A television company in Holland is seeking volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars. The good news is that the sort of people who would volunteer to be on a reality TV show will be on a one-way trip to Mars.

Mars One was founded in 2010 by 36-year-old engineer Bas Lansdorp, who told ABC News he has a road map and financing plan for the project, and that "the mission is perfectly feasible."

In order to raise the estimated $6 billion required to fund such an ambitious project, Lansdorp says that it hopes to capitalize on vast public interest in a manned mission to Mars by selling global broadcasting rights to the mission.

Seems legit.

From the company website:

Mars One is a not-for-profit organization that will take humanity to Mars in 2023, to establish the foundation of a permanent settlement from which we will prosper, learn, and grow. Before the first crew lands, Mars One will have established a habitable, sustainable settlement designed to receive astronauts every two years. To accomplish this, Mars One has developed a precise, realistic plan based entirely upon existing technologies. It is both economically and logistically feasible, in motion through the integration of existing suppliers and experts in space exploration. We invite you to participate in this journey, by sharing our vision with your friends, by supporting our effort and, perhaps, by becoming the next Mars astronaut yourself.

Space is full of radiation. It's impossible to escape. Imagine standing in the middle of a dust storm, with bits of gravel constantly swirling around you, whizzing by, pinging against your skin. That's what radiation is like in space. The problem is that, unlike a pebble or a speck of dirt, ionizing radiation doesn't bounce off human flesh. It goes right through, like a cannonball through the side of the building, leaving damage behind.

Last week, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center published a study that suggests long exposures to galactic cosmic radiation — like the kind astronauts might experience on a trip to Mars — could increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Reading stories about that paper made me curious. We've now been sending people into space for more than 50 years. We've been able to track a generation of astronauts as they aged and died and we're constantly monitoring the people who travel in space today. Research like what was done at the University of Rochester is conducted on lab animals, mice and rats. It's meant to help us prepare for the future. But what do we know about the past? How has radiation affected the people who have already been to space? How is it affecting the people who are there now?

There is one key difference between the astronauts of today and those of the future. That difference is the Earth, itself.

Galactic cosmic radiation — also called galactic cosmic rays — is the kind of radiation that researchers are most worried about. It's made up particles, bits and pieces of atoms that were probably flung off from the aftermath of supernovas. The majority of this radiation, roughly 90%, is made up protons ripped from atoms of hydrogen. These particles travel around the galaxy at almost the speed of light.

And then they hit the Earth. This planet has a couple of defense mechanisms that protect us here on the ground from the impact of galactic cosmic radiation. First, Earth's magnetic field both pushes away some of the particles and blocks others completely. Then, the particles that make it through that barrier start to encounter the atoms that make up our atmosphere.

If you drop a big tower made of Legos down the stairs it will break apart, losing more pieces every time it hits a new step. That's a lot like what happens to galactic cosmic radiation in our atmosphere. The particles collide with atoms and break apart, forming new particles. Those new particles hit something else and also break apart. At each step, the particles lose energy. They get a little slower, a little weaker. By the time they "come to a stop" at the ground, they aren't the galactic powerhouses they once were. It's still radiation. But it's much less dangerous radiation. Just like it would hurt a lot less to be hit with one Lego block, than with a whole tower of them.

All of the astronauts we've sent into space so far have, at least partially, benefited from Earth's protective barriers, Francis Cucinotta told me. He's the director of the NASA Space Radiobiology Program, the go-to guy for finding out how radiation hurts astronauts. He says, with the exception of Apollo flights to the Moon, the human presence in space has happened within the Earth's magnetic field. The International Space Station, for instance, is above the atmosphere, but still well inside the first line of defense. Our astronauts aren't exposed to the full force of galactic cosmic radiation.

They're also exposed to it for a relatively limited amount of time. The longest spaceflight ever lasted a little over a year. And that matters, because the damage from radiation is cumulative. You simply can't rack up as much risk on a six month jaunt to the ISS as you could, theoretically, on a multi-year excursion to Mars.

But what's interesting, and concerning, is that even with those protections we do see signs of radiation damage to astronauts, Cucinotta told me.

The big thing is cataracts — changes in the lens of the eye that make it more opaque. With less light able to get into their eyes, people with cataracts lose some of their ability to see. In 2001, Cucinotta and his colleagues looked at data from the ongoing Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health, and found that astronauts who had been exposed to higher doses of radiation (because they'd flown more missions in space, or because of the specifics of the missions they'd been on*) were more likely to develop cataracts than those who had been exposed to lower doses.

There's also probably an increased risk of cancer, though it's difficult to estimate how much, exactly. That's because we don't have human epidemiological data about the kind of radiation astronauts are exposed to. We know the rates of cancer for survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that radiation isn't really comparable to the stuff in Galactic Cosmic Radiation. In particular, Cucinotta is concerned about particles known as HZE ions.

These particles are very heavy and very fast and we don't experience them here on the ground. They're the kind of things that get filtered out and broken down by Earth's defense systems. But HZE ions can cause more damage, and different kinds of damage, than the radiation scientists are really familiar with. We know this because scientists actually compare samples of astronauts' blood before and after a spaceflight.

Cucinotta calls this pre-flight calibration. Scientists take a blood sample from an astronaut before the launch. While the astronaut is in space, the scientists divide that blood sample up and expose it to various levels of gamma rays — the kind of damaging radiation we're used to dealing with on Earth. Then, when the astronaut comes back, they compare those gamma ray-affected samples to what has actually happened to the astronaut while in space. "You see about a two-to-three fold difference across the population of astronauts," Cucinotta told me.

One example of how HZE ions are different: They seem to be able to affect cells they don't even touch. In non-human trials, these non-targeted effects can happen in cells up to a millimeter away from the cells that have actually been irradiated and we don't really know what that means yet. But it definitely changes the way we think about radiation risks, which is a model based on the assumption of a direct, linear connection between dose and risk. With HZE ions, that might not be true.

All of this explains why studies like the one published last week are going on. It's not that we're seeing horrible effects in astronauts who've been to space in the last half-century. Instead, there are two things those astronauts have shown us. First, there are genetic changes and damage happening even within the relatively safe confines we've traveled thus far. Second, there is a hell of a lot we don't know about how radiation exposure and risk works in outer space. It's almost like we can smell gas in our house, but we don't yet know whether there's a serious leak, or we just left a stove burner on for a couple minutes.

If our future really does lie in the stars, then this is a mystery we're going to have to figure out.

FURTHER READING:
• The new paper on Galactic Cosmic Radiation and Alzheimer’s disease
• An introduction to the space radiation environment
• NASA primer on cosmic rays
• A 2006 essay in The Lancet, written by Francis Cucinotta, about cancer risk and Galactic Cosmic Rays
• Cucinotta's 2001 paper on cataracts in astronauts
• A 2004 NASA Science News piece that also explores cataracts in astronauts

I always forget that Los Angeles has a subway at all, let alone the fact that it used to have a much more extensive one.

Parts of that old subway have sat, abandoned, beneath streets and buildings for decades. They've become part of the stratigraphy of the city, as humans do what humans have always done — build the new on top of the old and forget about what we covered up under there. It's no different than the way Rome was built, with the columns of old buildings serving as the foundations of new ones.

Back in May, blogger Gelatobaby got to go on a tour of one part L.A.'s lost subway, exploring a secret world exposed by renovations on a building that was once the city's main subway terminal. Her photos — including the one posted above — are amazing. Go check out the whole thing.

Now this is how you do multimedia.

At The New York Times, John Branch tells the amazing, terrifying story of 16 backcountry skiers and snowboarders caught in an avalanche in the Cascade mountains in February 2012. The article, by itself, is a must-read. But you should also take a look at the absolutely fantastic way that Branch and his editors put the online medium to good use — embedding interactive maps, photos that move like something out of Harry Potter, and more standard videos into a lovely, fluid design.

Alissa Walker, who pointed me toward this piece, said that she felt cold just reading it. And you really do get that feeling. All the elements of Branch's article are brought together in a way that enhances the urgency and amplifies your sense of experiencing somebody else's story. It's really, really, really fantastic.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Boldly going where nobody's gone before. In a lot of ways, that idea kind of defines our whole species. We travel. We're curious. We poke our noses around the planet to find new places to live. We're compelled to explore places few people would ever actually want to live. We push ourselves into space.

This behavior isn't totally unique. But it is remarkable. So we have to ask, is there a genetic, evolution-driven, cause behind the restlessness of humanity?

At National Geographic, David Dobbs has an amazing long read digging into that idea. The story is fascinating, stretching from Polynesian sailors to Quebecois settlers. And it's very, very good science writing. Dobbs resists the urge to go for easy "here is the gene that does this" answers. Instead, he helps us see the complex web of genetics and culture that influences and encourages certain behaviors at certain times. It's a great read.

Not all of us ache to ride a rocket or sail the infinite sea. Yet as a species we’re curious enough, and intrigued enough by the prospect, to help pay for the trip and cheer at the voyagers’ return. Yes, we explore to find a better place to live or acquire a larger territory or make a fortune. But we also explore simply to discover what’s there.

“No other mammal moves around like we do,” says Svante Pääbo, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, where he uses genetics to study human origins. “We jump borders. We push into new territory even when we have resources where we are. Other animals don’t do this. Other humans either. Neanderthals were around hundreds of thousands of years, but they never spread around the world. In just 50,000 years we covered everything. There’s a kind of madness to it. Sailing out into the ocean, you have no idea what’s on the other side. And now we go to Mars. We never stop. Why?”

Why indeed? Pääbo and other scientists pondering this question are themselves explorers, walking new ground. They know that they might have to backtrack and regroup at any time. They know that any notion about why we explore might soon face revision as their young disciplines—anthropology, genetics, developmental neuropsychology—turn up new fundamentals. Yet for those trying to figure out what makes humans tick, our urge to explore is irresistible terrain. What gives rise to this “madness” to explore? What drove us out from Africa and on to the moon and beyond?

Read the full story

The three-man crew of the 31-foot Belzebub II, a fiberglass sailboat "with a living space the size of a bathroom," told the world today how they sailed through the M’Clure Strait in northern Canada, a "decreasingly ice-packed route through the famed Northwest Passage." Warming global temperatures and melting polar ice caps made it possible. The crew's original blog post is here. (LAT)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/04/climate-change-allows-3-explor.html/feed 9 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/30/178793.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/30/178793.html#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:41:05 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=178793 Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader and director of CICLOPS in Boulder, CO, writes:

For no other reason than that they are gorgeous, the Cassini imaging team is releasing today a set of fabulous images of Saturn and Titan...in living color...for your day-dreaming enjoyment.

Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader and director of CICLOPS in Boulder, CO, writes:

For no other reason than that they are gorgeous, the Cassini imaging team is releasing today a set of fabulous images of Saturn and Titan...in living color...for your day-dreaming enjoyment. Note that our presence at Saturn for the last 8 years has made possible the sighting of subtle changes with time, and one such change is obvious here. As the seasons have advanced, and spring has come to the north and autumn to the south throughout the Saturn system, the azure blue in the northern winter Saturnian hemisphere that greeted Cassini upon its arrival in 2004 is now fading; and it is now the southern hemisphere, in its approach to winter, that is taking on a bluish hue.

[B]ack here on Earth, the Cassini mission was recently given rave reviews by a panel of planetary scientists and NASA program managers for its contributions to our understanding of the solar system, a circumstance that bodes well for a well-funded continuing mission over the next 5 years. Despite the fact that we can't know exactly what the next five years will bring us, we can be certain that whatever it is will be wondrous.

Photo above: "A giant of a moon appears before a giant of a planet undergoing seasonal changes in this natural color view of Titan and Saturn from NASA's Cassini spacecraft."

More beautiful images from Cassini here.

Hellooooo, new desktop. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/30/178793.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/about-mars-curiosity-rovers.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/about-mars-curiosity-rovers.html#comments Thu, 16 Aug 2012 18:26:16 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=176837 a beautiful video by Mark Rober, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "I was able to work on NASA JPL's Curiosity Mars Rover for 7 years.]]>

What a beautiful video by Mark Rober, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "I was able to work on NASA JPL's Curiosity Mars Rover for 7 years. This video is an attempt to capture what it felt like to have 7 years of your life vindicated in the 7 minute landing. Honestly one of the coolest moments of my life so far.

(Via Adam Steltner)

 

• Mars Curiosity rover: NASA's John Grunsfeld and Miles O''12/08/06/mars-curiosity-moment-of-joy.html#previouspost">Mars Curiosity moment of joy: NASA JPL team high-fiving after ...
• Mars Curiosity Rover: Boing Boing's $2.5 billion dollar question ...
• Life on Mars: A round-up of Curiosity-related awesomeness
• Animated GIF of Mars Curiosity descent images
• Mars Curiosity image of the day: first pic by Navigation cameras ...
• Interactive version of Curiosity's Mars panorama
• When Curiosity was born: a peek at Mars rover during construction ...
• Mission to Mars: Anticipating NASA rover 'Curiosity' touchdown ...
• Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity headed for Mars landing ...
• Curiosity transmits first full-color panorama back from Mars.
• Today, science willing, Curiosity rover lands on Mars. Here's how to ...
• Are we all Martians? The curious hunt for life on Mars
• NASA's Ashwin Vasavada talks Mars Science Laboratory and ...
• William Shatner and Wil Wheaton welcome NASA's Curiosity rover ...

]]>

John Streeter, who is a television producer with NASA at Johnson Space Center in Houston, sends this cool video and tells Boing Boing:

It is all real, all shot from the International Space Station and all beautiful. It is time-lapse photography that showcases stars, cities at night, lightning storms and the aurora all from the vantage point of the space station. Also, there is a link at the end where you can visit, download and create your own videos if you wish.

The station is a remarkable engineering achievement and this is just a small side benefit of being in orbit. I hope you enjoy.

On the anniversary of Apollo 11, Steve Jurvetson posted an amazing, never-before-seen series of space artifacts. He writes:

On July 20, 1969, Eagle landed on the moon. These are the handwritten notes from the Grumman engineers as they pushed to complete Lunar Module LM-5 in 1968. On the last page, they learn than this particular Lunar Module would be the one to bring the first humans to the moon.

The Grumman Engineering Log served not only as an engineering notebook but also as an intercom between the day and night shift – separate teams that needed to push the ball forward from where the other left off. So we are offered a rare peek into the concerns, uncertainties and conversations that might have otherwise been quietly undocumented.

This log has informed the writing of Pellegrino’s book Chariots for Apollo, but only a few scholars have had access to these pages to date. Heritage reported that this original document is the only one in existence, with no copy on file anywhere. So I thought it would be good to make a color scan of the entire book, and make it available to all. So, here is the PDF file (8MB).

My hope is that we can collectively decode some of its mysteries, or better yet, find some of the engineers to see if it jogs their memories. There is a list of all of the engineers on p.2. We only have first initial and last names. So any insights to the full names or their whereabouts would be appreciated.

I am also hoping that space historians who come across interesting passages can share what they know in the comments below (with reference to date or page number). Are any of the part numbers significant, especially those swapped between the Apollo 9,11,12 and 13 Lunar Modules? I will also add a glossary of acronyms below as we decode them. Also, if anyone can OCR the hybrid handwriting, please do. Our attempts with free OCR tools have failed so far.

Here's the Flickr page, with lots more details, and lots more links.

At left, Steve with a prototype build of the first flagpole assembly on the moon.

"I brought it to Buzz Aldrin, and his eyes went wide," he says. "But from what I learned, there probably is no Apollo 11 flag on the moon today."

How exciting. Happy space-a-versary, everyone!

And here's another amazing artifact photographed by Steve, below: a silicon disc, FROM PLANET EARTH.

On the Flickr page for this photo, Steve writes:

On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 took flight to the moon. In the days that preceded the launch, the U.S. scrambled to pull together the messages from Earth that would be left behind on the moon. This is the Apollo Goodwill Disc, and it was engineered to last long after the U.S. flag was destroyed."

This silicon disc contains etched letters (scanned and reduced 200x) from the leaders of the world’s nations. This is one of the discs produced by Sprague and retained by a Sprague manager; a second resides in the Smithsonian, and a third rests on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility, deposited there by Buzz Aldrin.

(Does anyone know if other builds remain intact? A Sprague press release says that of the handful of discs made, one was given to President Nixon and one to President Johnson).

It is a tricky subject matter for photography. I wanted to capture the angle-dependendent iridescence of the semiconductor thin films. The overhead light source reflects off the leather seat cushion, revealing the shift from green to purple that occurs at oblique angles.

This comes from the early days of the semiconductor industry, when Apollo consumed 50% of global production, and wafers were just 2” wide (the ultimate disc was cropped around the 1.5” metallized ring and placed in a aluminum case).

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/21/how-the-eagle-landed-the-grum.html/feed 32 http://boingboing.net/2012/06/06/solar-impulse-plane-lands-com.html http://boingboing.net/2012/06/06/solar-impulse-plane-lands-com.html#comments Thu, 07 Jun 2012 01:53:34 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=165173 Solar Impulse plane project president and pilot Bertrand Piccard lands after a 19-hour flight from Madrid at Rabat's International airport, June 5, 2012.]]>

Photo: REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal

The Solar Impulse plane project president and pilot Bertrand Piccard lands after a 19-hour flight from Madrid at Rabat's International airport, June 5, 2012. The plane landed in Morocco on Tuesday, completing the world's first intercontinental flight powered by the sun to show the potential for pollution-free air travel.

More about the successful completion of the project here.

Photo: REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal

Crew members check the Solar Impulse plane after it landed following a 19-hour flight from Madrid at Rabat's International airport, June 5, 2012.

Photo: REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal

The Solar Impulse plane's project president and pilot, Bertrand Piccard (L) celebrates with co-founder and CEO Andre Borschberg (R) and Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN) CEO Mustapha Bakkoury after the plane landed.

In the New York Times today, Brian Lam (formerly of Gizmodo, now the creator of Scuttlefish and Wirecutter) writes about OpenROV, a low-cost submarine designed to be an affordable tool for "curious students and amateurs, as well as provide a highly valuable shallow water tool for explorers and scientists."

This month, NASA engineer Eric Stackpole hiked to a spot in Trinity County, east of California’s rough Bigfoot country. Nestled at the base of a hill of loose rock, peppered by red and purple wildflowers, is Hall City Cave. For part of the winter the cave is infested with large spiders, but is mostly flooded year-round. Locals whisper the cave’s deep pools hold a cache of stolen gold, but Mr. Stackpole isn’t here to look for treasure.

He had, under his arm, what might appear to be a clunky toy blue submarine about the size of a lunchbox. The machine is the latest prototype of the OpenROV–an open-source, remotely operated vehicle that could map the cave in 3D using software from Autodesk and collect water in places too tight for a diver to go. It could change the future of ocean exploration. For now, it is exploring caves because it can only go down 100 meters. But it holds promise because it is cheap, links to a laptop, and is available to a large number of researchers for experimentation. Indeed, the OpenROV team hopes to start taking orders for OpenROV kits on the crowd sourced project site, Kickstarter. Going for $750, the kits include laser cut plastic parts and all the electronics necessary to build an OpenROV. (Users will have to bring their own laptops to view the onboard video feed and control the machine. They’ll also have to supply their own C-cell batteries which power the sub.) The subs are expected to be available by the end of summer.

Read the full story here, and check out the awesome video Brian shot, here.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/29/openrov-the-750-submarine.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2012/05/22/miles-obrien-on-spacex-launc.html http://boingboing.net/2012/05/22/miles-obrien-on-spacex-launc.html#comments Tue, 22 May 2012 16:42:25 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=162413 the PBS Newshour site, an analysis of what today's historic SpaceX launch means for the future of space flight, by veteran space journalist Miles O'Brien.]]>

At the PBS Newshour site, an analysis of what today's historic SpaceX launch means for the future of space flight, by veteran space journalist Miles O'Brien.

Space is hard and unforgiving and there is still a lot of challenging work ahead for the SpaceX Dragon team. I would not pop the champagne corks just yet. But this is a moment to savor.

For the first time since Endeavour's wheels stopped on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011, a U.S. built spacecraft is back in Mach 25 motion - on its way to meet up with the International Space Station. Endeavour landed 42 years and one day after Neil Armstrong first left his footprints on the moon, and the J.D. Salinger of the Apollo astronaut corps has been very vocal in his opposition and skepticism about this new course in space.

But anyone who claims they are interested in the exploration of the Final Frontier must applaud this endeavor (lower case - without the "u"). It has now been more than fifty years since human beings first flew to space and little more than 500 of them have been there. Talk about the ultimate elite club.

It is high time that ended and that will never happen if the government runs its space enterprise the way it has up until now: with cost-plus contracts that provide no incentive for the private sector to think about efficiencies.

Read the rest here.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/22/miles-obrien-on-spacex-launc.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2012/05/15/what-do-astronauts-and-the-hol.html http://boingboing.net/2012/05/15/what-do-astronauts-and-the-hol.html#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 16:55:07 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=160975 Dan Cohen is the guy behind "An Article of Hope," a feature film project seven years in the making.]]>

Filmmaker Dan Cohen is the guy behind "An Article of Hope," a feature film project seven years in the making. The documentary is done, but Dan's got a Kickstarter to raise funds to get it on television and into schools. Below, some words from Dan for Boing Boing readers about the film:

What could space shuttle Astronauts and the Holocaust possibly have in common? When I began my research into my documentary An Article of Hope, I thought I was making a film about a Holocaust story. But I soon unraveled a story that was much more than that. It is a story that crosses generations woven by the lives of three men, born at a different time, but brought together by a twist of fate.

At the center of the story were the Astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia. All from different backgrounds from around the world, magnificently diverse, yet threaded by a moment from the Holocaust, a horrific attempt to stamp out diversity.

Israeli Astronaut Ilan Ramon was a hero fighter pilot, a man who had the ability to rise to the moment. By the time he launched into space he was more than that, he was the representative of his country, his faith, and in his eyes perhaps, humanity. He searched for a symbol of this responsibility, and found a little Torah scroll given to a boy in a secret Bar Mitzvah in a Nazi concentration camp.

The boy survived to become a scientist – working on the mission. So Ramon wrapped around him the story of the scroll, demonstrating to the world what can happen when, in his words, “You go from the depths of hell, to the heights of space.”

In today’s fractious world, An Article of Hope is a story that needs to be told, a story about hope for the future. Our Kickstarter campaign will help us raise the underwriting we need to bring this story to millions across America on PBS. We are two-thirds of the way there. The campaign kicked off with a jolt, support from all over the world. We have just a bit more than a week to go to meet the goal of this 9-year project, to continue to tell the story of An Article of Hope.

And, why the Kickstarter if the documentary's done?

It took 7-years to make the documentary. We did it by raising a little money here, borrowing a little more money there, and a lot of love and un-reimbursed time from the director. Now the final challenge is to get it on television before millions. PBS is a non-profit network, which means we must bring underwriting to the agreement. With your help, the funds we raise here go toward final editing to conform the documentary to PBS technical requirements, broadcast rights and fees, promotion, web site, all of the things that would normally come from a traditional agreement, we must fund it all.

(Thanks, Miles O'Brien!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/15/what-do-astronauts-and-the-hol.html/feed 18 http://boingboing.net/2012/04/27/for-the-billionaire-who-has-ev.html http://boingboing.net/2012/04/27/for-the-billionaire-who-has-ev.html#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:53:54 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=157192 a good read over at VentureBeat on a trend of sorts among the ultra-rich: investing in space exploration startups.]]> a good read over at VentureBeat on a trend of sorts among the ultra-rich: investing in space exploration startups. "The wonder isn’t that billionaires are doing this, the wonder is that it’s taken them so long."]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/04/27/for-the-billionaire-who-has-ev.html/feed 11 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/29/historic-apollo-11-rocket-engi.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/29/historic-apollo-11-rocket-engi.html#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:47:58 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=152060 Jeff Bezos announces on his blog that the Apollo 11 rocket engines which propelled Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon in 1969—making them the first humans on the moon—have been found on the bottom of the Atlantic ocean by Bezos' research team.]]>

Amazon founder and space entrepreneur Jeff Bezos announces on his blog that the Apollo 11 rocket engines which propelled Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon in 1969—making them the first humans on the moon—have been found on the bottom of the Atlantic ocean by Bezos' research team. Next step? Finding a way to safely recover the long-lost engines, and bring them back to the surface.

Snip:

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration. A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind's mission to the moon?

I'm excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we're making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor. We don't know yet what condition these engines might be in - they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they're made of tough stuff, so we'll see.

Read more at his Bezos Expeditions blog.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/29/historic-apollo-11-rocket-engi.html/feed 21 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/25/james-cameron-hits-bottom.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/25/james-cameron-hits-bottom.html#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:47:07 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=151227 Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge— James Cameron (@JimCameron) March 25, 2012 Movie director, global explorer, and noted badass James Cameron today dove to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, earth's deepest point, using a specially designed submarine.]]>

Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge

— James Cameron (@JimCameron) March 25, 2012

Movie director, global explorer, and noted badass James Cameron today dove to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, earth's deepest point, using a specially designed submarine. He is the first person to attempt such a dive since 1960. More on the project, and what they hope to accomplish, at the Deep Sea Challenge website.

From National Geographic:

At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and would soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane. Earlier, the descent to Challenger Deep had taken 2 hours and 36 minutes.

(Photo: Mark Thiessen, National Geographic)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/25/james-cameron-hits-bottom.html/feed 46 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/14/eyewitness-to-climate-change.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/14/eyewitness-to-climate-change.html#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:23:41 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=149300 Numbers can be powerful things, but they don't necessarily help the average person grasp what's actually going on in science. Instead, personal stories tend to make a bigger impact.]]>

Numbers can be powerful things, but they don't necessarily help the average person grasp what's actually going on in science. Instead, personal stories tend to make a bigger impact. And that's understandable. Things you can see—or things that someone can show you—are going to stick in your head a bit more than a barrage of data.

This is especially a problem, I think, with climate change. Some of the largest impact of climate change, so far, have happened in places far removed from the experiences of the people who create the most anthropogenic greenhouse gases. So it's often hard to take the idea "the Earth is getting warmer" and really grok what that actually means.

That's why people like Will Steger are important. Steger is an explorer and science communicator who has won the National Geographic Society's John Oliver La Gorce Medal—an award that's also been given to Amelia Earhart, Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and Jacques Cousteau.

He does most of his work in the Arctic and Antarctic, places where he has clearly seen the results of climate change. In a video of a presentation at the University of Minnesota, Steger shows you his experiences—and what they mean. How has climate change altered the landscape of the poles? What does that mean for the future of the Earth? Steger does a good job of making the data feel like something real.

I wish I could figure out how to embed this, but you should go watch it, nonetheless. It's a long video, but worth the time.

I love it when news lines up almost perfectly with our editorial calendar. Next week, I've got a Science Question from a Toddler feature lined up that will explain how scientists can date reserves of water, and what makes ancient water special.

This week, in Antarctica, a team of Russian scientists made contact with some very ancient water. Yesterday, they drilled through the last of a more than 12,000-foot ice cover and into Lake Vostok, a reserve of liquid water that hasn't had contact with the outside world in 15-34 million years.

These researchers are looking for extremophile bacteria—semi-alien Earthlings that have evolved separately from the rest of their terrestrial kin. Bryan Walsh at Time.com explains:

The hope is that some form of new microbial life might exist within the waters of the lake, which remain liquid despite the cold thanks to heat generated by the pressure of all that ice and geothermal energy rising from the planet’s core. The environment of Lake Vostok is similar to that found on Jupiter’s icy moon of Europa. If life can survive in Lake Vostok, it might just be able to survive on another planetary body.

It’s still going to take the Russian scientists some time to actually take samples from the lake—with the Antarctic winter on its way, they’ll need to leave Vostok Station soon. And there are environmental concerns that the drilling process could contaminate the lake, which is pristine. The researchers used more than 66 tons (60 metric tons) of lubricants and antifreeze in the drilling process—chemicals that would have polluted Lake Vostok had they leaked through the ice, and contaminated any samples. The good news is that contamination seems to have been avoided: the scientists plugged the bottom of the bore hole with Freon, an inert fluid, and drilled the final distance to the lake surface using a heated drill tip instead of a motorized drill that needed chemical lubricants. When the lake was breached, water flowed up the bore hole before freezing and forming an icy plug.

This chamber, currently under construction at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, will be able to reproduce the temperature, pressure, and chemical conditions on the surface of Venus. Scientists will use it to find materials and lander designs that can withstand the 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures on that planet.

In a story on the chamber for WIRED, Dave Mosher points out that a similar chamber already exists. The trouble is, it's too small to fit a life-size model of a Venusian lander. The new chamber will be big enough to test out equipment at the size it will be used. Better yet, the new chamber could also be used to replicate conditions on other moons and planets, as well.

Thanks to its thick walls, it can simulate all conditions experienced during a trip to Venus: launch, the cold vacuum of space and even atmospheric entry.

In the future, operators could simulate conditions found in Jupiter’s outer atmosphere, the Martian equator and even vents near volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io. Seven- and 10-foot-wide additions to the first chamber (below) could also make room for prototypes designed for ultra-cold conditions on the moons Europa, Ganymede and Titan.