Category Archives: Moon Colonization

Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson wears his astronaut's wings after flying with a crew in Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket plane VSS Unity to the edge of space. [Courtesy]

For decades; invention, innovation and technological advancement have been largely tied to State machinery.

In many cases, all the three dimensions have thrived under intelligence and warfare conditions as governments multiply budgets for military and defence ministries adopting the latest technologies.

Throughout history, innovations including ICT technologies have thrived alongside global situations and world wars.

Space exploration and development has over the ages not only thrived amidst conflict but has been tied to the hip with warfare and warfare like conditions.

One, however, has to go back more than 30 years ago to appreciate this dimension of space exploration and interest.

Cold war

To date, space exploration has hit heights albeit with international hostilities, fear, intimidation and even paranoia.

For instance, as per reports, when the former Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States differed on policy in the aftermath of the 1947 Second World War, this set the then president for suspicion, competition and in some instances proxy wars as was the case in Cuba and Vietnam.

Spaceflight capability was also at the centre of this tension which virtually split up the world in two.

In bare-knuckle fashion, both the United States and the USSR battled each other for supremacy high above the rest of us to end with remarkable fetes in space exploration and the accompanying technologies.

The Soviets took a clear head start in the race putting out the first satellite and the first human in outer space with the first satellites including probes to the moon and Venus.

Soviets Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human on a space flight in 1961, this fete would however be eclipsed in July of 1969 when the Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the lunar surface.

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on the bus on the way to the launch of Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. [Reuters]

Deemed as the single event designating the winner of the space race, the landing of man on the moon brought space exploration to the fore while astronauts like Neil Armstrong became household names as the fight captivated masses in both rival camps.

Earlier on in 1958, US President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), a key federal agency dedicated to space exploration to this very day.

In 1991, the USSR crumbled to pieces in an internal disintegration, effectively bringing to an end the more than three decades space race and the birth of a softer Russian Federation.

The same moment marked the end of the hay days for space exploration as rivalry turned to collaboration - including the joint development of the International Space Station (ISS).

Years later, space exploration has slowly waned into the background with the US government for instance slashing spending to programs alongside aerospace accidents with catastrophic outcomes and the retirement of the maverick space shuttle.

The slow degeneration of space exploration, however, seems to have reached its ends as the industry sees new impetus.

Billionaire's patch

The new era of space exploration is not characterized by sovereigns and taxpayer-backed funding as the private sector now seeks a piece of the action.

Aerospace manufacturer SpaceX has been one such revelation and its goal revolve around the colonization of Mars in the near term and cost-effectiveness in the development of space technologies.

Founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk, SpaceX is already the front runner in space exploration by private entities beating its closest rivals by miles in the marathon to outer space.

SpaceX has been the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

In the most recent, the company has both sent craft and astronauts to the ISS. By going to Mars, Musk says it shall be the furthest that life has travelled.

In March last year, Musk and company market the first crewed launch from the US in more than nine years.

Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II in Hawthorne, California, U.S., August 27, 2017. [Reuters]

Today, SpaceX has a 29 billion dollars contract with NASA to develop the first commercial lender which will put the next American astronauts on the moon, including the first woman.

The flight path for SpaceX has, however, experienced turbulence with both the company and Elon Musk going through tough times.

Between 2006 and 2008 for instance, the company marked three failures at rocket launch which put pressure on the company plans.

Musk was forced to split $30 million between SpaceX and his automobile company Tesla before subsequent successful missions and eventual deals from NASA.

More billionaires

Earlier this month, British billionaire Richard Branson became the first person in history to successfully test his spacecraft as he flew close to the end of space.

This coming in just under a fortnight to another billionaires maiden space flight. Unlike SpaceX, Branson and his space exploration company Virgin Galactic have an eye on space tourism with Bransons experience being taunted at the private astronaut experience.

Branson targets to create the first commercial spaceline sub-orbital flights with the flights commencing in 2022.

A ticket for the experience will start from $250,000 or Ksh.27 million in local terms. Just like Musk, Branson has had his moments of adversary including the death of three contractors killed during a test in 2007 and the death of a pilot in 2014 when a Galactic craft broke into parts mid-flight.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos is set to fly out to the edge of space before the end of July on his most secret project Blue Origin.

The company targets passenger flights to space with Bezos being on the inaugural flight. Bezos has mostly funded the project out of pocket to this point.

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addresses the media about the New Shepard rocket booster and Crew Capsule mockup at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States April 5, 2017. [Reuters]

Private money including the three billionaires and more is now set to take centre stage in the exploration of space and will likely determine the pace and efficiency of space exploration.

While many argue space exploration is the burning of stacks of cash that would otherwise be used in resolving earthly; challenges, humans ventures into space will remain a key pillar.

From the feasibility of a second home for man and new commercial opportunities, humankind have more to reap from space than is comprehendible by most.

Already, developments in space satellites have improved the quality of life on earth including the ability to pre-empt weather patterns and high-speed internet connectivity and communication.

If anything, humans are now universal beings with the cosmos being out there for us to reap and conquer.

The near future looks worrying, with everyone going through a global pandemic recession but the new digital technologies and space travel innovations remain an interesting commercial opportunity both for the public and private sectors.

-Chris Diaz, Business leader and Trustee Brand Africa

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Billionaires to the moon - The Standard

ON Sunday, July 11, Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin commercial empire, took a ride on a suborbital spaceplane built by one of his companies, Virgin Galactic. The global news media, using completely inappropriate superlatives such as "historic" and "record-breaking" has subsequently spent every day since cramming the story down everyone's throats, and I suspect most people are tired of it. I know I am.

Nevertheless, Richard Branson and his little "spaceship" are an interesting case study in why the world probably deserves an extinction-level meteor impact, and so, the topic is worth a little more examination.

First, the particulars of the flight itself. The vehicle, known as "SpaceShipTwo," with Branson, three other Virgin Galactic employees and two pilots aboard, was lifted to an altitude of about 46,000 feet above its base in New Mexico by a carrier plane dubbed "White Knight Two." The spaceplane then detached and fired its single-rocket motor for 70 seconds to accelerate upward, then coasted to its peak altitude of about 282,700 feet (roughly 53 miles or 86 kilometers) a few minutes later. The plane then descended, taking about 25 minutes to glide to a landing back at its base, which is grandiosely named "Spaceport America."

The flight was only the fourth powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo; an earlier version, SpaceShipOne, successfully flew three times before suffering a mechanical failure and crashing during its fourth flight in 2014. Branson's expressed goal for his program, which has been in development for about 17 years, is to be able to enter the "space tourism" business or, in other words, provide recreational flights for paying passengers who wish to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see some nice views of the Earth from extremely high altitude.

First of all, there was nothing at all "historic" or "record-breaking" about the flight. Although the Virgin system surely represents a great deal of refinement in the technology, the basic system of launching a rocket-powered plane from a carrier aircraft has existed since the end of World War 2. The concept of "space tourism" is nothing new as well; the first "space tourist" spent a week on the International Space Station in 2001, and there have been others since (at prices of upward of $20 million for the privilege).

And unlike Branson, those forerunners can actually claim to have been to space, whereas the limit of his achievement was to have been "really high up." Although the relatively modest altitude achieved by SpaceShipTwo has sparked something of a debate about where "space" really starts, there is actually a reliable definition: it is called the Karman Line, and it is at an altitude of 100 km or 62 miles; in other words, about 17 kilometers higher than Branson and his fellow passengers traveled. To put it in a more familiar perspective, that would be like traveling from Caloocan to Manila and then going home and telling everyone you visited Las Pias.

Granted, the Karman Line is an arbitrary boundary. What is considered "the edge of space" in a scientific sense may be much higher or somewhat lower, depending on who you ask. There is a specific reason, however, why the 100-km altitude is a valid benchmark. According to the internationally-recognized legal definition of space, based on the principle that space cannot be claimed as territory, the Karman Line marks the ceiling of any country's airspace. Get above that line and you're in space; below it and you're in the territory of whatever country is below you. Thus, Richard Branson didn't go to space; he just went to a really remote part of New Mexico.

Why, then, if Richard's Big Adventure was so unimpressive, have we been compelled to hear so much about it? It is because for his entire career, Richard Branson has been a master of image cultivation and marketing. By crafting a persona of the hip, rebel adventurer - in short, an annoying wanker - he has managed to fool the entire world into assuming he has done innovative things and made billions in the process.

Compared to his contemporaries like Jeff Bezos, who is scheduled to ride his own rocket next week, or Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company has built a fleet of space trucks, Branson is contributing almost nothing to the overall human march to the stars, except for what amounts to a very expensive amusement park ride (tickets for a Virgin Galactic flight will start at something north of $250,000). Bezos and Musk are every bit as annoying as Richard Branson if not more so, but both of their space ventures are long-term programs with real practical aims toward offering broader commercial opportunities in space, space exploration, and even colonization of the Moon and Mars. Naturally, they will make a great deal of money from pursuing those aims, but they are at least potentially contributing to the greater good.

Richard Branson, on the other hand, gets all the rest of us to contribute to Richard Branson, on the basis of his being Richard Branson. As one glaring example, he was able to prevail upon the government of New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the US, to pony up some $220 million in state taxpayer money to build his "Spaceport America," and then let it sit idle for 10 years before finally moving Virgin Galactic's operations there.

It is somewhat impressive that he has been able to make his vacuous, personality-worship business model work to his advantage, but rather than praising him for it, we should blame ourselves for letting him do it at the rest of the world's expense.

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Raise your hand if you're tired of hearing about Richard Branson - The Manila Times

In 2019, 44 percent of older Americans reported playing video games at least once a month. Part of this trend is seen in the rising popularity of game-like brain training programs such as Lumosity (which alone boasts over 75 million users), which promise improvements in memory, attention, and decision-making skills. But are these claims backed up by research?

One early study found effects of working memory training on intelligence, sparking a field of research focused on potential training benefits. After initial promising results, subsequent studies failed to replicate these findings. Often studies find some evidence of near transfer, or a training boost to specific skills, but fail to see far transfer, or benefits to general cognitive performance.

A 2021 study set out to determine the effectiveness of brain training programs in over 8,000 online participants, including 1,000 people who reported being active users of a brain training program. If these programs are as effective as they claim, then these active users should outperform the other participants on tests of memory, verbal ability, and reasoning skills. The participants came from a variety of countries, education levels, genders, and ages, a major strength of this study. The self-reported brain trainers actively used at least one program, and had used programs for anywhere between two weeks and five years.

The researchers found no evidence of an effect of brain training. Active brain trainers did not perform better on any cognitive measure than people who do not use these programs. Furthermore, no effect was found for any demographic group, such as age, education or socioeconomic status, or specific brain training program, further bolstering the conclusion that these programs are not effective.

The researchers found one significant result: people who believed that brain training was effective, regardless of whether they actually used them or not, counterintuitively performed worse on cognitive tests compared to people who didnt believe these programs are effective. Whether or not people believe these games work, they seem to have little benefit to general cognitive function. Play games for enjoyment, not with any expectation of a major cognitive boost.

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Floods in Germany are the latest wake-up call in the climate crisis - Massive Science

On June 7, Jeff Bezos announced his plan to go to space on July 20just fifteen days afterfinishing up as CEO of Amazon. It was positioned as a bold next step in the billionaire space race that has been escalating for several years, though it didnt take long for its true face to show itself. Soon after Bezos set his date, Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Bransona man known for his marketing stuntsdecided he would try to beat the richest man in the world into orbit and scheduled his own space flight for July 11.

But as these billionaires had their eyes turned to the stars and the media showered them with the headlines they craved, the evidence that the climate of our planet is rapidly changing in a way that is hostile to lifeboth human and otherwisewas escalating.

Near the end of June, Jacobabad, a city of 200,000 people in Pakistan,experienced wet bulb conditionswhere high humidity and scorching temperatures combine to reach a level where the human body can no longer cool itself down. Meanwhile, half a world away, on the West Coast of North America, a heat dome that wasmade much worse by climate changesent temperatures soaring so high that the town of Lytton, British Columbia, hit 49.6C,beating Canadas previous temperature record by 4.6C, thenburned to the groundwhen a wildfire tore through the town.

At a moment when we should be throwing everything we have into ensuring the planet remains habitable, billionaires are treating us to a spectacle to distract us from their quest for continued capitalist accumulation and the disastrous effects it is already having.

The contrast between those stories is striking. On one hand, billionaires are engaging ina dick-measuring contestto see who can exit the atmosphere first, while on the other, the billions of us who will never make any such journey are increasing dealing with the consequences of capitalisms effects on the climateand the decades its most powerful adherents have spent stifling action to curb them.

At a moment when we should be throwing everything we have into ensuring the planet remains habitable, billionaires are treating us to a spectacle to distract us from their quest for continued capitalist accumulation and the disastrous effects it is already having.

Last May, we were treated to a similar display of billionaire space ambition. As people across the United States were marching in the streets after the murder of George Floyd and the government was doing little to stop COVID-19 from sweeping the country,Elon Musk and President Donald Trump met in Floridato celebrate SpaceXs first time launching astronauts to the International Space Station.

As regular people were fighting for their lives, it felt like the elite were living in a completely separate world and had no qualms about showing it. They didnt have to make it to another planet.

Over the past few years, as the billionaire space race has escalated, the public has become increasingly familiar with its grand visions for our future. SpaceXs Elon Musk wants us tocolonize Marsand claims the mission of his space company is to lay the infrastructure to do just that. He wants humanity to be a multiplanetary species, and he claims a Martian colony would be a backup plan in case Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Meanwhile, Bezos doesnt have much time for Mars colonization. Instead, he believes we shouldbuild large structures in Earths orbitwhere the human population can grow to a trillion people without further harming the planets environment. As we live out our lives in ONeill cylinders, as theyre called, well take occasional vacations down to the surface to experience the wonder of the world we once called home.

Neither of these futures are appealing if you look past the billionaires rosy pitch decks. Life on Mars would be horrendous for hundreds of years, at least, and would likelykill many of the people who made the journey, while the technology for massive space colonies doesnt exist and similarly wont be feasible for a long time to come. So, whats the point of promoting these futures in the face of an unprecedented threat to our species here on Earth? Its to get the public on board for a new phase of capitalist accumulation whose benefits will be reaped by those billionaires.

To be clear, that does not even mean anything as grand as asteroid mining. Rather, its form can be seen in the event last May: as Musk and even Trump continued to push the spectacle of Mars for the public, SpaceX was becoming not just a key player in a privatized space industry but also in enabling a military buildup through billions of dollars in government contracts. The grand visions, rocket launches, and spectacles of billionaires leaving the atmosphere are all cover for the real space economy.

While Branson is using the PR stunt for attention, the real competition is between Bezos and Muskand while they do compete with each other, they have significant mutual interest. In 2004, Bezos and Musk met todiscuss their respective visions for space, which led Musk to call Bezoss ideas dumb. As a result of that discussion, they occasionally snipe at each otherexchanges the media eats upbut theyre still working to forward a private space industry from which they both stand to benefit.

The years of competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin over landing platforms, patents, and NASA contracts show what the billionaire space race is really about. The most recent example of this is a$2.9 billion NASA contractawarded to SpaceX to build a moon lander, which Blue Origin and defense contractor Dyneticschallenged. In the aftermath, Congressconsideredincreasing NASAs budget by $10 billion, in part so it could hand a second contract to Blue Origin. But thats hardly the only example of public funding for the ostensibly private space industry.

For all the lauding of private space companies and the space billionaires that champion them, they remain heavily reliant on government money.

A report from Space Angels in 2019estimatedthat $7.2 billion had been handed out to the commercial space industry since 2000, and it specifically called out SpaceX as a company whose early success depended on NASA contracts. Yet private space companies arent just building relationships with the public space agency.

SpaceX won a $149 million contract from the Pentagon to buildmissile-tracking satellites, and two more worth $160 million touse its Falcon 9 rockets. It also won an initial contract of $316 million to providea launch for the Space Forcea contract whose value will likely be worth far more in the futureand its building the military a rocket that willdeliver weapons around the world. On top of all that, SpaceX won$900 million in subsidiesfrom the Federal Communications Commission to provide rural broadband through itsoverhypedStarlink satellites.

For all the lauding of private space companies and the space billionaires that champion them, they remain heavily reliant on government money. This is the real face of the private space industry: billions of dollars in contracts from NASA, the military, and increasingly for telecommunications that are helping companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin control the infrastructure of spaceand its all justified to the public under the promise that its in service of grand visions that are nothing more than marketing ploys.

Part of the reason SpaceX has been so successful at winning these contracts is because Musk is not an inventor but a marketer. He knows how to use PR stunts to get people to pay attention, and that helps him win lucrative contracts. He also knows what thingsnot to emphasize, like the potentially controversial military contracts that dont get tweets or flashy announcement videos. Bezoss trip to space is all aboutembracing spectacle, because he realizes its essential to compete for the attention of the public and the bureaucrats deciding who gets public contracts.

For years, there have been concerns that billionaires space investments are about escaping the climate chaos their class continues to fuel here on Earth. Its the story of Neill BlomkampsElysium: the rich live on a space colony, and the rest of us suffer on a climate-ravaged Earth while being pushed around by robot police as we perform the labor that makes the abundance of the colony possible. But thats not actually the future were headed toward.

As Sim Kern explains, keeping just a few people alive on the International Space Stationtakes a staff of thousandsand it gets harder the farther away people are from the one world we can truly call home. Mars colonies or massive space stations are not happening anytime soon; they wont be a backup plan, nor an escape hatch. As billionaires chase profit in space and boost their egos in the process, theyre also planning for climate apocalypse down here on Earthbuttheyre only planning for themselves.

Just as Musk uses misleading narratives about space to fuel public excitement, he does the same with climate solutions. His portfolio of electric cars, suburban solar installations, and other transport projects are promoted to the public, but they are designed to work bestif not exclusivelyfor the elite. Billionaires are not leaving the planet, theyre insulating themselves from the general public with bulletproof vehicles, battery-powered gated communities, and possibly even exclusive transport tunnels. They have the resources to maintain multiple homes and to have private jets on standby if they need to flee a natural disaster or public outrage.

We desperately need the public to see through the spectacle of the billionaire space race and recognize that theyre not laying the groundwork for a fantastic future, or even advancing scientific knowledge about the universe. Theyre trying to extend our ailing capitalist system, while diverting resources and attention from the most pressing challenge the overwhelming majority of the planet faces. Instead of letting the billionaires keep playing in space, we need to seize the wealth theyve extracted from us and redeploy it to address the climate crisisbefore its too late.

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Piiigs iiin Spaaace! - The Real News Network

(Welcome toWhere to Watch, which provides a clear and simple answer to the question, Hey, where can I watch this thing? In this edition: theAlienfranchise.)

TheAlien franchise has a little bit of something for everyone. There are scares, thrills, existential dread, some laughs, and even a little bit of romance. Regardless of what youre looking for, theres anAlien film tailored to your wants.The franchise started in 1979 withAlien, which followed a rag-tag crew of space tuggers who get killed by a nasty alien that gets aboard their ship. From there, the series spawned three sequels, two prequels, and two spinoff movies.The world of xenomorphs and the people who fight them is a fascinating one, so heres where you can catch all the films in this fantastic series.

Where to stream:Amazon Prime

The one that started it all is 1979sAlien,a science-fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan OBannon. It follows the crew of the commercial space tug Nostromo after they encounter a violent extraterrestrial that gets loose on the ship.Sigourney Weaver stars as Ellen Ripley, the warrant officer aboard the Nostromo. The less you know aboutAlien going in, the better.Alienis a haunted house movie set in a spaceship, its scares coming from what might be lurking around the next corner. Its a moody, terrifying film with incredible set and creature designs from acclaimed Swiss artist H.R. Giger.Everyone should seeAlien at least once, even if the chest-burster sequence ends up giving them nightmares for a week.

Where to stream:Amazon Prime

The second film in the series,Aliens, features less claustrophobic horror and more fist-pumping action. Written and directed byJames Cameron, this 1986 sequel features some of the most iconic moments in the franchise. After losing contact with a colony on the same moon where the Nostromo encountered the killer alien, Lieutenant Ripley (Weaver) agrees to return to check things out. After being the only survivor last time, however, shes eager to bring along some company with big guns. Joined by a crew of colonial marines, she sets out to investigate what happened to the colony and hopefully erase the xenomorph threat once and for all. She also discovers her maternal instincts when the crew finds a lone survivor, a young girl called Newt (Carrie Henn).

The banter among the colonial marines, especiallyBill Paxtons Private Hudson, makesAliens much tonally lighter than its predecessor. Theres also the introduction of the franchises most lovable android, Bishop (Lance Henriksen), who is a far cry from the villainous Ash in the first film.The most iconic scene is the final fight, which sees Ripley geared up in a power-loader exosuit to take on the massive queen alien. Its queen vs. queen in a showdown for the ages.

Where to rent:Redbox ($2.99), Amazon/Apple/YouTube/Vudu ($3.99)

The third installment in theAlien quadrilogy was released to mixed reviews but has since found a cult following. David Finchers decidedly darkerAlien lacked the ghost-house scares of the first film and was nothing like the action blockbuster of the second.

Following the events ofAliens, a xenomorph escapes on Ripleys ship while everyone is in cryostasis. The ship launches its escape pod, though one of the crew has a facehugger alien on them. (We all know how that tends to go) The pod lands on Fury 161, a floating foundry and prison station for prisoners with a YY chromosomal mutation that can cause them to be extra aggressive. Ripley is woken up only to discover that on top of worrying about the killer alien on the loose, she is also the only woman on an entire station full of angry men.Alienis heady sci-fi thatdigs into issues surrounding the prison system, gender dynamics, abortion rights, and personal identity. Its not nearly as fun as either of the previous two films, but it has a lot more to say. It also gives closure to Ripleys arc, and is the film that dives the deepest into her character.

Where to rent:Redbox ($2.99), Amazon/Apple/YouTube/Vudu ($3.99)

Even though it seemed like Ripleys story had come to a close at the end ofAlien,screenwriterJoss Whedon brought her back (as a clone!) forAlien Resurrection in 1997. Weaver returns as Ripley 8, a clone of Ellen Ripley created 200 year after the events ofAlien.A xenomorph queen is removed from the Ripley clone, and the two somehow share DNA with one another. Ripley gains alien-like superpowers:the clone has enhanced strength and reflexes, acidic blood, and a psychic link with the xenomorphs.

A group of mercenaries including the android Call (Winona Ryder) bring kidnapped humans in stasis to the scientists. The scientists use these captive humans as hosts for the aliens, and raise several xenomorphs for study. Then they escape, because they have freaking acid blood that can eat through metal.

Alien Resurrection was directed byJean-Pierre Jeunet, who gained international fame with his comedy Amelie.Its a mess of a movie that feels more like Alien franchise fanfiction than a part of the overall narrative, but it has some decent performances and moments. Watch out forBrad Dourif as a scientist andRon Perlman as one of the mercenaries teamed with Call.

Where to stream:HBO Max

Ridley Scott returns to the franchise he started withPrometheus, set approximately 30 years before the events ofAlien. Scott directs a script byJon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, telling the origin of both humanity and xenomorphs. The movie follows the crew of the exploratory science shipPrometheusas they search a distant moon for signs of humanitys creator. Funded by the Weyland corporation and following a map found painted in caves on earth, the crew hopes to find the origin of all human life. What they find instead is lots of death.

Prometheushas an all-star cast that includes Charlize Theron as Weyland employee Vickers, Idris Elba as the captain of theship, Noomi Rapace as the hopeful scientist Shaw, and Logan Marshall-Green as her scientist husband, Holloway.Michael Fassbender steals the show, however, as the android David. David is one of the first androids created by the Weyland corporation, and he sees Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) as a father. Seeing the origin of androids in the franchise is interesting, given where it goes with the villainous Ash, loyal Bishop, and curious Call.Prometheus ends up becoming Davids story as he tries to find his creators creator. Theres a lot of existential pondering here, but theres also an extended alien C-section sequence that is gory greatness.

Where to rent:Redbox ($2.99), Amazon/Apple/YouTube/Vudu ($3.99)

Prometheusleft a lot of questions unanswered and ended on a cliffhanger, so five years later its sequel,Alien: Covenant,arrived. Alien: Covenant is once again directed by Scott, with a script by John Logan and Dante Harper, from a story by Michael Green and Jack Paglen. Alien: Covenant begins 11 years after the events ofPrometheus, following a colonization ship searching for new planets to inhabit. A solar flare damages the ship and the android Walter, who is a later version of the David build, wakes up the human crew. They decide to follow a transmission of a human voice from a nearby planet, only to discover that the entire planet is void of life.

The reason everythings dead, of course, is because David and Shaw crash-landed their ship there and unleashed a deadly pathogen. Walter and David go head-to-head in the worlds best game of good android, bad android, and we learn that David has been breeding all kinds of new aliens. Ship second-in-command Daniels (Katherine Waterston) must do everything she can to save not only her crew, but all of the colonists still in stasis on the ship.Alien: Covenant ends up being halfAlienmovie, halfandroid existential crisis, and it delivers on both fronts.

Where to stream:HBO Max

There are a lot of Alien franchise fans who dont countAlien vs. Predator or its sequel as part of the franchise, but Im a completionist, so here we are. The idea for a Predator to take on a xenomorph originally appeared in aPredator comic book in 1989. In 2004, writer and directorPaul W.S. Anderson createdAlien vs. Predator, a silly but fun science fiction/adventure flick that pits the formidable alien foes against one another (and some unlucky humans). Genre greatLance HenriksenplaysCharles Bishop Weyland, the head of the Weyland corporation, who once again funds an expedition to go check out some trouble in space.Sanaa Lathanplays Lex Woods, an experienced guide hired to show the expedition team around. Lex is based loosely on the character Machiko Noguchi, who appears in multipleAlien vs. Predator books and eventually joins the ranks of the Predators herself.

Lex and the rest of the crew eventually discover that Predators have been visiting Earth for centuries, sacrificing certain humans as hosts for new xenomorphs in order for the Predators to hunt them. Its a coming-of-age ritual, Predator style, and the crew manages to get caught in the crossfire. While the films PG-13 rating certainly hampers it,Alien vs. Predator is still a fun, gory ride that gives us plenty of extraterrestrial-on-extraterrestrial action.

Where to stream:HBO Max

You can watch this one if you really want, but I dont recommend it.Aliens vs. Predator: Requiempicks up where the previous film left off. A Predator ship crashlands in a forest in Colorado, and an alien/Predator hybrid called the Predalien escapes. It wreaks havoc on a small town, and a skilled veteran Predator is sent to dispatch it.Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem was the directorial debut of brothers Colin and Greg Strause and was written by Shane Salerno, who co-wroteArmageddon. Theres plenty of Predalien fighting Predator carnage here, but the cinematography is so dark you can barely see any of it. At least this ones rated R?

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Where to Find the Alien Movies Streaming or For Rent - /FILM

What would an RNA molecule today have to say about the origins of life? We live in a world where cellular life is dominated by DNA, but this wasnt always the case. The Origins of LifeAgain is a speculative look at the future from the perspective of an RNA molecule if she was able to take agency for her own destiny. Instigated by an NSF funded project that is using synthetic biology to investigate the origins of life RNA imagines a future based on the past, one that leads to insight on RNA-based viruses, the limits of fully synthetic genomes, and potential extraterrestrial life.

We have synthesized functional genomes of viruses, bacteria and simple celled organisms, but are we able to replicate life that no longer exists on this planet? Before DNA became indispensable to cellular life, there was an RNA world in which RNA performed all the functions, produced all the proteins necessary for transmission, replication, and evolution, aka life. RNA can even do the work of proteins...without proteins. Creating an RNA-based organism in the lab that self-replicates would shed light on how we transitioned into our DNA-based world.

This is exactly what our RNA character is investigating as she shuns her repetitive messenger job within the DNA factory to engineer her own likeness. RNA is inspired by the past - a rollercoaster world full of possibilities as a way to build a new future. Can RNA create an entirely new form of life using new rules, and what does that mean for biology?

If successful, this will (hypothetically?) be the first time in billions of years that cellular life with an RNA chromosome will grace the surface of the Earth. Fully synthetic genomes, including artificial genomes that go beyond what could evolve in known life, will enable us to answer questions about lifes origins and to extend the rules that set lifes limitations.

To animate is to bring to life and animation is a lot like synthetic biology both have near infinite creative capacity under the guidance of a few rules and certain tools. To match the transformative potential of the research, we took a meta angle and wondered what life itself would think of the origins of life. In creating a figurative universe its possible to envision new hypotheses and subvert traditional metaphors within synthetic biology. Metaphors always break down at some point, and the more radical a proposal, the quicker they crumble.

The original research project delves into the cultural aspect of science from the outset and includes an ethics and rhetoric component, pieces to be explored in future animations.

Presented by The Johns Hopkins University.

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Mycorrhizal fungi helped plants make the transition from water to land Read now - Massive Science

Most of what we now know as the Bay Area was Ohlone territory, from Vallejo down to Monterey, including San Francisco and the Peninsula. "Now within that, there's at least 54 independent nations," Medina says. While these groups share some things in common, they speak many different languages; Medina speaks one called Chochenyo.

Other groups around the Bay Area include the Miwok Coast Miwok people along the shoreline of Marin County, and Bay and Plains Miwok further up the Delta as well as Patwin and Wappo.

As for where the term Ohlone comes from, Medina says there are a few explanations:

"Sometimes people will say that it comes from the name of one of those smaller nations I was describing on the San Francisco Peninsula, but we have another explanation for that in our family here in the East Bay. We believe it comes from the Miwok term which means 'people of the west.' "

The record is spotty, but humans were definitely here before the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago and back then the place was not a windswept tundra. The weather was mild, and the low sea level meant the coast was miles further west than today. Whats now the bay was more like a lush river valley.

The first people we know of living here probably enjoyed abundant seafood, says Kent Lightfoot, an anthropology professor at UC Berkeley with expertise in California archaeology.

"The earliest people we have really good archaeological records of," Lightfoot says, "were maritime peoples, seafaring peoples who had boats and who had come down the coast."

It's possible another wave of migrants came in to hunt the mammoths and mastodons that roamed the Bay Area around this time. While Lightfoot says there's not great evidence of this, it wouldn't surprise him.

Over the next several thousand years, sea levels rose. The ice age megafauna vanished, but a tremendous array of wildlife remained including the now-extinct California grizzly bear.

During this period, the people here came to use bows and arrows rather than spears to hunt animals like elk. And they learned to process acorns into a kind of porridge. They also used grass-like tule reeds for everything from building structures and boats to crafting baskets and nets for fish.

Malcolm Margolin, an author and publisher who has written extensively about the native peoples of California, says the shellmounds that can still be found in the region are a hallmark from this age.

"By the time the first Europeans came, the bay had about 400 shellmounds around it. These shellmounds were accumulations of earth, of shells, of ashes from fires, of refuse and burials," Margolin says. Some were around 300 feet in diameter and three stories high and would've taken generations to build up long enough for their use to gradually shift with time. Perhaps some generations used them as ritual places, others for dwelling, he says.

Today, many shellmounds have become the sites of shopping centers and parking lots. And there are ongoing legal disputes and protests over this type of development. Perhaps the best surviving example of a shellmound is in Coyote Hills Regional Park, but that one is only open to the public on certain occasions.

It's a sad but familiar story: Waves of colonizers came to the Bay Area and killed nearly all the native people living here. Survivors had to give up their land and their way of life.

Margolin calls the genocide "an attempt to erase people," saying, "I think Europeans had no use for Indians. I think they had a sense of them as inferior beings. What they saw were people that didn't have the right clothes, that didn't have the right manners. They didn't have the right religion."

Bay Curious is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, NPR One or your favorite podcast platform.

The devastation came in three waves, starting about 250 years ago with the Spanish.

"The conquest was as cruel as it could be. Indians were drawn into the missions and many of them died either from disease or were killed outright," Margolin says.

Then, during the era of Mexican control that followed, native people were cut loose from the missions. With nowhere to return to, many were forced to work on ranches.

Mexico gave up rights to California at the end of the Mexican-American War. A few months after California became a state in 1850, the first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, said to expect a "war of extermination" against native people.

"Our family experienced a lot of hardships that came with colonization too many hardships to ever really list," Vincent Medina says.

Through it all, Indigenous people like Medinas great-grandmother quietly preserved and passed on the traditions of their ancestors.

"When not everything could be carried on, one way that our family found to keep these things alive was through documenting them," Medina said. His great-grandmother and other elders wrote thousands of pages on history, language, religion and foods.

"My great-grandmother survived that time," Medina said. She got through it, and she still kept our culture close, passing on as much as she could to everybody in our family around her. And through those efforts that's how so many of us, including myself, grew up empowered with our culture."

Medina says at one point not a single person he knew spoke Chochenyo. But over the past several years, he and others have worked to resuscitate the language, using the documentation their elders left behind as a guide. Now a whole community is conversant.

That shows healing right there in action, Medina says. That shows how we can be able to have things back again that we might have not had a short time ago, but that we were always meant to have.

Medina works to make Indigenous culture more visible in other ways, too. He runs Cafe Ohlone recently relocated to UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum of Anthropology where the menu features shellfish, acorn soup and even acorn-flour brownies a hit with kids.

He's one person among many working to revive traditional dance, basketry and even making boats of tule reeds. He sees this as carrying forward a story that began a very, very long time ago.

"Knowing that were Indigenous here, that we were created here, it gives us that responsibility and that obligation to keep these teachings close with a lot of integrity and a lot of deep care and love," Medina says.

Originally posted here:
Who Were the First People to Live in the Bay Area? - KQED

You can hardly blame Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and all their rich buddies for ditching planet Earth to have a hot billionaire summer in space.

After all, even rich people were stuck inside for a year while the COVID-19 pandemic raged its way around the globe. Who among us couldnt use an out-of-this-world vacation?

But it can be difficult not to feel a little salty over the fact that us regular poor folk can only dream of leaving atmosphere. Meanwhile, Elon Musks out there planning exactly what the buildings will look like on Mars.

Heres the thing though: those billionaires are almost certainly never going to live anywhere but on Earth. Its just too hard. Most of us are unlikely to ever visit space and pretty much none of us, in our lifetimes,will get the opportunity to live there permanently.

Like Musk says, humanity should probably become a multi-planet species ASAP. The longer we sit around waiting for our planet to get destroyed by an asteroid, an alien species, or our own unchecked destruction, the more likely well end up joining the same club as the dodo and the dinosaurs.

But were going to need to fix the Earth if we hope to live long enough as a species to obtain the necessary technology itll take to make life possible in space.

Unfortunately, living in space isnt as simple as replicating life on Earth. The reason people get excited about the possibilities is because weve been inundated with pictures of smiling astronauts having fun floating around.

But compared to Earth, outer space, the Moon, and Mars are all hellishly harsh environments. Theres a laundry list of unresolved science problems restricting even the most basic of human life requirements from being met at any scale beyond a trained space station crew, and that makes colonization a far-away science fiction fantasy.

Each of the above line items are mission-stoppers when it comes to moving members of the general public off Earth.

We dont have the technology to build massive structures in space. And that limits our ability to resolve some of the most difficult problems with living in space.

In the movies, characters walk around on spaceships as if they were taking a stroll on Earth. But space doesnt work that way and artificial gravity remains science fiction.

One way in which we can use currently available technology to solve the gravity issue would be to develop huge cylinders and set them spinning in space. Thanks to centrifugal force, a space station rotating at sufficient velocity could theoretically create artificial gravity.

But were talking massive structures here some scientists believe theyd have to be several miles across. And theres currently no feasible method by which we could build such a thing on Earth and get it up into space.

Just feeding, washing, clothing, and supplying oxygen for a handful of astronauts aboard the International Space Station costs millions of dollars per week.

In order to support human life beyond the scope of a spaceship crew, well need infrastructure in space we simply cant build or support with current technlogy.

There are literally no safe spaces in outer space. The moment we leave Earths atmosphere, were completely beholden to our technology. If your ship malfunctions in space, theres no pulling over to fix it.

Furthermore, none of the heavenly bodies near our planet offer the same protections as Earth. Temperatures on the Moon range from 260F to -280F daily. On Mars, the average temperature is -81F. And cosmic background temperature areas of space that arent being heated by nearby stars or other entities is around -455F.

What that means is, if you leave our planet, anywhere close enough for you to travel in your lifetime will be uninhabitable based on temperatures alone.

If you move to Mars or the Moon, youll never be able to stand outside and gaze up at the stars without a special suit to protect you again. And if you live on a giant spaceship or settle on a space station instead, youll spend the rest of your life looking at the cosmos through a window.

The technology it would take to terraform another planet or build giant domes to protect entire populations doesnt exist today.

The science behind making other planets habitable is purely speculative. Elon Musk honestly suggested we should consider dropping a nuclear bomb on Mars to kick start its atmosphere. That should tell you exactly how nuanced our ideas on off-world colonization are.

If we cannot solve Earths current climate crisis, it would be brilliantly stupid to think we can make the atmosphere and surface of Mars habitable for humans.

But with no atmosphere, life outside of Earth would be eternal confinement. The first civilians who try to live in space will be as much prisoners as they are pioneers.

We dont know exactly what effects long term exposure to space radiation will have on people, but we know theyre going to be bad.

Astronauts operating just outside the Earths orbit require teams with hundreds of support personnel to keep them alive. They cant just rocket up into space and fly around willy-nilly.

Scientists have to monitor radiation constantly so astronauts can avoid bursts and protect themselves. Bursts of radiation can disrupt communications and electronics and even prove instantly fatal to humans.

Furthermore, even if we manage to figure out how to shield humans during transport, theres nowhere safe for them to go except home. Humans will experience substantially more radiation on Mars and the Moon than they do on Earth, and thats likely to result in a severely decreased lifespan for anybody who lives off-planet.

The human body has evolved over millions of years. Where once we were single-celled organisms developing mutations such as flagella for locomotion, were now upright primates capable of creating nuclear reactors and episodes of Rick & Morty.

One of the quirks that comes with evolving to inhabit a gorgeous, lush planet, is that were built for gravity. Floating around in space might look like a lot of fun, but the human cardiovascular system is built to pump blood in a gravity-based environment. Our digestive system uses gravity. Our bones, muscles, tendons, and even our organs have all been designed and trained to function with a very specific amount of force pulling them in the general direction of down.

Removing us from the gravity we were designed to live in has catastrophic effects. Itd be nearly impossible to maintain muscle mass. And theres not much research on what that would mean for our hearts and brains. We simply cannot exist in low gravity for long periods of time without expecting serious health risks including premature death.

Theres currently no solution to this problem. Functional artificial gravity in space or off-planet remains squarely within the realms of science fiction.

At the end of the day, living in space would be exponentially more difficult, boring, dangerous, harsh, and soul-suckingly awful than permanently relocating to Antarctica or establishing a human colony beneath the ocean.

No matter what the billionaires tell you, its going to be easier to fix the planet we live on than to find a new home. Theres only one Earth.

Original post:
5 reasons why living in space is way harder than solving climate change - The Next Web

Welcome back to our series on Colonizing the Solar System! Today, we take a look at that closest of celestial neighbors to Earth. Thats right, were taking a look at the Moon!

Chances are, weve all heard about it more than once in our lifetimes and even have some thoughts of our own on the subject. But for space agencies around the world, futurists, and private aerospace companies, the idea of colonizing the Moon is not a question of if, but when and how. For some, establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon is a matter of destiny while for others, its a matter of survival.

Not surprisingly, plans for establishing a human settlement predate both the Moon Landing and the Space Race. In the past few decades, many of these plansa have been dusted off and updated thanks to plans for a renewed era of lunar exploration. So what would it take to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, when could it happen, and are we up to that challenge?

Even before proposals were being made for lunar colonies, the idea of humanity living on the Moon was explored extensively in fiction, with examples going back over a century. In addition, there was considerable speculation as late as the early 20th century that the Moon may be already inhabited by indigenous lifeforms (much like what was believed about Mars).

Between the 1940s and 1960s, science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein wrote extensively about the first voyages and eventual colonization of the Moon. These included multiple short stories from the 1940s that describe what life would be like in settlements on Luna (the name commonly used by Heinlein to describe a colonized Moon.

In 1966, Heinlein released the Hugo Award-winning novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which tells the story of the descendants of a lunar penal colony fighting for independence from Earth. This story received wide acclaim for the way it combined political commentary with issues like space exploration, sustainability, and artificial intelligence. It was also in this work that Heinlein coined the term TANSTAAFL an acronym for There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

In 1985, Heinlein released The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, where much of the book takes place on a Free Luna after it won its fight for independence and includes characters from some of his previous works.

Lunar colonization was also explored in fiction by the late and great Arthur C. Clarke. This included the short story Earthlight (1955), where a settlement on the Moon finds itself caught in the middle of a war between Earth and an alliance between Mars and Venus. This was followed by A Fall of Moondust (1961), which features a lunar ship full of tourists sinking into a sea of Moondust.

In 1968, Clarke collaborated with director Stanley Kubrick to create the science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, where part of plot takes place in an American lunar colony that is quarantined after an object of alien origin is found nearby. Clarke elaborated on this in the novel version that was released that same year. A lunar colony is also mentioned in Clarkes Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novel Rendezvous with Rama (1973).

Fellow sci-fi great Ursula K. Le Guin also includes a lunar colony in her 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven, which won the Locus Award for Best Novel in 1972 and was adapted into film twice (1980 and 2002). In an alternate reality, lunar bases are established in 2002 and then attacked by a hostile alien species from Aldebaran (who in another reality are benign).

In 1973, the late and great Isaac Asimov released the novel The Gods Themselves, where the third section takes place in a lunar settlement in the early 22nd century.The Lunatics (1988) by Kim Stanley Robinson (author of the Red Mars trilogy, 2312 and Aurora) centers on a group of enslaved miners forced to work under the lunar surface launch a rebellion.

The 1995 short story Byrd Land Six by Alastair Reynolds makes mention of a Moon colony with an economy centered around the mining of helium-3. In 1998, Ben Bova released Moonrise and Moonwar, two novels that centered on a lunar base that is established by an American corporation and which eventually rebels against Earth. These are part of his Grand Tour series that collectively deal with the colonization of the Solar System.

In 2017, Andy Weir (author of The Martian) released Artemis, a novel set in a lunar city whose economy is built around lunar tourism. Considerable attention is given towards the details of daily life on the Moon, which includes descriptions of a nuclear power plant, an aluminum smelter, and an oxygen production facility.

The earliest recorded example of humans living on the Moon was made in the 17th century by Bishop John Wilkins. In his A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet (1638), he predicted that humans would one day learn to master flight and establish a lunar colony. However, detailed and scientifically-based proposals would not come until the 20th century.

In 1901, H.G. Wells wrote The First Men in the Moon, which tells the story of native lunar inhabitants (Selenites) and includes elements of real science. In 1920, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (hailed by many to be the father of astronautics and rocketry) wrote the novel Outside the Earth. This novel tells the story of humans colonizing the Solar System and describes in detail what life would be like in space.

With the beginning of the Space Race in the 1950s, a number of concepts and designs have been suggested by scientists, engineers, and architects. In 1954, Arthur C. Clarke proposed the creation of a lunar base consisting of inflatable modules covered in lunar dust for insulation. Communications would be maintained with astronauts in the field using an inflatable radio mast.

Over time, a larger, permanent dome would be built that relied on an algae-based air purifier, a nuclear reactor for power, and electromagnetic cannons to launch cargo and fuel to vessels in space. Clarke would explore this proposal further with his 1955 short story Earthlight.

In 1959, the US Army launched a study known as Project Horizon, a plan to establish a fort on the Moon by 1967. The plan envisioned a first landing carried out by two soldier-astronauts in 1965, followed by construction workers and cargo delivered using iterations of the Saturn I rocket shortly thereafter.

In 1959, John S. Rinehart then-director of the Mining Research Laboratory at the Colorado School of Mines suggested a lunar structure that could [float] in a stationary ocean of dust. This was in response to the then-popular theory that there were oceans of regolith that were up 1.5 km (one mile) deep on the Moon.

This concept was outlined in Rineharts study, Basic Criteria for Moon Building, in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, where he described a floating base consisting of a half-cylinder with half-domes at both ends and a micrometeoroid shield placed above.

In 1961, the same year that President Kennedy announced the Apollo Program, the US Air Force released a secret report based on the previous assessment of a lunar military base made by the US Army. Known as the Lunex Project, the plan called for a crew lunar landing that would eventually lead to an underground Air Force base on the Moon by 1968.

In 1962, John DeNike (the Program Manager for NASAs Advanced Programs) and Stanley Zahn (Technical Director of Lunar Basing Studies in the Martin Companys Space Division) published a study titled Lunar Basing. Their concept called for a sub-surface base located at the Sea of Tranquility, the future landing site of the Apollo 11 mission.

Like Clarkes proposal, this base would rely on nuclear reactors for power and an algae-based air filtration system. The base would be made up of 30 habitat modules divided between seven living areas, eight operations areas, and 15 logistics areas. the overall base would measure 1300 m (14,000 ft) in size that could accommodate 21 crew members.

During the 1960s, NASA produced multiple studies that advocated the creation of habitats inspired by the Apollo Programs mission architecture (in particular, the Saturn V rocket and derivatives thereof). These plans envisioned space station modules being emplaced on the lunar surface and using existing designs and technology in order to cut costs and ensure reliability.

In 1963, during the 13th Proceedings of the Lunar and Planetary Exploration Colloquium, William Sims produced a study titled Architecture of the Lunar Base. His design called for a habitat to be built beneath the wall of an impact crater with a landing field nearby for spacecraft. The habitat would be three stories high with the upper level providing a view of the surface through windows.

These windows would also allow for light to enter the habitat and would be insulated with water tanks for radiation protection. Power was to be provided by nuclear reactors while sections of the habitat would be dedicated to providing office spaces, workshops, labs, living areas, and a farm to produce as much of the crews food as possible.

But perhaps the most influential design of the Apollo era was the two-volume Lunar Base Synthesis Study, completed in 1971 by the aerospace firm North American Rockwell. The study produced a conceptual design for a series of Lunar Surface Bases (LSB) that were derived from a related study for an orbiting lunar station.

In more recent years, multiple space agencies have drafter proposals for building colonies on the Moon. In 2006, Japan announced plans for a Moon base by 2030. Russia made a similar proposal in 2007, which would be built between 2027-32. In 2007, Jim Burke of the International Space University in France proposed creating a Lunar Noahs Ark to ensure that human civilization would survive a cataclysmic event.

In August of 2014, representatives from NASA met with industry leaders to discuss cost-effective ways of building a Lunar base in the polar regions by 2022. In 2015, NASA outlined a concept for lunar settlement that would rely on robotic workers (known as Trans-Formers) and heliostats to create a lunar settlement around the Moons southern polar region.

In 2016, ESA chief Johann-Dietrich Wrner proposed the creation of an international village on the Moon as the successor of the international space station. The creation of this village would rely on the same inter-agency partnerships as the ISS, as well as partnerships between governments and private interests.

It goes without saying that the creation of a lunar colony would be a massive commitment in terms of time, resources and energy. While the development of reusable rockets and other measures are reducing the costs of individual launches, sending payloads to the Moon is still a very expensive venture especially where multiple heavy launches would be called for.

Theres also the matter of the many natural hazards that come from living on a body like the Moon. These include extremes in temperature, where the Sun-facing side experiences highs of 117 C (242 F), while the dark side experiences lows of -43 C (-46 F). Most of the lunar surface is also exposed to impacts from meteoroids and micrometeoroids.

The Moon also has an atmosphere that is tenuous, it is practically vacuum. This is part of the reason why the Moon goes through such extremes in temperature and why the surface is pockmarked by impacts (i.e. theres no atmosphere for meteors to burn up in). It also means that any settlements will have to be airtight, pressurized and insulated against the external environment.

The lack of an atmosphere (as well as a magnetosphere) also means that the surface is exposed to far more radiation that what we are used to here on Earth. This includes solar radiation, which gets much worse during a solar event, and cosmic rays.

Since the beginning of the Space Age, multiple proposals have been made for how and where a lunar colony could be built. The where is of particular importance since any settlement will have to provide a degree of protection from the elements. As the saying goes, the three most important consideration in real estate are: location, location, and location.

For this reason, multiple proposals have been made over the years to construct lunar habitats in locations that would allow for natural protection and/or containment. Currently, the most popular of these is the South-Pole Aitken Basin, a massive impact region around the Moons southern polar region that is heavily cratered.

One of the main draws of this region is the fact that it is permanently shadowed, which mean that it experiences much more stable temperatures. In addition, multiple missions have confirmed the presence of water ice in the region, which could be harvested to make everything from hydrogen (or hydrazene) fuel and oxygen gas to drinking and irrigation water.

Beyond that, any attempt to colonize the Moon will need to leverage technologies like additive manufacturing (aka. 3D printing), robot workers, and telepresence. The base (or bases) will also need to be manufactured and supplies as much as possible using local resources, a method known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).

NASA and the ESA have been exploring the concept for many years and both have produced their own methods for turning lunar regolith and other resources into usable materials. For example, since 2013, the ESA has been working with the architectural design firm Foster + Partners to design their International Moon Village.

Their proposed method for building this base consists of placing inflatable frameworks on the surface which would then be covered with a form of concrete made from lunar regolith, magnesium oxide, and a binding salt. NASA has proposed a similar method which calls for robotic workers using sintered regolith to 3D print bases. This consists of melting regolith by bombarding it with microwaves, then printing it out as a molten ceramic.

Other ideas involve building habitats into the ground and having an upper level that provides access to the surface and allows natural light in. Theres even the proposal for building lunar settlements inside stable lava tubes, which would not only provide protection against the vacuum of space and impacts but could be pressurized with greater ease.

Theres even the proposal for a Solenoid Moon-base that would provide its own radiation shielding. This concept was presented by civil engineer Marco Peroni at the 2017 AIAA Space and Astronautics Forum and Exposition and consists of transparent domes enclosed by a torus of high-voltage cables. This torus would provide active magnetic shielding against radiation and would allow for settlements to be built anywhere on the surface.

The abundance of ice around the polar regions will provide settlers with a steady source of water for drinking, irrigation, and could even be processed to produce fuel and breathable oxygen. A strict recycling regimen will be needed to ensure that waste is kept to a minimum, and composting toilets will most likely be used instead of flush toilets.

These composting toilets could be combined with lunar regolith to create growing soil, which could then be irrigated using locally-harvested water. This would be essential seeing as how the lunar colonists would need to grow much of their own food to reduce the number of shipments that would need to be sent from Earth on a regular basis.

Lunar water could also be used as a source of power if the colonies are equipped with electrolysis batteries (where water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen and the hydrogen is burned). Other power sources could include solar arrays, which could be built around the rims of craters and channel power to the settlements within them.

Space-based solar power would also be able to provide abundant energy to settlements all over the lunar landscape. Nuclear reactors are another option, as are fusion (tokamak) reactors. This latter option is especially attractive given the fact that Helium-3 (a power source for fusion reactors) is more abundant on the lunar surface than on Earth.

To be fair, establishing a colony on any of the celestial bodies in our Solar System has some serious potential benefits. But having a colony on the nearest celestial body to Earth would be particularly beneficial. Not only would we be able to conduct research, extract resources, and reap the benefits of new technologies, having a base on the Moon would facilitate missions and colonization efforts to other planets and moons.

To put it simply, a colony on the Moon could act as stepping stone to Mars, Venus, the Asteroid Belt, and beyond. By having infrastructure on the surface of the Moon and in orbit which could refuel and repair spacecraft heading farther out into the Solar System we could shave billions off the costs of deep-space missions.

This is one of the reasons why NASA is planning on establishing a space station in orbit of the Moon the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), aka. the Lunar Gateway, formerly known as the Deep Space Gateway. It is also one of the reasons why the ESA wants to build its Moon Village with international partners. China and Russia are also contemplating their own surface or orbital outposts for this precise reason.

Lunar research would also be highly lucrative. By studying the effects of low-gravity on the human body, astronauts will be better prepared to deal with the effects of long-duration space travel, missions to Mars, and other bodies where low-g is a reality. These studies could also help pave the way towards the establishment of colonies on these bodies.

The far side of the Moon also presents serious opportunities for all kinds of astronomy. Since it faces away from Earth, the far side of the Moon is free from radio interference, making it a prime location for radio telescopes. Since the Moon has no atmosphere, optical telescope arrays like the ESOs Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile would also be free of interference.

And then you have interferometers like LIGO and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) that would be able to search for gravitational waves and image black holes with greater efficacy. Geological studies could also be carried out that would reveal a great deal more about the Moon and the formation of the Earth-Moon system.

The abundance of resources on the Moon, such as helium-3 and various precious and rare-Earth metals, could also allow for an export economy. This would be aided by the fact that the Moon has a much lower escape velocity than Earth 2.38km/s (1.5 mps) compared to 11.186 km/s (6.95 mps). This is due to the Moon having a fraction of Earths gravity (0.1654 g), which means that launching payloads into space would be much cheaper.

But of course, no lunar economy would be complete without lunar tourism. A colony on the surface, plus infrastructure in orbit, would make regular visits to the Moon both cost-effective and even profitable. Its not hard to imagine that this could lead to the establishment of all kinds of leisure activities ranging from resorts and casinos to museums and expeditions across the surface.

With the right kind of commitment in terms of resources, money, and labor not to mention some seriously adventurous souls! there could be such a thing as Selenians someday (or as Heinlein called them, Loonies).

We have written many articles about lunar colonization here at Universe Today. Heres Paul Spudis Plan for a Sustainable and Affordable Lunar Base, Why Colonize the Moon First?, Stable Lava Tube Could Provide a Potential Human Habitat on the Moon, and ESA Planning To Build An International Village On The Moon!.

For more information, check out our four-part series, Building a Moon Base:

For a glimpse of what life and work could be like on the Moon, check out What is Moon Mining?, and This is Important! Students Are Figuring Out How to Make Beer on the Moon.

Astronomy Cast also has some lovely episodes on the subject. Heres Episode 115: The Moon, Part 3: Return to the Moon.

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How Do We Colonize the Moon? - Universe Today

Two astronauts stand outside a geodesic dome in an artist's conception of a lunar base.

Its time to ask ourselvesthebig question:Should wetrytocolonizeoursolar system, or not?Ill readily admit Imfor it, and I suspect a large portion ofthespace community wouldstand with me but this isnt the space communitys decision, or in fact, any single nations decision.A broad consensus of commercial, civil, defense and international parties will be essential to an undertaking of this magnitude and complexity.Think of it were considering moving large numbers of humans off their home planet, potentiallynot onlyforthe rest of their lives, but for the lives of their descendants.

Its important to distinguish between colonize and explore. Exploration already enjoys broad approval here in America. In June, 77% of U.S. respondents told Gallup pollsters that NASAs budget should either be maintained or increased undeniable evidence of support for the American space program (as its currently constituted). By any measure, weve done an admirable job of surveying the solar system over the past 60 years an essential first step in any comprehensive program of exploration. Unmanned probes developed and launched by the United States and the Soviet Union conducted flybys of the Moon and the terrestrial planets not long after we reached Earth orbit, and since then, weve flown by the outer planets. Multiple nations have placed increasingly sophisticated robotic emissaries on the surfaces of the Moon, Mars, Venus and Saturns largest moon, Titan.

Most stunningly, in atour de forceof technology and Cold War chutzpah,the U.S.dispatchedhumanstoset foot on another world, just 50 years and a few months ago.Butafteronlysixsuchvisits, wenever returned.Moonhabitatsin lava tubes, cropsunder glass domes, ice mining at the south pole?No.NASAs Artemis program may place a man and a woman on the Moon again in 2024.But thats hardly colonization.For perspective, lets look closer to home.

Sailors from an Americanvessel may have landedonAntarctica as early as1821 the claim is unverified butnoscientific expeditionswinteredthere foranother75 years.The first two of these, one Belgian and one British, enduredextreme coldand privation one inadvertently, the other by design.And yet,200 years after the first explorer set foot on the continent, there are no permanent settlements(partially as a result of a political consensus reached in the late 1950s, butin no small part due to thedifficulty of extractingresources such asore or fossil fuels through kilometers of ice).Less than 5,000internationalresearchers and support staffcomprise the summer population at the bottom of the world.That number dwindles tojust 1,100 during the harsh Antarctic winter,requiringmillions of tons of supplies and fuelto bedelivered every year none of which can be produced locally.To suggest that Antarctica iscolonized would be far overstating thesustainability ofhuman presence there.

If Antarctica is hard, the Moon,Mars,asteroids,and interplanetary spacewill be punishingly difficult.Writing inGizmodo this past July,GeorgeDvorskydescribes the challenges to ahuman colony posed by low gravity, radiation, lack of air and water,andthe psychological effects of long-term confinement and isolation insideartificialstructures, in space oronplanetary surfaces.Add to this the economic uncertainties of such a venture where themodernanalog of a Dutch or British East India Company would face enormousskepticism from investorsregardingthe profitability of shipping anygood or finished productbetween colonial ports of call and it becomes clear why nation states and mega-corporations alike haveso farresisted the temptation to set up camp beyond geosynchronous orbit.Perhaps, many argue, we should focus our limited resources on unresolved problems here at home?

Yet a wave of interest inpursuing solar systemcolonizationis building, whether itsinitialfocusisthe Moon, Mars, orONeill-style space habitats.Jeff Bezos has arguedeloquentlyfor moving heavy industry off the home planet, preservingEarthas a nature reserve,and building the space-based infrastructure that willlower barriers andcreateopportunities forvasteconomicand culturalgrowth(similar to how the Internet and a revolution in microelectronics has allowed Amazon and numerous othercompanies to achieve spectacular wealth).Elon Muskand Stephen Hawkingbothsuggestedthe need for ahedge population of humanson Marstoallow human civilization to reboot itself in the event of a catastrophe on Earth an eggs-in-several-baskets approach which actually complements the arguments made by Bezos.And while bothare valid reasons for pursuing colonization,theres a stronger,overarching rationalethat clinches it.

Ill assert that afundamental truth repeatedly borne out by history is thatexpanding, outwardly-focused civilizations are farless likely to turn onthemselves,andfarmore likely to expendtheirfecundityongrowinghabitations, conductingimportantresearchand creating wealth fortheircitizens.A civilization that turns away from discovery and growth stagnates a point made by NASAs Chief HistorianStevenDick as well as Mars exploration advocate RobertZubrin.

As a species, we have yet to resolve problems of extreme political polarization(both internal to nation states as well as among them), inequalities in wealth distribution, deficiencies incivil liberties,environmental depredationsand war.Forgoing opportunities to expand our presence into the cosmosto achieve better outcomes here at home hasnt eliminated these scourges.

Whats more, thecabin feveroftendecried by opponents of colonization (when applied to small, isolated outposts far from Earth) turns out to be a potential problem for our own planet.Without a relief valve for ideologicalpilgrimsor staunch individualists who might just prefer to be on their own despite theinevitablehardships, wemaywell run the risk of exacerbatingthepolarization and internecine strife westriveso hard toquell.Focusing humanitys attentionand imaginationon a grand projectmay wellgive us the running room we need to addressthese problems.But the decision cannot be made by one country, or one company, or one segment of the human population.If we do this, it will of necessity bea trulyinternational endeavor, a cross-sector endeavor (with allcommercial, civil, and defense interestsengaged and cooperating).

The good news:Critical technologiessuch as propulsion and power generation systemswill improveover time.Transit durationsbetweencelestialdestinations will shorten (in the same waysailing vessels gave way to steam ships and then to airliners and perhaps, one day, to point-to-point ballistic reusable rockets).Methods for obtaining critical resourceson other planetswill be refined and enhanced.Genetic engineering may be used to better adapt humans, their crops and other biota to life in space or on other planetary surfaces to withstand the effects of low or micro-gravity, radiation,and the psychological effects of long-duration spaceflight.

As nation after nation lands theirinauguralexploratory vessels on our Earths moon, and as billionaire space enthusiasts race to launch passengers, satellites and other cargo into orbit, its clearly time for us to sit down as a species and debate whether our future will be onehighlighted primarily bygrowth and discovery, opening the solar systemto settlement and economic development, or onethat eschews outward expansion for conservation and preservation.Doing so would allow us to focus our attentions on this planet, leavingthe solar system in itsnaturalstate, a celestial Antarctica stretching beyond Neptune.

I vote for growth.Butone person, or one company, one community, one nation, isnt a plurality here.This debate-postponed for more than 50 years is one worth having.Humanitys futurewill be decided by its outcome.

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To Colonize Space Or Not To Colonize: That Is The Question ...