Category Archives: Mars Colonization

SpaceX is teaming up with Space Adventures, an American space-tourism company, to send a small number of tourists into space as early as 2021, Engadget reported on Tuesday.

There's not much information about how the people will be chosen, and The Verge reported Space Adventures wasn't yet revealing pricing details. A spokesperson for SpaceX wasn't immediately available for comment.

The agreement comes several weeks after SpaceX opened an online booking tool for sending satellites into space on the Falcon 9 rocket, with payload prices starting at $1 million.

SpaceX, founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft with the goal of lowering the cost of space travel and eventually enabling humans to colonize Mars.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, which can carry up to seven passengers, will bring as many as four tourists into space for up to five days in orbit. The four noncrew members will receive several weeks of training before launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Engadget reported.

The Dragon spacecraft hasn't completed a flight with humans aboard, but it's scheduled to carry a crew in a mission in spring. The spacecraft had a successful trip to the International Space Station last year.

Flight tests for the upcoming tourism trip appear to have fixed problems that resulted in an explosion in April and demonstrated that the passenger capsule could release and land in the Atlantic during launch in case of malfunction.

But space tourism isn't the only frontier SpaceX is pioneering. The Falcon 9 launch service caters to customers who want to send small satellites into space but can't afford a full rocket, which can cost more than $60 million, according to TechCrunch. (Companies can book a payload flight on Falcon 9 by filling out this form.)

Falcon 9 is the first orbital-class reusable rocket, according to the SpaceX website. Rocket reusability is a key factor in reducing costs for access to space.

Falcon 9 made its first flight in 2012 to the International Space Station and completed its most recent launch on January 29.

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SpaceX plans to send a small number of tourists into space - Business Insider - Business Insider

Friday saw the release of Miss Anthropocene, the first record by Canadian pop artist Grimes in five years. The indelible mark she made on the 2010s with her breakthrough fourth record Visions (the soundtrack for every cool girl with a synthesizer at a Montreal loft party, wearing a neon beret) and her 2015 follow-up Art Angels (the soundtrack of every cool girl with a synthesizer who has since moved to Los Angeles, wearing a pink cowboy hat) now feels like a cultural curiosity from a bygone era; her promising career as a songwriter, producer, and a feminist icon (remember when she sold "pussy rings" as merchandise?) soon overshadowed by a high-profile relationship with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the South African billionaire set to colonize Mars, now the father of her unborn child. Today Grimes's career feels like the setup to a unfunny punchline in a Jimmy Fallon monologue. She's become a millennial punching bag, living on the verge of cancellation, despite her indisputable talent as an innovator of pop. After being lauded as one of the most innovative musicians and producers of her generation in the early 2010s, how different is the world she's returned to than the one she shook up a decade ago?

As an independent songwriter and producer, the 31-year-old Grimes built a formidable legacy making art in her own image: drawing her own cover art, directing and starring in her own acclaimed music videos, the curator of a unique crust-punk-meets-Sailor Moon aesthetic that made her into a fashion icon on Tumblr. During an era that also saw artists like Taylor Swift come into their own as songwriters only to be rejected by a culture who grew weary of women making confessional art about their own experiences, it's arguable that these women walked so that the 18-year-old Billie Eilish, or the incredible Lizzo, could run in 2020. Artists like Eilish and Lizzo are now entering a cultural climate that's grown (somewhat) more respectful of women, largely due to all the female musicians forced to be sacrificial lambs before them. And of the problematic faves on my Spotify, Grimes tops my playlist every time. You might hate it when she talks, but she continues to make compelling art.

In an interview with the British publication Crack Magazine, Grimes expressed her current conundrum: "Without me doing anything, just by random association with other people, I've watched my career and my reputation get totally fucking smashed. I worked my whole fucking life for this and now everyone thinks I'm so stupid. I was just sitting there incredulous watching my life's work go down the drain."

Miss Anthropocene sees her solution: to play the villain. It's a concept album in which Grimes subsumes a Voldemort-esque identity (she actually seems more like Cara Delevingne's "Enchantress" in Suicide Squad), taking on the persona of a hateful bitch who loves climate change and seeks death and destruction for the world. "If I'm stuck being a villain, I want to pursue villainy artistically," Grimes continued in the same interview. "If there's nothing left to lose, that's actually a really fun idea to me. I think it has freed me artistically. The best part of the movie is the Joker. Everyone loves the villain. Everyone fucking loves Thanos. Let's make some Thanos art."

Before she was Thanos, Vancouver-born Claire Boucher belonged to Canada. After attending McGill as a neuroscience and philosophy student, she began making music at Montreal DIY loft parties with her Arbutus Records labelmates Majical Cloudz and d'Eon. Her fourth record Visions was recorded on GarageBand in an apartment on Parc Avenue during a three-week period where she blacked out all the windows and effectively lost her mind, offering luscious dark-edged singles ("Oblivion," "Genesis," "Be A Body") that sounded like the internet: sad and infectious, futuristic and solipsistic, though she'd call her aesthetic "post internet" in interviews. It was irresistible at a time when the weirdest frontwoman we'd seen recently was Karen O., better still when we saw the Emily Kai Bock-directed video for "Oblivion," featuring a spritely 25-year-old Grimes bopping along to her own song in places like a McGill football game and a dirt biking event, waving the drunken bros past the camera. Amongher many cultural legacies at the time, she embraced a K-pop influence, tried to tour with sustainable environmental practices, and also introduced an intriguing new length for bangs.

But as Grimes signed to Roc Nation and began accepting invitations to the Met Ball, her career trajectory throughout the 2010s followed the same path as her counterpart in film and television, Lena Dunham. Both women's early self-produced efforts were heralded as genius feminist masterworks. They talked openly about their experiences being talked down to in rooms of men who wanted to teach them something, and with sexual assault. But as the media scrutiny increased alongside their fame and success, they found themselves in the impossible position of having to be everything to all people at all times in a vitriolic internet landscape. Dunham and Grimes were two emotionally sensitive weirdos who became famous in their 20s, set with the daunting task of making art about their own experiences, branded as "the new hope" in two industries (film and music) on the verge of collapse. As white women of notable privilege, they did not handle it well, leading to behaviour that was questionable at best.

There were wild, regrettable, career-destroying, foot-in-mouth moments for both of them embarrassing social media overshares, casual experiments with bindis, an Instagram story maelstrom by Azealia Banks that summoned Grimes to testify in court. Even as I write this, Grimes has posted another cryptic tweet: "Only art ever saved me, everything else has betrayed me."

Grimes has always made undeniable bangers about deeply uncomfortable subjects her sexual assault, drug abuse, climate change, being a victim of the patriarchy but she also presents as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. We've never been able to handle that contradiction well since Manic Pixie Dream Girls can't also be smart, join protests to blockage a Kinder Morgan pipeline in B.C. as she did in 2018, or be genius-level producers. If women like Grimes fail to produce new music within a reasonable timeline, fall in love with problematic South African billionaires, or behave inappropriately online, they risk cancellation, exile, and belittlement, as well as repeated rape and death threats. We want them to speak their mind, only so we can tell them to shut the fuck up.

Scapegoating flawed female artists on the internet might feel like a nice release valve for all the aggression and anxiety we live with on a daily basis in the nightmare that is Trump's America, but it also means these female artists make worse and far more self-critical art, and far less often. Given all that's on her plate as a soon-to-be new mother of Elon Musk's child and the time it's taken her to confidently make new music again, it's entirely possible that Miss Anthropocene might be her last record, which saddens me.

In terms of world-building, Grimes was always ahead of her time: constructing a universe in her music videos as dense and cinematic as any Marvel movie, and this was pre-Lemonade. Like Robyn, she understood the mechanics of how to make a song bury into your brain, how the best pop songs were about feeling nostalgic for an experience that hasn't happened, and the challenges of making art in isolation. And like Madonna, she has tried to reinvent herself and failed: changing her name at one point to c, the scientific symbol for the speed of light, to distance herself from her reputation.

The start of 2020 has seen several young pop stars come out of the woodwork about the difficulties they've faced in the public eye. Thanks to the efforts of the #MeToo movement, there has been a shift of consciousness in pop music one that's become slightly more open to identifying women as human, but it still comes at a severe cost. Kesha's battle with her former producer Dr. Luke over allegations of rape recently ended with her being ordered to pay $375,000 to him for defamation of character, showing the fault lines in a system that continues to discredit women's stories of sexual assault but she also released a glorious new record, High Road, that sees her earning back her freedom of expression. Demi Lovato's performance of "Anyone" at the 2020 Grammys was a soulful triumph for the pop star, who was hospitalized in 2018 after an overdose and has been candid about her past attempts with suicide and drug addiction. Also this year, Selena Gomez who sought treatment at a mental health centre in 2016 and has been vocal about her experiences with depression and anxiety released the masterful Rare, a selection of beautiful songs that showcase her vulnerability as a strength. Meanwhile, Swift's documentary Miss Americana saw the singer confess to an eating disorder and explain why she was afraid to rally politically against Trump for fear of death and rape threats like the ones experienced by The Dixie Chicks when they denounced George Bush in 2003.

"I'm trying to be as educated as possible on how to respect people, on how to deprogram the misogyny in my own brain," said Swift. She later describes what might be the central goal for any young female artist: "I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful."

Miss Anthropocene is a great record, offering multiple tracks that are the grimiest Grimes has ever sounded. It delivers on the promise of the artist, less as a problematic pop star and more as an innovative producer like her hero Trent Reznor, seeing her embrace what could be seen as her id. Here, the industrial beats on "Violence" are positively oil-slicked as her ethereal vocals float above them, like oat milk on a latte. "U feed off hurting me...U wanna make me bad, and I like it like that," taunts Grimes in the song.

There is a freedom that comes with being cancelled, one supposes. If you're convinced no one wants to hear from you, maybe that empowers you to stop caring what other people think. I just hope Grimes continues to make music.

Originally posted here:
Grimes went from industry-shaking genius to punchline in a decade. Are we treating her fairly? - CBC.ca

Guion Bluford became the first African American to fly in spacewhen he launched aboard Challenger's STS-8 mission on Aug. 30, 1983. Tribune News Service

President Trumps budget request for fiscal year 2021 proposes a 12% increase in overall funding to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The budget introduces several notable changes to NASAs funding, including a 46% increase in space exploration to land a crewed mission on the moon by 2024.

Conversely, it proposes slashing funding for NASAs science programs by 12% and eliminating the STEM engagement budget, which is used for grants and cooperative associations.

But why bother with space policy in the first place? Why not privatize it all? Should our tax dollars really be funding quasar research and meteor analysis?

Yes, they should.

Space policy is justified as one of the most appropriate uses of public funding because NASA consistently makes contributions to humanitys general well-being in a way other government agencies do not. To meet the demands of our time and ensure NASAs continued success, we should increase funding for all of its programs.

Lots of arguments are made against the practicality of space policy, from the economic to the social to the philosophical. However, the opposition is misguided.

One of the most common objections to the public funding of space exploration is its supposedly exorbitant cost. However, NASAs budget totals $22.6 billion for the 2020 fiscal year. Compared to the $738 billion our government is spending on defense, this figure seems reasonable.

Contrary to popular belief, NASA is actually a boon to the economy. NASA employs more than 17,000 people whose salaries average out at $91,013 per year. Moreover, NASA is an integral part of the global space economy through its prodigious investment in space-related industries, such as space technology manufacturing, which have been identified as key national priorities. Aside from the strategic importance of such investments, the space economy generated $414.75 billion dollars in 2018, according to the Space Foundation.

Privatization is undesirable. NASA renders services for the government that private businesses do not. For example, NASA offers grants that have bolstered scientific research in areas such as microbial ecology and climate change.

Additionally, as a world leader in the space industry, NASA represents the U.S. on the world stage in a way that no business could. Maintaining a strong international presence on space policy is strategically advantageous.

Not to mention NASA sent a loveable rover to Mars. Talk to me when your space capsules have endearing personalities, Elon.

Despite its wealth of cutting-edge technology and decades of research, the agency has found no evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The nearest potentially habitable planet outside of our solar system, Proxima Centauri-b, is located approximately 4.24 light years away, and we are generations away from potentially attempting to colonize it.

But the majority of Americans still think it is essential that NASA continues to be involved in space exploration, according to the Pew Research Center.

Trying to figure out how to navigate and survive space yields insight into survival on Earth. For example, NASAs food science research has influenced closed-system ecology and pushed the needle forward on 3D printed food. This work could help develop more efficient and sustainable food sources for the future.

Not to mention there may come a time when it is necessary to harvest resources from outer space to maintain human infrastructure. One day we may even have to colonize nearby planets for survival.

The U.S. has an obligation to both its citizens and to humanity to propagate the species and expand our knowledge of the universe. Few other government agencies are tasked with such a forward-looking humanitarian mission.

It can be argued that the kernel of the skepticism surrounding NASA regards the merit of its forward-looking goals in government generally. Much suspicion is aroused in the heart of a conservative when there is no immediate payoff to be found. One analogy is climate change, which is another area of policy bedeviled by political skepticism despite its clear benefits in the long run.

If we want to avoid making the same myopic, greedy mistakes the previous generation made, we should ignore these skeptics and increase funding to all of NASAs programs, including its STEM engagement and scientific research. These forward-thinking initiatives are an investment in humankinds future and a testament to our species continued progress.

Carter Cooley (he/him) is a junior studying political science. After graduating he plans to go into political campaign management.

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OPINION: The government has a duty to fund space policy - Indiana Daily Student

Your Android game and app deals are now up for the taking. In todays collection of price drops, we are exploring point-and click adventure games, relaxing with beautiful puzzlers, colonizing Mars, and attempting to prevent an apocalypse that already happened. Dont waste your time and money browsing for deals on Android apps, let us do the work for you. Todays highlights include titles like MechaNika, Colorzzle, Mars Power Industries, Fenix 2 for Twitter, AWAKENING HORROR, and many more. Jump below the fold for a complete collection of todays most notable Android app deals and freebies.

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Colorzzle is a puzzle game that matches colors. When you match the same color, the trees grow and flowers bloom. If you grow all the trees and flowers, the stage is clear! There are more than 100 beautiful stages.Its easy to get started, but it gets harder. You have to mix colors to create different colors. Match the colors to grow trees and flowers. I intended minimalism through this game. Feel peace through a simple game.

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Todays best Android game/app deals and freebies: Colorzzle, MechaNika, more - 9to5Toys

SpaceX wants to put the pedal to the metal on its Starship Mars colonization system.

The company is hosting a Starship career day today (Feb. 6) at its facility near the South Texas village of Boca Chica, where the big spaceship is coming together.

"This is mainly for staffing up 4 production shifts for 24/7 operations, but engineers, supervisors & support personnel are certainly needed too. A super hardcore work ethic, talent for building things, common sense & trustworthiness are required, the rest we can train," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter Tuesday (Feb. 4).

Related: Elon Musk's thinking big for SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket. Really big.

That explanation came a day after another tweet, in which Musk stressed that Starship production is already humming along. "Going max hardcore on design/production Starship here in Boca. It's awesome! Feels a bit like a Mars simulator," the billionaire entrepreneur wrote. ("Hardcore" appears to be the term of the moment.)

Starship is a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) spacecraft that SpaceX is building to take people to and from Mars, the moon and other distant destinations. The ship will launch off Earth atop a huge rocket called Super Heavy; both of these vehicles will be reusable. (Starship is powerful enough to get itself off the moon and Mars, both of whose gravitational clutches are much weaker than Earth's.)

The only version of Starship to get off the ground to date is a single-engine prototype called Starhopper, which made a few brief test flights last year before being retired. But that could change soon; SpaceX has filed paperwork with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch a 12-mile-high (20 kilometers) test flight with Starship between March and September of this year, The Verge reported.

Things will move quickly after that, if all goes according to SpaceX's plan. Company representatives have said that the first operational Starship missions, which will likely loft commercial communications satellites, could launch as early as 2021.

And SpaceX has one crewed Starship mission on the docket already: Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa booked the vehicle on an around-the-moon flight, with a targeted launch date of 2023.

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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SpaceX is holding a Starship career day to ramp up its Mars colonization effort - Space.com

The Red Planet: Design on Our Race to Mars

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Space has long captured our imaginations. Looking to the ocean above us, writers, scientists and designers alike have continuously dreamed up new visions for a future on distant planets. Mars is at the center of this discourse, the most habitable planet in our solar system after Earth. Proposals for the red planet explore how we can create new realms of humanity in outer space.

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As former Managing Editor Katherine Allen stated, our dreams for life in space are crafted in fiction, with visions ranging from the romantic to the dystopian. In the last five years, ArchDaily has covered a range of stories exploring architecture and design on Mars. From 3D printed ice houses to biodegradable fungus towers and simulated habitats, these proposals may seem far-fetched, but SpaceX announced plans to begin Mars colonization, and last month, successfully performed an in-flight abort test of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, one of the final milestones before a crewed test flight.

In his recent piece, Living in space is the answer, but what was the question?, designer and educator Fred Scharmen looked at how architects and designers may be the best positioned to address questions of living in space. According to him, three elements ground the new rise of proposals for architecture in space: lower launch costs, a supply chain of matter and energy, and a legal framework for resources. "All we need now are a new generation of Martian architects to design buildings made of Martian concrete that will be suitable structures for humans to live and work in," concluded the MIT Technology Review in their report on a new type of concrete designed for use on Mars.

At the same time, designing for life on Mars presents a host of new design problems. The following articles explore how architecture and design are tied to our dreams of Mars, and what these projects might mean in the not-so-distant future.

Up until now, space architecture has been mainly focused on engineering, centered on projects like orbital space stations or Martian exploration convoys, commissioned by world space agencies such as ESA (Europe) or NASA (USA). But in recent years, an increasingly broader spectrum of professionals have joined the challenge of designing extraterrestrial built environments, the new space race of the 21st century.

Developed by scientists led by Lin Wan at Northwestern University, this "Martian concrete" is just one of many scientific developments that will be required for the increasingly popular goal of sending humans to, and eventually colonizing, the Red Planet (apparently the un-colonized Moon is already old hat - just ask Matt Damon).

Mars has beennotable for capturing humans' interest, intriguingbusiness moguls such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezosto go on a "billionaire space race" and settle onthe planet. Since the world is stirring towards being an interplanetary society, two exhibitions;Moving to MarsandDesigns for Different Futures, tackle the ethics, anxieties, and culture of humanity of life on Earth and beyond.

Bjarke Ingels Group has been working on the Mars Science City project after the United Arab Emirates announced the initiative in 2017. The research city aims to serve as a viable and realistic model for the simulation of human occupation of the martian landscape. The project is designed with a team of Emirati scientists, engineers and designers from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center.

Architecture and technology company AI SpaceFactory has completed the autonomous construction of MARSHA, a proposal for a Martian surface habitat for NASA. The 3D printed shelter is one of five finalists in an international competition to design and build a habitat for a crew of four astronauts on a mission to Mars.

MARS Case is a minimal housing prototype designed by OPEN Architecture in collaboration with Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi. The proposal is part of an annual cross-industry innovation and research platform known as House Vision, which uses the medium of the house to explore and question the direction of our living habits and urban environments in the future.

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The Red Planet: Design on Our Race to Mars - ArchDaily

Editors note: This is one in a continuing series of guest opinions about fostering environmental stewardship. The series is coordinated by ACES, the Alliance of Climate and Environmental Stewards.

Fifty years ago, the world was home to 2.7 billion people. We are now approaching 8 billion people almost triple in our lifetime. How could that kind of growth, those kinds of numbers, not make an impact on our planet? Global warming, indeed!

But rather than sign up for the passenger list for Elon Musks Mars colonization mission, maybe we need to look at how we can utilize our current resources better.

In the Newburyport area, we are lucky. We are leaders at saving the planet. Lets look at it from a micro, mini and macro perspective.

At a micro level, we excel at residents recycling look at those containers chock full on garbage day and the use of the compost program, even though it costs extra.

Another piece of evidence: Crowds every first Saturday at the recycle center swapping items, bringing in electronics, Styrofoam, used oil and metal. The success of the Repair Caf at the Senior Community Center is another data point. Newburyporters are getting very good at the six Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, recycle. But we can get better.

Now, lets turn to examples at the mini level of environmental action. What other small cities have this many options for ridesharing or commuting?

The bus options at the Park & Ride (thanks, C&J!), the local MVRTA bus routes, even the fact that we are at the rails end and can take advantage of a train to Boston and beyond. Why drive when you can ride? And many locals do ride especially their bikes on our local bike trails. Check off another one for carbon footprint reduction.

What we often ignore is the macro level contribution we make: our homes. Weve had an unprecedented growth in solar rooftops. A large part of our housing stock is 1850 and earlier.

Both of those facts put us in an enviable position when it comes to our contribution to the environment. How many trees have we saved by avoiding new construction?

Maybe, thats a new set of Rs: rent, resell, rehabilitate. Energy awareness programs have made many of our200-plus-year-old homes as tight as 20-year-old homes.

We tend to live on smaller plots of land. We inhabit an unprecedented number of half houses and have converted many larger homes into condos. Homes have been on their lots forever, built using local materials. I think we dont give ourselves enough credit.

The Dallas suburbs we are not, and it has paid off, not only environmental dividends, but destination dividends as well Newburyport history, and our historic homes, make this the place to visit.

Lets not take all that for granted. Every horsehair plaster wall we tear down, every early growth woodwork we throw out adds to waste and contributes to climate change.

But we Newburyporters are a frugal bunch. If you are like me, gutting a room or a home is a last resort. If it isnt broke, dont fix it. Add housing preservation to the environmental awareness list.

Recently, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, an investment management firm, said that climate change has become a defining factor in companies long-term prospects.

Homeowners, like companies, have a vested interest in climate change and what it does to our pocketbooks in the next 30 years.

Says Larry: What will happen to the 30-year mortgage a key building block of finance if lenders cant estimate the impact of climate risk over such a long timeline, and if there is no viable market for flood or fire insurance in impacted areas?

While government must lead the way in this climate transition, companies and investors also have a meaningful role to play. But when it comes to climate change, its the decision we make as individuals, whether at the micro, mini or macro level, that ultimately will make a difference.

Lets continue to treat our old Newburyport homes like the climate assets they are by minimizing wholesale reconstruction, interior gutting or tear-downs. Not just for historys sake but for the climates sake as well.

Jack Santos, a 12-year resident of Newburyport, is a research vice president and chief of research for enterprise architecture and technology innovation with Gartner Inc. He is also an ACES adviser contributing to the development of IT and overall systems. He can be reached at iam@jacksantos.com.

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COMMENTARY: Our climate, our actions, our homes - The Daily News of Newburyport

A prototype of SpaceX's Starship Mars-colonization spacecraft blew its lid in a crucial pressure test late Tuesday (Jan. 28) in a big test for the private spaceflight company.

During a cryogenic strength test at the company's South Texas facility near the village of Boca Chica, SpaceX filled the prototype's 30-foot (9 meters) test tank with ultracold liquid nitrogen and pressurized the tank until it "popped."This video was captured by Spadre.com, a tourism information site for the nearby South Padre Island that offers live camera views of SpaceX's Starship work.

While the destructive test may not look like good news for the private spaceflight company, this event actually represents a major milestone for Starship. It demonstrated that the fuel tank can withstand the pressure it would experience on future human missions to the moon and Mars.

Video: Watch SpaceX destroy a Starship tank in pressurization testRelated: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy in Images

The Starship's test tank reached an internal pressure of 8.5 bar, or about 8.5 times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted after the test. And that's exactly how much pressure Starship will need to be able to endure to be considered safe for astronauts.

Earlier this month, Musk tweeted that the spacecraft would need to withstand a pressure of 6 bar for an orbital flight without humans onboard. For safety reasons, a crewed mission would raise that requirement by a factor of 1.4, which is why the spacecraft needs to endure a pressure of 8.5 bar to safely fly astronauts.

Tuesday's test follows a similar evaluation SpaceX performed earlier this week, when the spacecraft's tank reached a pressure of 7.5 bar before springing a leak, Musk tweeted on Monday (Jan. 27). "Small leak at a weld doubler. Will be repaired & retested at cryo," he said.

SpaceX still has a lot of work to do before it can launch people to space on its new Starship. The company is currently building its newest Starship prototype, the SN1, at its Boca Chica facility. An earlier version, a fully assembled rocket prototype called Mk1, was destroyed in a cryogenic test in November. After that anomaly, SpaceX discontinued the development of Mk1 and a nearly identical prototype called Mk2, which was being built on Florida's Space Coast.

"We're now building flight design of Starship SN1, but each SN will have at least minor improvements, at least through SN20 or so of Starship V1.0," Musk tweeted on Dec. 27, 2019, adding that the SN1 could be ready for its first test flight in just a few months.

If all goes according to plan, SpaceX could start launching satellites as early as 2021, followed by uncrewed moon missions for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program in 2022. The company also plans to launch a private crewed mission called "#dearMOON" on a flight around the moon in 2023. SpaceX has not offered an official timeline for Starship's Mars missions, but Musk has suggested that the spacecraft could help establish a human Mars base by 2028.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom and onFacebook.

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SpaceX just destroyed a huge tank for its Starship on purpose. Here's the video! - Space.com

In todays Big Story podcast, were not the first generation to dream of colonizing Mars. Not even close. But we are the first to at least theoretically have the technology to reach the red planet. And were not doing so great with the only planet we currently have, so letting billionaires make promises of populating a backup home seems like a pretty good idea. We might as well be ambitious, right? About that

Mars is hard to live on. Like, harder-than-the-Earth-after-nuclear-winter hard to live on. And even in the very best scenarios dangled in popular culture, there are a few things that always get left out. It doesnt mean it will never happenand well send at least a few people, eventuallybut it does mean the image of a Mars colony thats in your head is, well, something put there by Hollywood.

GUEST: Dr. Katie Mack, theoretical cosmologist, assistant professor, NC State University

You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify

You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

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Why Mars is a lovely dream that will also probably kill anyone who goes - CityNews Calgary

The Expanse is a science fiction television show based on the novels by James S. A. Corey. It ran on SyFy for three seasons starting in 2015 but was canceled. Luckily, it was picked up by Amazon, and the fourth season came out on Prime in December.

RELATED: 5 Sci-Fi Series We're Looking Forward To In 2020 (& 5 We're Not)

It features our solar system hundreds of years in the future. Humanity has colonized Mars, several moons, and the Asteroid belt, eventually developing different governments and cultures for each. The show follows characters from each of the three big powers as they navigate intra-system politics on levels both grand and small. Here's why you need to start watching it immediately.

Over its four seasons, The Expanse follows seven main protagonists. Each of them has an important role in the plot, but each of them has their personal demons to battle as well. James Holden (Steven Strait) is the main protagonist. He's inadvertently thrust into a leadership position both in the solar system and of the three-person crew of his ship, the Rocinante. He struggles with the belief that he's not good enough. One of his crewmen, Amos (Wes Chatham) is borderline sociopathic, but somehow is also one of the most loyal, protective, and kind characters.

Bobby (Frankie Adams) is a Martian Marine who struggles with her anger. Naomi (Dominique Tipper) is a Belter whose political opinions are always evolving. Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is the leader of Earth who struggles with her love of power. Alex (Cas Anvar) is the Martian pilot of the Rocinante whose guilt over leaving his family to travel the stars can be overwhelming. We could go on, but the point is that each of the protagonists has their flaws that make them interesting and nuanced characters.

Race doesn't seem to be a factor in the future that The Expanse depicts. The crew of the Rocinante includes a man of South Asian heritage (with a Southern accent!), a Black British woman, and two white men. Additionally, Bobby is played by a New Zealand-Samoan woman, and Chrisjen Avasarala is meant to be South Asian but is played by an Iranian woman. There is also a First Nations woman with a supporting role (Cara Gee)!

The crew behind the camera has its moments too. The Expanse features a few female directors and writers. Most notably, both the show's co-creator (Hawk Otsby) and its showrunner (Naren Shankar) are men of Indian descent. These men and women are doing their jobs, but their presence means a lot to other people, to the stories they tell, and the future of television.

The Expanse has a different storyline for each season that ties beautifully into the show as a whole. Some of these are grand, sweeping political issues while others are simple, like a missings person case, or personal, like a man searching for his daughter. But they're always tied back into the main storyline somehow.

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Take, for example, Naomi's first trip to a planet in season four. She's a Belter who has lived her entire life in space. She had to physically prepare for planet landing through exercise and medical intervention. This is a personal storyline that ties into the larger narrative of both Belter physiology and season four's new planet.

Chrisjen Avasarala is one heck of a character. She's a tough, f-word-loving politician on Earth, and she has the voice of a goddess. Chrisjen works with Holden and his crew to protect Earth from the protomolecule as best as she can. However, sometimes that means going against the rules.

Chrisjen's outfits are the unofficial star of the show. She wears ornate, detailed saris and other South Asian-inspired suits and dresses. She pairs them with lavish jewelry and perfectly matched lipstick. Chrisjen is stunning in every scene.

Science fiction falls into two general categories: "hard" and "soft." Soft sci-fi leans more towards fantasy and is more interested in digging into the "soft" sciences like anthropology and psychology. Hard sci-fi bases itself in the "hard" sciences like biology, physics, and chemistry.

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The Expanse works hard to depict the science of our universe. Ships move at scientifically plausible speeds and in realistic directions. The characters receive an infusion of medicine during takeoff that keeps them conscious despite the extreme G-forces. There's a communication delay based on the distance between the parties, so the characters use video messages to talk. There are many more examples of the ways The Expanse respects the laws of our known solar system than just these.

The Expanse also accurately depicts gravity, for the most part. They try their best, at least. There are no artificial gravity machines onboard ships (unless they're spinning to created their own gravity). The crews are weightless unless using their gravity boots, which use magnets to adhere to the floors of the ship.

The ships- and, importantly, asteroids- that spin to create gravity are shown as having different levels of gravity depending on one's relative location to the core. This has affected the Belters' physiology, which is also depicted in the show.

The three main powers in the show are Earth, run by the United Nations, Mars, which has a military-based culture, and the Asteroid Belt, run by a loose network of leaders called the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). Earth and Mars are at each other's necks, and both consider the OPA to be a terrorist organization.

It would be overly simplistic to assign specific countries to each player. However, the two centralized powers' reaction to the Belt can be likened to many stories of statewide oppression in history. The Earth and Mars mine the Belt for important minerals, using the Belters as labor. Meanwhile, the Belters get no political representation and suffer many health consequences living in low gravity. Sound familiar?

Not only does the Expanse closely adhere to the principles of hard science, but it also does extra work depicting other details. Its interest in anthropology becomes clear when one looks at the Belters. They have their own culture, developed over years of living in the Belt.

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One of the most unique details the show presents about the Belters is their language. They speak a Belter creole, that has elements of all the different languages that were spoken by the first inhabitants of the Belt. While the actors' interpretations of this accent vary, the fact that there is a noticeable difference at all is astounding in a TV show.

If you're tired of seeing alien species differentiated from humans by nothing more than a wrinkle on the bridge of their noses, then this is the show for you. The alien presence in The Expanse takes the form of the proto-molecule, a substance that defies the laws of physics but is not exactly alive.

As of season four, there is no humanoid life to be found. There are some poisonous slugs, some toxic microorganisms, and a hint of larger fauna. It's refreshing to see life evolving at a commensurate rate to the science we know at the present.

Season four was released in its entirety on December 13th of last year. It was the first seasondistributedby Amazon Studios and it was just as good, perhaps better, than the three seasons that came before.

With each new season, the Expanse has added beloved new characters and exciting new storylines. At the end of each season, there's been a heart-wrenching cliffhanger that indicates where the next season will start and leaves the audience hungering for more.

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Katarina writes and lives at the intersection of mental health, media, and hope. She has written for National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Women Write About Comics in the past. Currently she serves as editor for The Future of the Force and writes lists for CBR & ScreenRant. Film, writing, people, and nature are Katarinas four favorite things. Her passion lies in using writing to help people understand and experience the world and its media more vividly. A new resident of LA, Katarina is probably crying about something nerdy at this very moment.

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The Expanse: 10 Reasons It's The Best Sci-Fi On TV Right Now - Screen Rant