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By Jo Nova
Thanks to Elon, many people are wondering “Why Mars?” and the answer might be “mining the asteroids”
Devon Eriksen has the best answer I’ve seen. He compares the race to space with the industrial revolution. Just as wood, coal and oil set us free of lives of manual labor, a whole new set of materials beckon… if minerals that are rare and expensive on Earth can be mined in the asteroid belt, and processed on Mars, all kinds of new tools and toys may follow the boom.
The Earth, Eriksen says, is like a jar that’s been shaken until most of the heavy stuff settles to the bottom. The heavy metals mostly end up in the Earths core, with the lighter stuff on top. But apart from the distance, asteroids have easy access goods, and are split already into handy size chunks, conveniently parked out in the open, far from gravity wells and not hidden under crustal plates, oceans and magma. The rocks under our feet are so much closer but there is a whole planet in the way. It might be a lot cheaper to get the rare metals we need on asteroids than out […]
By Jo Nova
I mean, wow.
The SpaceX fifth Starship rocket is 19 stories tall and they caught it first try with the Mechanzilla chopsticks.
Musk: “This the largest & most powerful flying object ever made at more than double the thrust of the Saturn V Moon rocket. ”
The tower has caught the rocket!! pic.twitter.com/CPXsHJBdUh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024
If Elon had not jumped in with the Orange Hitler Man, this would have been on every news channel.
Seen from a distance we can appreciate just how fast it was hurtling toward the ground. The pre-launch information mentioned that the rocket would decelerate so rapidly it would cause audible sonic booms in the area.
POV @SpaceX catching a rocket pic.twitter.com/cZvNj4UlDn
— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) October 13, 2024
The rocket at launch:
pic.twitter.com/ZOvkj5idCY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024
Elon Musk commenting on the lawfare being used to slow launches: “The next fight of Starship is ready to fly. We are waiting on regulatory approval. It shouldn’t be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another.” More […]
By Jo Nova
We know it’s a cult when we have thousands of years of nuclear power available but scientists want to build giant mirrors in space to reflect the sun onto solar panels on Earth.
We know it’s corrupt when governments won’t pay for research into the suns role in our climate but they’ll give 2.5 million Euros to a wild idea that might rescue their banker and investment friends last technological white elephant. This was funded under “EXCELLENT SCIENCE – European Research Council (ERC)” don’t you know?
They figure we could get teams of robots into space to assemble vast mirrors about 1 km across that would reflect the sun from 900km above Earth onto solar plants so they make electricity a bit more often. What could possibly go wrong, apart from mishaps that blind drivers, hurt wildlife, screw body clocks and waste gazillions of dollars?
As the huge reflectors pass over a solar plant, they will spin around and point at it to illuminate it “and it’s immediate surroundings”. Thus theoretically extending the working day of the solar panels, and delivering energy at breakfast and dinner time when the peak hour demand is killing our new fragile […]
By Jo Nova
Well that was lucky. Early reports suggest the Chinese space junk from the launch four days ago has crashed in the Pacific 1,000 km short of Mexico. However, if I am reading those maps (below) correctly, on this uncontrolled reentry it only missed Australia and New Zealand by half an hour, and just a few minutes later and it would have “landed” somewhere in Mexico or maybe Florida. (Now that would have been a November surprise).
Despite what China says, this is not what the rest of the world does:
China Lucks Out Again as Out-of-Control Rocket Booster Falls in the Pacific
Kenneth Chang, New York Times
It was China’s latest round of celestial roulette involving a deliberate uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry. The rocket stage, by design, did not include a system to guide it into a specific spot on Earth, far away from people.
“The thing I want to point out about this is that we, the world, don’t deliberately launch things this big intending them to fall wherever,” Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit group largely financed by the U.S. government that […]
China’s Long March-5B launch*
This should rattle the Wokeness Cage: Russia and China are actively testing the US defences in space on a daily basis. US assets are being harassed with lazers, radio jammers, cyber attacks and even other satellites with robotic grappling hook arms. The Russians even launched a satellite into an orbit so close to a US Security satellite that from the ground people couldn’t tell if it was being attacked, then, in something like a James Bond movie stunt, the Russian satellite launched a little target and shot it, “dangerously close”. That was in 2019. We can see now why Trump set up “Space Force”.
Last week the news came out that China’s space program was going nuclear, and the 1MW reactor would be 100 times larger than the one NASA plans to put on the moon by 2030.
Gen. David Thompson from Space Force estimates China may overtake the US in space by the end of the decade.
So by 2030 the US hopes to reduce CO2 by 50% and China hopes it will command space.
Meanwhile, China is a developing nation that doesn’t need to reduce CO2 emissions at all, and in the […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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