Posts Tagged Mars

Interview: “Warren Ellis Thinks Newt Gingrich’s Space Ideas Are Full of Shit”

Posted by mistergroonk in Interviews, Just Freaking Neat, USA, World on January 31, 2012

Over on Motherboard , Abraham Reisman interviewed Warren Ellis about Newt Gingrich’s aspirations for a USA moon colony. We figured Mr Ellis might have a word or two on Gingrich’s obvious vote grabbing statement. Mr Ellis did not disappoint.

The following excerpts are just a few choice moments from the interview. It was a bit difficult deciding which thoughts were best.


Abraham Reisman: What kind of merit is there to Gingrich’s proposals — which he’s self-described as “grandiose” — for developing a rocket that can reach Mars, establishing a permanent moon base, and so on?

Warren Ellis: Well, let’s start with the “51st State” bit that’s being bandied about. Speaker Gingrich knows as well as the next political mammal that the Outer Space Treaty forbids any one nation from claiming sovereignty over the moon. So, not so much with the 51st State crap.

[…]

Going to Mars is important. Going back to the Moon is, I think, important. But his plans and reasons for going make about as much sense as if he had said we had to go to Mars to find him something new to marry. I’m genuinely interested in seeing the human race escape the planet and go exploring. Speaker Gingrich would like to be elected.

Are there other technological goals on the scale of space travel that you think humanity should be pushing for, right now? If so, do you see models for us achieving them?

I’m not sure where everyone got the idea that the human race can only do one thing at a time. “What about here on Earth?” people say. “Shouldn’t there be other goals here that we should be pushing for?” Sure there are. But at this late date I’m fairly sure we’ve mastered walking and chewing gum as a simultaneous operation.

I’m not suggesting that we can’t do two things at once. But if there were things in addition to space travel that you think could have a similarly massive effect on humanity’s ability to grow as a species…

Curing cancer. Increasing quality human longevity. Induced pluripotential cell treatments. Nailing down that weird neutrino anomaly that seems to allow for faster-than-light communication. The usual shopping list. Also I want an orbital death ray.

You will read the entire interview on Motherboard.

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NASA Proposes One-Way trip to Mars, Surprised When Hundreds Volunteer

Posted by mistergroonk in Science, Space on January 14, 2011

living on Mars

So a few scientists proposed an unconventional idea: send astronauts — but simplify the flight by making it a one-way trip. The astronauts would be settlers as well as explorers. A return trip is massively more difficult than the voyage there, partly because the fuel and supplies to get home would have make the round trip from Earth.

It’s just a fanciful idea for now — but the editors say they were stunned when more than 500 e-mail messages came from people around the world, volunteering to be the first Mars colonists.

Students, soldiers, law enforcement officers, nurses, and space enthusiasts young and old wrote in, saying they’d be happy to leave their lives on Earth for the chance to be pioneers. (The response was so great, in fact, that the journal announced Thursday that it would actively seek volunteers and supporters for a Mars mission. It encouraged the public to sign up on the journal’s home page or e-mail them.)

Have you seen the world lately? Mars looks like the better bet with each passing day.

When asked why he would be willing to leave his son, family and friends behind, he said, “Christopher Columbus did it. It’s a pioneering thing. …Because it’s there.”

Well, yeah. There’s that, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Good Morning, Mars. See You Real Soon.

Posted by mistergroonk in Photography on October 14, 2010

via @dailygalaxy

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Ray Bradbury is Mad as Snakes, Claims there are Too Many Internets. Rachel Bloom Shares Her Bradbury Love.

Posted by mistergroonk in Books, Interviews, Music, Video on August 17, 2010

Prolific science future writer Ray Bradbury had a few things to share about today’s world. His words are political, frustrated, and a tinge desparate. While we agree with his thoughts on returning to the moon, Mars and the universe at large, we see a lot of angry old man shaking his cane at today’s youth in his words. That always makes it difficult to separate the useful wheat from the crazy chaff.

For example:

Useful Bradbury

“He[President Obama] should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,”

“We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever.”

Crazy Bradbury

“We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

Bradbury says he’s not technology obsessive which is fine and good. Lots of people aren’t. We can’t help but wonder how humanity will ever reach the stars without massive amounts of proven technology. Unless he’s invented the fine art of “traveling without moving” we’re gonna need those machines for future use.

Rachel Bloom’s “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury”
And now, hold on tight as we take a wild left turn. The following is a sexy pop music video about Ray Bradbury created by You Tuber racheldoesstuff . There’s no doubt Bradbury’s crazy old man rant was never meant to mix with this catchy NSFW tune. That’s just how we roll.

Our universe lives in dichotomy.

via @comicscavern, @richl1, la times, racheldoesstuff

UPDATE: Ray Bradbury watching “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury”

Thanks, Ain’t It Cool.

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US Manned Spaceflight Back on the Table. Mars Promised… Again

Posted by mistergroonk in Science, USA on April 16, 2010

Space, the outer frontier. At first it seemed we weren’t going. Manned spaceflight heard a familiar death knell. Budget cuts would effectively end US manned spaceflight for longer than this Space Bastard felt necessary.

But then a change of heart.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Pointing to Mars and asteroids as destinations, President Obama on Thursday forcefully countered criticisms that he was trying to end the nation’s human spaceflight program.

Mars is promised as it was 6 years before.

Wait. What’s this now?
Read the rest of this entry »

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MSFC Ares I and Return to Moon Dead, Guess You *Can* Take the Sky From Me

Posted by mistergroonk in Space, USA on February 1, 2010

We saw this coming from miles away. Though we’re confused about the priorities. During the 60s there were several major social revolutions and wars aplenty . Yet the USA still managed to go to the moon. We did this using computers less powerful than a contemporary digital watch.

The Office of Management and Budget has released the proposed $19 billion fiscal year 2011 budget for NASA, with plans to cancel the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed Ares I and directions to shift focus away from returning to the moon to continue support of the International Space Station.

Are we being delusional because current times are tough? Let’s face it. Times are always tough. The benefits from the Apollo program are countless. Imagine what we could learn by stepping off our front porch. All of you practical minded folk who don’t have the love for The Black like we do, please consider the shear volume of jobs that would be created just to send a manned mission into Mars orbit.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

In their place, according to White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources familiar with Obama’s long-awaited plans for the space agency, NASA will look at developing a new “heavy-lift” rocket that one day will take humans and robots to explore beyond low Earth orbit. But that day will be years — possibly even a decade or more — away.

Beyond low Earth orbit is not good enough. We’ve been out there for decades. Why not stroll down the street to see what’s there?

Robots are not good enough. Until we create the intelligence that will fuel our future robot overlords, they don’t have the know-how, the poetry, or the will to get things done. This new tact is not the way of the future.

Today, our Space Bastard soul is disappointed.

(via al.com, phys.org )

UPDATE: @BryanMcB tells us that Buzz Aldrin is all about skipping the moon and going right to Mars: [PDF]. A bold and awesome thought. Aldrin hopes that more commercial explorations of low Earth orbit will “likely result in so many more earthlings being able to experience the transformative power of spaceflight.”

If only we could be as positive as Mr Aldrin about this.

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Mars Swinging by for a Closer View. Spirit Rover Readying for a Long Winter Nap.

Posted by mistergroonk in Robots, Space on January 27, 2010

Northern Spring on Mars

On Jan. 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than any other time between 2008 and 2014.

They say the view will actually be best Jan. 29, 2010. They also have maps of the sky to guide you.

In other news, the Mars rover, Spirit, appears to be permanently stuck.

NASA Gives Up on Spirit Rescue, Preps Mars Rover to Hibernate

With winter approaching, Spirit’s handlers have decided to put the rover into a hibernation mode intended to protect its electronics from temperatures that could drop close to the design limit of negative 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The Rover will be like a polar bear hibernating and it could be for many months, on the order of 6 months that the Rover will be in this state,” said John Callas, the Rover project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during a media teleconference. “This is not like the Phoenix mission. This rover is electrically active, but it has insufficient power to be awake each day.”

(via wired, wired: spirit , APOD)

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Beneath the Mountains of Mars: Glaciers

Posted by mistergroonk in The Future on December 22, 2008

081120-hellas-deposits-02widec1These mounds of ice exist at much lower latitudes than any ice previously found on the red planet.

“Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that’s not in the polar caps,” said John Holt of the University of Texas at Austin and the main author of the study. “Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to one-half-mile thick, and there are many more.”

Water on Mars: great. Possible water source for future human settlements: fantastic. Alien locations for off-world snowboard festivals: why not?

But what I really want to know is: Does Mars have a Santa Claus? More importantly, will he fight for us or against us?

(via msnbc)

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Coming Soon: The ‘Interplanetary Internet’

Posted by mistergroonk in Just Freaking Neat, Space on December 1, 2008

Last month, while I was busy focusing on nothing but movies(trailers), science was busy amazing the crap out of the world with their innovations.

NASA has finished its first deep-space test of what could become an ‘interplanetary internet’. The new networking commands could one day be used to automatically relay information between Earth, spacecraft, and astronauts, without the need for humans to schedule transmissions at each point.

Spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit usually communicate directly with Earth – the first to do so through an intermediary were the Mars Explorations Rovers, which launched in 2003. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers transmit data to orbiters, which then send the data back to Earth.

[…]

A new method would automate and streamline this process by sending data through an interplanetary ‘internet’. Just as data is sent from one point to another on the internet via a linked network of hubs, or nodes, spacecraft scattered throughout the solar system could be used as nodes to transmit data through space.

Do you know what this means, people?! The future world as depicted in Cowboy Bebop, is becoming a legitimate jam session.

The Cortex will be a reality. At the speed of thought we will send waves across the system of Sol. The truth of the signal will be spread far and wide. Even the likes of the puppet theater will be forced to admit, “You can’t stop the signal.”

(via new scientists, grinding.be)

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Pirate Love from “M-AAAAARS!”

Posted by mistergroonk in Holiday, Space on September 19, 2008

Mars Phoenix. You are so money.

(via mars pheonix)

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