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Tag Archives: space-ish
The Human Population of Space
… is currently about six. That is, if one adds up all the person-years spent in space by various crews, it comes to about six for recent years. In a previous post from 2010, “The Population of Space”, I had … Continue reading
Ceres: the Best Place in Space?
We’ve recently learned something extraordinary about the dwarf planet Ceres, something that might make it the most habitable place in the solar system outside of the Earth: It appears to have an icy mantle 100 km thick. That would give … Continue reading
“The Martian”: Really Mundane SF
A few years ago Geoff Ryman, the renowned author of “Was” and “The Unconquered Country”, got sick of the tropes of science fiction. Faster-than-light interstellar travel, aliens, and alternate realities were cheap devices that encouraged boring and lazy writing. While … Continue reading
“Gravity” and Retreating From Space
I was once surfing around the cable channels when I came upon a screen that was almost completely white. Almost, but not quite – slight ripples and whorls were moving slowly across it. There was hardly any sound, just a … Continue reading
Adding Glitz to NASA: the Interstellar Probe
Hmm, what should NASA do next after the spectacular Curiosity mission? A solar observer? Seen that. A lunar orbiter? Like the ones China and India already did? A Mars orbiter? Like the several that are already there? Even I … Continue reading
The Inspiring “Pale Blue Dot” and the Clunky New Horizons
I recently came across a striking animation of Carl Sagan’s famous passage from his last book “Pale Blue Dot”: Pale Blue Dot from ORDER on Vimeo. He’s commenting on this picture, taken at his request by Voyager 1 in 1990 … Continue reading
“BLAST!” and Good, Cheap Science
“BLAST!” is a documentary about the Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope, and it opens with this teaser: The telescope is that huge instrument on the end of crane. It’s supposed to measure light in the far infrared from the early … Continue reading
The Moon Is Dull
Last summer there were two movies partially set on the Moon: “Transformers: the Dark of the Moon” and “Apollo 18”. In the first, the Apollo program has a secret agenda to explore alien robots that are discovered there. In the … Continue reading
The Robot Population of Deep Space
In 1978 I heard Carl Sagan speak at MIT. The two most important space probes ever, Voyager 1 and 2, had just launched the year before, and Sagan had been deeply involved with them. It was his idea to do … Continue reading
The End of the Shuttle and the Start of Nothing
So last Friday I watched the liftoff of the last Space Shuttle on the NASA feed in my office. I saw it for real once in 1992, when I went down to Florida just for the show. I had just … Continue reading
A Niche in the Library of Babel 