As it stands, we really don't know what's under the surface when it comes to comets and other extraterrestrial objects. This probe will let us find out.
This is of great interest from a basic research perspective, but after our relative close call with MN 2004 the more practical applications of this should be obvious.
As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, NASA has nothing to do with the budget for this parade float. All of the funding is coming from Caltech, which is a private university.
Caltech is funding the float. That means the money is likely coming from Caltech students/alumni, not the federal government, NASA, or your tax dollars.
Caltech is providing all of the funds for this. Caltech's parade funds are probably coming from things like student tuition and alumni donations.
Honestly, the only connection NASA has to this is that NASA funds the JPL, and some JPL employees probably decided to spend some of their spare time on the float.
I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.
* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems. * NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA. * Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me. * Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration" * Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic. * Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings." * Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog. * Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires. * theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays * spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion. * politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion. * robots.net: Robotics news * Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway" * Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry. * Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary
Looks like we will need to develop some sort of (funded) international contingency plan to deal with dangers from space, even if it is eventually determined this particular rock will miss us.
Check out this congressional statement by former Brigadier General Simon "Pete" Worden on the topic of detecting and mitigating the threat of Near Earth Objects. Coincidentally, he's also in the running to become the next NASA Administrator, although he's been somewhat critical of NASA and the large aerospace contractors in the past.
Essentially, international cooperation would be great for the actual detection of asteroids -- you want all the eyes you can get. However, when it comes to actually diverting an asteroid, an effort by a single large country would probably be better than trying to cobble together some sort of International Coalition to Divert the Asteroid. The actual financial cost probably wouldn't be too great, although it'd probably make use of some weapons tech which a country wouldn't want to share with others.
So for now, it sounds like it will be exploited as a very expensive roller-coaster ride, not a mode of transportation...
Actually, I'm going to wait and see how long the actual maximum downrange will be on SpaceShipTwo. It's quite possible that it might also be evolveable into a point-to-point transportation vehicle.
Woah now! I'm the original submitter. I really should've put some quotes around "bad news" to show that I was trying to be amusingly flippant. I didn't think anyone would actually think I seriously thought that putting SpaceShipOne in a museum for future generations to admire was some sort of tragedy.
Granted, it would have been exciting to see the craft launch again, but they've presumably learned all they need to learn from SpaceShipOne. Their knowledge will go into SpaceShipTwo, which will be better and safer in just about every way. It'll be a little while before it actually goes up, but I'm perfectly happy to wait.
It's interesting to note that when Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) tried to introduce a bill to provide additional funding for tracking near-earth asteroids, he was mocked by some of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's aides. In general, supporting things like this (even though they're actually pretty important) is a good way to get yourself targeted for "not caring about things here on Earth."
I am sure of this: if we had a machine with _infinite_ processing power, it would still not be intelligent because we don't know how to write the software!
If we had infinite processing power, we'd just instantaneously iterate through the set of all possible programs, until we encountered something intelligent. Alas, we don't have infinite processing power.
So we should wait a hundred years (or however long it takes) until something like this gets developed and catches us by surprise, then go OMGWTF?!? and scramble to figure out what we're going to do about it?
I recommend any book by V. S. Ramachandran. Really, anything written by him is a joy to read and packed with knowledge. His latest book is "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness," which examines such interesting phenomena as phantom limbs, patients who insist that their poodles or mothers are imposters, synesthetes who see colors in numbers or flavors in sounds, and the root of consciousness in the human brain.
Actually though, one major breakthrough in their design is the shuttlecock-style reentry, which I'm pretty sure has never been done before. I'm expecting that it will start showing up as a standard reentry method.
Look at it in perspective. What we're talking about here would take global cooperation of the scale never seen before. We can't even wipe out AIDS or world hunger or war, how are we going to work together to colonize another planet?
Think about the last time there was a massive wave of remote settlement (1500s-1700s). How much did they rely on global cooperation?
Granted, it's important to get launch costs low so that the two efforts can begin to become comparable.
The saddest comment I once got was: "we'll never be able to colonize other planets because the conditions are so fundamentally hostile, so let's not waste any funds/effort on manned space flights."
Actually, the saddest comments I've heard are along the lines of "Humans are a plague which we have to keep quarantined to Earth."
The point is to make it routine. Once people see these things going up every day, their sensitivity to accidents with them will be appropriately tuned.
I really like the "Mother Earth Metaphor" as a way of thinking about space settlement. From this page:
"The Earth isn't sick, she's pregnant!" -- David Buth, dbuth@freemars.org
One interesting way to look at space colonization is via the Mother Earth metaphor. With this metaphor we compare the biosphere to a pregnant woman. This implies that we think of the biosphere as a single organism, which is consistent with the Gaia hypothesis proposed by Dr. Lovelock. In the following discussion, remember that this is only a metaphor.
In the Mother Earth metaphor of space colonization:
* space colonies are like children (a fetus right now)
* the biosphere is like a pregnant woman
* humanity is like the biosphere's reproductive system
Space colonies as children is a straightforward analogy. Space colonies look different than the Earth (since life is on the inside, not the outside), but a space colony's life support system must function much as the Earth's biosphere does and, ideally, might look much like a nice Earth ecosystem.
Consider the biosphere as a pregnant woman, with the twist that she doesn't know she's pregnant and doesn't know that pregnancy exists -- or that children exist. This is the condition most of us find ourselves in since space colonization is not a widely believed realistic concept. Consider:
* A pregnant woman experiences unsustainable growth in her abdomen, specifically in the reproductive organs. Imagine how frightening this would be if you didn't know about pregnancy. Similarly, the Earth is experiencing unsustainable growth of the human population -- which in our metaphor is Mother Earth's reproductive system.
* A pregnant woman experiences changes in her body chemistry. Similarly, the biosphere is experiencing changes in air and water chemistry as a result of man-made pollution.
* Pregnancy and birth, particularly before the advent of modern medicine, can be a very dangerous time for a woman. Death of the mother and/or the child was once quite common. Similarly, nuclear weapons, pollution, and other problems threaten civilization (although the biosphere has survived much worse).
* A wise woman treats her body with extra care during pregnancy -- eating well, getting plenty of sleep, avoiding drugs, and seeking appropriate medical attention. The implications for ourselves are obvious, especially since that there are no experienced doctors or midwives.
In the context of the Mother Earth metaphor, humanity's purpose is obvious. We are here to help Mother Earth give birth. We are the reproductive organs. The dinosaurs failed, after a long successful period, apparently because a comet or asteroid struck the Earth and wiped them out. Since then a space-faring species has developed which has the power to avoid this fate by expanding off the Earth. Expanding the range of a species is a often-used and successful survival strategy. Expanding throughout the solar system and, eventually, the galaxy should have substantial survival value.
It is easy to make too much of this metaphor, but it is interesting and, I believe, instructive.
In the book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition the author describes a study where chickens were raised in a high-gravity environment (I think using something like a centrifuge). The resulting chickens ended up having huge, super-strong leg muscles.
Slashdot Mirror
As it stands, we really don't know what's under the surface when it comes to comets and other extraterrestrial objects. This probe will let us find out.
This is of great interest from a basic research perspective, but after our relative close call with MN 2004 the more practical applications of this should be obvious.
Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log has a picture grabbed from the video stream, showing the robot before the flowers have been put on.
As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, NASA has nothing to do with the budget for this parade float. All of the funding is coming from Caltech, which is a private university.
Caltech is funding the float. That means the money is likely coming from Caltech students/alumni, not the federal government, NASA, or your tax dollars.
Caltech is providing all of the funds for this. Caltech's parade funds are probably coming from things like student tuition and alumni donations.
Honestly, the only connection NASA has to this is that NASA funds the JPL, and some JPL employees probably decided to spend some of their spare time on the float.
I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.
* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary
Looks like we will need to develop some sort of (funded) international contingency plan to deal with dangers from space, even if it is eventually determined this particular rock will miss us.
Check out this congressional statement by former Brigadier General Simon "Pete" Worden on the topic of detecting and mitigating the threat of Near Earth Objects. Coincidentally, he's also in the running to become the next NASA Administrator, although he's been somewhat critical of NASA and the large aerospace contractors in the past.
Essentially, international cooperation would be great for the actual detection of asteroids -- you want all the eyes you can get. However, when it comes to actually diverting an asteroid, an effort by a single large country would probably be better than trying to cobble together some sort of International Coalition to Divert the Asteroid. The actual financial cost probably wouldn't be too great, although it'd probably make use of some weapons tech which a country wouldn't want to share with others.
So for now, it sounds like it will be exploited as a very expensive roller-coaster ride, not a mode of transportation...
Actually, I'm going to wait and see how long the actual maximum downrange will be on SpaceShipTwo. It's quite possible that it might also be evolveable into a point-to-point transportation vehicle.
Woah now! I'm the original submitter. I really should've put some quotes around "bad news" to show that I was trying to be amusingly flippant. I didn't think anyone would actually think I seriously thought that putting SpaceShipOne in a museum for future generations to admire was some sort of tragedy.
Granted, it would have been exciting to see the craft launch again, but they've presumably learned all they need to learn from SpaceShipOne. Their knowledge will go into SpaceShipTwo, which will be better and safer in just about every way. It'll be a little while before it actually goes up, but I'm perfectly happy to wait.
It's interesting to note that when Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) tried to introduce a bill to provide additional funding for tracking near-earth asteroids, he was mocked by some of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's aides. In general, supporting things like this (even though they're actually pretty important) is a good way to get yourself targeted for "not caring about things here on Earth."
Somewhere between 0 and infinity. :)
I am sure of this: if we had a machine with _infinite_ processing power, it would still not be intelligent because we don't know how to write the software!
If we had infinite processing power, we'd just instantaneously iterate through the set of all possible programs, until we encountered something intelligent. Alas, we don't have infinite processing power.
So we should wait a hundred years (or however long it takes) until something like this gets developed and catches us by surprise, then go OMGWTF?!? and scramble to figure out what we're going to do about it?
One thing to note is that there are many humans (particular those with certain mental disorders) who would be unable to pass a Turing test.
I recommend any book by V. S. Ramachandran. Really, anything written by him is a joy to read and packed with knowledge. His latest book is "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness," which examines such interesting phenomena as phantom limbs, patients who insist that their poodles or mothers are imposters, synesthetes who see colors in numbers or flavors in sounds, and the root of consciousness in the human brain.
And if they weren't releasing these images, we'd be accusing them of witholding data from the public. Which would you prefer?
Here's a preprint of their publication in Applied Nonlinear Mathematics. Yes, it includes crochet instructions. :)
Actually though, one major breakthrough in their design is the shuttlecock-style reentry, which I'm pretty sure has never been done before. I'm expecting that it will start showing up as a standard reentry method.
This page has some of the first pictures of clouds and frost on Mars, likely composed of water ice. It's really quite amazing.
Look at it in perspective. What we're talking about here would take global cooperation of the scale never seen before. We can't even wipe out AIDS or world hunger or war, how are we going to work together to colonize another planet?
Think about the last time there was a massive wave of remote settlement (1500s-1700s). How much did they rely on global cooperation?
Granted, it's important to get launch costs low so that the two efforts can begin to become comparable.
The saddest comment I once got was: "we'll never be able to colonize other planets because the conditions are so fundamentally hostile, so let's not waste any funds/effort on manned space flights."
Actually, the saddest comments I've heard are along the lines of "Humans are a plague which we have to keep quarantined to Earth."
The point is to make it routine. Once people see these things going up every day, their sensitivity to accidents with them will be appropriately tuned.
I really like the "Mother Earth Metaphor" as a way of thinking about space settlement. From this page:
"The Earth isn't sick, she's pregnant!" -- David Buth, dbuth@freemars.org
One interesting way to look at space colonization is via the Mother Earth metaphor. With this metaphor we compare the biosphere to a pregnant woman. This implies that we think of the biosphere as a single organism, which is consistent with the Gaia hypothesis proposed by Dr. Lovelock. In the following discussion, remember that this is only a metaphor.
In the Mother Earth metaphor of space colonization:
* space colonies are like children (a fetus right now)
* the biosphere is like a pregnant woman
* humanity is like the biosphere's reproductive system
Space colonies as children is a straightforward analogy. Space colonies look different than the Earth (since life is on the inside, not the outside), but a space colony's life support system must function much as the Earth's biosphere does and, ideally, might look much like a nice Earth ecosystem.
Consider the biosphere as a pregnant woman, with the twist that she doesn't know she's pregnant and doesn't know that pregnancy exists -- or that children exist. This is the condition most of us find ourselves in since space colonization is not a widely believed realistic concept. Consider:
* A pregnant woman experiences unsustainable growth in her abdomen, specifically in the reproductive organs. Imagine how frightening this would be if you didn't know about pregnancy. Similarly, the Earth is experiencing unsustainable growth of the human population -- which in our metaphor is Mother Earth's reproductive system.
* A pregnant woman experiences changes in her body chemistry. Similarly, the biosphere is experiencing changes in air and water chemistry as a result of man-made pollution.
* Pregnancy and birth, particularly before the advent of modern medicine, can be a very dangerous time for a woman. Death of the mother and/or the child was once quite common. Similarly, nuclear weapons, pollution, and other problems threaten civilization (although the biosphere has survived much worse).
* A wise woman treats her body with extra care during pregnancy -- eating well, getting plenty of sleep, avoiding drugs, and seeking appropriate medical attention. The implications for ourselves are obvious, especially since that there are no experienced doctors or midwives.
In the context of the Mother Earth metaphor, humanity's purpose is obvious. We are here to help Mother Earth give birth. We are the reproductive organs. The dinosaurs failed, after a long successful period, apparently because a comet or asteroid struck the Earth and wiped them out. Since then a space-faring species has developed which has the power to avoid this fate by expanding off the Earth. Expanding the range of a species is a often-used and successful survival strategy. Expanding throughout the solar system and, eventually, the galaxy should have substantial survival value.
It is easy to make too much of this metaphor, but it is interesting and, I believe, instructive.
Or so a space colonization advocate once said. The metaphor has its rough spots, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Resistance is futile. In the end we and all our descendants will disappear. We will fry. Or freeze. We WILL die.
If we get some viable off-world settlements, I'm sure we can make it to at least the heat-death of the universe.
In the book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition the author describes a study where chickens were raised in a high-gravity environment (I think using something like a centrifuge). The resulting chickens ended up having huge, super-strong leg muscles.