Year: 2022

To date, the largest struc­ture built in space is the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS).  ISS took over a decade to build and required over a decade to assemble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

The fol­low-on space sta­tions that are expect­ed to be built in the com­ing decade are all small­er but are expect­ed to be com­mer­cial outposts.

https://www.space.com/nasa-commercial-space-station-rely-on-market-demand

But the real­ly big space sta­tions that could have there own spin grav­i­ty remain on the far hori­zon.  Two exam­ples are the Stan­ford Torus Space Set­tle­ment, and the O’Neill Cylin­der.

In a recent dis­cus­sion, Anton Petrov reveals a study on the con­struc­tion of an O’Neill cylin­der.  His video is avail­able below.

This week, I offer a return to the Moon sto­ry:  Golf and Out­gassing.

For those of you inter­est­ed, I include an arti­cle that peels back the fic­tion and dis­cuss­es the sci­ence behind the sto­ry: Sci­ence of Golf and Outgassing

The Hun­ga-Ton­ga vol­canic erup­tion of last Jan­u­ary con­tin­ues to pro­vide a wealth of new sci­ence. Vol­canos con­tin­ue to sur­prise us. And this erup­tion is no excep­tion.  In the arti­cle below, the authors explain how the erup­tion effect­ed Earth­’s ionos­phere more than many solar storms.

Ton­ga Erup­tion Made Waves in Earth’s Ionosphere

Arti­cles about Fusion:

https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fusionfuel.php

Meth­ods for find­ing exoplanets:

https://www.planetary.org/worlds/exoplanets

This helps deter­mine the frac­tion of stars hav­ing plan­ets and the num­ber of plan­ets per star for the Drake Equation.

Using spec­tra to deter­mine com­po­si­tion and chem­istry of atmosphere:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1304208111

This relates to frac­tion of worlds hav­ing life from the Drake Equation.

Though not a pow­er­plant, NIF man­ages to show through exper­i­ment that we aren’t wast­ing our time look­ing for the panacea of nuclear fusion. In my opin­ion, this is a break­through moment such as the Apol­lo 11 land­ing on the Moon.  There are things that human­i­ty learns to do that ensures the sur­vival of our­selves and the rest of the plan­et. Fusion is one of them.

In my arti­cle about the Kar­da­shev scale, I dis­cuss the lev­el of civ­i­liza­tion estab­lished by the amount of pow­er avail­able. With the devel­op­ment of nuclear fusion, our Earth­’s civ­i­liza­tion will reach the lev­el of Class 1.  This brings ben­e­fits almost beyond belief:

https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fusionfuel.php

In a recent dis­cus­sion on Star Talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson dis­cuss­es the impli­ca­tions of the suc­cess­ful exper­i­ment at Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab’s Nation­al Igni­tion Facil­i­ty. Check out the video below.

This week I rec­om­mend  Stranger a vignette fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters from Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester. Enjoy!

Astronomers have a list of things that we assume will be found on exo­plan­ets. In the video below, Dr. Becky reviews JWST’s life detec­tion capabilities.

These capa­bil­i­ties have an impact on the para­me­ters in the Drake Equa­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, the frac­tion of plan­ets that sup­port life, , can now be con­strained by obser­va­tion. Using the data  col­lect­ed from JWST over the next few years, we’ll have some idea val­ue of this parameter.

Here is anoth­er arti­cle about plan­e­tary atmos­phere spec­tra as it applies to habitability:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1304208111

This week I rec­om­mend Clash of Titans a short fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters from Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester. Enjoy!

Astronomers have a list of things that we assume will be found on exo­plan­ets.  Here is some­thing that we now have ‘data’ to prove.  Check it out.