Category: Space Technology

Sciency Words: Colony

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 11 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to another episode of Sciency Words.  Normally on Sciency Words, we talk about those strange words scientists use, but today we’re going to talk about a word scientists—or at least some scientists—would prefer to stop using.  And that word is:

COLONY

Mars is so eager for humans to come visit and maybe even stay permanently.  And plenty of humans are eager to do just that!  We’ll bring life to Mars.  Not only that, we’ll bring civilization and culture.  One might say it is humanity’s destiny to colonize Mars.

But is this language of “colonization” and “destiny” too evocative of European imperialism?  Some think so, and they would ask that we stop using such colonialist language when we talk about space exploration.

Now I want to be clear about where I’m coming from on this: I try my best to call people by the names and terms they prefer to be called, and if I find out that the language I use offends somebody, I’ll do may best to change.  Some would accuse me of being too P.C., but I think it’s just good manners.

And I have found that if you make an effort to be respectful and accommodating to others, others will make an effort to be respectful and accommodating to you, and in general they’ll be more willing to forgive you if/when you do slip up and say something unintentionally hurtful.

So a few years back, when I came across this article from National Geographic, I started reading it with an open mind and a willingness to change.  But by the end of the article, even I felt like this was an example of political correctness run amok.  The word “colony” is offensive.  So are the words “settlement” and “frontier.”  Okay.  What words should I use instead?  Even that National Geographic article seems to concede at one point that we don’t have many workable alternatives to these terms.

But this concern does seem to be coming up more and more.  Plenty of people in the scientific community are shying away from words like colony and colonization.  Bill Nye (the Science Guy) says he avoids the word colony, and this official glossary of SETI terminology warns that “settle” and “colonize” may have certain negative connotations for some people.

So at this point, I’m not sure what to think.  What about you?  Do you think this is much ado about nothing, or should we really start looking for alternatives to words like “colony” or “settlement” in our space exploration vocabularies?

Next time on Planet Pailly… I actually don’t have anything planned yet for my next blog post.  We’ll probably just talk about more space stuff.

Sciency Words: Bunny Hopping

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 21 Comments

Sciency Words: (proper noun) a special series here on Planet Pailly focusing on the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  Today’s Sciency Word is:

BUNNY HOPPING

So yesterday I was reading up on the latest spacesuit design from NASA, and I came across a term that I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing before.  In this article from Space Daily, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is quoted as saying: “If we remember the Apollo generation, we remember Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, they bunny hopped on the surface of the Moon.”

This left me wondering: do people really use the term “bunny hopping” to describe how Apollo astronauts moved about on the Moon?  I tried really hard to trace the etymology of this term.  I didn’t find much, but honestly, when you see clips like this one, it’s easy to figure out where the term came from.

In my previous research on this topic, I’ve seen this method of locomotion referred to as “loping-mode” or “skipping-mode.”  But sure, we can call it “bunny hopping” too.  So why did astronauts do this?

Well, there’s something about walking that most of us, in our daily lives, don’t realize: Earth’s gravity does some of the work for us.  When you take a step, first you lift your foot off the ground, then you extend your leg, and then… well, try to stop yourself at this point.  With your leg extended forward like that, you’ll find that your center of gravity has shifted, and you can feel the force of gravity trying to pull you through the remainder of your walk cycle.

So walking feels like a natural and efficient way for us humans to get around because Earth’s gravity helps us.  Take Earth’s gravity away, and walking suddenly feels awkward and cumbersome.  In lunar gravity, which is approximately ⅙ of Earth’s gravity, the Apollo astronauts found other methods of locomotion to be more comfortable, more natural.  In this clip, we hear audio chatter of astronauts disagreeing about whether “hopping” or “loping” is a better way to get around.

Personal preference seems to be important here, both in how astronauts “walked” on the Moon and in how they described the experience of this new kind of “walking.”

Getting back to the new spacesuits from NASA, the new design features a dramatically improved range of motion.  The next astronauts on the Moon will have a much easier time getting around, and according to Administrator Bridenstine there will be no need for bunny hopping.  “Now we’re going to be able to walk on the surface of the Moon, which is very different from the suits of the past.”

And that’s got me confused.  I’m really not sure what Bridenstine means by that statement because, as I just explained, it was the Moon’s gravity—more so than the spacesuits—that made Apollo era astronauts feel the need to “bunny hop” on the Moon.  The new spacesuits, with their improved range of motion, should help astronauts in the new Artemis program avoid gaffs like these…

But without altering the Moon’s gravity, I don’t see any way to avoid “bunny hopping.”

LIGO: The Next Generation

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

As everyone knows, I’m a total surfer dude.  So after all my recent blog posts about the LIGO project (click here, here, or here), I’ve been wondering: could I “hang ten” on a gravitational wave?

There’s still a lot we don’t know about gravitational waves.  LIGO—the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory—is one of the most delicately sensitive scientific instruments ever built.  But as sensitive as LIGO is, it’s still not sensitive enough.  The next generation of gravitational wave detectors promises to do better.

  • Cosmic Explorer: The United States wants to build a bigger LIGO.  Cosmic Explorer will use the same L-shaped interferometer design as LIGO, only ten times bigger.  This will increase the signal amplitude without adding to the amount of background noise the detector picks up, according to the Cosmic Explorer website.  Click here to learn more.
  • Einstein Telescope: Meanwhile the Europeans are planning to build a gravitational wave detector underground.  The Einstein Telescope, as the project is named, will incorporate not one but two laser interferometers, arranged in a triangular pattern.  One of these interferometers will pick up low frequency gravitational waves; the other will pick up waves of higher frequencies.  Click here to learn more.
  • LISA: And lastly, NASA wants to put a gravitational wave detector in space.  The project is called LISA, which stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.  LISA will consist of three small spacecraft beaming lasers at each other, forming a giant equilateral triangle.  Size really does matter when it comes to gravitational wave detectors, and this space laser triangle will be far, far larger than anything we could have built here on the ground.  Click here to learn more.

Some of the questions these next generation gravitational wave detectors could help us answer: How many black holes are there in the universe?  What’s going on inside neutron stars?  What about pulsars or magnetars?  Are there gravitational waves associated with the cosmic microwave background?  Are there gravitational waves associated with dark matter?  Are any gravitational waves coming from unexpected or unknown sources?

So much science will be gained from these projects!  However, I’m not sure if Cosmic Explorer, the Einstein Telescope, or LISA will be able to answer the question I asked at the beginning of this post.  Total bummer!

Disclaimer: I’m not really a surfer dude.  Actually, I’m terrified of the ocean and I’ve never even learned how to swim.

Sciency Words: Entomopters

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

Sciency Words: (proper noun) a special series here on Planet Pailly focusing on the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  Today’s Sciency Word is:

ENTOMOPTERS

It is aerodynamically impossible for insects to fly, or so French entomologist Antoine Magnan famously claimed in 1934.  And it’s true.  If aerodynamics means the scientific principles governing the flight of airplanes, then you will have a very hard time explaining how insects fly using aerodynamics alone.

Do you know what else is aerodynamically impossible, or at least aerodynamically very, very difficult?  Flying on Mars.  The atmosphere is too thin for fixed-wing aircraft.  But perhaps where traditional aerodynamics fails, insect aerodynamics might succeed!

At least that was the thought behind the entomopter, a project proposed by Robert Michelson and colleagues at the Georgia Tech Research Institute back in the early 2000’s.  The term entomopter comes from two Greek words—entoma, meaning insect, and pteron, meaning wing.  So an entomopter is a flying machine that mimics the “aerodynamically impossibly” flight of insects.

As Michelson explains in this article:

Aerodynamic analyses of [insect] flight consistently revealed that their wings must produce 2-3 times more lift than conventional wings, and in some cases up to 6-7 times.  The extra load-lifting capacity this would offer Entomopters is highly significant, and indicates that a novel design based on flapping insect flight would outperform a more traditional aerodynamic approach.

The prototype entomopter built by Michelson and his research team was modeled after the hawk moth (scientific name Manduca sexta).  With a ten-centimeter wingspan, the hawk moth is an unusually large insect, which makes it easier to observe and study the movements of its wings. And I have to admit in this concept video from NASA, there is something distinctly moth-y about the way the entomopter flies.

I first learned about the entomopter while researching last week’s post on NASA’s NIAC program.  The entomopter was one of those so-crazy-it-might-work proposals that won grant money through NIAC.

You may have heard about the Mars Helicopter Scout (a.k.a. Marscopter), which will be accompanying NASA’s next Mars rover.  You may have also heard about Dragonfly, the robotic quadcopter that NASA plans to send to Titan sometime in the 2030’s. Neither of these spacecraft qualify as entomopters, and I’m really not sure how much thanks either Marscopter or Dragonfly owe to the entomopter project.  But I strongly suspect there is some sort of connection there.

Sciency Words: NIAC

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 11 Comments

Sciency Words: (proper noun) a special series here on Planet Pailly focusing on the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  Today’s Sciency Word is:

NIAC

Every once in a while, you’ll hear that NASA is working on some crazy Sci-Fi technology.  Space elevators, warp drive… stuff like that.  How seriously should you take this?  Well, I’m not sure, but NASA does have this special program called NIAC.

When NIAC was first created in 1998, the acronym stood for “NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts.”  The program was canceled for budgetary reasons in 2007, but then it was revived in 2011.  The acronym now stands for “NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts.”

As explained in a recent article from Scientific American, “The program functions as NASA’a venture capital arm, in that it supports technologies that might pan out, big-time.”  Basically, if you have a proposal for some highly speculative new space technology—something that sounds a little bit crazy, but not too crazy—NASA might give you grant money for your research.

NIAC funding has gone toward space elevators and robotic space bees.  A mission to Proxima Centauri using tiny “chip” sized space probes?  That got NIAC funding.  The almost magical sounding Mach effect thruster—a propulsion system that uses zero propellant?  That got NIAC funding.

Some of these ideas have been ridiculed by the scientific community and in the popular press.  And I have to agree: this stuff really does sound crazy.  But remember, The New York Times once ridiculed Robert Goddard for his crazy idea that rockets could get us to the Moon.  The New York Times was really harsh in their criticism.

But as we now know, Goddard was right, and The New York Times famously published an apology in 1969, just days before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.

Most NIAC-funded projects probably won’t work out; but imagine what would happen if a few of them did!  So the next time you hear that NASA is working on some crazy sounding Sci-Fi tech, that probably just means somebody won a NIAC grant. I’m still not sure how seriously you or I should take these NIAC-funded projects, but maybe it’s okay to take them just a little bit seriously.

Sciency Words: Artemis

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

Sciency Words: (proper noun) a special series here on Planet Pailly focusing on the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  Today’s Sciency Word is:

ARTEMIS

By 2024, America will return to the Moon.  That is the promise of NASA’s new Artemis Program. As far as I’m concerned, NASA could not have picked a better name for their next Moon mission.

In ancient mythology, Artemis was Apollo’s twin sister. So as a follow-up to the Apollo Program, Artemis is the logical choice.

And where Apollo (named for a Greek god) put the first man on the Moon, Artemis (named for a Greek goddess) promises to put the first woman on the Moon.  And furthermore, Artemis has a stronger claim to the Moon anyway; she was the goddess of the Moon, after all! Apollo was the god of the Sun.

But will the Artemis mission actually happen? Honestly, I doubt it. Why?  Well, I’m really, really sorry for this, but we’re going to have to talk about American politics.

Artemis is expected to cost $20 billion, minimum.  That’s roughly equivalent to NASA’s entire annual budget.  While that $20 billion price tag is not an immediate deal breaker (like the 90-Day Report was), it’s still an awful lot of money.

It’s up to the current administration to persuade Congress to pay for Artemis.  Why is Artemis a good idea?  Why does it have to happen by 2024?  Based on articles like this one, it sounds like Congress is skeptical yet persuadable.

Unfortunately, the current administration seems to be sending a lot of mixed messages about Artemis.  Most notably, at an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the original Moon Landing, the current President very publically chastised his own NASA administrator for wanting to return to the Moon.  It’s enough to make one wonder if Artemis is a real priority for this administration.

So I’m pretty pessimistic about the Artemis Program. I don’t think it will happen, at least not as it’s currently envisioned, and certain not on the current timetable. Don’t agree?  Please tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.  I would love to be wrong about this.

But whenever the United States does get around to returning to the Moon, I hope NASA keeps the Artemis name.  That really is the perfect name for the next Moon mission.

Sciency Words: The 90-Day Report

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Sciency Words: (proper noun) a special series here on Planet Pailly focusing on the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  Today’s Sciency Word is:

THE 90-DAY REPORT

We recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing. There’s been a lot of talk lately about the old Apollo Program, and also a lot of talk about the new Artemis Program, NASA’s next manned (and womanned) mission to the Moon.

But this is not a Sciency Words post about Artemis (I’m saving that for next week).  Instead, this is a post about the 90-Day Report and how it effectively killed NASA’s plans to return to the Moon in the 1990’s.  I think the story of the 90-Day Report provides some context for what may or may not happen with Artemis.

It was July 20, 1989—the 20th anniversary of the Moon Landing—when President George H.W. Bush announced America’s intention to return to the Moon and establish a permanent presence there.  This would be part of a strategy for America to push onward to Mars.  Following the President’s announcement, a special committee was formed to figure out how to make it all happen.  The committee’s findings were released in a document titled “Report on the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars,” a.k.a. the 90-Day Report.

According to the 90-Day Report, NASA would need to build a huge amount of infrastructure in space.  If you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, that’s basically what the 90-Day Report described: giant space stations, a multitude of space shuttles taxiing equipment and personnel to Earth orbit, and enormous interplanetary space cruisers to transport astronauts to the Moon or Mars.

And how much would this cost?  The 90-Day Report conspicuously didn’t say, but the most commonly cited estimate was $450 billion.  To put that in some context, NASA’s budget at the time was just over $11 billion (according to Wikipedia, numbers not adjusted for inflation).  As Robert Zubrin explains in his book The Case for Mars:

It is doubtful that any kind of program could have survived that price tag. Given its long timelines and limited set of advertised accomplishments on the road to colonizing space, which did little to arouse the enthusiasm of the space-interested public, the 90-Day Report proposal certainly could not.  Unless that $450 billion number could be radically reduced, the [Space Exploration Initiative] was as good as dead, a fact made clear in the ensuing months and years as Congress proceeded to zero out every SEI appropriation bill that crossed its desks.

A lot of people ask why we haven’t returned to the Moon since the days of the Apollo Program.  The 90-Day Report is a prime example of why.  “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” as a dear friend of mine likes to say.  Where President Kennedy set a singular, clearly defined goal for the American space program, President Bush handed the space program over to a committee, which came up with a very complicated, very costly list of ideas, which Congress was unsurprisingly unwilling in paying for.

To be fair, at least one idea from the 90-Day Report did come to fruition.  We did get a giant space station.  But that only happened as a result of an international partnership, which is (in my opinion) a model for how all future space missions should be done.

So with the memory of the 90-Day report in mind, next week we’ll talk about the Artemis Program.

We Chose to Go to the Moon

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

We choose to go to the Moon!  We choose to go to the Moon….  We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because the goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

J.F.K., 1962

This weekend, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing.  Much has already been written about this anniversary: about what the Apollo Program meant to the United States and to the world, about why the space program has struggled in the five decades since, about future missions that may or may not be happening.

I’m going to approach this from a different perspective, because as passionate as I am about space, there’s one thing I’m even more passionate about: writing.

I’ve blogged about this before: being a writer is a lot like running the space program.  For a writer, every small step forward feels like a giant leap.  But much like NASA scientists, writers have a tough time setting realistic budgets and deadlines for themselves.  And most significantly, there will always been doubters and naysayers who want to tell you what you’re doing isn’t pragmatic.  You’re wasting time and money.  Aren’t there other problems you should deal with first?  Writing can wait.

So today, if I may borrow the words of President Kennedy, I’d like to say this:

I choose to write my stories!  I choose to write my stories and do the other things (like marketing, blogging, etc), not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of my energies and skills, because that challenge is one I am willing to accept, one I’m unwilling to postpone, and one I intend to win.

– J.S.P., 2019

Now that I’m thinking about it, you could plug just about any goal you set for yourself into J.F.K.’s Moon speech, and it’ll probably still work.  So in the spirit of President Kennedy and the Apollo Program, what do you choose to do?

P.S.: Oh, and much like the Moon Landing, there are weird conspiracy theories about writers too.

Sciency Words A to Z: METI

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Welcome to a special A to Z Challenge edition of Sciency Words!  Sciency Words is an ongoing series here on Planet Pailly about the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  In today’s post, M is for:

METI

In a sense, SETI researchers are just sitting by the phone waiting for somebody to call.  Maybe that’s the wrong way to go about it.  Maybe it’s time to pick up the phone, start dialing numbers, and see who picks up.

This idea is sometimes called active SETI, but it’s more common (and according to this paper, more appropriate) to use the term METI: the messaging of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Earth has been broadcasting TV and radio signals for over a century.  This has led to a common misconception that even now, aliens on some far off planet might be gathering around their equivalent of a television set, watching old episodes of Howdy Doody  or The Honeymooners.  Or perhaps, if the aliens live nearby, they’re currently listening to our more recent music.

But Humanity is only a Type 0 or Type I civilization, depending on which version of the Kardashev scale you’re using. Either way, our broadcasts are not actually that strong.  As David Grinspoon explains in his book Earth in Human Hands:

Our television signals are diffuse and not targeted at any star system.  It would take a huge antenna, much larger than anything we’ve built or planned, to pick up on them.  From a radio point of view our planet is not completely hidden, but it is hardly conspicuous.  This could easily change.  Targeted messages sent directly toward nearby stars would cause Earth suddenly to turn on like a spotlight, becoming an obvious beacon announcing, for better or worse, “We are here!”

Of course we’ve already done this.  Several times, in fact.  But not with enough consistency to truly make our presence known.

The first attempt was in 1974, when Frank Drake and Carl Sagan transmitted a message from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, aimed at the M13 globular cluster.  But according to Grinspoon, if aliens ever do pick up that signal, “[…] they might dismiss it as a momentary fluke.  We would.”  That’s because the Arecibo message was a quick, one-time thing.  By itself, it’s hardly proof beyond a reasonable doubt that life exists on Earth.

If we really want to get somebody’s attention, we have to send a sustained, repetitive signal, kind of like those repetitive radio pulses Jocelyn Bell detected in the 60’s.  We have the technology.  We can make METI a reality.  But should we?  Some say yes, others no.  After all, we have no idea who might hear our signal, or what form their response might take, and there is no guarantee that the aliens will be friendly.

METI is a discussion and a debate that maybe we all, as a species, should be part of.  Perhaps we should take a vote, because in the end, we all have a stake in what might happen.  And while we’re at it, there are some other issues we all, as a species, should vote on.  Or at least that’s what Grinspoon says we should do in his book.

Next time on Sciency Words A to Z, we’ll go back in time and check out the oceans of Mars.

Sciency Words A to Z: JUICE

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 25 Comments

Welcome to a special A to Z Challenge edition of Sciency Words!  Sciency Words is an ongoing series here on Planet Pailly about the definitions and etymologies of science or science-related terms.  In today’s post, J is for:

JUICE

Speaking as a space enthusiast and a citizen of the United States, I have to confess I’m a bit disappointed with the status of the American space program.  While there have been some success stories—New Horizons, Curiosity, Scott Kelly’s year in space—I can’t help but feel like NASA has spent the last decade or so floundering.

However, it’s encouraging to see that so many other space agencies around the world are starting to pick up the slack.  My favorite example of this is the JUICE mission, a project of the European Space Agency (E.S.A.).

Astrobiologists have taken a keen interest in the icy moons of Jupiter.  There’s compelling evidence that one of those moons (Europa) has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface.  There’s also a growing suspicion that two more of those moons (Ganymede and Callisto) may have subsurface oceans as well.

The original plan was for NASA and the E.S.A. to pool their resources for one big, giant mission to the Jupiter system.  But then the 2008 financial crisis hit.  The U.S. Congress was loath to spend money on anything—especially space stuff.  “Due to the unavailability of the proposed international partnerships […]”—that’s how this E.S.A. report describes the matter.

So the E.S.A. decided to go it alone. Personally, I think this was a very brave move.  E.S.A. has never done a mission to the outer Solar System before, not without NASA’s help.  But there has to be a first time for everything, right?  And so JUICE—the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer—began.  It’s not my favorite acronym, but it works.

According to E.S.A.’s website, JUICE will conduct multiple flybys of Europa and Callisto before settling into orbit around Ganymede.  You may be wondering why JUICE won’t be orbiting Europa.  This is in large part because of the radiation environment around Jupiter.  Europa may be more exciting to astrobiologists, but Ganymede is a safer place to park your spacecraft.

Meanwhile, NASA has recovered much of the funding it lost after the 2008 financial crisis, and they’re once again planning to send their own mission to the Jupiter system.  So maybe NASA and E.S.A. will get to explore those icy moons together after all!  Or maybe not.  According to this article from the Planetary Society, NASA’s budget is under threat once again.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but no matter what happens to NASA’s budget, E.S.A. seems fully committed to JUICE.  So speaking as a space enthusiast, at least I have that to look forward to.

Next time on Sciency Words A to Z, how do you measure the size of an alien civilization?