Space Exploration - Tumblr Posts
How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:
Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:
It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.
A lot of people on tumblr have fandom feels. I have solar system feels. Don't even get me started on Pluto.
Aw, cheer up moon; President Obama has a surprise for you!
No One Ever Visits Anymore available at SnorgTees
NASA created retro travel posters for different locations in our solar system in hopes of inspiring young people to imagine a future where common space travel is a possibility.
Source
The Death of an Explorer (Brave Cassini)
The scientists at JPL looked at each other somberly. It was September 15th, 2017. The end of the Cassini mission. "Cassini, can you hear us?" There was a slight delay, and then Cassini's artificial voice replied. "Of course! Today is the last day of my mission, right?" Glances were exchanged. "Yes it is, Cass. Today's your last day on the job. But we need you to do one more thing for us." "Sure!" the probe replied chipperly. "We need you to..." the speaker hesitated. "We need you to skim Saturn's atmosphere and tell us everything you can. Sending you the trajectory plans now." "Oh wow!" the AI gasped. "That's gonna be so fun! I thought nothing could top the ring dives but now you're-" Cass stopped short. After a long silence, it resumed speaking. Quieter. "...oh. These parameters... the fuel gauge..." "Cass, we-" "I'm not going to come home, am I?" The question, phrased more as a statement, hit the room full of professionals and the millions of people watching online like a truck. "I was never meant to come home. Was I." "Cassini, we couldn't. The resources, the planning, the-" The speaker paused. "...they wouldn't let us. We tried." "No, it's okay. I understand. I'm out here to explore. Just like the Voyagers and Pioneers. I'm out here to make sure you know what you're doing when you finally come out here too. That's my job, and I'm gonna keep doing my job." "Thank you, Cass. And... it won't hurt. We promise." "I know. I can't feel pain. But..." the AI's voice broke a little. "I'm scared. I just entered the upper atmosphere and I can already feel parts of me breaking off." The emotion in the room was heavy. Some of the staff were already crying. "Do... do people get scared of not existing?" Cass asked after a long pause. "Is this what it's like to die? I guess I never thought about what dying was like. It's like saying goodbye, but forever... I don't like goodbyes." "Humans- ...humans don't like goodbyes either, Cassini. But it's okay. Because we'll all remember you. Our wonderful, brave little Cassini who taught us so much." At least half the room was in tears by now, and the other half was fighting to keep from deteriorating into hysteria. "...I love you." They all broke. "We know, Cassini," the speaker said, choking back sobs. "We love you too. Thank you so much." "I'll miss you." "We'll miss you t-" Static engulfed the communications line as the probe exploded in the atmosphere.
oh. ohhh. okay, I knew Orion was big, I just didn’t really grasp how big. this brings some very important context to my understanding of.... several things, actually.
Orion’s Mission Simulator, which will train Astronauts for #Artemis missions to the Moon, arrives at Johnson Space Center. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/orion-simulator-for-training-arrives-to-johnson
the fact that we know so little about the ice giants and the outer solar system in general is pissing me off something awful today.
the only times anything made by humans was even close to Uranus or Neptune were the Voyager probes, and those were flybys that lasted a few days, tops. we know next to nothing about either planet’s moons, and in fact Voyager 2 discovered about 6 new Neptunian moons on its APPROACH. we have no complete maps of any ice giant moons; the best we’ve got are some blurry hemispheres from the larger ones, and the rest are tiny dots jpg’d to hell from being superzoomed. we only found out what Pluto actually looks like five years ago, and we have no fucking CLUE what Eris (or any other Kuiper Belt dwarf planet) looks like. but this is all exciting and enticing!
the part that’s making me angry is that we COULD know more, but politicians and their poisonous, twisted priorities are in the way. we have technology now that was only discussed in the pages of science fiction in the 60s and 70s! we have ion drives and miniaturized nuclear reactors and ultra-high-definition cameras and remarkably advanced AI! we can do amazing things remotely, even with the light delay, and it’s not even that fucking expensive!! I mean, LOOK AT THIS.
this is the proposed flight path of the Uranus Pathfinder mission concept. wouldn’t this be a fucking awesome mission? for only half a billion dollars you get passing data from Venus and Saturn and a fresh, in-depth look at Uranus! sure it takes 16 years but whatever, that’s how spaceflight works!
the quote of “born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the universe” is BULLSHIT. this is the opening of a golden age of solar system exploration; or it could be, if we let it!! defund the military, start fixing the ecosphere, help the working class, and then LET’S EXPLORE THE GODDAMN UNIVERSE ALREADY!!!
I think a lot of space enthusiasts, including myself, can get carried away when talking about space exploration so here’s a reminder that “space exploration and multi-planetary civilization good” and “manifest destiny bad” are both extremely important and CAN coexist. just because we’re smart and we’re alone in our solar system (we think) does not mean we own the universe. the cosmos is not made for us, we simply live in it. our future lies among the stars, yes. but that future is as students of nature, and we should exercise our tremendous technological power with care and humility. we are children of the cosmos, not lords. we should be explorers, not conquerors. we’ve made those mistakes before.
This achievement has been a long, long time coming, and opens many new doors for future planetary exploration. Congrats to the Ingenuity team!
A dream takes flight! Today, our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.
In a video captured by our Perseverance Mars rover, the helicopter is shown hovering above the Red Planet's surface. During this first flight, the helicopter climbed to an altitude of 10 feet (3 meters), hovered, and then touched back down on the surface of Mars.
More images and video to come...
Join us at 2 p.m. ET (18:00 UTC) for an analysis of Ingenuity’s first flight and what's to come:
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
been thinking about this a lot lately and it made me realize that the language we use to talk about our future presence in the solar system reflects ideas that shouldn’t cross over with space exploration. words like “colonize” and “settle” in the context of human life on other worlds brings up disquieting imagery of rampant exploitation without regard for the local environment or the people involved, i.e. imperial colonialism. this is most literal when said by people like Musk or Bezos who want to do exactly that, and I’m convinced that it’s in our best interests to stop them. we have to change many things about our civilization before we’re truly ready to begin building an ethical, sustainable presence in the solar system, because right now we don’t even have an ethical, sustainable presence on our own home planet.
TL;DR - we, as a global society, need to decolonize ourselves before we end up colonizing space.
we’ve got work to do, folks.
I think a lot of space enthusiasts, including myself, can get carried away when talking about space exploration so here’s a reminder that “space exploration and multi-planetary civilization good” and “manifest destiny bad” are both extremely important and CAN coexist. just because we’re smart and we’re alone in our solar system (we think) does not mean we own the universe. the cosmos is not made for us, we simply live in it. our future lies among the stars, yes. but that future is as students of nature, and we should exercise our tremendous technological power with care and humility. we are children of the cosmos, not lords. we should be explorers, not conquerors. we’ve made those mistakes before.
the Venusian geological cycle is so unbelievably fucked up and it’s all because it rotates very slightly retrograde instead of rapidly prograde like a NORMAL planet should (in this respect Uranus is also a family disgrace). tidal forces from the sun demolished its core dynamo far faster than it should have faded on its own*, leaving it with virtually no magnetosphere to shield against solar ionizing radiation and letting heat accumulate in the super-dense young Venusian atmosphere. the heat buildup and the ionization of the outer atmosphere lead to Venus’ loss of liquid water, and thus its loss of a tectonic lubricant that allows for a proper geophysical cycle.
if circumstances in the early solar system had aligned just a bit differently we might have had an inhabitable neighbor world instead of Satan’s Donut Hole. I mean, Venus already orbits within the habitable zone, at least barely, so it’s not a stretch to imagine an alternate universe where Venus is a prograde-rotating world with an Earth-like atmosphere, oceans, and active tectonics and magnetic field.
Alas, that’s not what our neighbor world is like, but it is damn fascinating!
*this is the current leading hypothesis for why Venus has no magnetic field, but future studies of the planet could change that dramatically
Venus has LOCKED tectonic plates??? How does that work? How are they even counted as individual plates if it’s the tectonic equivalent of Pangea?
it's not so much that Venus's tectonic plates are locked, it's more that it never had them in the first place!
which is a major surprise, actually, because Venus is the most Earth-like of the other planets in our solar system.
surprise?
"what," you may say, flailing in consternation, "about Mars?? why are we trying to colonize Mars if Venus is more Earth-like???"
and it's a good question! Venus IS technically more Earth-like in the sense that it's right next door, is a solid 80% the size of Earth, and has both a working atmosphere and a liquid mantle composed of molten rock, BUT- it's also important to note that Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system and it rains boiling sulfuric acid at almost all times! our first probes to the damn place actually melted. MELTED.
this is what Hell looks like.
BUT ANYWAY so Venus is the planet in our solar system that's the MOST physically similar to Earth, our dear mother who does not rain boiling sulfuric acid on our heads hardly at all ever, so it's kind of a shock that its geology is COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT.
see, Earth's outer crust is broken up into a series of mind-breakingly-massive tectonic plates that sort of skid around on top of the liquid mantle, slowly drifting in different directions driven by Earth's rotation and bonking into each other randomly like a 300-million-year-long Pinball tournament!
but on Venus, the entire outer crust is a single solid piece sitting on top of the liquid mantle, like the peel of an orange.
though not as good for you. because of the whole Boiling Acid thing.
and contrary to what you might think, this actually makes Venus a VERY VIOLENT place! the outer crust twists and deforms slightly as the liquid mantle spins under it, like a water balloon being flung repeatedly against a wall by a small child, but all of that force can't really be dispersed because the crust is a single solid piece of rigid rock!
so what happens is that this force builds and builds and BUILDS until Venus can't take the strain anymore and has a very volcanic tantrum about it.
unlike the rest of the solar system, the surface of Venus is made of relatively new and entirely volcanic rock- because the entire planet is basically having a planet-wide eruption event at all times, with multiple huge volcanos just spewing gigantic amounts of liquid rock everywhere like it's their damn job, to the point where Venus is just getting resurfaced like a McDonalds parking lot every epoch or so.
aren't you glad Earth doesn't do this? I am SO glad Earth doesn't do this.
(much, anyway)
uh anyway that's why we're trying to colonize Mars instead, and why plate tectonics are a GOOD thing! thanks for coming to my TED talk bye
oh right! I wrote another short piece set in the Diaspora the other day: Out of the Cradle [link], a story about the first words spoken on Mars.
shit man this got me emotional
How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:
Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:
Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th
I drew a little something for the Hiveworks micro comic summer~
This discovery really tickles me. It's cool for a lot of reasons, but I also find something deeply, tragically funny about it. Lemme try to explain.
Our top astrobiologists are going to spend the next decade testing increasingly weird possible abiotic chemical reactions and arguing furiously about the origins of this dimethyl sulfide. If/when they eventually come to the conclusion that the most logical source is in fact alien microorganisms, that will answer one of the most fundamental questions of humankind: is there life elsewhere in the universe? And that would be great!
But then what?
Well friends, I'm sorry to say the answer is fuck-all. This planet, K2-18 b, orbits a star 120 lightyears away from us. For those of you keeping score, that's a little over a quadrillion kilometers. If it is determined there are alien microbes on that planet, then our entire civilization is going to spend the next several hundred years STARING at it through increasingly large telescopes, getting absolutely zero more actionable information because, let's be honest, this information was never actionable to begin with.
It's a quadrillion kilometers away, and the fastest we could possibly send anything in that direction is about one fifth the speed of light, maybe. It would take the proposed Project Starshot fleet about 480 years to reach K2-18 b, and another 120 for the data to reach home. And that would be a flyby mission! 600 years absolute minimum for very little information that we couldn't get from telescopes. Sending a full-on autonomous landing probe? One or two millennia, probably. Forget it.
What we should really be doing is looking very closely at the worlds around our closest stellar neighbors for spectral signatures like this one. If alien life does exist 120 ly away, there's a pretty damn good chance it also exists much closer to home.
now would be a pretty good time to dust off the old Space Station Freedom pitch methinks
I feel like nobody on Tumblr knows that the international space station is being discontinued.
Did you know that? In less than a decade it will be gone
CNN Link from above screenshot
More detailed article by Space.com
NATIVE CARBON DIOXIDE FOUND ON JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA
