Wed 27 Oct 2010
News Items: Lunar Prospecting; 100 year starship;one way ticket to Mars;Bigelow deals soars;
Posted by admin under Commercialization of Space , NASANo Comments
Lunar Rush Far, Far Away as Earthlings Struggle With Laws in Space by Ashy Jones
An international space treaty created at the height of the Cold War likely makes it very difficult for any party to claim rights to the lunar water scientists now say exists. That 1967 treaty, ratified by the U.S., China, India and 95 other countries, in effect prevents any nation from owning the moon.
The agreement reflects the concerns of the two superpowers at the time, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, that space should be used peacefully, that no weapons of destruction should exist there, and that it should be used for the benefit of all mankind, according to legal experts. Yet technology and moon exploration have advanced in the past four decades. That is forcing lawyers to grapple with how international law can govern ownership rights in outer space. It is unlikely any corporation would undertake lunar resource-extraction without far more legal certainty that its rights would be legally protected.
Full article here.
What is NASA’s ’100-Year Starship’? as published in The Week
NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are starting work on a “Hundred Year Starship” designed to take astronauts on a one-way trip to other planets, says NASA Ames Research Center director Simon “Pete” Worden. “You heard it here,” he told a gathering in San Francisco last weekend. “The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds.” What is the Hundred-Year Starship, and will it make our sci-fi dreams a reality?
Why one-way? Keep in mind that space is “annoyingly, impractically huge,” says Evan Dashevsky, with the nearest planet 24 million miles away. That means “it takes a long time to get to the good stuff.” Also, it will cost a lot less, since the major expense of any plan to travel to other worlds is bringing the astronauts home. Hopefully, adds Dashevsky, this doesn’t mean NASA and DARPA “know something that we don’t about the future habitability of this planet.”
Neither Worden nor NASA gave any details, but Worden did say NASA is looking at electric and ground-based microwave thermal propulsion systems to boost the ship into space, rather than using heavy rocket fuel. “Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds,” he says. “I think we’ll be on the moons of Mars by 2030 or so.”
Full article here.
Professors: Send Colonists to Mars With No Return Ticket as posted in Seattle pi Blogs
We should send people to Mars without worrying about how to bring them back, professors from Washington State University and Arizona State University argue in a new paper. “A one-way human mission to Mars would be the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet,” WSU associated professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch said in a news release discussing “To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars,” which he published with ASU physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies in the latest issue of the Journal of Cosmology.
They note that most of the cost of a round-trip to Mars would come in the return leg and say the first arrivals would be the vanguard for a long-term presence on the red planet. “It would really be little different from the first white settlers of the North American continent, who left Europe with little expectation of return,” Davies said. “Explorers such as Columbus, Frobisher, Scott and Amundsen, while not embarking on their voyages with the intention of staying at their destination, nevertheless took huge personal risks to explore new lands, in the knowledge that there was a significant likelihood that they would perish in the attempt.”
Full article here.
Bigelow Aerospace Soars with Private Space Station Deals by Leonard David
A private space company offering room on inflatable space habitats for research has found a robust international market, with eager clients signing up from space agencies, government departments and research groups. Bigelow Aerospace has been busy marketing private space modules, an outreach effort leading to six deals being signed with clients this year.
The deals involve Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom. “These are countries that do not want to be hostage to just what the International Space Station may or may not deliver,” Bigelow said. The company’s Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 unmanned test modules, lofted in 2006 and 2007, have served as forerunners to ever-larger and human-rated space structures. More recently, a 185,000 square-foot expansion to Bigelow’s North Las Vegas facilities is enabling the churning out of bigger space habitats.
A question that continues to float through the halls of NASA and the Congress: Is there a commercial market for utilizing space? “We’ve got a very certain and loud answer to that. Not only is there a commercial market, but it’s a one that’s robust and global,” said Michael Gold, director of Washington, D.C., operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace.
Full article here.
