Category: space
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Have you ever wondered how we know the Earth is round?
Because we have photos taken from space, duh! I hear you say. True, but how did we know before space flight? Of course, the Earth isn’t round, it’s more technically accurate to say that it’s an oblate spheroid, though from space it just looks like a big blue ball. Credit Look out your window and…
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“We are stardust, billion-year-old carbon”
– Joni Mitchell, Canadian-American musician, producer, and painter At the dawn of the universe, there was a whole lot of hydrogen and helium, a little bit of lithium, and not much else. This is consistent with the standard or “big bang” model. Between 12 and 13 billion years ago, massive amounts of hydrogen and helium…
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“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
— Isaac Asimov (2 Jan 1920 – 6 Apr 1992) American author (of Russian parentage) and professor of biochemistry at Boston University who was a prolific author and editor of science fiction and non-fiction. He was a regular commentator on science and society and atheism and was known for creating the three laws of robotics.…
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Space elevators – for Mars
https://www.flickr.com/photos/flyingsinger/471698669 Space elevators aren’t just for Earth. The possibility of a space elevator on Mars has been around for a few years, with various academics and science fiction authors covering the concept. There are different problems with the Martian space elevator – due to its satellites, Phobos and Deimos, as their orbits would intersect with…
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Space-Based Solar Power
Another amazing concept, like space elevators, with a long pedigree in science fiction and scientific speculation. From Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story, Reason, to Gerard K O’Neil’s The High Frontier, space-based solar power satellites provide the emotional drivers and scientific background that can’t be kept down. The University of Southampton’s recent exciting new publication, Space…
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Space elevators
Who doesn’t love the concept of a space elevator?! Simple and cheap access to space – and eco-friendly. Once built its self-sustaining. Once the investment is made, everything else is free (or virtually)! Interest in space elevators is growing – see this article from 2021 and this opinion piece from Scientific American. The British Interplanetary…
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The future of humanity in space
The Moon and Jupiter together in the early evening sky in November 2022, from Cyprus. In the not-too-distant future, you or your children will go there, will live there. To learn more about the potential, keep coming back to this site.
Stargazing Guy 