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One-Way Flight to Mars? A Soldier Volunteers

May 28, 2008 12:07 PM

The idea, to say the least, was provocative.  Back in March Nancy Atkinson wrote a piece for Universe Today about a retired NASA engineer named Jim McLane, who suggested a way to jump-start human settlement of Mars: go before we're sure how to get back.  Her original piece is HERE, and the post I wrote about it is HERE.

"When we eliminate the need to launch off Mars, we remove the mission’s most daunting obstacle," McLane told her. He said it would not be a suicide mission, but that risks are necessary when you do great things.  "I don’t think there would be any shortage of people willing to volunteer for the mission. Lindbergh was someone who was willing to risk everything because it was worth it. I don’t think it will be hard to find another Lindbergh to go to Mars."

Nancy has now sent me a note to say that amid the hundreds of responses the story got, one stands out -- from a soldier stationed in Afghanistan, SFC William H. Ruth III.  He says he and his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division are "ready and willing to go."

SFC Ruth wrote, "While reading Jim McLane and Nancy Atkinson’s thoughts on Space Colonization, I started to realize that we ‘ALL’ have lost our way. We have become so consumed by petty differences and dislikes of others that we all have forgotten our pre destiny of something better."

He continued, "Will we falter at a hint of death or danger? Or will we do now what so many in ‘ALL’ of the world’s history has done before us. NASA of all thinking societies should understand this. Would there even be an America or NASA if a man named Columbus had not pursued a dangerous and possibly deadly voyage to a new world? He certainly had to consider whether or not he would ever return home to see all those he loved so dearly. But what of those aboard his ships, those that left Spain knowing that they would never return. Those few that willingly risked all for the chance at a new world and a new future, could they have possibly known what effects they would have had on the future due to their sacrifices? Now can we have enough vision to see our destiny, can we, for a moment, see past our petty differences of race and religion to see…peace, prosperity and possibly a new world."

Nancy Atkinson's followup story is HERE, and she's posted "A Soldier's Perspective" from Ruth HERE.  Ruth struck up a correspondence with a Spanish journalist, Javier Yanes of a newspaper called Publico, and he forwarded Ruth's message.

"I fully agree with NASA and others that it is completely dangerous and potentially deadly for anyone who sets out on this voyage," Ruth wrote. "But since when has that ever stopped anyone?"

May 28, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (44) | TrackBack (0)

Scenes from the Martian Arctic

May 26, 2008 12:59 PM

Some years ago I flew in a helicopter over the tundra near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and the first thought that  came to mind was that it looked like Mars.  The ground was frozen, broken into strange, giant polygons,  apparently formed by the ice beneath it, expanding and contracting as it froze and thawed and froze again.

Last night I looked at the first images of the polar north on Mars, shot by the Phoenix Lander, and the first  thought that came to mind was that it looked like Prudhoe Bay.  The ground was frozen, made of strange, giant  polygons, apparently formed by the ice beneath it, expanding and contracting as it froze and thawed and froze again.

You do not have to stretch to make this analogy.  In 2002 a NASA orbiter, Mars Odyssey, showed that the  Martian polar regions, unlike the rest of the planet, had frozen water mixed in with the soil.  Mars is far colder today than Earth, but the scientists on the Phoenix team remarked that the polygons they saw on Mars were probably formed the same way as the ones near the Arctic Ocean. 

There are other forces at work, of course, but still -- two worlds, 170 million miles apart, where very similar things are happening.

Mars, as the twin rovers showed in 2004, once had standing water on its surface, though it's long gone from the sites near the equator where they landed.  There's been climate change there, as on Earth, though for different reasons.  Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, the Principal Investigator for Mars Phoenix Lander, says the tilt of Mars' axis has been the largest factor.

Take a look at the raw images from the Phoenix ship; you can find them HERE and HERE.  It looks so desolate, but it may be the friendliest place on Mars we've yet seen.  The rovers drove across bone-dry ground; Phoenix probably has ice just a few feet beneath its landing legs.  If -- and this is the point of the mission -- the ship finds organic compounds in the soil, that plus water make for an intriguing mix.  NASA's posted a useful primer on water and life HERE.

We're right back to Steve Squyres' point from my previous post: is life special?  Or does it just take root wherever conditions are friendly enough?

The Phoenix probe landed 68 degrees north of the Martian equator.  Prudhoe Bay is 70 degrees north of the Earth's equator.  Just a coincidence.

(Mars Phoenix image via NASA.  Prudhoe Bay image from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

May 26, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

Why Mars?

May 23, 2008 3:06 PM

Phoenix Mars Lander is on final approach now.  If you could hitch a ride on the little ship, you would see a rusty red globe looming in the distance, slowly growing. 

Nothing much will happen until late Sunday afternoon, U.S. time, when the ship jettisons its cruise stage, and goes plowing into the Martian atmosphere.  Engineers hope that in a seven-minute period, it will slow from 12,700 miles an hour...to only five.  (Take a look, if you haven't already read it, at Gina Sunseri's piece.)

Landing is a risky proposition, and the mission managers at JPL are clearly trying to keep expectations low.  A very similar probe, Mars Polar Lander, crashed in 1999.

All of which raises the question of why they try.  I invite you to weigh in, as we get closer to Sunday, but here's one answer, from an interview I did a couple of years ago with Steve Squyres, the Cornell astronomer who is the principal investigator for the twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.  They landed safely on Mars in 2004, and though they're clearly wearing down, they're still going.

Squyres and his team say the rovers found clear evidence that there was once standing water on the Martian surface -- brackish pools and rivulets, thick with the minerals that make the planet red. 

That water is long gone -- but the rovers both landed near the Martian equator.  Readings from orbit show there's still ice in the soil near the Martian poles, which is where Phoenix is headed.  It is set to land at 68 degrees north latitude, which, on Earth, would be like landing in northwestern Canada near the Arctic Ocean.

Water, plus time, plus organic molecules -- those are thought to be good ingredients for the rise of life, and Phoenix is designed to look for organic compounds.  But if the mix is right, does life just...happen?  Or does there need to be something more?

That, to Squyres, is why Mars is worth exploring, and that's what we discussed down the hall from his office at Cornell.

"Life might have originated on Mars.  Did it?  We don’t know,” he said.  But if you can show that life arose independently on two different worlds, just in this one solar system, it takes no great leap of imagination or faith, or anything else, to begin to believe that life might be common throughout the universe."

“And the reverse might also be important?” I asked.

“The reverse might also be true.  You might get to Mars and find that the conditions were once just right for life.  It was warm, it was wet, there were pools of water—and you could search for years and find no evidence of life.

“That would be important too,” said Squyres.  “It means that life is pretty special.”

May 23, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (37) | TrackBack (0)

America's First Carbon Tax

May 21, 2008 1:01 PM

Updated, 3pm EDT:

In San Francisco, regulators have voted 15-1 to impose America's first fee for emitting carbon dioxide. 

It's not terribly much -- 4.4 cents per ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere -- but the symbolism is obvious.   

The proposal comes from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which met today.  About 2,500 businesses would be required to pay fees, most of them less than a dollar a year.  A few big ones -- seven power plants and refineries, could pay close to $200,000.  Cars and trucks, estimated by the District staff to account for half of local CO2 emissions, are not affected by this plan.

More details HERE from Terry McSweeney of our San Francisco affiliate, KGO-TV.

"It doesn't solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms," Prof. Daniel Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, tells AP. "It's not enough of a cost to change behavior, but it tells us where things are headed. You have to think not just in financial terms, but in carbon terms."

Plenty of businesses, of course, feel otherwise, worrying that competitors elsewhere will get more work if they have to pass one more cost on to customers.  The Western States Petroleum Association says it may sue over the hodgepodge of regulations that might now come.  And there are questions about whether local regulators have authority on a global issue, though the District's staff says the California Air Resources Board doesn't seem inclined to stop them.

To many environmental advocates, nothing will happen unless there's a clear cost to emitting greenhouse gases.  The beauty, they argue, is that businesses can get around the tax by...finding cleaner ways to operate. 

Some companies have outright asked for clear regulations from Washington.  They stand to profit from it.  GE's homepage today leads with a feature about the company providing wind farms in China.

May 21, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (190) | TrackBack (0)

Little Star Makes Big Mess

May 19, 2008 12:42 PM

It is a good thing that we don't know of any planets circling a star called EV Lacertae.  If there are, they would be really unpleasant places.

NASA says the little star -- a so-called red dwarf -- has given off one of the brightest solar flares ever observed. The Swift satellite, an orbiting observatory with an X-ray telescope, caught it in the act on April 25, and artist Casey Reed has done the picture you see above, released today by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

EV Lacertae isn't much of a star.  It's about a third as massive as our Sun, and gives off about one percent as much light.  It's also believed to be young -- only a few hundred million years -- so it hasn't had much time to form a solar system.

Which is why this is comforting on a Monday.  "Here's a small, cool star that shot off a monster flare," said Rachel Osten of NASA and the University of Maryland in a statement.  "Flares like this would deplete the atmospheres of life-bearing planets, sterilizing their surfaces."

Our Sun gives off flares all the time -- and is the only source of flares brighter than the one from EV Lacertae.  But we're protected by the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field.  Perhaps more useful, EV Lacertae is 16 light-years away (about 90 trillion miles), while the Sun is 8 light-minutes.

Of course, there could be planets circling EV Lacertae, in which case this story would be much less pleasant.

May 19, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Tit for Tat

May 16, 2008 8:47 AM

The picture that accompanies this post is not of a polar bear, it's of a political football.  Wednesday's decision to list the bears as a threatened species, everyone involved seems to agree, did very little to affect their well-being for now.

So Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) have now introduced The Polar Bear Seas Protection Act of 2008, intended to protect against oil and gas drilling in the Beaufort Sea (off the northeast coast of Alaska) and the Chukchi Sea (off to the northwest).

The environmental groups that sued in 2006 to protect the bears under the Endangered Species Act were up-front in their motives: they wanted to use the bears as a legal weapon against the production of greenhouse gases.  Take a look at the release, HERE, from the Center for Biological Diversity, which has pursued the issue for four years with polar bears and other species.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne made it clear that he -- and the White House -- would not fall for it.  "Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears.  But it should not open the door to use the ESA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources," he said.  Read his prepared remarks HERE.

Now come Reps. Inslee and Hinchey.  Sen. John Kerry has introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

"While the listing was a long overdue recognition of scientific reality, the administration included a poison pill by ruling out the one thing that would make it meaningful: an effective policy on stopping global warming.  It’ll be business as usual for oil and gas development, which will put polar bears at greater risk from potential spills, onshore infrastructure and disturbances, not to mention, will continue emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing the melting of sea ice in the first place,” said Inslee in a statement to accompany the bill.  “This bill will help fill the vacuum of administration leadership by providing important protections for polar bears and their habitat."

Will the tactic work?  Should it? 

May 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (203) | TrackBack (0)

Polar Bear Ruling: Nobody's Happy

May 14, 2008 4:38 PM

Interior Secretary Kempthorne has now ruled to give polar bears "threatened" status.  But it's clear that nobody -- not he, not environmentalists, not conservative groups that oppose the environmentalists -- is pleased with the decision.

If you haven't seen our piece, it's HERE.  A few extra quotes:

Secretary Kempthorne: "While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting.  Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective.  That is why I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies."

John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation: "They said that they can't say any single coal plant or any other polluter is responsible for the decline of sea ice.  And that's simply incorrect.

"They said that the endangered species act would do nothing to help the polar bear from the threat of oil and gas activities in the Arctic.  And that's a big problem."

On the other side, Robin Rivett, president of the Pacific Legal Foundation: "We're prepared to sue, quite frankly.

"There were 5,000 bears in the 1960s.  There are 25,000 now.  The only basis for this decision is computer modeling that shows polar ice might thin in the middle of the century.  That's pretty flimsy science."

One more comment, of a sort: we're told these are two members of the Alaska Wilderness League, who sat in the back row of Kempthorne's news conference.

See you in court?

May 14, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)

Pitched Battle over the Polar Bear

May 14, 2008 12:28 PM

What is to become of this iconic creature -- not in the Arctic where it lives, but in Washington, where it is the object of a spirited debate?

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is to make an announcement this afternoon on whether the bears are to be listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.  Environmental groups had sought this status for them on grounds rarely used before: that the bears are losing habitat because of the Earth's warming climate.

The Interior Department had fought making a decision, and lost.  The court-imposed deadline is tomorrow.  Environmentalists from Alaska to Washington are abuzz over what's going to be said.

There are two schools of thought:

--Mr. Kempthorne will announce that he is not going to invoke the Endangered Species Act, with all the restrictions it implies.  Instead, he will cite a Memorandum of Understanding with the Canadian Wildlife Service, in which the two countries pledge to protect the bears.  Find the text HERE.

Some of the logic in this scenario: some Interior staffers argued that if the bears were given Endangered-Species protection on global-warming grounds, the department could, in effect, be placed in the position of regulating carbon dioxide emissions -- something the administration had fought.  You'll recall the the Environmental Protection Agency took this issue to the Supreme Court, and lost last year.

--The second school of thought is that the department will give the bears Endangered-Species protection, but with caveats so that oil and gas drilling in the Arctic are not impeded.  That's been a sore point -- oil companies see reserves dwindling elsewhere and want to expand drilling in northern Alaska and the Arctic Ocean nearby, while environmental groups say that's precisely why we have global warming.  Just this month, talking about high gasoline prices, President Bush faulted Congress for refusing to allow oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.

"This has been going back and forth by the hour," one person said to me late this morning.  More when we get it.

May 14, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

By the Light of the Silvery Moons

May 08, 2008 8:05 AM

The Earth had a really bad day about 4.5 billion years ago.  Something about the size of Mars, so the theory goes, hit our still-forming planet, spewing debris in all directions.  Much of that material eventually coalesced to form the Moon.

Or maybe, say two scientists, it formed several moons. 

Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center and John Chambers of the Carnegie Institution of Washington have published a paper in the journal Icarus -- read the abstract HERE -- in which they do the math and conclude that debris could stay put for tens of millions of years at two of the so-called Lagrange points, places about a million miles from Earth where the gravity and the Earth and Moon effectively cancel each other out. 

The Lagrange points have proved useful to managers of space missions; the SOHO solar observatory floats in one of them.  But entire moons, even small ones?

Lissauer and Chambers say it's possible -- and given the eons they calculate debris could have stayed put, pieces of debris could have pulled together under the force of gravity to form moonlets. 

Whether this actually happened is conjecture; the Lagrange points are empty now.  The gravity of other planets would have been enough to destabilize objects there over time.

Ker Than of New Scientist has posted a short musing on the possibility, quoting Matija Cuk of the University of British Columbia, who's done similar modeling.

"They would have looked more like Jupiter or Venus in the sky than a satellite," said Cuk. "They would have resembled very bright stars."

Hat tip to Tuan Nguyen of our staff for noticing this.

May 8, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (23) | TrackBack (0)

Body Parts for Sale

May 06, 2008 8:29 AM

A kidney specialist in Australia has created a ruckus by suggesting a way to end the shortage in organs for transplant -- let people sell their kidneys for $50,000 (Australian, equal to about $47,300 U.S.), to the government, for use on an open, legal market.

"Being forced to travel overseas and illegally buy an organ from someone who desperately needs the money, with no medical controls over the process and nobody checking whether the kidney is a good match, is what I call unethical," says Dr. Gavin Carney in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"But what is the option? Spending eight hours a day on dialysis for up to seven years? Dying on a wait list?"

The Herald says 1,800 Australians are waiting for kidney transplants, but only 343 were donated last year.

Trading in body parts is something most Americans find horrific, with all its implications of poor people selling their organs -- and well-being -- to those who can afford it.  But there are occasional calls, such as Dr. Carney's, for people to reconsider.  And there is one country -- Iran -- where the sale of organs is legal. 

My old friend Stephen Dubner, co-author with Steven Levitt of "Freakonomics", has written about this lately --find his post HERE -- and he points us to an analysis by Dr. Benjamin Hippen, a kidney transplant surgeon in Charlotte, posted on the website of the Cato Institute.  Take a look HERE.

"Although Iran clearly does not serve as a model for solving most of the world's problems, its method for solving its organ shortage is well worth examining," writes Hippen.

Hippen is quick to say he does not see Americans getting over their repugnance of organ-selling anytime soon, but he calls the shortage of organs for transplant the result of a "terrible policy failure."  He says, "The portion of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 which prohibits the sale of organs should be repealed," so that we can explore how a fair market for organs -- better, presumably, than Iran's -- might work.

Would you sell one of your kidneys?  Tuesday's edition of the Sydney Morning Herald carries a follow-up story: a man named Craig Gill called the paper to say he'd readily sell a kidney to secure the future of his two-year-old daughter Petal.

May 6, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)

Here Comes the Sun

May 02, 2008 8:05 AM

A lame joke, from the early days of the Moon race, had a comedian/astronaut cheerfully claiming he was going to fly a mission to the Sun.

But it's too hot, the straight man would reply.  How will you get there?

Simple, came the answer.  We'll go at night.

Groan.

But now, after 30 years of planning and arguing and canceling because it was too hard and too expensive, NASA has finally ordered up a mission that, for now, it calls Solar Probe.  It's asked the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to work up a plan for a launch in 2015.  The spacecraft will have a carbon-composite heat shield, nine feet in diameter and six inches thick.  The Earth is about 93 million miles away from the Sun on average; Solar Probe would be sent within 4.1 million miles.

This is billed as pure science, but in a technology-driven world, engineers want to know more about the charged particles that come flying our way, as solar wind most of the time, and as giant flares -- Coronal Mass Ejections -- when the Sun is especially active.  Solar radiation has, on occasion, fried the electronics of satellites, and in 1989 a power blackout in Quebec was attributed to solar activity. 

Shield your eyes.

May 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (30) | TrackBack (0)