James

Titan: One of the Most Earth-like Bodies in Our Solar System

 Posted by on Sun, 10/16 at 10:36pm  reading  No Responses »
Oct 162016
 

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, and the second largest moon in the solar system, following Jupiter’s Galilean moon Ganymede. Titan is so large that it is actually slightly larger than the smallest planet in the solar system, Mercury. Besides our own Moon, and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, Titan is among the earliest discovered moon in the solar system, first detected in 1655. The moon was first viewed up close in 1980 by Voyager 1, but came under intense scrutiny in the mid-2000’s when it was being studied by the Cassini-Huygens space probe. Outwardly, the moon is interesting because unlike other moons, it is covered in a very thick honey-colored atmosphere, so thick in fact, that it is nearly impossible to see the moon’s surface features from outside its atmosphere. This is surprising because generally smaller celestial bodies, even bodies the size of Mars, are thought to be unable to support a thick atmosphere because their gravity levels are so low. Titan, however, can support an atmosphere four times as dense as Earth’s because it is so cold. The surface temperature averages at about -289 degrees fahrenheit, and as the gas molecules are not moving very rapidly, they do not overcome Titan’s gravity and leave the moon.

But what is more interesting about Titan’s atmosphere is that it is 98% nitrogen. Compare this with Earth’s 78.1% nitrogen atmosphere. While Titan may lack the oxygen level’s of Earth’s atmosphere, both bodies share an atmosphere with nitrogen as it’s base. But similarities between these two atmosphere’s go a big step further. Within Titan’s atmosphere clouds of ethane and methane sometimes accumulate, and from time to time these clouds precipitate, releasing rain in the form of liquid ethane and methane. Violent rainstorms on Titan are responsible for the formation of huge lakes – complete with bays, inlets and islands – that are often larger than Earth’s five Great Lakes. These seas create an earth-like terrain; valleys and channels cut by running liquid mark the surface, and stones which on Mars, Mercury or our Moon would be jagged and lumpy are round and smooth on Titan due to rain weathering. Titan’s terrain also lacks the craters which are so often the staple of extraterrestrial surfaces. Scientist’s theorize that this owes itself to Titan’s relative youth geologically. If this is true, it is not difficult then to think of Titan then as similar to what Earth may have been like in its early youth. Because Ethane and Methane are hydrocarbons (Hydrogen: one of the building blocks of water, + Carbon: the main building block of all life on Earth), life on Titan seems viable, if not already existent in microbial form. Either way, Titan in every sense except it’s excessively cold conditions, seems to be what scientists think of when they imagine a young planet with conditions in which life could potentially evolve.

Why Go To Mars?

 Posted by on Sun, 10/2 at 11:42pm  ideas  No Responses »
Oct 022016
 

I believe travel to Mars is important for a number of reasons. There are two sets of reasons to go to Mars; the immediate, and the long-term. The immediate reasons are simple, although often unconvincing. A trip to Mars might draw as its immediate goals the two goals which got us to the moon, 1.) to prove to the U.S.’s enemies that the U.S. has more advanced technology and capabilities than any other nation on earth, and 2.) to undertake scientific research. The second reason listed does not bear much scrutiny, however, due to the fact that the U.S. and other nations have already sent probes and rovers to Mars which are able to preform a satisfying amount of research on Mars without endangering the lives of anybody in the process. The first reason listed, although more legitimate than the second, is difficult to conceive of as legitimate enough to justify the costs of a Mars mission. The U.S. currently considers itself as unrivaled in terms of technology and military power. The political landscape that drove NASA to the moon in the 1960’s and 70’s just doesn’t exist in the 21st century. A third conceivable reason seems the most legitimate. Mars’s natural resources, sparse though they are, currently seem to me to be the most legitimate immediate justification for a Mars colony. But even this seems dubious. Mars has no oil, no lumber, no foodstuffs.

The most legitimate reason of all lies outside the range of immediate reasons to go to Mars, and is the reason which Elon Musk himself most frequently cites. While the ultimate concept is not my own, I have developed my own way of understanding and rationalizing the idea that going to Mars is important in ensuring that the human race has as long a history as humanly possible (pardon the pun). The human race is used to thinking about the past in historic, rather than geologic terms. For most people 2,000 years is a long time, 4,000 years is a very long time, and so on. This way of thinking is understandable, only around 6,000 years ago, human civilization as we know it emerged in what is today Iraq. But if the human race wants to survive for as long as it is capable, we ought to start considering the concept of becoming first an interplanetary, and then later an interstellar species. Geologic history, the history of the Earth that began over 4 billion years ago, is full of catastrophic events. For much of this history life, let alone human life or human civilization, did not exist. During the relatively short time in which life did exist, extinction events were frequent. The mass extinction that whipped out the dinosaurs is well known, but far from the only extinction event. So in geologic terms, if the human race and human civilization is to survive for much more than the relatively puny 6,000 years it has already existed, it only makes sense to diversify our environment. Right now all our eggs are in the basket of earth. A massive catastrophe in geologic terms is nearly as common as a famine is in historic terms, so if the human race intends to have a long, prosperous and meaningful existence, it makes sense to spread to other worlds to ensure our survival beyond our current concept of historic time and into geologic time.

Last Tuesday Elon Musk discussed his plans for SpaceX’s colonization of Mars.

 Posted by on Sun, 10/2 at 10:52pm  reading  No Responses »
Oct 022016
 

Earlier this week on Tuesday, September 27th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave an important talk at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. He revealed his plans for the long anticipated project to colonize the planet Mars. SpaceX, expanding on their commitment to efficiency, wants to bring the costs of travel to Mars down from $10 million per colonist to $200,000 per colonist. While difficult, an improvement in efficiency of that scale is not impossible nor unheard of. Musk intends of draw on the improvements in efficiency his company has already developed in the period between the company’s founding in 2002 and today. Technology from the falcon 9 rocket, which was discussed in an earlier post, will cut down on costs by making the booster rocket reusable (rather than expendable, which has been the norm throughout the history of space travel). But Musk’s plan involves much more than drawing on his companies recent technological improvements, but rather he foresees the need for much further improvements in efficiency, many of which are under development.

The Merlin rocket, used in the falcon 9 and many other SpaceX rockets, boasts unprecedented thrust for its size. But last Tuesday night Musk discussed SpaceX’s on-going development of a rocket engine three times as powerful, yet at around the same size and weight as the Merlin. This rocket engine will be dubbed the Raptor, and is critical if Musk’s plan is to succeed. The entire rocket which Musk intends to build in order to reach Mars is projected to be much larger than the Saturn V, the current holder of the title of tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket. The Saturn V has gone unchallenged as the most powerful rocket since he 1960’s,when it was used throughout the Apollo Program. But in order to reach Mars, Musk needs not just to build a rocket larger than the Saturn V, but one much more powerful. Musk’s rocket needs to be disproportionately more powerful than Saturn V was if he is to succeed in getting his spacecraft into orbit. The distance from here to Mars is not the problem, the lack of atmosphere in space means there is no friction or air resistance that would otherwise slow down and eventually stop a vehicle. In space, spacecrafts and space probes glide huge distances without the need for propulsion. The issue for Musk is the sheer weight of the craft he intends to launch into orbit. Never before has anything near the size of Musk’s craft been launched into orbit. It would need to hold around 100 colonist, plus the resources necessary to sustain them on their 3-6 month journey to Mars (the length of the journey depends on the distances between Earth and Mars at the time a spacecraft is launched, the shortest trip being 80 days in the early 2030’s). The Raptor’s unprecedented power relative to its size is a crucial component to the plausibility of a Mars colony in the near future.

But Musk discussed much more than rocket engines. The details of his plan include other factors such as funding, which the company receives in part from their contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS, but would necessarily need to rely on the charity of wealthy private donors (which, Musk says, are eager and willing to contribute) and probably on government aid. Eventually after colonists have established themselves, Musk dreams of terraforming Mars (a composite word which means to make a planet more like Earth in that it will have liquid water and plant life indigenous to Earth. Terra = Earth; + Forming). Scott Hubbard, a professor at Stanford University, endorses the plausibility of Musk’s plan to colonize the Red Planet.

The Blue Marble

 Posted by on Fri, 9/23 at 10:41am  mini analysis  No Responses »
Sep 232016
 

The Blue Marble

The Blue Marble is one of those rare photographs that have been seen by millions, possibly billions of eyes around the globe. Taken by Apollo 17 in 1972, the photograph, in the exact same way in which the moon landing was received, symbolizes so much more than what the American Apollo program was doing up in space, and crosses boundaries of race and ethnicity, gender and nationality. The picture is universal. Advertisements are designed specifically for the consumer and consumerism’s sake. Political or social movement posters target a specific demographic and ask, demand or try to persuade audiences to adopt similar perspectives. Even the world’s great art hold’s a cultural resemblance to the society in which its creator was born. Not so for the Blue Marble. And the image’s universality is represented in its simplicity. We have all seen a globe or an atlas of the world. In that sense, we have all seen an image of the world from a perspective very similar to the one the Blue Marble gives us. But this time something is very, very different. Finally, we see the world how it actually is, rather than a geopolitical chaos of borders and boundaries. And for a moment we understand that it truly is possible, at least in this one context but the hope is in more, to take our political, social and cultural differences and throw them out the window, realizing that we all live on one tiny little marble in space. From this distance we are all equally vulnerable.

I also believe the picture says something very fundamental about the persons behind the camera. By the point in history when this photo would have been circulated, the Apollo 11 mission would have been well known and the somewhat conflicting words and actions of the first men who walked on the moon. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” said Armstrong, and there was almost no doubt that he was certainly right, yet they proceeded to steal the spotlight for the United States’ sake by planting one of their own national flag on the lunar surface. Were the Apollo missions going to be primarily a human endeavor, or an American expedition? By the final trip to our moon, Apollo 17, it was becoming more clear that yes, the whole world could and should take pride in the huge stride technology and science had made in the last century and that the oneness of the world and the human race was not contained simply in the fact that national boundaries are imaginary and that we inhabited a single world, but now finally were are given a sense that we have a unity of purpose as well, one toward curiosity and exploration of our universe.

My ‘Humanities of STEM Study’

 Posted by on Wed, 9/14 at 11:57am  Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 142016
 

Despite the fact that I am a history and philosophy major, and that I love the humanities far above all other academic fields, nearly all of my college friends are STEM majors. So, being surrounded my STEM talk so frequently, I have somewhat of a knowledge and appreciation for the sciences myself, and above all, space exploration fascinates me in that it lies at the forefront of scientific knowledge and human historical progress.

Space exploration, past, present and future, is a widely discussed topic and there is certainly no shortage of material on the subject. In my opinion, among the most interesting and groundbreaking figures in modern space exploration technology is Elon Musk, a South African born Canadian-American businessman known for Pay Pal and Tesla Motors. In the aerospace technology field, he has broken onto the scene as the CEO, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and founder of SpaceX, a private company which strives to make space travel cheaper and more efficient. Space X currently has a contract with NASA that allows the private corporation to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). They use the Falcon 9 rocket, innovative in that the first stage of the rocket is fully reusable, and actually lands remotely after delivering its cargo to the ISS. Here’s a short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGUQySBikQ.

But I think it’s safe to say that when a contemporary thinks of space exploration, he or she finds herself anticipating Mars colonies, or at least a “Mars Landing” similar to the moon landings of the late 60’s and early 70’s. And while an actual trip to Mars may still be only a very remote and distant prospect, not to come into fruition until much later in this century, geologists, biologists, and many other varieties of scientists are already busy anticipating the possible pitfalls and stumbling blocks of such a journey, while not neglecting the potential rewards. For example, while putting together a scholarly paper on some of the chemical composites on Mars, scientists Robert Pellenbarg, Michael Max, and Stephen Clifford still put human colonization at the center of their study http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002JE001901/full. Everywhere, or at least very frequently, the question of Mars colonization seems to be at the forefront of forward thinking people’s minds when it comes to space exploration, both among the laymen and specialists. But Mars isn’t the only celestial body in our solar system to attract a disproportionate amount of attention. Europa, speculated to contain huge amounts of water beneath its icy surface, is a serious candidate for further unmanned NASA missions http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-mission/. Titan, too, is famous among space enthusiasts for its liquid methane and ethane lakes, which unsurprisingly has captured the imaginations of many. Some believe the conditions on Titan are similar to those on early earth. Pluto, recently, was the subject of talk after pictures were taken of it by the New Horizons probe when it flew past the dwarf planet on July 14th , 2015, providing us for the first time with detailed photos of the planet which since 2006 has been the subject of much “debate”.

The Death and Hopeful Resurrection of the Writing Dream

 Posted by on Fri, 9/9 at 9:14am  Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 092016
 

Writing can be both stressful and rewarding, and I believe the trick, and the idea behind both Reid and Ballenger’s articles, is discovering how to minimize the stress of writing while maximizing the reward. For a period of my life before entering high school, writing was fun and I kept a fairly consistent schedule of writing short stories. I did it not for the love of words or of the English language, but as an outlet for pent up creativity, which, when I found a way to express on the page filled me with the satisfaction that I created something that I (while perhaps not a more refined individual) could proudly call art. And that’s what creative short fiction was for me, it wasn’t just about conjuring up plots and characters and settings, it was about expression, about a message. Every story I wrote had a moral, and I felt like a better person for expressing them. And for me that was my exigency, the desire to express concepts I felt were meaningful and which in my young and optimistic head just might make my reader a little bit better of a person. And in that since, I’ve never really considered developing and answering “rhetorical questions” like those listed by Reid. The question, “What is my purpose?” has always been for me the most frequently considered question when it came to writing (of any variety, academic, creative, etc…) whereas the audience has only hardly concerned me. Sure, when writing for a course grade, the professor as your audience is an important thing to consider, but in every other sense, I always assumed my audience would be anyone interested in what I’ve written. If an individual isn’t interested in what I have to say, he or she probably isn’t reading what I have to say.

At one point in my life, around high school’s freshman year, I found myself approaching writing from a new, more restrained angle. Increasingly writing became and academic exercise, and increasingly I felt my affinity for writing dwindle little by little. And while the first thing anybody who knows me will tell you about me is that I have always had an aversion to computer technology and all things web-based, Reid’s ideals about blogging were in a small way attractive to me. I’ve always longed for that joy of writing that I experienced as a kid, and Reid offers a solution (and a solution, in any form, is an attractive concept) yet I find myself still unconvinced by the concept of blogging. The internet as an audience frightens me, I worry about frequently unnoticed spelling and grammatical errors and whether my readers will find me dull, unintelligent or uninteresting. Ballenger was far more appealing, a concept that may surprise you given my affinity for the more creative and less academic side of writing. He showed in a convincing way how research can be not only a knowledge driven academic venture, but a truly creative enterprise as well. I thought that was a neat concept. Further, the essay rather than the blog, can be written, rewritten, revised and edited over a period of time that in my mind should weed out embarrassing errors and allow me to express what I want to express. And while in my youth creative writing had moralizing purpose, I believe the intellectual purpose behind research is just as noble. Readers will become better people by becoming more knowledgeable people.

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