Life on Mars

Apparently not as easy as it might be.

"Absolutely, the astronauts can live in this environment. It’s not so different from what astronauts might experience on the International Space Station. The real question is if you add up the total contribution to the astronaut’s total dose on a Mars mission can you stay within your career limits as you accumulate those numbers. Over time we will get those numbers."

MUSTARD in space

In 1957 Arthur C. Clarke published a collection of loosely related stories in Tales from the White Hart. From the blurb to a recent edition:

Although written, as the author informs us in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, in such diverse locations as New York, Miami, Columbo and Sydney there is something inherently English about these stories. London's famed Fleet Street district has changed dramatically in the five decades since the collection's first appearance as a Ballantine paperback original… and, of course, many of the regulars of the White Hart (based on the White Horse pub on Fetter Lane) are no longer with us. But the White Hart's most prominent raconteur  Harry Purvis can still be found propping up the bar and regaling us all once again with tales of quirky and often downright eccentric scientists and inventors.

Some sense of the atmosphere of Clarke's stories – and the real life organisations on which they were based – can be got from Poking fun at Britain's Moon Men at Tor.com.

Pencils and engagement rings

Nearby Exoplanet Could Be Covered With Diamond

Back to the future of space exploration

In a dozen juvenile novels (that's novels for young people, not novels written when he was young), Robert Heinlein laid out a manifesto for the exploration and colonisation of the solar system. Arthur C. Clarke supposedly remarked that the Moon landings justified all science fiction to that date. Everyone expected colonies on Mars, generation ships etc. by 1985. But, for various reasons, the exploration of space has been left to unmanned vehicles, while human activity has stopped at the low earth orbit of the International Space Station.

(Speaking of unmanned vehicles, there is some blogger buzz – but no confirmation from NASA – that Voyager 1 has in fact finally left the solar system).

More cricket pitches!

36-Dish Australian Telescope Array Opens for Business

The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is now standing tall in the outback of Western Australia, and will officially be turned on and open for business on Friday, October 5, 2012 . This large array is made up of 36 identical antennas, each 12 meters in diameter, spread out over 4,000 square meters but working together as a single instrument. ASKAP is designed to survey the whole sky very quickly, and astronomers expect to do studies of the sky that could never have been done before.

The size of Curiosity

In case you were wondering. About the size of a HumVee someone said.

Why didn't they take the tram?

The Curiosity Rover seems to have missed Mars by a long way and has ended up in Adelaide. Its now heading for Glenelg.

(Loving the name of the reporter).

Dining etiquette in Space

Not a problem that had occurred to me:

Always have a loaner spoon available. In weightlessness, it is easy to lose things. It is not unusual in a group of six for someone’s spoon to have floated off. Having a clean loaner spoon allows for the evening to continue and the conversation to flow. It is rude to give your guest a loaner spoon caked in crud from the last time it was used. The lost spoon is usually found by morning, stuck to a ventilator inlet screen, and your guest will appreciate it being returned.

One Small step etc.

Because you wanted a collection of sounds from NASA.

Voyager 1 and 2 Are Leaving

(This is not an update, I am just very late.)

Given how easily everyone zips around space in SciFi and how many planets they can visit which are 100%  like specific parts of Earth (but not Earth as a whole), it is surprising that no extra-solar planets had been certainly observed until 1992 (an early candidate found in 1988 was not confirmed until 2003) and so far nothing made by man has actually left the Solar System.

I, for one, welcome our new Fish Overlords

Fish in Space: Space Station Gets an Aquarium

Tui sunt caeli, et tua est terra

Doubtless you have often wondered how we know the size of the universe. Never fear, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich can tell you.

The Universe is 93 billion light years across

(That's 28 billion parsecs if you are Luke Skywalker.)

The size of the Universe, and all that it contains:


Copyright 2012. Magnifying the Universe by Number Sleuth.