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Monday, February 24, 2003 |
What is The Space Review?
The Space Review is a new online publication devoted to in-depth articles, commentary, and reviews regarding all aspects of space exploration: science, technology, policy, business, and more. more info |
http://www.thespacereview.com/
Mars has become the de facto next destination for human space exploration, in part because of the possibility of life there. However, Donald F. Robertson writes, that possibility actually makes Mars an undesirable site for human exploration and colonization.
Monday, February 24, 2003
What does a road race from L.A. to Las Vegas have to do with NASA? Jeff Foust writes that this unique “Grand Challenge” could teach the space agency new ways of developing innovative technologies—while having some fun.
Monday, February 24, 2003
10:45:46 PM 
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In their search for evidence of life, could future astronauts on Mars do more harm than good? (credit: Pat Rawlings/SAIC for NASA) |
The Mars train wreck
by Donald F. Robertson
Monday, February 24, 2003
Before it even gets underway, human Mars exploration is headed for a political train wreck. The likelihood of trouble is so great that advocates for human exploration of the Solar System probably should look elsewhere—toward a return to Earth’s Moon or asteroid mining expeditions. The problem is life, especially if we find it, but even if we don’t.
No matter how carefully humanity explores Mars, we will never be able to say with certainty that the planet is sterile. That creates immense political problems for anyone planning even one human flight to Mars, much less attempts to colonize the world.
The political reality is that human Mars exploration will be expensive and difficult, yet it has limited popular appeal. Getting such a mission underway will require the active cooperation of every involved constituency and the tacit acceptance of most others. Even privately funded missions—which, following Robert Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” ideas, are at least conceivable—would have to avoid much active opposition.
Unfortunately, political opposition is likely to be both active and powerful. The most surprising opponents may be the group one would expect to most strongly advocate human Mars exploration: the Mars scientists themselves.
I first started thinking about this issue after 2001’s Mars Society Convention near San Francisco. Even at that venue, a number of individuals expressed serious reservations about Mr. Zubrin’s ideas for unrestrained “living off the land” and the possible impact to native ecosystems. One scientist, who has actively supported human Mars exploration for many years, argued that it should be done the same way that humanity explores Antarctica.
He argued that scientists must always be prepared to “back out” and leave a pristine natural environment in the event that life is found. There is little point in discovering life on Mars if we immediately destroy it with terrestrial contamination. Any Martian life should be left alone to pursue its own destiny.
snip
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/5/1
or http://www.saber.net/~donaldrf//marstrn.html
Which see - LRK -
and http://www.saber.net/~donaldrf//index.html
10:17:25 PM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/national/nationalspecial/24NASA.html
Scientists Question the Value of Shuttle Flights
By JAMES GLANZ and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
 or decades, NASA's prime argument for putting people in space has been the value to science. Space, the agency says, is a unique laboratory where humans are essential to test an array of things, including the way gases burn and how spiders spin webs in a weightless environment.
But in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster, many scientists outside the space agency have concluded that the scientific payoff, by itself, is nowhere near enough to justify the program's huge cost and risks.
The scientists do not necessarily favor abandoning human spaceflight. Some say long-term space exploration is a worthwhile goal. They note that experiments on the long-term effect of weightlessness can be studied only on flights.
But with remarkable unanimity, the scientists reject NASA's assertion that the research being done by astronauts can be carried out in no other way. They add that unmanned probes and robots could do most of the experiments.
snip
9:25:55 PM
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By DAVID F. GALLAGHER
 oogle's recent purchase of Pyra Labs, creators of the Blogger service for publishing the online soapboxes known as Weblogs, was a happy ending for a much-loved startup that at times seemed on the edge of collapse.
But people who follow Weblogs are curious about what Google, the world's leading search engine, expects to gain from the deal.
snip
9:24:02 PM
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Laura Brown
Columbia Accident Investigation Board Feb. 24, 2003
(Phone: 281/283-7565)
Eileen Hawley
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(Phone: 281/483-5111)
Glenn Mahone/Doc Mirelson
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1600)
NOTE TO EDITORS: N03-022
COLUMBIA ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BOARD PRESS CONFERENCE
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) will
conduct a press conference on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 3 p.m. EST.
The press briefing will be at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston.
CAIB Chairman, retired Navy Admiral Harold W. "Hal" Gehman
Jr., will be joined by other members of his investigative
team. The press conference will be an opportunity to review
with the recent investigatory activities of the CAIB.
The press conference will be broadcast on NASA Television.
Reporters may ask questions from selected NASA centers or
from the NASA Headquarters Auditorium. NASA Television is
broadcast on AMC-2, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85
degrees west longitude. The frequency is 3880.0 MHz.
Polarization is vertical and audio is monaural at 6.8 MHz.
Media wishing to attend the briefing must contact JSC for
accreditation no later than 9 a.m. CST Tuesday, February 25.
Accreditation requests, on the letterhead of the sponsoring
media organization, should be faxed to the JSC newsroom at:
281/483-2000.
For more information about NASA or the Columbia investigation
on the Internet:
http://www.nasa.gov
9:18:24 PM
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Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes
Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA.
A year ago, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of silicon microchips. Now the team has gone one step further. In the new device, the single DNA molecule that provides the computer with the input data also provides all the necessary fuel.
The design is considered a giant step in DNA computing. The Guinness World Records last week recognized the computer as "the smallest biological computing device" ever constructed. DNA computing is in its infancy, and its implications are only beginning to be explored. But it could transform the future of computers, especially in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications.
snip
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0224_030224_DNAcomputer.html
9:13:28 PM
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Salon.com Technology | Space station crew may be cut to two
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2003/02/24/space_station/print.html
Feb. 24, 2003 | CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Two American astronauts aboard the international space station wiggled and tugged to get out of bulky spacesuits by themselves Monday to test whether a two-person crew can stay aboard while the shuttle fleet is grounded.
Normally the space station has a three-person crew.
Flight managers wanted to see if the astronauts could put on and take off their spacesuits by themselves without the assistance of a third crew member. A member of a two-man crew would have to know how to take off the suit alone in case the crewmate became incapacitated.
Commander Ken Bowersox and science officer Don Pettit completed the test successfully in less than the allotted three hours. The space station's third crew member, Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, videotaped the test and offered suggestions to his crewmates.
NASA and its international partners must decide whether to keep three people aboard the station or reduce its crew to two. A two-person crew would put less demands on supplies at the space station. Crew members now must rely on Russia's space vehicles to deliver water, food and supplies instead of the much larger shuttles.
The shuttles were grounded after Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts.
A decision on when the shuttles will fly again will not come until an investigation into Columbia is completed.
The space station crew members conducted the spacesuit test 246 miles above Earth.
Bowersox struggled for several minutes to emerge from the bulky spacesuit. He submerged his head into the suit and tugged on his sleeves. When that didn't work, he took the pants portion off. He then leaned his body onto tethers stretched across the air lock and used the resistance of the tethers to pull off the top half of the suit.
Workers at NASA's Johnson Space Center applauded and Bowersox pumped his fist in the air.
"The Sox kind of reminded me of a withering insect crawling out from its chrysalis," said Pettit, using Bowersox's nickname. "Except that insect turns into a beautiful butterfly."
9:09:20 PM
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Columbia panel to determine significance of e-mail warning
NASA administrator says discussion 2 days before disaster was not unusual
Associated Press
Originally published February 24, 2003
WASHINGTON - NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said yesterday that an independent
panel will decide the significance of e-mails by a NASA research engineer
warning two days before Columbia broke apart that damage to the shuttle's
insulating tiles might have left it in "marginal" condition.
"I'm going to live by that judgment from that independent group to tell us
exactly what we could have, should have, might have, would have done had we
known something differently," O'Keefe said on CNN's Late Edition.
But O'Keefe insisted the e-mail discussions about the spacecraft were not
unusual. "Those are the kinds of dialogues and debates that go on every single
time, during every single mission," he said
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.shuttle24feb24,0,6820618.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
9:06:26 PM
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Feb. 24, 2003, 6:23AM
In tragedy's wake, NASA budget now hot partisan issueBy JULIE MASON
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
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SPACE EXPLORATION |
A view of Earth from Columbia six days before it disintegrated.
WHAT THEY SAID
• President Bush:
"The cause in which they died will continue." -Feb. 1
Video | Audio | Text
• Crew's families:
"The bold exploration of space must go on." -Feb. 2
Text
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WASHINGTON -- The NASA budget, rarely an inherently sexy topic, also has proven over the years impervious to the political tides that regularly buffet issues like welfare reform and defense spending.
But that is changing in the wake of the Columbia tragedy, and NASA is becoming one of the steamiest partisan issues in Washington since the Enron scandal.
"Like most tragedies, there is an initial pulling together, then too shortly afterwards, the partisan blame game starts," said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands. "That is the pattern, unfortunately."
By convening its own multifront investigation into the shuttle tragedy, Congress has placed itself in a critical role for determining the direction of the space agency.
There has been one mildly testy joint House and Senate hearing into the Columbia disaster so far, and this week, the House Science Committee has scheduled a hearing of its own.
The only witness lawmakers have asked to hear is NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, a one-time White House budget official and former protégé of Vice President Dick Cheney who has headed up the agency for just over a year.
snip
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/1791706
========> Will be interesting to see where the investigation takes us and whether we get a better way to space as a result. - LRK -
7:33:49 AM
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What will Google do with Blogger? | Is it time to set up Ofsearch, a regulator of search engines asks technology consultant Bill Thompson
Everyone's favourite search engine now owns the world's most popular blogging tool.
With its purchase of Pyra Labs, Google now runs Blogger and with it the weblogs of hundreds of thousands of opinionated net users.
The story of the buyout was, appropriately enough, broken on a weblog by journalist Dan Gillmor, shortly followed by an 'official' announcement on his personal blog from Prya Labs co-founder Evan Williams.
Then the blogs and technology news sites went wild, making this the net news story of the week, if not the month.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2786761.stm
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===>They are just up the road - maybe I could get a job with them :-) - LRK -
7:12:06 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Larry Kellogg.
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