Tag: science

ISS to be deorbited in 2020

7:47 am

The head of the Russian space agency said today that ISS will be deorbited in 2020, as agreed to by the governments running it.

Wanna bet? They are only now starting to do the research the station is best designed for, and learning how to live in space for years is going to take years. Come 2020, that work will hardly be done. Moreover, the impossibility of replacing ISS without a shuttle to haul up large modules and trusses will make very appealing the idea of keeping the present station in operation.

Then again, everything I just wrote is simple common sense, and who ever expected common sense from these governments?

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ISS partners discuss how to use the space station as a test bed for missions beyond low Earth orbit.

8:43 pm

Now why didn’t they think of this before? The ISS partners met today to discuss how to use the space station as a test bed for missions beyond low Earth orbit.

As I wrote in Leaving Earth, a space station is nothing more than a prototype interplanetary spaceship. This kind of research is really its main purpose, and I am glad that the governments running ISS are finally beginning to recognize it, even though their engineers have known it for decades. Note too that the press release above also gives a nice overview of some of the ongoing research on ISS that is directly related to learning how to survive in space for long periods.

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Better constants in science

1:22 pm

More precise constants in science.

The numbers include reduced uncertainties for several key constants, which physicists say is encouraging because these will allow for better tests of theory. The more precise figures will also aid plans to redefine familiar units of measure­ment, such as the kelvin and the kilogram, in terms of unchanging fundamental constants rather than relying on a material object that might not be stable (as for the kilogram standard).

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Thank the Gods for Climategate

1:03 pm

Thank the gods for climategate.

We are certainly in a far different world vis-a-vis global warming than 21 months ago. The [global warming] climatologists are, to a very large extent, being ignored. Yes, there is an IPCC coming up, and perhaps we should wait until that is over. But I will predict that no matter what hoohah comes out of it, it will not have 50% of the energy of the previous IPCCs, because governments just aren’t listening with baited breath anymore. If there is any place where the mojo counted, it was with governments. But it ain’t there any more.

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Junk journalism

12:50 pm

In a piece today at the Huffington Post, science journalist Seth Borenstein declares the wonders of NASA’s next mission: to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, as declared by President Obama.

If you believe this is going to happen, then I have a bridge I want to sell you. To do it we need a spaceship in which people can live for at least a year, and a rocket to get that ship into orbit. Not only do we not yet know how to build such a spaceship, we no longer have the capability of putting it into orbit. In case you’re unaware (Borenstein acts like he is), the space shuttle no longer exists. And under this administration and Congress, any replacement we get isn’t going to be able to launch such an interplanetary spaceship anywhere in the near future, especially faced as we are with the present federal debt.

The disgraceful thing about this article, however, is the lack of skepticism shown by Borenstein.
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