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More Water Out There — Ice Found On an Asteroid
Matt_dk writes "For the first time, astronomers have confirmed that an asteroid contains frozen water on its surface. Analysis of asteroid 24 Themis shows evidence of water ice along with organic compounds widespread across the surface. The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet."
Nuclear propulsion can easily move us to the furthest points of our Solar System with ease. Gravity produced by rotation can solve the bone loss problems. A Nuclear energy source can also provide enough power to build an electromagnetic shield around the spacecraft (make the spacecraft a large dynamo, just like Earth) and enough power for smaller craft that can be used for landing to planets.
It would cost a lot to build such a big spaceship, and it could only be built in space, but there is no alternative, really. Such a ship would allow mankind to go near each and every solar system body and also land in Mars and other rocky planets.
That's not how it works. There's the square root of bugger-all oxygen in space, so the odds of an O atom finding an H atom are beyond astronomical. Luckily they're not molecular gases, or there'd be an insurmountable activation barrier to deal with too. However there are aggregates of carbon or silicon atoms in space (grains) which O or H atoms can adhere to for long periods of time and diffuse around on. That greatly increases the chances of a reaction to form an OH, and in the very long term, water. The same's true of all molecules in space, essentially.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
While I am not so sure that China will make it to the moon anytime soon, I think the belief that they will comes from a different approach to the problem than we take in America. America is a very risk adverse society in general and this has filtered heavily into our space program. We spend, literally, billions of dollars every year in this country building up infrastructure and bureaucracy within companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Gruman to design and manufacture very complex technical systems (read rockets and spacecraft) which have a 95% + success factor. I have worked on spacecraft design projects and getting a risk analysis with that high of a success rate is incredibly difficult. We are talking about connecting multiple valves, switches, screws, cables, etc. (parts level components) that each come with their own failure/success rating. These get implemented into triple and quad redundant designs so that the risk models can show parallel success paths which is what eventually allows the final massive system to have a 95% + success rating. All of this requires extraordinary amounts of personnel, and, as the number of people working on a project increase, so does the accompanying paperwork and approval meetings and so on. Thus, in order to launch one damn rocket, America literally employs tens of thousands of people at all levels micromanaging every single screw in a system (no, really, I did screw tracking for a summer internship once...Lockheed Martin never loses screws...).
The Chinese culture, currently, allows a different approach to be taken. Primarily, China takes after Russia in its approach to space access. Their motto basically boils down to, "Keep it simple and make 2 just in case." Russia, for instance, has multiple factories capable of literally assembling entire launch vehicle systems rapidly down miles of assembly line. Parts come in by train and are moved down miles of assembly line in huge factories and, basically, a complete rocket is spit out the other side of the factory. Is there as much analysis and modeling of risk and failure potential? No. Do the Russians care? No. If this particular rocket blows up, hell, just use the next one off the assembly line. What about the payload? Well hopefully the customer was smart enough to keep it simple as well and made two. China takes a similar approach. They also trade cost for risk. By not over-designing their systems, they can keep the cost low and produce tangible results faster. However, there is a higher likely-hood that the duct tape holding the vent open will tear and the rocket will explode. Nonetheless, they have backups so they don't worry about it. From an external point of view, however, it appears that they are doing exactly what America is doing at twice the rate twice as well. That's not entirely true, they just take a very different mission approach.
To be complete, just about every culture has its own quirky design methodologies. Russians are pragmatic and get the job done. Americans value safety and low-failure rates. The Japanese spend a lot of time and effort streamlining and optimizing their manufacturing process. Every culture has a different approach because every culture is made up of slightly different values. To use a metaphor, there is more than one way to the top of the mountain. Americans try to chose the safest. It gives off the appearance that they are slow and wasteful (and to some extent we are) when compared to trailblazing 'craizes' like Russia and China. Nonetheless, all paths have their potential benefits and disadvantages. =)
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"The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet."
Well, it seems to me that whatever the processes were that would have generated/collected water and organics on these asteroids, would just as likely have SIMILARLY generated/collected water and organics on the debris that accreted to form the earth in the FIRST place, no?
I mean, I understand that the accretion process from dust>>>planet was traumatic and probably involved a great deal of heat, but
a) the crashing of meteorites to earth is easily just as traumatic
b) while all the "envisionings" of early-forming protoearth illustrate it as a molten hellhole, I'm curious why? I could see a great deal of energy being generated by the collision/compression of the dust/debris cloud, but wouldn't most of this be in the gravitational center of mass? The outer surface would both suffer less compression heating AND be able to quickly radiate heat away, no? Further, this process would have taken at least hundreds of millions of years, and so not necessarily resulted in really high (ie molten lava) temps at any given point...?
In any case, it seems logical that the process of accumulating water/organics didn't simply *poof* start AFTER the Earth was formed, there were a good 6-8 billion years prior to that, and the pre-earth debris would likely have been just as covered.
-Styopa