This week, I offer a glimpse of a major char­ac­ter in Sins of the Son.

 

A new novel by Torn MacAlester

The long awaited sequel to Thunder Moon Tussle:

Mask of the Joyful Moon

Coming Soon

NASA’s  (Dou­ble Aster­oid Redi­rec­tion Test) DART  Mis­sion is a demon­stra­tion of acqui­si­tion of tech­nol­o­gy nec­es­sary to ensure the sur­vival of human­i­ty. Last year, the suc­cess­ful kinet­ic inter­cept of an aster­oid showed the fea­si­bil­i­ty of plan­e­tary defense.

You can read more about DART at the NASA press release:

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-dart-mission-impact-changed-asteroid-s-motion-in-space

DART is a clever use of a dou­ble aster­oid to mea­sure the effect of the col­li­sion.  A dou­ble aster­oid is an aster­oid that is orbit­ed by a low­er com­pan­ion.  Because the aster­oids have such tiny mass, an impact on the small­er com­pan­ion would affect its orbit the oth­er in a notice­able way that is detectable over a short­er time scale. The orbits of the aster­oids around each oth­er  over a short timescale, so a dif­fer­ence in that orbit will be eas­i­er to observe than an orbit that has been changed around the sun.

In the video below, Anton Petrov, dis­cuss­es a new result explain­ing the unex­pect­ed­ly large orbit change that has been detected.

https://futurism.com/the-kardashev-scale-type-i-ii-iii-iv-v-civilization

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The Kar­da­shev scale is a means of con­ve­nient­ly mea­sur­ing the pow­er out­put of a civ­i­liza­tion.  The scale tra­di­tion­al­ly has three lev­els, called I — plan­e­tary, II — stel­lar , & III — galactic.

A Type I civ­i­liza­tion has a pow­er out­put of approx­i­mate­ly Watts. This is a fac­tor of ten thou­sand times greater than the Earth civ­i­liza­tion’s cur­rent pow­er out­put of Watts.

The recent break­through with fusion pow­er may put our civ­i­liza­tion on track for becom­ing Type I soon­er than with­out it. Check out my arti­cle on the Kar­da­shev scale here.

Below, Michio Kaku com­ments on the the Kar­da­shev scale and our tra­jec­to­ry to reach Type I with­in about a century.

 

https://www.herox.com/blog/954-what-resources-could-we-find-on-the-moon-here-are

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Its not so out­ra­geous as it seemed at first glance. The Moon has water in unusu­al places.

https://www.sciencealert.com/water-from-the-sun-has-been-found-on-the-moon

The solar wind is com­posed of most­ly hydro­gen. The rate of solar wind flow is . That is the same as  pro­tons per sec­ond stream­ing away from the sun in all direc­tions, or pro­tons impact­ing the Moon’s sur­face per second.

Many lunar rocks are oxides, pro­vid­ing the source of oxy­gen.  If every pro­ton impact­ing the Moon’s sur­face turns into water mol­e­cules, then we have on order mol­e­cules or 200 grams of water being formed every sec­ond just below the Moon’s sun­lit surface.

This water would be formed inside the rocks and regolith with a depth depend­ing upon the inci­dent ener­gy of the protons.

Inter­est­ing web page with large scale space struc­tures and cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy readi­ness lev­el (TRL) estimates:

https://www.factoriesinspace.com/large-space-structures

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.

Space Cities Out of Aster­oids and Graphene Bags? Intrigu­ing O’Neill Cylin­der Study

Kilauea resumes eruption

https://apnews.com/article/volcanoes-kilauea-hawaii-climate-and-environment-0fd356cfa61a82c7977f88e428ae8200

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Recent­ly, both Vol­canos on Hawai­i’s big island stopped erupting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/mauna-loa-volcano-eruption.html

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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.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/06/french-nuclear-fusion-project-may-be-delayed-by-years-its-head-admits

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

https://www.livescience.com/23394-fusion.html

Fusion for Rockets:

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

 

Dying plan­et

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221219094937.htm

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Data­base of Extra­so­lar Planets:

http://exoplanet.eu/

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.

The Sun­day Dis­cord Chat starts in a few min­utes at 1 PM EST (6 PM GMT).  https://tornmacalester.com/discord/

Tonight at 9–10 PM EDT (1–2 AM GMT) Torn will be on Dis­cord for a discussion.