM. They added MM to a standard mixture of nutrients and minerals that are used to grow microbes at 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% strength, and used it to grow cyanobacteria. They found the cyanobacterial cells could not grow well in 60% and 80% MM compared to the standard mixture and produced less chlorophyll, the green pigment that allows plants and cyanobacteria to perform photosynthesis. However, the scientists noticed that after 45 days in 40% MM, the cyanobacteria began to grow well and were more active than those grown in the standard mixture.

The scientists suspected that because the cells grew better in 40% MM they were producing more nutrients than normal and could be a good food source for astronauts. The team harvested cyanobacteria grown in 40% MM and used several chemical reactions to measure how much nutrients they contained. These reactions create a color change based on the amount of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates in the harvested cells. The team measured the intensity of the color change during the reactions and found that cyanobacteria grown in 40% MM produced about 33% more carbohydrates but 15% less protein than cyanobacteria grown in the standard mixture. Despite the lower protein content, the cyanobacteria still contained healthy amounts of nutrients that could act as a food supplement for astronauts.

Next, the team investigated the specific molecules in the harvested cyanobacteria with a method that uses gas and liquids to force the cellular nutrients through a column packed with different chemical substances, called chromatography. As the molecules travel through the column, some move slower than others, depending on how strongly the molecule interacts with these substances. Molecules that do not interact with the substance move quickly through the column, while molecules that interact strongly with the substance move more slowly through the column, causing the molecules to separate into a pattern the scientists can identify.

Using chromatography, the team found the cyanobacteria grown in 40% MM contained many saturated fats that could increase the astronauts risk of heart disease if they consumed too much. On the other hand, these cyanobacteria were enriched in fats known to fight infection and inflammation. They also found these cyanobacteria contained antioxidants that could help astronauts who experience oxidative stress from radiation and low gravity on Mars.

Lastly, the team grew human stem cells and fed them different amounts of harvested cyanobacteria to test if cyanobacteria grown in 40% MM were toxic. The scientists found that the human cells fed cyanobacteria grown in 40% MM or the standard mixture survived and grew. However, stem cells fed the cyanobacteria grown in 40% MM produced up to 30% more cells than those fed cyanobacteria grown in the standard mixture.

The research team considered these results a promising sign that cyanobacteria can be grown cheaply on Mars and used as a dietary supplement. They suggested future researchers should verify that eating cyanobacteria is safe for astronauts, not just human cells in a petri dish. The researchers concluded that these microbes contain enough nutrients and antioxidants to supplement a healthy Martian diet.

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Could microbes feed astronauts on Mars? - Sciworthy

By Alimat Aliyeva

SpaceX held a big presentation at which the head of the organization, Elon Musk, spoke. Azernews reports that the billionaire shared his vision of the future of SpaceX, as well as an approximate plan for the colonization of Mars.

According to the billionaire, the giant Starship 3 rocket will serve as the base for the colonization of Mars. It is equipped with a new generation Raptor engine, thanks to which the rocket will be able to carry up to 200 tons of cargo on board.

Musk did not specify when Starship 3 will be put into operation, but stressed that it will cost the company very cheaply. According to him, if the launch of Falcon 1 now costs $ 10 million, then Starship 3 will cost $ 2-3 million.

"These are almost inconceivable figures. No one ever thought that such a thing would be possible. At the same time, in order to achieve this goal, we will not have to violate the laws of physics at all," Musk said.

In addition, the head of SpaceX added that his company will take about 20 years to explore Mars. During this time, he said, about one million people could be sent to the red planet, which would be enough to create a self-sufficient colonial city.

Musk wants ships to go to Mars about every two years. This regularity will ensure that colonizers not only receive regular resources, but also the opportunity to return to Earth. At the same time, the billionaire believes that most newly minted Martians will still be unable to return to their home planet.

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Elon Musk to send a million people to Mars - AzerNews.Az

Currently in the twelfth year of its mission, NASA's Curiosity rover continues to press on while treading the world of Mars, delving into areas no rover has gone before. The latest phase of Curiosity's adventure has brought it to what some scientists believe is the desiccated bed of an ancient river.

As Curiosity prepares to follow Gediz Vallis, as scientists call this winding and boulder-choked channel, it will try to give scientists a look back through time so they can discover how the landform came to be in the first place

Originally slated for a two-year-mission, Curiosity continues to trawl the Martian surface in search of new insight into the Martian environment and life that might have once lived or still lives on the Red Planet. Since 2014, the rover has been ascending the foothills of Mount Sharp, which rises 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the rover's original landing site in Gale Crater.

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover confirms presence of ancient lake on Mars and it may hold clues to past life

Gediz Vallis snakes through Mount Sharp. Billions of years ago, the mountain as with the rest of Mars would have been significantly wetter than it is today. Over time, as Mars dried up, wind and remnant water eroded the mountain into the layers Curiosity can see today. Scientists believe some force of Martin nature carved the Gedis Vallis channel into Red Planet slopes during this drying time.

It's possible that wind created Gediz Vallis however, the channel's sides are steeper than scientists would expect from a wind-carved vale. Thus, it's possible the channel is the work of landslides stemming from further up the mountain, which might have deposited boulders and other rocky debris that Curiosity spotted filling Gediz Vallis' floor. Or, perhaps more enticingly, it's possible Gediz Vallis was formed by flowing liquid water.

"If the channel or the debris pile were formed by liquid water, that's really interesting. It would mean that fairly late in the story of Mount Sharp after a long dry period water came back, and in a big way," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.

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Curiosity will spend months exploring the channel, looking at more than just the Martian past. The rover doesn't have the capability to summit Mount Sharp, so looking up from the channel is the best way it can help scientists learn more about what lies up there.

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NASA's Curiosity Mars rover begins exploring possible dried-up Red Planet river - Space.com

Vertical Future has been awarded 1.5m from the UK Space Agency to boldly go where no British vertical farming company has gone before: to develop agricultural technologies for potential use beyond the Earth's orbit.

The UK company today announced it has been selected to deliver the second phase of the Autonomous Agriculture for Space Exploration project led by the UK Space Agency, which will see it adapt its technology to provide a prototype system for use in space.

Vertical Future said the aim was to develop a vertical crop farming system for use in the world's first commercial space station, which is currently being constructed by US specialist Axiom Space and is scheduled to launch into orbit in 2026.

As part of the project, the company - which develops autonomous farming technologies for cultivating leafy greens and crops for use in pharmaceuticals - said it aimed to develop the first remotely-monitored farm system to track the productivity of crops growing in low orbit from back on Earth.

Moreover, Vertical Future suggested the technologies tested through the initiative could be developed "into the 2030s as a key enabler for Mars missions".

"Following this, the goal is to implement the solutions onto the Lunar Gateway, the Lunar surface, and eventually the Martian surface," the company said.

The company also stressed that testing, researching, and developing vertical farming technologies and techniques for use in space could unlock benefits and improvements for controlled environment agriculture projects on Earth.

It cited the threats of worsening climate impacts and food insecurity to the global food system as key drivers for further developing vertical farming systems, which typically require far less water and energy to grow crops and are also protected from extreme weather.

Dr Jen Bromley, Vertical Future's chief scientific officer and autonomous agriculture project lead, said producing food, biomaterials, and medicines in space would be critical if humans are to travel from Earth.

"Plans are able to be the biofactories to cover all of these needs," she explained. "The ability to reliably grow off-Earth is not yet realised as the technologies to achieve this haven't yet been implemented away from Earth at the scale required to sustain life.

"The autonomous agriculture project puts Vertical Future and the UK at the front and centre, leading and defining a new category for the commercial space sector: Agri-Space. The skills and sector-specific knowledge brought by our incredible partners are crucial to delivering the project, including sensor development critical to delivering an autonomous growing environment and enabling fine-tuning of parameters that cannot be tested outside of a micro-gravity environment."

The project boasts a host of international collaborators, including the Australian Space Agency, Axiom Space, and operations experts Saber Astronautics, with additional support from the South Australian Space Industry Centre (SASIC).

Research partners for the project also include the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space - a joint venture between the Universities of Cambridge, Adelaide, and Western Australia - and the University of Southern Queensland's iLAuNCH programme.

Professor Anu Ojha, director of championing space at the UK Space Agency, said bringing together a range of international partners for the project alongside UK expertise "supports new space capabilities and catalyses investment".

"Supporting innovative projects like the development of a robotic space farm' facility to grow plants in space is a great opportunity to showcase the UK as a spacefaring nation, whilst enhancing the wider UK space sector, creating jobs and generating further investment," he said.

The initiative forms part of the UK Space Agency's 20m International Bilateral Fund programme, which today announced a fresh wave of funding recipients, including projects to develop space-based nuclear power technologies and enhance monitoring of the Earth's inland and coastal water quality from space.

Rolls-Royce Submarines and BWXT Advanced Technologies have been awarded 1.2m to identify optimum technologies for fission nuclear systems in space, while a project led by the University of Leicester has also secured 800,000 to explore "a range of mission opportunities" for UK space nuclear power technologies.

In addition, the University of Strathclyde's Aerospace Centre for Excellence is leading a project which has secured 1.5m funding to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help improve space operations' sustainability and reduce man-made space debris.

According to the UK Space Agency, millions of man-made space objects are orbiting the planet, of which almost 37,000 measure larger than 10cm and an estimated 130 million measure less than 1cm, with sources ranging from defunct satellites to astronauts' discarded toothbrushes and flecks of paint.

One of the key aims of the project is to use AI and machine learning to better predict the motion of space objects and thereby reduce the risk of debris-causing collisions.

Professor Massimiliano Vasile, director of the Aerospace Centre of Excellence at Strathclyde, said more sustainable operations in space were "essential to enable any future space activity".

"The sector is based on a model that isn't sustainable because we keep on launching materials into space - meaning there is a constant drain we take from Earth," he explained. "Eventually nothing will be able to use space and it will be so crowded you can't launch anything."

Vasile said the aim was "to increase automation to help avoid collisions - a little bit like self-driving cars".

"We also want to use AI to determine the impact on the space environment to allow for informed decisions," he added. "When countries decide on policies to licence new missions they need to understand the global impact of that mission on the space environment insurance companies also need to understand the global impact to quantify how risky it is."

Others working on the project include the University of Arizona, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Waterloo in Canada, the Alan Turing Institute, as well as commercial space firms LMO and GMV in the UK, Nominal Systems in Australia and Columbiad in Canada.

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Mission to Mars? Vertical Future to develop prototype for growing crops in space - BusinessGreen

In terms of revolutionizing the world and pushing humanity forward, Elon Musk has easily been one of the most consequential figures in the last decade. Not only did he make electric vehicles profitable, but he somehow also did the same with rocket science. At the moment, Musk is busy developing self-driving cars, neural transmitters, and high-functioning androids.

Thus, it is right and just that an acclaimed biographer like Walter Isaacson tells the Musk story. The example of a self-made visionary overcoming obstacles is nothing short of inspiring. More importantly, his experience as a member of Generation X (those between 45 and 60) is representative of many in his age group.

Naturally, the biography emphasizes Musks technical genius and indomitable will. At so many junctures in his life, Musk drives both himself and his employees to do amazing things, like produce thousands of Teslas in an impossibly short timeframe or design a reusable rocket that can safely transport astronauts to the international space station.

These great feats, however, often come at great human cost, with Musk and his crew often hitting the breaking points of sanity and emotional stability. In such moments, Musk goes into demon mode, brutally criticizing and firing employees, denouncing and mocking the competition, and desperately looking to distract himself from a deep internal darkness (usually through work).

Although Musk and his biographer will attribute these manic episodes to his undiagnosed Aspergers Syndrome or his commitment to greatness, a Christian would rightly conclude that almost all of his personal turmoil stems from the absence of a spiritual life.

Musk is one of the richest and most celebrated men in the world, yet he also has to be one of the loneliest and saddest, bereft of community, meaning, and love. At one point, he told admirers: Id be careful what you wish for. Im not sure how many people would actually like to be me. The amount I torture myself is next level, frankly.

Like many of his generation, Musk, 52, grew up in a broken household. He had a callous, emotionally abusive father and a vain, passive mother. Inevitably, they divorced as their children reached adolescence. Musk technically attended a Christian school in South Africa, but his family never went to church. Instead of learning how to pray and cultivate virtue, he learned how to fight and write programs. Upon experiencing existential depression as a teenager, he found solace in reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and playing video games.

This background made him tough, resourceful, and well-positioned to thrive in America in the 90s and 00s, but it also made him temperamental and restless. Again, like many in his generation, he filled the hole in his heart with an addiction to work and video games. This led him to make his first fortune with Zip2, then another with PayPal, then another with SpaceX, and then another with Tesla. Each time, he would launch a project surge, mandating long hours, maximizing efficiency, berating employees, and constantly taking risks.

Rather than being motivated by fame or fortune, Musk was driven by something much greater: faith. Except that the faith he embraced was the nebulous idea of human progress, not organized religion. Judging from his comments, his idea of heaven includes cyborg humans, friendly non-woke robots, spaceships going to Mars, and gloriously high birthrates. Its a vision somewhat like Ray Bradburys short story, Mars Is Heaven!, but without the tragic ending.

Despite his uncompromising disposition, Musk has disciples who look up to him as a kind of messiah. As one might imagine, those close to Musk have the same outlook on life as he does. They go hardcore with their duties, dispense with personal attachments, and attempt to do the impossible. In a revealing exchange between Musks longtime employees, one of them admitted, I was burned out [working at Tesla]. But after nine months [elsewhere], I was bored, so I called my boss and begged him to let me come back. I decided Id rather be burned out than bored.

Somewhere up in heaven, Blaise Pascal, who once wrote that All mans troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room, is likely shaking his head and sighing at these poor souls. While they have applied their remarkable brainpower to things that Musk proudly declares are far cooler than whatever is the second coolest, they have sacrificed the very thing that makes them human in the first place: relationships, contentment, and purpose.

At what point can people finally settle down and rest in their accomplishments? When does the constant striving end? What would have to happen to Elon Musk or his disciples for people to realize that this is not a good model for a rich and fulfilling life? If constant work is the way to heaven, does that mean retirement is the way to hell? Was Ayn Rand right after all that our world is lifted by atlases and fountainheads simply being their brilliant selves?

Put simply, the hustle never stops. Of course, it could be worse. One of Musks many envious opponents in business or government could take him down and impose on all of us a drab, regressive police state that opposes human achievement and independence. This possibility has made most conservatives generally supportive of Musk who at least believes in free speech, industry, free markets, and humanity.

Its important to realize, however, that human life could be made better, yet Musk will not be the worlds savior. The real progress to be made by society does not reside in rockets and robots, but in community and contemplation. True, these goods can coincide and complement one another, but the former should not overtake the latter. Before man was made for work, he was made for love.

Lets hope that Elon Musk and the many who share his post-Christian faith in technology and themselves will come to realize this before they burn out for good.

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For Elon Musk and His Disciples, Mars Is Heaven - The Catholic Thing

SpaceX has conducted a presentation at its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, revealing some key details about its upcoming Mars missions that will feature the world's most powerful rocket, Starship.

The company's CEO, Elon Musk, has taken to stage to discuss what fans of SpaceX can expect out of the company in 2024 and what will be involved in creating a sustainable presence on the surface of Mars. Musk said that this is the first time in human civilization that Earth is capable of making the species multiplanetary, and all of this hinges of the success of Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket ever created.

Musk outlines that mass to orbit is a key factor in achieving a Mars base, and when Starship is complete, it will be capable of taking 200 tons to orbit while being fully reusable. The SpaceX CEO explains that once Starship is in orbit, it will need to be refueled by a tanker that's also in orbit. This new technology will be called Ship to Ship Propellent Transfer, and for every trip to Mars, Starship will need to be refueled six times, so a ratio of 5 to 1. Musk said that SpaceX plans on demonstrating Ship to Ship Propellent Transfer sometime next year.

"You actually want to use the ship. Take a part the ship and use it for raw materials on Mars. Because the ship materials will be so valuable, most of the ships you won't want to bring back, you would just want to use them for raw materials. Eventually we will want to bring ships back and I think we will want to give people the option of coming back because they're more likely to want to go if there's some option of coming back. But I think most of the people that go to Mars will never come back to Earth," said Musk during the presentation (skip to 23:00)

Additionally, Musk said that Starship's ship will be turned into scrap metal once it lands on Mars as its parts will be extremely valuable to the pioneers living on the Red Planet. Ultimately, the company plans on creating a Starship that is capable of making a return trip back to Earth, but initially Musk believes most people who sign up for a trip to Mars will not return to Earth.

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SpaceX plans to leave the first humans on Mars stranded with no way home - TweakTown

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced his intention to relocate a million people to Mars by 2050. However, a well-known astrophysicist and a member of the royal family of Great Britain with the title Astronomer Royal Martin Rees expressed doubts at such a fast pace. The astrophysicist frankly calls Musks plans a dangerous illusion.

Rees expressed his views while participating in the House of Lords podcast Lord Speakers Corner, where he described Musk as an extraordinary figure with a rather strange character, which might indicate a growing unpredictability.

I dont think Elon Musks plans are realistic. Perhaps only some brave pioneers will be able to live on Mars. The idea of mass migration to avoid Earths problems, which he (Elon Musk) and several other space enthusiasts adopted, in my opinion, is a dangerous illusion, Rees notes.

Rees suggests financing space research privately, rather than using public funds, as is the case with NASA and SpaceX. The astrophysicist argues that governments should be more careful about crew safety, which makes space programs extremely costly. Therefore, manned missions to Mars will be a very expensive initiative more expensive than all space programs combined.

The main part of research in space should be carried out by remotely controlled robots. In cases where it is impossible to do without people, such space missions should be funded by private companies, but not at the expense of public funds, Rees believes.

The problems highlighted by Rees relate to the adaptation of the human body to space conditions, which can be extremely harmful to health. Perhaps he is right that it is necessary to solve Earths problems first before considering colonization of other planets.

Earlier, we reported on how Elon Musk was pointed to a serious miscalculation in the colonization of Mars.

According to telegraph.co.uk

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Astrophysicist called the colonization of Mars a dangerous illusion - The Universe. Space. Tech

Mars has a history of liquid water on its surface, including lakes like the one that used to occupy Jezero Crater, which have long since dried up. Ancient water that carried debrisand melted water ice that presently does the samewere also thought to be the only thing driving the formation of gullies spread throughout the Martian landscape. That view may now change thanks to new results that suggest dry ice can also shape the landscape.

Previously, scientists were convinced that only liquid water shaped gullies on Mars because thats what happens on Earth. What was not taken into account was sublimation, or the direct transition of a substance from a solid to a gaseous state. Sublimation is how CO2 ice disappears (sometimes water ice experiences this, too).

Frozen carbon dioxide is everywhere on Mars, including in its gullies. When CO2 ice sublimates on one of these gullies, the resulting gas can push debris further down the slope and continue to shape it.

Led by planetary researcher Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, a team of scientists has found that the sublimation of CO2 ice could have shaped Martian gullies, which might mean the most recent occurrence of liquid water on Mars may have been further back in time than previously thought. That could also mean the window during which life could have emerged and thrived on Mars was possibly smaller.

Sublimation of CO2 ice, under Martian atmospheric conditions, can fluidize sediment and creates morphologies similar to those observed on Mars, Roelofs and her colleagues said in a study recently published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Earth and Martian gullies have basically the same morphology. The difference is that were certain that liquid water is behind their formation and continuous shaping and re-shaping on Earth. Such activity includes new channels being carved out and more debris being taken to the bottom.

While ancient Mars may have had enough stable liquid water to pull this off, there is not enough on the present surface of Mars to sustain that kind of activity. This is where sublimation comes in. CO2 ice has been observed on the surface of Mars at the same time that material starts flowing.

After examining observations like these, the researchers hypothesized these flows are pushed downward by gas as the frozen carbon dioxide sublimates. Because of the low pressure on Mars, sublimation creates a relatively greater gas flux than it would on Earthenough power to make fluid motion of material possible.

There are two ways sublimation can be triggered to get these flows moving. When part of a more exposed area of a gully collapses, especially on a steep slope, sediment and other debris that have been warmed by the Sun can fall on CO2 ice in a shadier and cooler area. Heat from the falling material could supply enough energy for the frost to sublimate. Another possibility is that CO2 ice and sediment can break from the gully and fall onto warmer material, which will also trigger sublimation.

There is just one problem with these ideas: since humans have not landed on Mars (yet), there are no in situ observations of these phenomena, only images and data beamed back from spacecraft. So, everything is hypothetical. The research team would have to model Martian gullies to watch the action in real time.

To re-create a part of the red planets landscape in a lab, Roelofs built a flume in a special environmental chamber that simulated the atmospheric pressure of Mars. It was steep enough for material to move downward and cold enough for CO2 ice to remain stable. But the team also added warmer adjacent slopes to provide heat for sublimation, which would drive movement of debris. They experimented with both scenarios that might happen on Mars: heat coming from beneath the CO2 ice and warm material being poured on top of it. Both produced the kinds of flows that had been hypothesized.

For further evidence that flows driven by sublimation would happen under certain conditions, two further experiments were conducted, one under Earth-like pressures and one without CO2 ice. No flows were produced by either.

For the first time, these experiments provide direct evidence that CO2 sublimation can fluidize, and sustain, granular flows under Martian atmospheric conditions, the researchers said in the study.

Because this experiment showed that gullies and systems like them can be shaped by sublimation and not just liquid water, it raises questions about how long Mars had a sufficient supply of liquid water on the surface for any organisms (if they existed at all) to survive. Its period of habitability might have been shorter than it was once thought to be. Does this mean nothing ever lived on Mars? Not necessarily, but Roelofs findings could influence how we see planetary habitability in the future.

Communications Earth & Environment, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01298-7

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Mars may not have had liquid water long enough for life to form - Ars Technica