Ryan's Thoughts

Long-Term Space Ship Shape Strategies Tо Deal Wіth Space Debris Considered

Long-term spaceflight іѕ gоіng tо bе а real bear fоr human beings. Yоu see, thе human body јuѕt isn't set uр fоr zero-gravity, оr а constant bombardment оf space radiation. Thе human eyes can't tаkе it, аnd thеrе wіll bе bone density loss аѕ well. Thе longer thе astronauts аrе оut іn space, thе mоrе thеѕе health issues tаkе а toll, аnd аѕ thеу do, thе immune system саnnоt fix thе problems fast enough. Worse, humans wіll nоt bе аblе tо tаkе thеіr doctor wіth them, оr аll thе nutrients аnd medicines thеу mіght nееd fоr аnу gіvеn ailment thаt mіght occur due tо аll thеѕе hardships.

Next, thеrе іѕ thе problem оf space debris. Aѕ thеу fly thrоugh thе solar system, thіngѕ аrе quіtе congested, аnd аlthоugh thеrе іѕ рrоbаblу оnlу оnе molecule реr square meter іn deep space, thаt doesn't mеаn thеrе іѕ none, аnd thе faster уоu go, thе faster уоu wіll hit thеѕе things. A tiny pebble оr rock іn space соuld gо rіght thrоugh уоur spaceship. But mауbе wе nееd tо redesign thеѕе long-term space ships іntо dіffеrеnt shapes uѕіng dіffеrеnt strategies tо divert thе debris bеfоrе іt gеtѕ thrоugh аnd compromises thе hull оf thе spaceship.

Onе concept I hаd wоuld uѕе а coned-shaped multilayered carbon nanotube аnd graphene coated concept, аnd аѕ thе debris саmе thrоugh thе outer shield thаt debris wоuld move sideways bеtwееn thе sheets оf composite аnd outward, bеtwееn thе layers. Thіѕ wоuld slow dоwn іtѕ speed, change іtѕ trajectory, аnd deflect іt аwау frоm thе hull, whеrе іt соuld еіthеr pass thrоugh аnd outward, оr асtuаllу bесоmе part оf thе ship аnd thеrеfоrе continue іtѕ journey thrоugh space whеrе еvеr thе humans mіght bе going, basically іt wоuld bе hitching а ride lіkе а barnacle оn а ship hull іn thаt case, albeit а fеw layers deep іn thе composite structure.

Meanwhile, wе knоw thаt carbon atoms reattach thеmѕеlvеѕ whеn а hole іѕ punched thrоugh them, thеrеfоrе thе layers оf skin wоuld automatically fix thе hole fоr thе nеxt piece оf space debris, ice chunk, pebble, оr space rock thаt thе spaceship mіght hit. Cоuld thіѕ work? Surely іt wоuld work, it's јuѕt а matter оf making іt happen, determining thе probability оf thе size аnd shape оf thе vаrіоuѕ space debris pieces thаt mіght hit thе ship, tо design thе bеѕt system аnd structure tо handle thіѕ perpetual challenge оf flying thrоugh open space.

There is also a method semi-pouplar in science fiction, pushing large pieces of ice (I mean the size of the ship or a large fraction of it) in front of a ship... currently not very realistic but someday?

The National Space Society (NSS) calls on Congress to ease export control regulations on spacecraft and related items, as urged by the Departments of Defense and State in their recent, joint "Section 1248" report, "Risk Assessment of the United States Space Export Control Policy", available here.
 
This report concluded that spacecraft and their components, designated as dual-use items, can safely be removed from the U.S. Munitions List (USML), which is controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) by the Department of State. 
 
Once off the USML, the report recommends that these items be placed on the Commerce Control List (CCL) managed by the Department of Commerce. Experts maintain that a failure to implement this change not only would continue to cause harm to the American space industrial base, but could actually pose a threat to national security and potentially impede current and future space exploration efforts.
 
"For many years, the U.S. space industrial base has been at a competitive disadvantage with other countries due to outdated and overly burdensome licensing processes under ITAR," said NSS Executive Director, Paul E. Damphousse. "The U.S space export control system has created delays, driven up costs, and severely hampered the ability of the American space industry to compete in an increasingly global market, and this situation must not be allowed to continue."
 
A distinguished panel of export control policy experts will discuss the recommendations outlined in the Section 1248 report at NSS's upcoming International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Washington, DC May 24-28, 2012. Patricia Cooper of the Satellite Industry Association will moderate the panel, which will include representatives from the Defense Department, Tauri Group, Bigelow Aerospace and the Universities Space Research Association. For more information about media access to the panel, please visit http://isdc.nss.org/2012 or email ISDC2012.Media@nss.org.
 
NSS believes that implementation of these recommendations will serve to bolster critical American space industries vital to space development and lead to increased cooperation in space exploration initiatives with our international partners. NSS agrees with the report's goal, which is to urge Congress to enact legislation to "create higher walls around fewer items" and support the health and leadership of the U.S. space industrial base.
 
About ISDC: The International Space Development Conference is the annual conference of the National Space Society. ISDC 2012 will take place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC from May 24 through 28, 2012. ISDC brings together a diverse group of NASA officials, aerospace industry leaders and interested private citizens to engage in discussions about today's prevalent space issues in order to stimulate innovation and overcome the obstacles that hinder human advancement off the Earth.
 
About The National Space Society (NSS): NSS is an independent, educational, grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization.  Founded when the National Space Institute and the L5 Society merged in 1987, NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen's voice on space.  NSS has over 12,000 members and supporters, and over 50 chapters in the United States and around the world.  The society publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space. 

First let me apologize... I haven't done a This Week in Space for a bit... I'll do one soon, probably.

Leaked documents from the Russian space agency Roscosmos reveal what the country has planned for the next 18 years of its space program. The ambitious list includes multiple permanent research stations on Mars, probes exploring Venus and Jupiter, and a manned Moon landing.

Russia plans to send probes to Jupiter and Venus, land a network of unmanned stations on Mars and ferry Russian cosmonauts to the surface of the Moon — all by 2030.

Read more HERE

Two Canadian teenagers successfully launched a Lego man to 80,000 ft via homemade weather balloon

Star blasts planet with X-rays

Heh, sucks to be that planet!!!

A nearby star is pummeling a companion planet with a barrage of X-rays a hundred thousand times more intense than the Earth receives from the Sun.

Read more about it HERE

Methane debate splits Mars community

Personally I believe there was life on mars, and almost certainly still is. Methane producing bacteria/algae would be a great explanation for this.

Observations over the last decade suggest that methane clouds form briefly over Mars during the summer months. The discovery has left many scientists scratching their heads, since it doesn't fit into models of the martian atmosphere.

Read more about it HERE

Dark clouds in space

Dust dust and more dust. Someone get a broom!

Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are dark patches in the sky seen against the continuous, bright infrared background produced by our galaxy. IRDCs are rich in molecules and relatively dense, cool gas, and they are natural sites for future star birth. Studies of IRDCs to date have emphasized those candidates that already have star formation underway within them, but astronomers are increasingly interested in probing younger, colder clouds to probe earlier stages in the star formation process.

Read more about it HERE

Herschel paints new story of galaxy evolution

Theories like this are always fun, but for now I think we should simply collect the data and analyze it and STOP trying to explain things we don't even have a good foundation to attempt to understand let alone unravel.

ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that galaxies do not need to collide with each other to drive vigorous star birth. The finding overturns this long-held assumption and paints a more stately picture of how galaxies evolve.

Read more about it HERE

Space mission tells of Antarctic melt

New supernova remnant lights up

Awesome! I love that we keep seeing more and more of these, and are able to get good amounts of data from them as well as some cool images.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are witnessing the unprecedented transition of a supernova to a supernova remnant, where light from an exploding star in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached Earth in February 1987.

Read more about it HERE

Blah blah blah, while that's interesting this has happened time and time again throughout history I'm sure.

A team of researchers from The Australian National University has been selected from a competitive field to participate in NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Science Team.

Read more about it HERE

Russia sets first post-crash manned flight for November

Yay, maybe this is a sign we aren't abandoning space as I've suspected the past few months.

Russia on Tuesday scheduled its next manned space flight for November 12 after delaying previous missions because of a cargo craft's failure to reach the International Space Station.

Read more about it HERE

Cosmic crashes forging gold: Nuclear reactions in space do produce the heaviest elements

Collisions of neutron stars produce the heaviest elements such as gold or lead. The cosmic site where the heaviest chemical elements such as lead or gold are formed has most likely been identified: Ejected matter from neutron stars merging in a violent collision provides ideal conditions. In detailed numerical simulations, scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and affiliated to the Excellence Cluster Universe and of the Free University of Brussels have verified that the relevant reactions of atomic nuclei do take place in this environment, producing the heaviest elements in the correct abundances.

Now, to figure out how to exploit this to produce large amounts of gold and other heavy elements for the manufacturing industry.

 Read about it HERE

Fermi's latest gamma-ray census highlights cosmic mysteries

Every three hours, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope scans the entire sky and deepens its portrait of the high-energy universe. Every year, the satellite's scientists reanalyze all of the data it has collected, exploiting updated analysis methods to tease out new sources. These relatively steady sources are in addition to the numerous transient events Fermi detects, such as gamma-ray bursts in the distant universe and flares from the sun.

Read about it HERE

Research team pinpoints location of elusive black hole using radio jets

A team of Japanese astrophysicists and space scientists have found a way to more precisely describe where in space a very large, but distant black hole lies. In their paper published in Nature, the team describes how they’ve used data from a large array of radio telescopes spread across the Pacific ocean to measure high energy emissions that are ejected from areas inside the galaxy M87 due to the actions of the massive black hole that lies somewhere near its center.

This should actually give us a way to detect ones we just don't see in the data at the moment.

 Read about it HERE

Supernova 'brightens up' September 7-8

The nearest supernova of its type to be discovered for 40 years is predicted to be at its brightest 7-8 September and will be visible through a good pair of binoculars.

Sorry I reported this to you all a few days late, I missed the best viewing of it myself though if it makes you any less upset.

 Read about it HERE

Blazars

A blazar is a galaxy which, like a quasar, has an intensely bright central nucleus containing a supermassive black hole. In a blazar, however, the emitted light sometimes includes extremely high energy gamma rays, sometimes over a hundred million times more energetic than the highest energy X-rays that the Chandra X-ray Observatory can study. The overall emission has several other unique properties as well, including that its intensity can vary dramatically with time.

Sounds like we need to make an instrument better than Chandra to study these things, and then I imagine it'll show us something it can't study that's even more impressiveve.

 Read about it HERE

Our galaxy might hold thousands of ticking 'time bombs'

In the Hollywood blockbuster "Speed," a bomb on a bus is rigged to blow up if the bus slows down below 50 miles per hour. The premise - slow down and you explode - makes for a great action movie plot, and also happens to have a cosmic equivalent.

It's stuff like this that keeps me up at night... well this and millions of other things out there in space that could cease our existence in the blink of an eye. Basically with this one a new theory suggest that white dwarfs might be held up by their rapid spins and when they slow down enough... big bada boom

Read about it HERE

Wind delays NASA launch of twin moon spacecraft

I hope this thing launch happens tomorrow, this mission should give us more awesome data of the moon.

High wind forced NASA on Thursday to delay the launch of twin spacecraft destined for the moon, the first mission dedicated to measuring lunar gravity.

See the rest HERE

Kepler spacecraft discovers 'invisible world'

Kepler has been hard at work finding cool stuff, this is yet another cool find... let's just hope it's another planet that made it 'late' and not something more sinister

Usually, running five minutes late is a bad thing since you might lose your dinner reservation or miss out on tickets to the latest show. But when a planet runs five minutes late, astronomers get excited because it suggests that another world is nearby.

Read more about it HERE

Space image: The Moon's North pole

I love it, it's kinda trippy, I want to print it on a disc and spin it haha

The Earth's moon has been an endless source of fascination for humanity for thousands of years. When at last Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in 1969, the crew found a desolate, lifeless orb, but one which still fascinates scientist and non-scientist alike.

Read more about it HERE

This is just awesome!

The glowing orange line in the middle of this photo is the border between India and Pakistan, as seen from the International Space Station.The border is fenced and floodlit to cut down on smuggling and arms trafficking. There’s a similar fence between India’s eastern border and Bangladesh, but it’s not visible from space.

As for the glow around the Earth, that’s airglow caused by the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation hitting atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere.

Read more about it HERE

Well, there is a little less space junk that will be in orbit!

Heads up! That's the word from NASA today (Sept. 7) given the impending re-entry of a 6.5-ton satellite through Earth's atmosphere.

The huge Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled fall in late September or early October. Much of the spacecraft is expected to burn up during re-entry, but some pieces are expected to make it intact to the ground, NASA officials said.

The U.S. space agency will be taking measures to inform the public about the pieces of the spacecraft that are expected to survive re-entry.

Read more about it HERE

Episode 2 of Audio Hostem is up! Check it out in iTunes at http://www.IHearTheEnemy.com or right here in this post.

Download this episode (right click and save)

Chandra finds nearest pair of supermassive black holes

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. At a distance of 160 million light years, it is also the nearest known pair of supermassive black holes.

See the article HERE

The star that should not exist

A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible. They discovered that this star is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only remarkably small amounts of other chemical elements in it. This intriguing composition places it in the "forbidden zone" of a widely accepted theory of star formation, meaning that it should never have come into existence in the first place. The results will appear in the 1 September 2011 issue of the journal Nature.

See the article HERE

Exotic galaxy reveals tantalizing tale

A galaxy with a combination of characteristics never seen before is giving astronomers a tantalizing peek at processes they believe played key roles in the growth of galaxies and clusters of galaxies early in the history of the Universe.

Read about it HERE

A planet made of diamond

A once-massive star that's been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that is what University of Manchester astronomers think they've found in the Milky Way.

Read about it HERE

'Instant cosmic classic' supernova discovered

A supernova discovered yesterday is closer to Earth—approximately 21 million light-years away—than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialized survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools.

Read about it HERE

Report: NASA made proper pick for retired shuttles

NASA acted properly when it picked new homes for the retired space shuttles, the space agency's watchdog said Thursday.

Read about it HERE

Russia's Soyuz: historic symbol of space reliability

Russia's Soyuz rocket, which failed to put a Russian supply ship into orbit, is descended from launch vehicles of the early days of the space race but until now has been a byword for reliability.

Read about it HERE

Sunspot breakthrough

Imagine forecasting a hurricane in Miami weeks before the storm was even a swirl of clouds off the coast of Africa—or predicting a tornado in Kansas from the flutter of a butterfly's wing in Texas. These are the kind of forecasts meteorologists can only dream about.

Read about it HERE

40 year old Mariner 5 solar wind problem finds answer - turbulence doesn't go with the flow

Research led by astrophysicists at the University of Warwick has resolved a 40 year old problem with observations of turbulence in the solar wind first made by the probe Mariner Five. The research resolves an issue with what is by far the largest and most interesting natural turbulence lab accessible to researchers today.

Read about it HERE

My letter to AMC suggesting they purchase Caprica.

"As I'm sure your company should know, SyFy networks has canceled Caprica. There are many many fans that were saddened by this and we are preparing to order 1400-3500$ worth of apples to send to SyFy, similar to the campaign with peanuts to save Jericho a few seasons back on a similar network. A core group of us fans have realized that Caprica has the similar themes and is of the same quality of shows on your network, such as Mad Men. We ask you to pass the suggestion to purchase the rights to, and create more episode of, Caprica on up the line in your company. We are very dedicated fans that not only tune in religiously to watch our program but also buy the show on DVD as well as on iTunes when it is made available for sale. We feel that your company would benefit by purchasing the rights to this show and producing more episodes by gaining an already strong fan-base and likely considerably adding to the viewers with the existing demographic that tunes in to your network's programs. Thank you for your time, and keep making quality programming."

Sent to amccustomerservice@rainbow-media.com

To contact AMC to suggest the same please see the above email address, you may also contact them at AMC Viewer Services
200 Jericho Quadrangle
Jericho, New York 11753
516-803-4360

Their official contact website is HERE

We are also writing Space! My similar letter to them.

"As I'm sure your company should know, SyFy networks has canceled Caprica. There are many many fans that were saddened by this and we are preparing to order 1400-3500$ worth of apples to send to SyFy, similar to the campaign with peanuts to save Jericho a few seasons back on a similar network. A core group of us fans have realized that Caprica while already aired on your network could benefit from being purchased and developed by Space more. We would be fine with a lower budget show, and know the show could benefit from help from the National Film Board of Canada, then us Americans to the south of you would have to hope SyFy or another channel would opt to syndicate the show. We ask you to pass the suggestion to purchase the rights to, and create more episode of, Caprica on up the line in your company. We are very dedicated fans that not only tune in religiously to watch our program but also buy the show on DVD as well as on iTunes when it is made available for sale. We feel that your company would benefit by purchasing the rights to this show and producing more episodes by gaining an already strong fan-base and likely considerably adding to the viewers with the existing demographic that tunes in to your network's programs. Thank you for your time, and keep airing, and making quality programming as it still finds a way to get to us down here in the States."

For programming questions or comments, email space@spacecast.com

SPACE
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Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2Z5

Their contact info is HERE