SpaceX's follow on launch of Falcon 9 was a big success, and so was the splash down. I got up in the morning on the west coast (Seattle) just in time (T-6 minutes).
Watching the solid take-off of the Falcon 9 on a bright morning in Florida was an awesome sight, and knowing what it had riding on the top (first commercial manned-capable orbital spacecraft), and having followed SpaceX closely for a few years now, even if just on live webcams, made it more beautiful and inspiring than any other launch I have seen in the past, on either high-d or low-d video, because of what was riding on it: the dawn of a new era.
I was also glad to find out today that my predictions from June 2006 (see Slide 139, on the presentation in this related blog from 2006)
are still resembling reality 4 years later, given how hard it is to predict anything in this domain :-)
From that slide written in June 2006: "2021: Spurred by X-prize, NASA prizes and heating market competition, cost of large launcher that can launch humans to Moon and Mars drop radically with large, cheap private spacecrafts and launchers from many players from US, China, Russia, India. SpaceX is a prominent one among them. US scraps NASA launcher developments for Moon and Mars."
I can see now all that happening in 2021 more easily than even when I wrote it 4 years ago. Some of that is happening now, with the COTS missions in 2011.
Btw, Space-X now has Bigelow's inflatable habitats (Sundancer) on their launch schedule for 2014 on Falcon 9. And Bigelow is building 2 even much bigger ones. When they go up, in the next 10 years, the majority of the habitable volume and most of human launch capability into space would have both moved to just these two companies; Falcon 9's 9 engines are produced assembly-line style in very large numbers and Space X's factory is built to scale that up easily with demand. And Bigelow's plan is to move these stations into orbit around the Moon after that, or even to land the modules on the Moon for an instant base.
So yes, there is a real Version 2 Space Race on; not between India/China/US, but between goverment funded platforms (India and China) vs. commercial programs (US) where the government and private orgs are just launch and habitation buyers.
Way to Go Elon Musk and SpaceX. A hearty congratulations to the whole team!
I am excited and look forward to the COTS missions, and the coming into existence of the Flacon Heavy and even bigger boosters from SpaceX. They can realize their dreams now from the revenue that SpaceX generates from the NASA and other missions over the next 5 years.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Monday, October 04, 2010
Gliese 581g: the first Earth-like habitable planet found around another star!
This is a big day. Mark the date Sep 29,2010 - for the history books!
Space.com news link is here, and here is a link to the original paper announcing this discovery.
Over the next 3 to 10 years (thanks to Kepler and improving Earth optics), we should expect to hear more details about this one, and 100s more like this one, but with lots of variations (e.g. dwarf habitable moons- which CAN be easier to detect, by looking at secondary wobbles of the primary planet, but this is the first real one with just the right temperature, mass and everything.
Now we can finally start pointing our SETI telescopes in the right direction :-) Confirmation of life-signs might take another few years, using spectrometer and interferometer combinations, but the fact that Gliese 581g (look forward to a more personal, official name soon for this first habitable planet :-)), is smack in the middle of Gliese 581's habitable zone is awesome- no debates about habitability on this one, only the question about how much water is going to be there. That would determine whether it's a water-world with higher phase ice at the bottom of its oceans that completely block continental minerals from mixing, so that it turns out to be a water desert (also see http://www.egy.org/files/cloutier.pdf), and where water dominates so much that life occurs in islands and pockets of minerals left over by asteorid impacts an dusts only), or whether it's an Earthly desert (where life has adapted to dewdrops and oases). In either case it would be awesome, and leave a lot of possibilities for a complex biosphere, and we should soon know which of the two scenarios is the real one, when we get measurements of this planet's atmosphere content (how much water vapor). If it has less water, that is probably better for this planet, as too much water can be a very big problem for advanced life to evolve in the 7 to 11 billion years current age for this planet. However, note that since the parent Sun can live virtually forever (this star is 50 times dimmer-than-our-sun red dwarf even though it has 30% of Sun's mass, which gives it a very long life), even if there is too much water, eventually enough water-loss because of the solar wind would cause Gliese 581g to have just the right amount of water eventually to have continents protruding out. I am really hoping it has some water though :-) and conditions point to that being the case , when combined with the fact that it is much heavier than Earth, and is smack in the middle of the habitable zone.
Regarding verification of how much water it has, and the atmospheric composition (which would hugely increase our confidence in imagining specific forms of life there), I predict that the discovery of this planet is going to motivate lot of smart astronomer-engineers to come up with ways to measure the atmosphere ASAP, even if TPF-I does not launch for another decade or two. I also believe that these discoveries, as they mount over the next 2-5 years, will force the urgency in funding for such a telescope, just like the Mars exploration program got a huge boost from the discovery of recent volcanism, rivers, oceans on Mars, and even more- the recent discovery of liquid water, water-runoffs, and methane on Mars.
Space.com news link is here, and here is a link to the original paper announcing this discovery.
Over the next 3 to 10 years (thanks to Kepler and improving Earth optics), we should expect to hear more details about this one, and 100s more like this one, but with lots of variations (e.g. dwarf habitable moons- which CAN be easier to detect, by looking at secondary wobbles of the primary planet, but this is the first real one with just the right temperature, mass and everything.
Now we can finally start pointing our SETI telescopes in the right direction :-) Confirmation of life-signs might take another few years, using spectrometer and interferometer combinations, but the fact that Gliese 581g (look forward to a more personal, official name soon for this first habitable planet :-)), is smack in the middle of Gliese 581's habitable zone is awesome- no debates about habitability on this one, only the question about how much water is going to be there. That would determine whether it's a water-world with higher phase ice at the bottom of its oceans that completely block continental minerals from mixing, so that it turns out to be a water desert (also see http://www.egy.org/files/cloutier.pdf), and where water dominates so much that life occurs in islands and pockets of minerals left over by asteorid impacts an dusts only), or whether it's an Earthly desert (where life has adapted to dewdrops and oases). In either case it would be awesome, and leave a lot of possibilities for a complex biosphere, and we should soon know which of the two scenarios is the real one, when we get measurements of this planet's atmosphere content (how much water vapor). If it has less water, that is probably better for this planet, as too much water can be a very big problem for advanced life to evolve in the 7 to 11 billion years current age for this planet. However, note that since the parent Sun can live virtually forever (this star is 50 times dimmer-than-our-sun red dwarf even though it has 30% of Sun's mass, which gives it a very long life), even if there is too much water, eventually enough water-loss because of the solar wind would cause Gliese 581g to have just the right amount of water eventually to have continents protruding out. I am really hoping it has some water though :-) and conditions point to that being the case , when combined with the fact that it is much heavier than Earth, and is smack in the middle of the habitable zone.
Regarding verification of how much water it has, and the atmospheric composition (which would hugely increase our confidence in imagining specific forms of life there), I predict that the discovery of this planet is going to motivate lot of smart astronomer-engineers to come up with ways to measure the atmosphere ASAP, even if TPF-I does not launch for another decade or two. I also believe that these discoveries, as they mount over the next 2-5 years, will force the urgency in funding for such a telescope, just like the Mars exploration program got a huge boost from the discovery of recent volcanism, rivers, oceans on Mars, and even more- the recent discovery of liquid water, water-runoffs, and methane on Mars.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Obama needs to define concretely the next destination for NASA's manned missions
More water confirmed by radar data coming from NASA's instrument on Chandrayan 1. See this link.
The important note in that article: “According to NASA, the ice would have to be relatively pure ice and at least several feet thick to give this signature.”
This would be cool as it makes the water usable by manned missions, unlike the last discovery where it was in minute amounts. Not sure the quotation above is true or just exaggerated by the Wired reporter.
Two important uses of setting up a base on the moon are (1) testing hardware for Mars, especially rovers and dust protection suits etc. (2) setting up a large array of radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon which is shielded from Earth transmissions. Because of moon’s low gravity that telescope can be periodically serviced by manned missions (just like the way Hubble has been serviced) that could be based on the polar region where there is water.
I hope that Obama removes the fog soon and declares that the Moon is going to be the testing location. Right now there is no destination for NASA’s manned space program. I don’t like the intermediate asteroid mission that Planetary Society is lobbying for as that does not test any hardware needed for Mars, not to mention being an even less interesting destination than the Moon.
Buzz Aldrin is suggesting Phobos as the intermediate mission instead of the Moon. I think Phobos would definitely serve as a good test for the orbital hardware for Mars and it should be a destination along with the Moon, which can be a good testing place for the surface Martian hardware. But they HAVE to declare Mars as the concrete goal instead of beating around the bush. Otherwise nothing will happen and the “private enterprise” such as Space-X will be left with low-earth-orbit missions for another few years until the next president. I think this last scenario is most likely and the way we will break out of it will be when Space-X and Bigelow Aerospace use low-earth orbit revenue and experience to strike out to the Moon, 10 years from now. Together they have more than all the necessary technology (or in the process of building so) to get there.
I am predicting a race between Space-X+Bigelow group (partially funded by a sub-section of NASA after their next two efforts to build hardware directly fail, and they completely give up building or owning flight hardware by 2017) vs. ISRO vs. Chinese Space agency to the Moon around 2020.
Gunjan
The important note in that article: “According to NASA, the ice would have to be relatively pure ice and at least several feet thick to give this signature.”
This would be cool as it makes the water usable by manned missions, unlike the last discovery where it was in minute amounts. Not sure the quotation above is true or just exaggerated by the Wired reporter.
Two important uses of setting up a base on the moon are (1) testing hardware for Mars, especially rovers and dust protection suits etc. (2) setting up a large array of radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon which is shielded from Earth transmissions. Because of moon’s low gravity that telescope can be periodically serviced by manned missions (just like the way Hubble has been serviced) that could be based on the polar region where there is water.
I hope that Obama removes the fog soon and declares that the Moon is going to be the testing location. Right now there is no destination for NASA’s manned space program. I don’t like the intermediate asteroid mission that Planetary Society is lobbying for as that does not test any hardware needed for Mars, not to mention being an even less interesting destination than the Moon.
Buzz Aldrin is suggesting Phobos as the intermediate mission instead of the Moon. I think Phobos would definitely serve as a good test for the orbital hardware for Mars and it should be a destination along with the Moon, which can be a good testing place for the surface Martian hardware. But they HAVE to declare Mars as the concrete goal instead of beating around the bush. Otherwise nothing will happen and the “private enterprise” such as Space-X will be left with low-earth-orbit missions for another few years until the next president. I think this last scenario is most likely and the way we will break out of it will be when Space-X and Bigelow Aerospace use low-earth orbit revenue and experience to strike out to the Moon, 10 years from now. Together they have more than all the necessary technology (or in the process of building so) to get there.
I am predicting a race between Space-X+Bigelow group (partially funded by a sub-section of NASA after their next two efforts to build hardware directly fail, and they completely give up building or owning flight hardware by 2017) vs. ISRO vs. Chinese Space agency to the Moon around 2020.
Gunjan
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