Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts

Wednesday 18 August 2021

Mushrooms to Mars: how fungi research could help long-duration space travel

I've often noted that fungi are the forgotten heroes of the ecosystem, beavering away largely out of sight and therefore out of mind. Whether it's the ability to break down plastic waste or their use as meat substitutes and pharmaceuticals, this uncharismatic but vital life form no doubt hold many more surprises in store for future research to discover. It's estimated that less than ten percent of all fungi species have so far been scientifically described; it's small wonder then that a recent study suggests an entirely new use for several types of these under-researched organisms.

Investigation of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1991 found that Cladosporium sphaerospermum, a fungus first described in the late nineteenth century, was thriving in the reactor cooling tanks. In other words, despite the high levels of radiation, the species was able to not only repair its cells but maintain a good rate of growth in this extreme environment. This led to research onboard the International Space Station at the end of 2018, when samples of the fungus were exposed to a month of cosmic radiation. The results were promising: a two millimetre thick layer of the fungus absorbed nearly two percent of the radiation compared to a fungus-free control.

This then suggests that long-duration crewed space missions, including to Mars, might be able to take advantage of this material to create a self-repairing radiation shield, both for spacecraft and within the walls of surface habitats. A twenty-one centimetre thick layer was deemed effective against cosmic rays, although this could potentially be reduced to just nine centimetres if the fungal mycelia were mixed with similar amounts of Martian soil. In addition, there is even the possibility of extracting the fungus' radiation-proof melanin pigment for use in items that require much thinner layers, such as spacesuit fabric.

If this sounds too good to be true, there are still plenty of technological hurdles to be overcome. Science fiction has frequently described the incorporation of biological elements into man-made technology, but it's early days as far as practical astronautics is concerned. After all, there is the potential for unique dangers, such as synthetic biology growing unstoppably (akin to scenarios of runaway nanobot replication). However, NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) shows that they are taking the idea of fungi-based shielding seriously, the current research considering how to take dormant fungal spores to Mars and then add water to grow what can only be described as myco-architecture elements - even interior fittings and furniture. In addition to the radiation shielding, using organic material also has the advantage of not having to haul everything with you across such vast distances.

Even more ideas are being suggested for the use of similarly hardy species of fungi on a Mars base, from bioluminescent lighting to water filtration. Of course, this doesn't take into account any existing Martian biology: the seasonal methane fluctuations that have been reported are thought by some to be too large to have a geochemical cause; this suggests that somewhere in the sink holes or canyon walls of Mars there are colonies of methane-producing microbes, cosily shielded from the worst of the ultraviolet. If this proves to be the case, you would hope that any fungi taken to the red planet would be genetically modified to guarantee that it couldn't survive outside of the explorer's habitats and so damage Martian biota. Humanity's track record when it comes to preserving the ecosystems of previously isolated environments is obviously not something we can be proud of!

What fungi can do alone, they also do in symbiosis with algae, i.e. as lichens. Various experiments, including the LIchens and Fungi Experiment (LIFE) on the International Space Station (incidentally, doesn't NASA love its project acronyms?) have tested extremophile lichens such as Xanthoria elegans and Rhizocarpon geographicum in simulated Martian environments for up to eighteen months. The researchers found that the organisms could remain active as long as they were partially protected, as if they were growing in sink holes beneath the Martian surface. Of course, this success also enhances the possibility of similar lifeforms already existing on the red planet, where it would have had eons in which to adapt to the gradually degraded conditions that succeeded Mars' early, clement, phase.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system and its successors may well develop synthetic fungi and lichens that can be used both on and especially off the Earth, but we shouldn't forget that Mother Nature got there first. Spacecraft shielding and myco-architecture based on natural or genetically modified organisms may prove to be an extremely efficient way to safeguard explorers beyond our world: the days of transporting metal, plastic and ceramic objects into space may be numbered; the era of the interplanetary mushroom may be on the horizon. Now there's a phrase you don't hear every day!


Tuesday 25 February 2020

Falling off the edge: in search of a flat Earth

It's just possible that future historians will label the 21st century as the Era of Extreme Stupidity. In addition to the 'Big Four' of climate change denial, disbelief in evolution by natural selection, young Earth creationism and the anti-vaxxers, there are groups whose oddball ideas have rather less impact on our ecosystem and ourselves. One segment of people that I place in the same camp as UFO abductees and their probing fixation are believers in a flat Earth.

Although on the surface this - admittedly tiny - percentage of people appear to be more amusing than harmful, their media visibility makes them a microcosm of the appalling state of science education and critical thinking in general. In addition, their belief in an immense, long-running, global conspiracy adds ammunition to those with similar paranoid delusions, such as the moon landing deniers. One example of how intense those beliefs can be (at times there's just a whiff of religious fanaticism), the American inventor and stuntman 'Mad' Mike Hughes was killed recently flying a self-built rocket intended to prove that the Earth is a disc.

I won't bother to describe exactly what the flat Earthers take to be true, except that their current beliefs resemble a description of the late, great Terry Pratchett's fantasy Discworld - albeit without the waterfall around the edge of the disc. For anyone who wants to test the hypothesis themselves rather than rely on authority (the mark of a true scientist) there are plenty of observational methods to try. These include:
  1. Viewing the Earth's shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse
  2. Noticing that a sailing ship's mast disappears/reappears on the horizon after/before the hull
  3. How certain stars are only visible at particular latitudes
For anyone with a sense of adventure, you can also build a high-altitude balloon or undertake a HAHO skydive to photograph the Earth's curvature - from any point on the planet!

It's easy to suggest that perhaps our brains just aren't up to the task of deciphering the intricacies of a 13.7 billion old universe, but basic experiments and observations made several thousand years ago were enough for Greek scientists to confirm both the shape and size of our planet. So what has changed in the past century or so to turn back the clock, geophysically-speaking?

The modern take on a flat Earth seems to have begun in the late 19th century, with an attempt - similar to contemporary mid-Western creationists - to ignore scientific discoveries that disagree with a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. Indeed, the forerunners of today's flat Earthers were anti-science in many respects, also denying that prominent enemy of today's Biblical literalists, evolution by natural selection. However, many of the 21st century' s leading adherents to a disc-shaped Earth have more sympathy and interest in scientific discoveries, even supporting such politically contentious issues as rapid, human-induced, climate change.

This topic is laden with ironies, few greater than the fact that a large proportion of the evidence for global warming is supplied by space agencies such as NASA. The latter has long been claimed by the Flat Earth Society as a leading conspirator and purveyor of faked imagery in the promotion of a spherical earth (yes to all pedants, I know that strictly speaking our planet is an oblate spheroid, not purely spherical).

Today's flat Earth societies follow the typical pseudo-scientific / fringe approach, analysing the latest science theories for material they can cherry pick and cannibalise to support their ideas. In recent years they've even tackled key new developments such as dark energy; in fact, about the only area they are lagging behind in is the incorporation of elements involving quantum mechanics.

But for anyone with an understanding of parsimony or Occam's Razor, the physics for a flat Earth have about as much likelihood as Aristotle's crystalline spheres. It isn't just the special pleading for localised astrophysics (since the other planets are deemed spherical); isn't it obviously absurd that there could be a global conspiracy involving rival nations and potentially hundreds of thousands of people - with no obvious explanation of what the conspirators gain from the deception?

Even for the vast majority of the public with little interest or understanding of the physics, most people considering the flat Earth hypothesis are presumably puzzled by this apparent lack of motivation. In a nutshell, what's in it for the conspirators? Until recently, NASA (nick-named 'Never A Straight Answer,') was the main enemy, but with numerous other nations and private corporations building space vehicles, there is now a plethora of conspiracy partners. Going back half a century to the height of the Cold War why, for example, would the USA and Soviet Union have agreed to conspire? As yet, there hasn't been anything approaching a satisfactory answer; but ask Carl Sagan said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Unlike most fringe groups, flat Earthers don't appear to favour other, popular conspiracy theories above scientific evidence. Yet somehow, their ability to support ludicrous ideas whilst denying fundamental observations and the laws of physics in the light of so much material evidence is astonishing.  Of course our species doesn't have a mental architecture geared solely towards rational, methodical thought processes, but the STEM advances that Homo sapiens has made over the millennia prove we are capable of suppressing the chaotic, emotional states we usually associate with young children.

Whether we can transform science education into a cornerstone topic, as daily-relevant as reading, writing and arithmetic, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the quest continues for funding a voyage to find the Antarctic ice wall that prevents the oceans falling over the edge of the world. Monty Python, anyone?

Monday 26 August 2019

Why tiny organisms can be big news: three stories focused on the smaller scales of life

I've often mentioned how small-scale life is overlooked compared to the larger creatures we share this planet with. Three recent examples concern progressively smaller species and show both how little most people know about such organisms and how such apparently inconsequential life forms can effect our species.

The first example comes from Shropshire in the United Kingdom and occurred last month. A family in Telford came home from holiday to find that the fish in their ornamental tank had died. On cleaning the tank, the toxic fumes that emanated from it were so dangerous as to poison the family, leading to a stay in an isolation ward while their house was sealed off. The agent responsible for this none other than Zoanthid soft corals growing on a tank ornament, which turned out to be palytoxin, for which there is no antidote. Severe cases can lead to death from respiratory or cardiac failure, making it the second most poisonous non-protein substance.

Incidentally, none of the news reports stated if it was the toxin that killed the fish in the aquarium. What is most interesting about this story was that the family were reported as being unaware that the coral was alive, in addition to not receiving a warning from the store they bought the coral from.

I'm uncertain whether they meant that they didn't know that corals are animals rather than plants or whether they considered them as some type of mineral! Either way this sort of lack of fairly basic knowledge about the natural world always fills me with amazement, as I would have thought that a combination of primary school books and David Attenborough documentaries would have supplied this information to just about anyone in the UK today.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that nature is not a harmless mis-en-scene built for the enjoyment of mankind, this example shows just how dangerous even small-scale life can be; proof indeed that you don't have to travel to Australia to come into close contact with highly toxic species. Once gain, global warming may increase such encounters, as since the start of the twenty-first century, the Mediterranean has been experiencing mass poisonings due to algal blooms produced by a palytoxin derivative. Perhaps the moral here is better education before buying a pet!

If NASA's recent announcement of the 2025 Europa Clipper mission comes to fruition we will be one step closer to knowing if there are exotic forms of life in the ice-blanketed ocean of this moon of Jupiter. However, it is possible that our very own Moon might already be harbouring animals of an altogether more terrestrial nature.

The Israeli Beresheet lander crashed there in April this year but news reports have suggested that a few thousand passengers in the form of barely visible tardigrades (no more than 1.2 millimeters long) may have survived, albeit in a dehydrated form of hibernation. Able to survive in a tun state without water and in conditions of intense cold and heat - as well as a high vacuum - these water bears are only susceptible to ultraviolet flux.

Experiments conducted on the International Space Station prove that tardigrades can be rehydrated back to normal after exposure to the outer space environment. The probes demise appears to have been rather fast, so whether the water bears could survive the impact and sudden change in temperature and loss of atmosphere is doubtful. Most news stories seem to play the cuteness factor, with few mentioning that biological contamination of another body could be a breach of international law. Of course, the Moon's lack of atmosphere and liquid water mean any survivors are likely to remain in a tun state unless they can be retrieved in the future.

Tardigrade research may one day aid the development of long-duration space travel and human hibernation. What I'd really like to know about this story is that had Beresheet landed successfully, just what were the plans for the tardigrades anyway? None of the articles I read stated just what sort of scientific experiment they were the unwilling participants in. It's not like they would be able to phone home!

The third story concerns a life form whose individuals are microscopic but none the less important in terms of their environmental impact en masse. Back in 2004, the Waiau River in New Zealand's South Island was found to contain large masses of didymo, a type of freshwater diatom or single-celled algae not known to be native to the Southern Hemisphere, let alone the country. Individual
Didymosphenia geminata, colloquially called 'rock snot', might not be any more than one or two hundred microns long but they are capable of generating clumps and strands of mucus around a meter in size. Other South Island rivers were soon found to be equally contaminated, with other nations ranging from Canada to Chile finding similar proliferation.

What made this outbreak interesting is that algal blooms are usually due to an excess of nutrients entering fresh water sources, primarily from agricultural run-off. In the case of didymo it appears to be quite the opposite, with massive increases in mucus production being generated by a severe lack of phosphorus. Ironically, this means that attempts to reduce nutrient levels in the affected rivers might have only exacerbated the problem. As evidence in favour of this hypothesis, rivers tested in New Zealand's North Island have been shown to contain a combination of high phosphorus and dead didymo cells.

It hasn't even been established beyond doubt as to whether didymo has been accidentally introduced to New Zealand and elsewhere, or whether it has always been a minor, unobtrusive component of the ecosystem previously kept in check. While some environmental departments and organisations seem to prefer the former option - presumably as ammunition in the fight against invasive species - either origin still leads to potential degradation. Smaller insect species that congregate around rivers and streams, such as gnats and midges, tend to increase in numbers at the expense of larger ones such as caddisflies and mayflies. This in turn could have a knock-on effect on freshwater fish, crustacea, and probably wading birds too.

Financially-important human activities are also affected, from commercial fishing to hydroelectric schemes, but there appears to be no method of eradicating didymo without destroying other life in the same river. Therefore it may turn out that the only solution is to pollute rivers with phosphorus in order to keep the diatom population at a minimum!

This is far from the first time that I have discussed small-scale life but the issues raised by these three stories show yet again that we maintain traditional scale prejudice at our peril. Whether it is a single household experiencing (potentially fatal) poisoning to widespread changes in freshwater environments, we need better public education - and probably far more funding for international research - in order to minimise the problems generated at scales usually beneath our gaze. When it comes down to the crunch, such organisms have a far greater impact on the global ecosystem than all the endangered pandas, elephants and rhinos combined. As for those lunar tardigrades, I wonder how they are getting on..?

Monday 13 August 2018

Life on Mars? How accumulated evidence slowly leads to scientific advances

Although the history of science is often presented as a series of eureka moments, with a single scientist's brainstorm paving the way for a paradigm-shifting theory, the truth is usually rather less dramatic. A good example of the latter is the formulation of plate tectonics, with the meteorologist Alfred Wegener's continental drift being rejected by the geological orthodoxy for over thirty years. It was only with the accumulation of data from late 1950's onward that the mobility of Earth's crust slowly gained acceptance, thanks to the multiple strands of new evidence that supported it.

One topic that looks likely to increase in popularity amongst both public and biologists is the search for life on Mars. Last month's announcement of a lake deep beneath the southern polar ice cap is the latest piece of observational data that Mars might still have environments suitable for microbial life. This is just the latest in an increasing body of evidence that conditions may be still be capable of supporting life, long after the planet's biota-friendly heyday. However, the data hasn't always been so positive, having fluctuated in both directions over the past century or so. So what is the correspondence between positive results and the levels of research for life on Mars?

The planet's polar ice caps were first discovered in the late Seventeenth Century, which combined with the Earth-like duration of the Martian day implied the planet might be fairly similar to our own. This was followed a century later by observation of what appeared to be seasonal changes to surface features, leading to the understandable conclusion of Mars as a temperate, hospitable world covered with vegetation. Then another century on, an early use of spectroscopy erroneously described abundant water on Mars; although the mistake was later corrected, the near contemporary reporting of non-existent Martian canals led to soaring public interest and intense speculation. The French astronomer Camille Flammarion helped popularise Mars as a potentially inhabited world, paving the way for H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series.

As astronomical technology improved and the planet's true environment became known (low temperatures, thin atmosphere and no canals), Mars' popularity waned. By the time of Mariner 4's 1965 fly-by, the arid, cratered and radiation-smothered surface it revealed only served to reinforce the notion of a lifeless desert; the geologically inactive world was long past its prime and any life still existing there probably wouldn't be visible without a microscope.

Despite this disappointing turnabout, NASA somehow managed to gain the funding to incorporate four biological experiments on the two Viking landers that arrived on Mars in 1976. Three of the experiments gave negative results while the fourth was inconclusive, most researchers hypothesising a geochemical rather than biological explanation for the outcome. After a decade and a half of continuous missions to Mars, this lack of positive results - accompanied by experimental cost overruns - probably contributed to a sixteen-year hiatus (excluding two Soviet attempts at missions to the Martian moons). Clearly, Mars' geology by itself was not enough to excite the interplanetary probe funding czars.

In the meantime, it was some distinctly Earth-bound research that reignited interested in Mars as a plausible source of life. The 1996 report that Martian meteorite ALH84001 contained features resembling fossilised (if extremely small) bacteria gained worldwide attention, even though the eventual conclusion repudiated this. Analysis of three other meteorites originating from Mars showed that complex organic chemistry, lava flows and moving water were common features of the planet's past, although they offered no more than tantalising hints that microbial life may have flourished, possibly billions of years ago.

Back on Mars, NASA's 1997 Pathfinder lander delivered the Sojourner rover. Although it appeared to be little more than a very expensive toy, managing a total distance in its operational lifetime of just one hundred metres, the proof of concept led to much larger and more sophisticated vehicles culminating in today’s Curiosity rover.

The plethora of Mars missions over the past two decades has delivered immense amounts of data, including that the planet used to have near-ideal conditions for microbial life - and still has a few types of environment that may be able to support miniscule extremophiles.

Together with research undertaken in Earth-bound simulators, the numerous Mars projects of the Twenty-first Century have to date swung the pendulum back in favour of a Martian biota. Here are a few prominent examples:

  • 2003 - atmospheric methane is discovered (the lack of active geology implying a biological rather than geochemical origin)
  • 2005 - atmospheric formaldehyde is detected (it could be a by-product of methane oxidation)
  • 2007 - silica-rich rocks, similar to hot springs, are found
  • 2010 - giant sinkholes are found (suitable as radiation-proof habitats)
  • 2011 - flowing brines and gypsum deposits discovered
  • 2012 - lichen survived for a month in the Mars Simulation Laboratory
  • 2013 - proof of ancient freshwater lakes and complex organic molecules, along with a long-lost magnetic field
  • 2014 - large-scale seasonal variation in methane, greater than usual if of geochemical origin
  • 2015 - Earth-based research successfully incubates methane-producing bacteria under Mars-like conditions
  • 2018 - a 20 kilometre across brine lake is found under the southern polar ice sheet

Although these facts accumulate into an impressive package in favour of Martian microbes, they should probably be treated as independent points, not as one combined argument. For as well as finding factors supporting microbial life, other research has produced opposing ones. For example, last year NASA found that a solar storm had temporarily doubled surface radiation levels, meaning that even dormant microbes would have to live over seven metres down in order to survive. We should also bear in mind that for some of each orbit, Mars veers outside our solar system's Goldilocks Zone and as such any native life would have its work cut out for it at aphelion.

A fleet of orbiters, landers, rovers and even a robotic helicopter are planned for further exploration in the next decade, so clearly the search for life on Mars is still deemed a worthwhile effort. Indeed, five more missions are scheduled for the next three years alone. Whether any will provide definitive proof is the big question, but conversely, how much of the surface - and sub-surface - would need to be thoroughly searched before concluding that Mars has either never had microscopic life or that it has long since become extinct?

What is apparent from all this is that the quantity of Mars-based missions has fluctuated according to confidence in the hypothesis. In other words, the more that data supports the existence of suitable habitats for microbes, the greater the amount of research to find them. In a world of limited resources, even such profoundly interesting questions as extra-terrestrial life appear to gain funding based on the probability of near-future success. If the next generation of missions fails to find traces of even extinct life, my bet would be a rapid and severe curtailing of probes to the red planet.

There is a caricature of the stages that scientific hypotheses go through, which can ironically best be described using religious terminology: they start as heresy; proceed to acceptance; and are then carved into stone as orthodoxy. Of course, unlike with religions, the vast majority of practitioners accept the new working theory once the data has passed a certain probability threshold, even if it totally negates an earlier one. During the first stage - and as the evidence starts to be favourable - more researchers may join the bandwagon, hoping to be the first to achieve success.

In this particular case, the expense and sophistication of the technology prohibits entries from all except a few key players such as NASA and ESA. It might seem obvious that in expensive, high-tech fields, there has to be a correlation between hypothesis-supporting facts and the amount of research. But this suggests a stumbling block for out-of-the-box thinking, as revolutionary hypotheses fail to gain funding without at least some supporting evidence.

Therefore does the cutting-edge, at least in areas that require expensive experimental confirmation, start life as a chicken-and-egg situation? Until data providentially appears, is it often the case that the powers-that-be have little enticement for funding left-field projects? That certainly seems to have been true for meteorologist Alfred Wegener and his continental drift hypothesis, since it took several research streams to codify plate tectonics as the revolutionary solution. 

Back to Martian microbes. Having now read in greater depth about seasonal methane, it appears that the periodicity could be due to temperature-related atmospheric changes. This only leaves the scale of variation as support for a biological rather than geochemical origin. Having said that, the joint ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter may find a definitive answer as to its source in the next year or so, although even a negative result is unlikely to close the matter for some time to come. Surely this has got to be one of the great what-ifs of our time? Happy hunting, Mars mission teams!

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Teslas in space: trivialising the final frontier

Earlier this month Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved great kudos thanks to the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket and recovery of two of the three first stage boosters. Although it has the fourth highest payload capacity in the history of spaceflight, the test did not include satellites or ballast but the unlikely shape of Musk's own $100,000 Tesla Roadster, complete with dummy astronaut. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the unique payload of this largely successful mission has led to it being labelled everything from a pioneering achievement to a foolish publicity stunt. So what's the truth behind it?

I discussed the near-future development of private spaceflight back in 2012 and if there's one thing that the programmes mentioned therein have in common is that they have all since been delayed. Rocket technology has proved to be more tricky than the current crop of entrepreneurs envisaged, Elon Musk himself giving the Falcon Heavy a fifty-fifty chance of success. As it was, two of the core booster's engines failed to fire before touchdown, leading it to crash into the sea. Musk admitted that due to safety concerns this design will never - as originally intended - be used to launch crews into space. But a successful first flight for such a large vehicle had the potential to bring enormous kudos - translate that to customers - at the expense of his lagging rivals.

It could be argued that with such a high probability of getting egg on his face, Musk was right to choose a joke payload, albeit an expensive one, as opposed to boring ballast or a (presumably heavily-insured) set of commercial satellites. Even so, some critics have argued that there is enough manmade junk floating around the solar system without adding the Tesla, never mind the slight risk of a crash-landing on Mars. The latter might seem of little import, but there's presumably the risk of microbial contamination - it's thought some bacteria could survive atmospheric entry - and as yet we're far from certain whether Martian microbes might exist in places sheltered from the ultraviolet flux.

However, researchers have run computer simulations and if anything, Earth stands a far greater chance of being the Tesla's target, albeit millions of years in the future. Indeed, Venus is the next most likely, with Mars a poor third. That's if the car doesn't fall apart long before then due to the radiation, temperature variations and micrometeoroid impacts: the 70,000km/h or so velocity means that even dust grains can behave like bullets and there's plenty of natural rock fragments whipping around the solar system.

Musk has said that his low-cost, private alternative to state-led missions is intended to spur competitors into developing similarly reusable launch vehicles, bearing in mind that fossil fuel-powered rockets are likely to be the only way into space for some time to come. Talking of Government-controlled space programmes, NASA has long since decided to concentrate on research and development and leave much of the day-to-day operations, such as cargo runs to the International Space Station, to commercial outfits. In other words, Elon Musk is only touting for business much like any other corporation. His customers already include the communications company Arabsat and the United States Air Force, so interest in the new rocket is clearly building.

As to whether Musk should have fired a $100,000 car on a one-way trip (thanks to orbital mechanics, it's not strictly speaking one-way of course but let's face it, he's never going to get it back) it also comes down to a matter of taste, when you consider the environmental and economic crises facing humanity and the planet in general. The reusability factor to the Falcon Heavy rocket design does assuage the ecological aspect, but only slightly; rockets are a pretty primitive form of transport with some hefty pollutant statistics. Unfortunately, they currently have the monopoly on any space travel for the foreseeable future - I wonder if Virgin Galactic passengers could be encouraged to buy carbon credits?

A rather smaller rocket also launched into the headlines last month in the form of the US-New Zealand Rocket Lab's Electron vehicle. Cheekily called 'Still Testing', this second - and first successful - flight of the two-stage Electron paves the way for New Zealand-based launches of small satellites at comparatively low cost. This particular mission launched several commercial satellites plus the controversial 'Humanity Star', a reflective one-metre geodesic sphere that has been likened to both a disco ball and 'glittery space garbage'. Set to decay and burn up after nine months, Rocket Lab's founder Peter Beck intended it to generate a sense of perspective among the wider public but it has instead instigated a lot of negative commentary from astronomers, environmentalists and people who enjoy getting annoyed about almost anything.

Again, all publicity might seem like good publicity, but it goes to show that many people like their space technology serious and on the level, not frivolous or containing airy gestures (or should that be vacuous ones, space being space and all?) Even this individual rocket's name goes against tradition, which usually comes down to either Greco-Roman machismo or dull acronyms such as NASA's new SLS. In addition, to the unaided eye the cosmos appears to be largely pristine and pure, lacking the visual noise that commercialism bombards us with down here on Earth. Therefore the Humanity Star appears a bit tacky and is unlikely to supply the inspiration that Beck intended, a symbol that is somewhat too puny for its lofty purpose.

An older example of an out-and-out publicity stunt at the edge of space is Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking freefall jump back in October 2012. The Red Bull Stratos mission claimed to be a serious technology test (of for example, the reefed parachute design) as well as a medical experiment on the effects of supersonic travel on a human body outside a vehicle but ultimately it appeared to be an opportunity to fulfil, at least approximately, the company slogan 'Red Bull gives you wings'.

It could be argued that the jump aided research into escaping from damaged spacecraft, but even my limited understanding of the physics involved suggests an enormous difference between Baumgartner's slow, helium-led ascent and the velocity of both newly-launched rockets and deorbiting spacecraft. The mission also claimed to be at the 'edge of space' but at thirty-nine kilometres above the Earth, the altitude was far below the nominal one hundred kilometre boundary known as the Kármán line. As so often the case in advertising, why adhere to the facts when hyperbole will help to sell your product instead? Although the jump broke a fifty-two year old free-fall altitude record, it has since been beaten in much quieter fashion by Google's Senior Vice President of Knowledge, no less. In October 2014 Dr. Alan Eustace undertook a slightly higher self-funded jump that was devoid of publicity, suggesting that far from being a technological milestone, these jumps are more akin to climbing Mount Everest: once the pioneer has been successful, the mission becomes relatively routine.

With a cynical eye it would be very easy to claim that these three missions are the result of over-inflated egos and crass commercialism. The practical issue of unnecessary space junk, combined with the uneasy impression that the universe is now available as a billboard for selling stuff, have soured these projects for many. Several space stations have already utilised food tie-ins while in 1999 Coca Cola investigated projecting advertising onto the moon, only to find the lasers required would be too powerful to be allowed (perhaps they should have contacted Dr Evil?)

In 1993 the US Government banned 'obtrusive' advertising in space, but this hasn't stopped companies in other nations from planning such stunts. A Japanese soft drink manufacturer announced in 2014 that it wanted to land a capsule of its powered Pocari Sweat beverage (sounds delightful) on the moon, the launch vehicle being none other than a SpaceX Falcon rocket. With NASA's increasing reliance on private companies, is it only a matter of time before the final frontier becomes a mere extension of the noisy, polluted, consumer goods-obsessed environment we call civilisation? Frankly, we've made a pig's ear of our planet, so how about we don't make profit margins our number one concern in outer space too?

Friday 28 July 2017

Navigating creation: A Cosmic Perspective with Neil deGrasse Tyson


I recently attended an interesting event at an Auckland venue usually reserved for pop music concerts. An audience in the thousands came to Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Cosmic Perspective, featuring the presenter of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and radio/tv show StarTalk. The 'Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive' presented his brand of science communication to an enormous congregation (forgive the use of the word) of science fans aged from as young as five years old. So was the evening a success? My fellow science buffs certainly seemed to have enjoyed it, so I decided it would be worthwhile to analyse the good doctor's method of large-scale sci-comm.

The evening was split into three sections, the first being the shortest, a primer as to our location in both physical and psychological space-time. After explaining the scale of the universe via a painless explanation of exponents, Dr Tyson used the homespun example of how stacking the 'billions' (which of course he declared to be Carl Sagan's favourite word) of Big Macs so far sold could be stacked many times around the Earth's circumference and even then extend onwards to the Moon and back. Although using such a familiar object in such unusual terrain is a powerful way of taking people outside their comfort territory, there was nothing new about this particular insight, since Dr Tyson has been using it since at least 2009; I assume it was a case of sticking to a tried-and-trusted method, especially when the rest of the evening was (presumably) unscripted.

Billions of Big Macs around the Earth and moon

Having already belittled our location in the universe, the remainder of the first segment appraised our species' smug sense of superiority, questioning whether extra-terrestrials would have any interest in us any more than we show to most of the biota here on Earth. This was a clear attempt to ask the audience to question the assumptions that science fiction, particularly of the Hollywood variety, has been popularising since the dawn of the Space Age. After all, would another civilisation consider us worthy of communicating with, considering how much of our broadcasting displays obvious acts of aggression? In this respect, Neil deGrasse Tyson differs markedly from Carl Sagan, who argued that curiosity would likely be a mutual connection with alien civilisations, despite their vastly superior technology. Perhaps this difference of attitude isn't surprising, considering Sagan's optimism has been negated by both general circumstance and the failure of SETI in the intervening decades.

Dr Tyson also had a few gibes at the worrying trend of over-reliance on high technology in place of basic cognitive skills, describing how after once working out some fairly elementary arithmetic he was asked which mobile app he had used to gain the result! This was to become a central theme of the evening, repeated several times in different guises: that rather than just learning scientific facts, non-scientists can benefit from practising critical thinking in non-STEM situations in everyday life.

Far from concentrating solely on astrophysical matters, Dr Tyson also followed up on topics he had raised in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey regarding environmental issues here on Earth. He used Apollo 8's famous 'Earthrise' photograph (taken on Christmas Eve 1968) as an example of how NASA's lunar landing programme inspired a cosmic perspective, adding that organisation such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency were founded during the programme. His thesis was clear: what began with political and strategic causes had fundamental benefits across sectors unrelated to space exploration; or as he put it "We're thinking we're exploring the moon and we discovered the Earth for the first time."

The second and main part of the event was Tyson's discussion with New Zealand-based nanotechnologist and science educator Michelle Dickinson, A.K.A. Nanogirl. I can only assume that there aren't any New Zealand astronomers or astrophysicists as media-savvy as Dr Dickinson, or possibly it's a case of celebrity first and detailed knowledge second, with a scientifically-minded interviewer deemed to have an appropriate enough mindset even if not an expert in the same specialisation.

The discussion/interview was enlightening, especially for someone like myself who knows Neil deGrasse Tyson as a presenter but very little about him as a person. Dr Tyson reminisced how in 1989 he accidentally become a media expert solely on the basis of being an astrophysicist and without reference to him as an Afro-American, counter to the prevailing culture that only featured Afro-Americans to gain their point of view.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Cosmic Perspective

Dr Tyson revealed himself to be both a dreamer and a realist, the two facets achieving a focal point with his passion for a crewed mission to Mars. He has often spoken of this desire to increase NASA's (comparatively small) budget so as reinvigorate the United States via taking humans out from the humdrum comfort zone of low earth orbit. However, his understanding of how dangerous such a mission would be led him to state he would only go to Mars once the pioneering phase was over!

His zeal for his home country was obvious - particularly the missed opportunities and the grass roots rejection of scientific expertise prevalent in the United States - and it would be easy to see his passionate pleas for the world to embrace Apollo-scale STEM projects as naïve and out-of-touch. Yet there is something to be said for such epic schemes; if the USA is to rise out of its present lassitude, then the numerous if unpredictable long-term benefits of, for example, a Mars mission is a potential call-to-arms.

The final part of the evening was devoted to audience questions. As I was aware of most of the STEM and sci-comm components previously discussed this was for me perhaps the most illuminating section of the event. The first question was about quantum mechanics, and so not unnaturally Dr Tyson stated that he wasn't qualified to answer it. Wouldn't it be great if the scientific approach to expertise could be carried across to other areas where people claim expert knowledge that they don't have?

I discussed the negative effects that the cult of celebrity could have on the public attitude towards science back in 2009 so it was extremely interesting to hear questions from several millennials who had grown up with Star Talk and claimed Neil deGrasse Tyson as their idol. Despite having watched the programmes and presumably having read some popular science books, they fell into some common traps, from over-reliance on celebrities as arbiters of truth to assuming that most scientific theories rather than just the cutting edge would be overturned by new discoveries within their own lifetimes.

Dr Tyson went to some lengths to correct this latter notion, describing how Newton's law of universal gravitation for example has become a subset of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Again, this reiterated that science isn't just a body of facts but a series of approaches to understanding nature. The Q&A session also showed that authority figures can have a rather obvious dampening effect on people's initiative to attempt critical analysis for themselves. This suggests a no-win situation: either the public obediently believe everything experts tell them (which leads to such horrors as the MMR vaccine scandal) or they fail to believe anything from STEM professionals, leaving the way open for pseudoscience and other nonsense. Dr Tyson confirmed he wants to teach the public to think critically, reducing gullibility and thus exploitation by snake oil merchants. To this end he follows in the tradition of James 'The Amazing' Randi and Carl Sagan, which is no bad thing in itself.

In addition, by interviewing media celebrities on StarTalk Dr Tyson stated how he can reach a far wider audience than just dedicated science fans. For this alone Neil deGrasse Tyson is a worthy successor to the much-missed Sagan. Let's hope some of those happy fans will be inspired to not just dream, but actively promote the cosmic perspective our species sorely needs if we are to climb out of our current doldrums.

Saturday 28 February 2015

Have spacecraft, will travel: planning the first manned Mars mission

As a space travel enthusiast since I was knee-high to a grasshopper it took me many years to appreciate robot probe missions with anything like the zeal engendered by manned spaceflight. As a schoolboy I watched the first space shuttle mission launch in 1981; no doubt like a multitude of others I initially considered this the start of the ‘casual' rather than pioneering phase of astronautics. Therefore it wasn't long before I asked myself the obvious question: when will there be a crewed mission to Mars?

Mars seems extremely familiar, no doubt due to the myriad of science fiction novels and films concerning the Red Planet. The last decade has seen a proliferation of news stories as various orbiters and rovers gather enormous amounts of - at times puzzling - data. However, none of the numerous projects of all scales that have investigated a manned mission have ever lifted off the launch pad. So here's a brief look at the state of play, not to say of course that this might not look woefully dated within the next few years.

1) Who will go to Mars?

Obviously the USA will supply the most funding so they will run the show. Or will they? The NASA budget available for planetary science is less than half that for International Space Station (ISS) operations, although of course the former are all unmanned missions. In fact, the Planetary Society has claimed that NASA spends less each year on interplanetary probes than the USA does on dog toys! A manned mission would have to negate this trend, as realistic estimates could be around US$500 billion for a single mission.

President Obama's announced half-billion dollar increase to the NASA budget is unlikely to be replicated by any Tea Party candidate who might (God forbid) achieve power. Unless that is we see a return to Cold War rivalries, with China offering a two-horse race to Mars. That might sound unlikely, but in 2006 the Chinese Government announced a long-term goal to land a crew there between 2040 and 2060. Since the US refused to allow them ISS involvement due to not wanting its technology to become available to Beijing, it is doubtful the Whitehouse would be any happier to cooperate in a Mars mission.

Either way, it's probable that some of the ISS partners would collaborate. However unrealistic it now appears in light of the financial crisis, back in 2001 the European Space Agency (ESA) announced its own plan for a crewed Mars landing in the 2030s. There was even a suggestion to include Russia as a minority partner, but the political situation there may prove prohibitive.

It doesn't just have to be other Western nations who participate in a NASA-led project, as numerous private companies are now involved in the commercial space programme. No doubt collaboration between some of the long-established aerospace giants and recent start-ups such as Space-X - whose long-term goal is to establish a Martian colony - with various Western governments would be more palatable to finance ministers. But it's still early days for the private sector: smaller infrastructure may shorten timescales compared to monolithic state enterprise, but as the Virgin Galactic SpaceshipTwo crash shows, developing even sub-orbital craft at this level still carries enormous risk.

So all in all, it could be the US and ESA, with or without substantial private investment, or China in a race with a Western bloc or (as an extreme longshot) Dutch engineer and entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, whose Mars One mission plans to regularly send crews of four non-professional astronauts on a one-way trip to the Red Planet from 2025. So far he has raised about 1/8000th of the project's already shoestring budget, but that hasn't stopped thousands of would-be colonists from applying. In addition to the necessary privations, these volunteers would also be the subjects of a fund-raising reality television show. If doesn't sound even vaguely like the product of an insane society then I don't know what is. Perhaps we should just turn our backs on the rest of the universe and just spend our lives uploading selfies to social media sites?

2) What will happen?

In theory it sounds simple: a small group of professional astronauts with various scientific backgrounds will spend up to two years on a high-risk mission, exploring the Martian surface for perhaps a month or so, then bring back copious samples of rock, soil, atmosphere and ice for more detailed examination on Earth.

The BBC ‘s 2004 mockumentary Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets showed the deadly effects that ionizing radiation can have on interplanetary travellers. The Mars Science Laboratory, carrier of the Curiosity rover, spent the Earth to Mars transit recording the radiation levels. It confirmed that they were high enough to risk crew members contracting various serious conditions such as cataracts and cancer. Incidentally, female astronauts would apparently be more prone to radiation-induced cancers than male colleagues. A 2012 mission plan considered developing an electromagnetic anti-radiation shield, but most designs are looking to use traditional aluminium construction, perhaps with polyethylene shielding around the pressurised cabins. This definitely appears to be a case of fingers crossed as much as relying on advanced materials science.

The long duration spent in shipboard micro-gravity will also cause physical problems such as bone and muscle deterioration. The astronauts/cosmonauts/taikonauts (delete as preferred) will then have to adjust on Mars arrival to the one-third Earth gravity. As well as avoiding radiation on the Martian surface they will have to minimise contamination from the fine dust: minute particles suspended in the atmosphere could cause lung and thyroid problems if allowed into the lander cabin.

Besides the physical problems, the pioneering crew will also have to contend with the psychological effects of having travelled further from the Earth than any other humans - by an enormous margin. It's one thing to undertake a mission on the ISS - with a regular exchange of crew and a close-up view of the Earth via the cupola - but quite another to spend several years away from fresh air, blue skies, and all the other fantastic things we take for granted. The interplanetary distances would of course be exacerbated by the lack of real-time conversation: the one-way journey time for radio signals from the Martian surface is between four and twelve minutes.

There has been much research into astronaut's disturbed sleep patterns, which can obviously have deleterious effects on their work as well as their mental health. The claustrophobic conditions may contribute too: negative emotions blighted the small group of inhabitants of the Arizona-based Biosphere 2 sealed ecosystem in the 1990s. In addition, this experiment had distinct problems maintaining the environment, with a primary issue being the fluctuating oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. All in all, there are likely to be problems even the best planned mission won't have predicted.

3) When will it take place?

By comparison to low Earth orbit missions, a trip to Mars would be several magnitudes greater. If you want a pioneering aviation analogy I've just figured out that ratio of the Earth-Moon distance compared to the mean Earth-Mars distance is akin to the Wright Brothers' first flight of 36.5 metres being followed up by another spanning over 5 kilometres!

I can foresee two main issues to consider when planning mission timelines, which should ideally coincide to suggest an ideal launch window. The first is the relative orbital mechanics of the two bodies, which can be exploited so as to utilise a minimum fuel trajectory. The second relies on the eleven-year solar cycle: maximal solar activity helps to block interstellar cosmic rays and so reduce the risk of radiation poisoning. Although the sun's output would be at its peak, the astronauts would be safe from solar flares and coronal mass ejections providing they didn't need to undertake any spacewalks or surface EVAs for their duration.

There are several research projects that if one were to prove successful, could reduce by several decades the time before humanity is ready for its first manned Mars flight. The University of Washington and Lockheed Martin are both working on nuclear fusion technology suitable for such a mission. By reducing the journey time from between six and eight months to just three months there would be far less health risk to the crew, as well as presumably considerable weight savings on air and consumables.

Therefore it may become feasible as early as the 2040s but I doubt any earlier, regardless of how much advance is made in fusion technology. On top of all the usual political and socio-economic fluctuations there are just too many important longer-term issues that need resolution here first.

4) Where will it take place?

Mars, of course! The planet has a wide variety of locales (hint of travel brochure there), some rather more interesting than others. If the public get to vote on sites for exploration - bearing in mind that taxpayers will no doubt be funding the majority of the mission - conspiracy theorists and assorted nutbars might promote the curious tetrahedrons (note, not pyramids) of Elysium. Presumably they're enormous ventifacts, but they still appear to be very interesting geological features.

Then there's the great canyon system of Valles Marineris, over 4000 kilometres long and up to 7 kilometres deep. Or how about the 25 kilometre high Olympus Mons and its surrounding escarpment? In Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl Sagan suggested that it might be fruitful to explore the slopes of the Martian volcanoes in case they are scattered with diamonds ejected from the carbon-rich mantle!

Other locations that are just begging for detailed exploration are the polar caps, now thought to be mostly composed of water ice rather than frozen carbon dioxide, and caves or caverns, which would not only be a good place to search for native microbes but also to hide from radiation or dust storms.

5) Why will it happen?

This is perhaps the most difficult question to answer. Carl Sagan argued that the mission would fulfil the deep-seated need for exploration that our species - only recently converted from a nomadic existence - still feels. There is something to be said of this provision of a surrogate for human wanderlust, as identified in Bertrand Russell's 1959 quote: "a world without war need not be a world without adventurous and hazardous glory." This form of argument seems fairly mainstream in astronautic circles: even NASA's budget estimate for 2016 includes the phrases ‘reveal the unknown' (very likely) and ‘benefit all humankind' (which seems rather less obvious, except for Earth resources and weather satellites).

Against this notion are rather more pragmatic motives such as a combination of accelerated technological development and national prestige. But if nuclear fusion power is acquired in time for the first mission it's difficult to see what else will be gained from spending say half a trillion US dollars on a single crewed flight: wouldn't it be wiser to spend such vast sums on environmental stabilisation or medical research here on Earth? I've already commented on the potential white elephant of the ISS and there are no doubt many who don't consider any manned space exploration a suitable use of such enormous resources.

It's obvious that there are distinctive practical advantages to having humans on the spot rather than relying on robots. One issue that a single manned mission might be able to resolve that countless probes wouldn't is the question of life on Mars. The haze and plume seen in 2012 and the seasonal methane suggest some very interesting meteorological phenomenon if there isn't a biological explanation, but if there is any Martian bacteria then surely the mission could be deemed worthy of its immense budget? Somehow, I have my doubts…

One day in the next few centuries there could well be - unfortunately - branches of Starbucks and McDonalds on Mars and the Red Planet will be an alien frontier no more. But until then, any humans who undertake such an incredible journey will be pioneers in the Yuri Gagarin/Roald Amundsen/Edmund Hillary mould. However, I doubt the first human to step onto the Martian surface will use the latter's keen Kiwi phraseology: "we knocked the b***d off!"

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Deserving dollars: should mega budget science be funded in an age of austerity?

With the UK narrowly avoiding France's fate of a triple dip recession, I thought I would bite the bullet and examine some of the economics of current science. In a time when numerous nations are feeling severe effects due to the downturn, it is ironic that there are a multitude of science projects with budgets larger than the GDP of some smaller nations. So who funds these ventures and are they value for money, or even worthwhile, in these straitened times? Here are a few examples of current and upcoming projects, with the lesser known the project the more the information supplied:

National Ignition Facility

The world's most powerful laser was designed with a single goal: to generate net energy from nuclear fusion by creating temperatures and pressures similar to those in the cores of stars. However, to state that the NIF has not lived up to expectation would be something of an understatement. According to even the most conservative sources, the original budget of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory project has at the very least doubled if not quadrupled to over US$4 billion, whilst the scheduled operational date came five years overdue.

I first learned of the project some years ago thanks to a friend who knew one of the scientists involved. The vital statistics are astonishing, both for the scale of the facility and the energies involved. But it seems that there may be underlying problems with the technology. Over-reliance on computer simulations and denial of deleterious experimental results on precursor projects, as well as the vested interests of project staffers and the over-confident potential for military advances, have all been suggested as causes for what history may conclude as a white elephant. So perhaps if you are looking for an archetypal example of how non-scientific factors have crippled research, this may well be it.

Unlike all the other projects discussed, the National Ignition Facility is solely funded by one nation, the USA. Of course, it could be argued that four billion dollars is a bargain if the project succeeded, and that it is today's time-precious society that needs to learn patience in order to appreciate the long-term timescales required to overcome the immense technological challenges. Nuclear fusion would presumably solve many of todays - and the foreseeable futures - energy requirements whilst being rather more environmentally friendly than either fossil fuels or fission reactors. The potential rewards are plain for all to see.

However, the problems are deep-rooted, leading to arguments against the development of laser-based fusion per se. Alternative fusion projects such as the Joint European Torus and the $20 billion ITER - see an earlier post on nuclear fusion research for details - use longer-established methods. My verdict in a nutshell: the science was possibly unsound from the start and the money would be better spent elsewhere. Meanwhile, perhaps the facility could get back a small portion of its funding if Star Trek movies continue to hire the NIF as a filming location!

The International Space Station

I remember the late Carl Sagan arguing that the only benefit of the ISS that couldn’t be achieved via cheaper projects such as – during the Space Shuttle era - the European Space Agency’s Spacelab, was research into the deleterious effects on health of long-duration spaceflight. So at $2 billion per year to run is it worthwhile, or but another example of a fundamentally flawed project? After all, as it is the station includes such non-scientific facets as the ultimate tourist destination for multi-millionaires!

Sometimes referred to as a lifeline for American and Russian aerospace industries (or even a way to prevent disaffected scientists in the latter from working for rogue states), I have been unable to offer a persuasive argument as to why the money would not have been better spent elsewhere. It is true that there has been investigation into vaccines for salmonella and MRSA, but after twelve years of permanent crewing on board the station, just how value for money has this research been? After all, similar studies were carried out on Space Shuttle flights in previous few decades, suggesting that the ISS was not vital to these programmes. The Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees has described as it as a 'turkey in the sky', siphoning funds that could have been spent on a plethora of unmanned missions such as interplanetary probes. But as we should be aware, it usually isn't a case that money not spent on one project would automatically become available for projects elsewhere.

On a positive scientific note, the station has played host to the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - a key contender in the search for dark matter - which would presumably have difficulty finding a long-duration orbital platform elsewhere. But then this is hardly likely to excite those who want immediate, practical benefits from such huge expenditure.

The ISS has no doubt performed well as a test bed for examining the deterioration of the human body due to living in space, if anything seriously weakening the argument for a manned Mars mission in the near future. Perhaps one other area in which the station has excelled has been that of a focal point for promoting science to the public, but surely those who follow in Sagan’s footsteps - the U.K.'s Brian Cox for one - can front television series with a similar goal for the tiniest fraction of the cost?

The Large Hadron Collider

An amazing public-relations success story, considering how far removed the science and technology are from everyday mundanity, the world's largest particle accelerator requires $1 billion per year to operate on top of a construction budget of over $6 billion. With a staff of over 10,000 the facility is currently in the midst of a two-year upgrade, giving plenty of time for its international research community to analyse the results. After all, the Higgs Boson A.K.A. 'God particle' has been found…probably.

So if the results are confirmed, what next? Apparently, the facility can be re-engineered for a wide variety of purposes, varying from immediately pragmatic biomedical research on cancer and radiation exposure to the long-term search for dark matter. This combination of practical benefits with extended fundamental science appears to be as good a compromise as any compared to similar-scale projects. Whether similar research could be carried out by more specialised projects is unknown. Does anyone know?

As for the future of mega-budget schemes, there are various projects in development extending into the next decade. The Southern Hemisphere is playing host to two large international collaborations: the Square Kilometre Array is due to begin construction in eleven nations - excluding its UK headquarters - in 2016, but it will be around eight years before this $2 billion radio telescope array is fully operational. Meanwhile the equally unimaginatively-named European Extremely Large Telescope is planned for a site in Chile, with an even longer construction period and a price tag approaching $1.5 billion. Both projects are being designed for a variety of purposes, from dark matter investigation to searching for small (i.e. Earth-sized) extra-solar planets with biologically-modified atmospheres.

At this point it is pertinent to ask do extremely ambitious science projects have to come with equally impressive price tags? Personally I believe that with a bit more ingenuity a lot of useful research can be undertaken on far smaller budgets. Public participation in distributed computing projects such as Folding@home and Seti@home, in which raw data is processed by home computers, is about as modest an approach as feasible for such large amounts of information.

An example of a long-term project on a comparatively small budget is the US-based Earthscope programme, which collects and analyses data including eminently practical research into seismic detection. With a construction cost of about $200 million and annual budget around a mere $125 million this seems to be a relative bargain for a project that combines wide-scale, theoretical targets with short-term, pragmatic gains. But talking of practical goals, there are other scientific disciplines crying out for a large increase in funding. Will the explosive demise of a meteor above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk back in February act as a wake-up call for more research into locating and deflecting Earth-crossing asteroids and comets? After all, the 2014 NASA budget for asteroid detection projects is barely over the hundred million dollar mark!

I will admit to some unique advantages to enormous projects, such as the bringing together of researchers from the funding nations that may lead to fruitful collaboration. This is presumably due to the sheer number of scientists gathered together for long periods, as opposed to spending just a few days at an international conference or seminar, for instance. Even so, I cannot help but feel that the money for many of the largest scale projects could be bettered used elsewhere, solving some of the immediate problems facing our species and ecosystem.

Unfortunately, the countries involved offer their populations little in the way of voice as to how public money is spent on research. But then considering the appalling state of science education in so many nations, as well as the short shrift that popular culture usually gives to the discipline, perhaps it isn’t so surprising after all. If we want to make mega-budget projects more accountable, we will need to make fundamental changes to the status of science in society. Without increased understanding of the research involved, governments are unlikely to grant us choice.

Monday 30 July 2012

Buy Jupiter: the commercialisation of outer space

I recently saw a billboard for the Samsung Galaxy SIII advertising a competition to win a "trip to space", in the form of a suborbital hop aboard a Virgin Galactic SpaceshipTwo. This phrase strikes me as highly interesting: a trip to space, not into space, as if the destination was just another beach holiday resort. The accompanying website uses the same wording, so clearly the choice of words wasn't caused by space issues (that's space for the text, not space as in outer). Despite less than a dozen space tourists to date, is space travel now considered routine and the rest of the universe ripe for commercial gain, as per the Pan Am shuttle and Hilton space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Or is this all somewhat premature, with the hype firmly ahead of the reality? After all, the first fee-paying space tourist, Dennis Tito, launched only eleven years ago in 2001.

Vodafone is only the second company after Guinness Breweries to offer space travel prizes, although fiction was way ahead of the game: in Arthur C. Clarke's 1952 children's novel Islands in the Sky the hero manages a trip into low Earth orbit thanks to a competition loophole.  However, the next decade could prove the turning point. Virgin Galactic already have over 500 ticket-holders whilst SpaceX, developer of the first commercial orbital craft - the unmanned Dragon cargo ship - plan to build a manned version that could reduce orbital seat costs by about 60%.

If anything, NASA is pushing such projects via its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme, including the aim of using for-profit services for the regular supply of cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS). The intention is presumably for NASA to concentrate on research and development rather than routine operations, but strong opposition to such commercialisation comes from an unusual direction: former NASA astronauts including Apollo pioneers Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan deem the COTs programme a threat to US astronautic supremacy. This seems to be more an issue of patriotism and politics rather than a consideration of technological or scientific importance. With China set to overtake the USA in scientific output next year and talk of a three-crew temporary Chinese space station within 4 years, the Eclipse of the West has already spread beyond the atmosphere. Then again, weren't pre-Shuttle era NASA projects, like their Soviet counterparts, primarily driven by politics, prestige, and military ambitions, with technological advances a necessary by-product and science very much of secondary importance?

Commerce in space could probably be said to have begun with the first communications satellite, Telstar 1, in 1962. The big change for this decade is the ability to launch ordinary people rather than trained specialists into space, although as I have mentioned before, the tourist jaunts planned by Virgin Galactic hardly go where no-one has gone before. The fundamental difference is that such trips are deemed relatively safe undertakings, even if the ticket costs of are several orders greater than any terrestrial holiday. A trip on board SpaceShipTwo is currently priced at US$200,000 whilst a visit to the International Space Station will set you back one hundred times that amount. This is clearly somewhat closer to the luxury flying boats of the pre-jet era than any modern package tour.

What is almost certain is that despite Virgin Galactic's assessment of the risk as being akin to 1920s airliners, very few people know enough of aviation history's safety record to make this statistic meaningful. After all, two of the five Space Shuttle orbiters were lost, the latter being the same number intended for the SpaceshipTwo fleet. Although Virgin Galactic plays the simplicity card for their design - i.e. the fewer the components, the less the chance of something going wrong - it should be remembered that the Columbia and Challenger shuttles were lost due to previously known and identified problems with the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters respectively. In other words, when there is a known technical issue but the risk is considered justifiable, human error enters the equation.

In addition, human error isn't just restricted to the engineers and pilots: anything from passenger illness (about half of all astronauts get spacesick - headaches and nausea for up to several days after launch) to disruptive behaviour of the sort I have witnessed on airliners. Whether the loss of business tycoons or celebrities would bring more attention to the dangers of space travel remains to be seen. Unfortunately, the increase in number and type of spacecraft means it is almost certainly a case of when, not if.

Planet Saturn via a Skywatcher telescope

Location location location (via my Skywatcher 130PM)

But if fifteen minutes of freefall might seem a sublime experience there are also some ridiculous space-orientated ventures, if some of the ludicrous claims found on certain websites are anything to go by. Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty does not allow land on other bodies to be owned by a nation state, companies such as Lunar Embassy have sold plots on the Moon to over 3 million customers. It is also possible to buy acres on Mars and Venus, even if the chance of doing anything with it is somewhat limited. I assume most customers treat their land rights as a novelty item, about as useful as say, a pet rock, but with some companies issuing mineral rights deeds for regions of other planets, could this have serious implications in the future? Right now it might seem like a joke, but as the Earth's resources dwindle and fossil fuels run low, could private companies race to exploit extra-terrestrial resources such as lunar Helium 3?

Various cranks/forward thinkers (delete as appropriate) have applied to buy other planets since at least the 1930s but with COTs supporting private aerospace initiatives such as unmanned lunar landers there is at least the potential of legal wrangling over mining rights throughout the solar system. The US-based company Planetary Resources has announced its intention to launch robot mining expeditions to some of the 1500 or so near-Earth asteroids, missions that are the technological equivalent of a lunar return mission.

But if there are enough chunks of space rock to go round, what about the unique resources that could rapidly become as crowded as low Earth orbit? For example, the Earth-Moon system's five Lagrange points are gravitationally stable positions useful for scientific missions, whilst geosynchronous orbit is vital for commercial communication satellites. So far, national governments have treated outer space like Antarctica, but theoretically a private company could cause trouble if the law fails to keep up with the technology, in much the same way that the internet has been a happy harbour for media pirates.

Stephen Hawking once said "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit". Then again, no-one should run before they can walk, never mind fly. We've got a long way to go before we reach the giddy heights of wheel-shaped Hiltons, but as resources dwindle and our population soars, at some point it will presumably become a necessity to undertake commercial space ventures, rather than just move Monte Carlo into orbit. Now, where's the best investment going to be: an acre of Mars or two on the Moon?

Monday 26 September 2011

Full steam ahead: is there a future in revisiting obsolete science and technology?

Several weeks ago I was looking towards Greenwich in south-east London when I spotted an airship. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a reminder of the time when Britain not only had a large manufacturing industry but in some sectors was even in the vanguard of technological development. The blimp in question was probably the 39 metre-long Goodyear Spirit of Safety II, which although nominally an American craft was assembled at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire. I visited this site about 20 years ago and managed to go inside one of its' two enormous air sheds, once home to such giants of the skies as the 237 metre-long R101. Sadly, these days the hangers are mostly used for filming and rock band rehearsals, and recently a housing estate was built inside the base perimeter. However, it's not all a case of rust and nostalgia, as Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd are making use of Cardington in a joint project with the aeronautical heavyweight Northrop Grumman to build three unmanned hybrid airships. The 76 metre-long Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle or LEMV - a classic boffin-flavoured acronym, hurrah - is being developed for a US military surveillance role. The company's future plans include eco-tourist airships, so are we seeing the glimmer of an airship renaissance?

On the whole this seems rather unlikely. In the 1980s Cardington was home to Hybrid Air Vehicles' predecessor Airship Industries, one of who's Skyship 500s appeared in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (the same design as seen in my circa 1984 photograph below). Unfortunately the innovations in materials and engines weren't enough to save the company from liquidation.

An air display at RAF Henlow, Bedfordshire - late 1970s
Although Hybrid Air Vehicles has grandiose plans for vehicles up to twice the LEMV's length, it's doubtful there will be a near-future resurgence in long-haul civilian airships. After all, even during their interwar heyday a transatlantic ticket on the likes of the Hindenburg cost more than double that of an ocean liner. Therefore, military usage and cargo delivery to aircraft-unfriendly terrain are a far safer bet from an economic viewpoint, despite the obvious advantages of aerial craft less reliant on fossil fuels. Indeed, there are even schemes afoot in several countries to develop solar-powered cargo airships.

Another UK-based proposal that seeks to put new life into old technology sadly appears to have rather less chance of success. The Class 5AT (Advanced Technology) Steam Locomotive Project plans to develop a steam engine capable of matching current main line high-speed stock. After ten years' effort, the team have put together a very detailed study for a 180 km/h locomotive, but as you might expect there hasn't exactly been a rush of investors. The typical short-term mentality of contemporary politicians and shareholder-responsive industry means few appear willing to support the initial start up costs, especially when Britain's current rail network operates so wonderfully (hint: that's called irony). If you think any of this sounds familiar, check out the post on boffins and their pipe dreams, where the science and technology were frequently superlative and the economics frankly embarrassing.

Then again, a resurgence in motive steam might appear to have little relevance outside of alternative history novels, but a point to remember is that it was only when James Watt started to repair a working model of Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric pumping engine in 1763 - a design by then half a century old - that the development of true steam engines began.

The steam car has even less chance of a reawakening, although there appear to be good engineering reasons behind this, namely difficulty coping with the constantly-changing speeds required in urban driving. As it is, steam on the road seems to have mostly novelty value these days. A good example is the British Steam Car, winner in 2009 of the Guinness World Land Speed Record for a steam powered car. It may have a dull name, but with a Batmobile aesthetic and top speed of 225km/h, the world's fastest kettle has certainly proved a point that steam needn't be associated with slow.

Somewhat less romantic and rather more pragmatic, NASA has returned to tried and tested capsule technology for their space shuttle replacement, Orion. The "Apollo on steroids" design is now accompanied by the Space Launch System or SLS (another uninspired moniker), which refers to a rocket slightly taller than the Saturn V that will have second stage engines developed from those used on this famous forebear - which incidentally last flew in 1973.

But reappraising old science isn't restricted to high technology, as can be seen by the resurgence of biotherapeutic methods in the past few decades. Most people have heard of the fish pedicure fad but the rather more important use of disinfected maggots to clean flesh wounds has received NHS support following some years of trials in the USA. A 2007 preliminary assessment even showed success using maggot therapy to treat wounds infected with the 'superbug' MRSA. Yet the technique is known from Renaissance Europe, Mesoamerican and Australian Aboriginal cultures: sometimes low-tech really could be the way forward.

Possibly that's the key as to whether these revitalisations are likely to succeed; if the start-up costs are relatively cheap then there's a good chance of adoption. Otherwise, the Western obsession with the now makes it all too easy to dismiss these projects as idealistic dreams by out-of-touch eccentrics. Not that new technologies have always followed the rational approach when initially developed anyway, since historical backstories have probably been as much a driving force as objective analysis. I guess we're back again to disproving that old Victorian notion of continuous upward progression, but then as the philosophically-minded would say, we do live in postmodern times.

Monday 24 May 2010

Come fly with me: private industry and future of manned spaceflight

As Major Tim Peake undergoes training as the first British citizen to join the European Space Agency's (ESA) Astronaut Corps, it's an interesting time to consider to what extent manned spaceflight will migrate from the state to private sector over the next decade or two. With the International Space Station (ISS - you can see the acronyms mounting) soon to be without the shuttle fleet, not to mention short of an emergency escape vehicle following on-again/off-again Crew Return Vehicle projects, some form of return to earth vehicle will surely be needed. Back in the 1980s at least one Soviet cosmonaut is supposed to have required a prompt return to Earth following a medical problem, but the ISS crew is too large to squeeze into a single venerable Soyuz ferry. It looks like NASA has managed to resurrect the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle as a lifeboat, eventually…but in the meantime, will the ISS be forced to look to the private sector?

The current centre of attention as far as private manned spaceflight goes is Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, with its $200,000 price tag for a suborbital hop in a SpaceShipTwo. The flight plan is nothing new - NASA's first two astronauts did something similar nearly half a century ago - but for a private company to achieve this is, or rather will be, astonishing. Any attempt to compare the development of spaceflight to commercial air travel is a failure: the differences in scale and logistics are too profound to allow any meaningful comparison. The margins for error are that much smaller with spaceflight, and whilst the cost of astronaut training is considerable, the cost of a space vehicle that much more. Unfortunately, and ironically, the success of science fiction has led to a widespread ignorance concerning the practicalities and dangers facing astronauts. For example, low Earth orbit has the mounting danger of man-made junk and debris, ranging from lost tools to frozen ejected fecal matter, with estimates for 'detectable' objects alone put at 10,000. According to NASA, this constitutes a 'critical level' of debris. One Soyuz mission in the 1980s suffered minor impact damage to a window, although this could have been a micrometeroid rather than man-made. Nonetheless, seeing as Star Trek deflectors aren't yet fitted as standard, at some point someone is presumably going to have start clearing up this mess.

In variance to Western capitalists looking to make commercial achievements in the human spaceflight sector (unlike say the existing success with communications and other unmanned satellites), both China and India are developing state-led programmes. The first Chinese manned spacecraft, a souped-up Soyuz clone, launched in 2003, whilst the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans, with Russian aid, to launch its first astronauts circa 2015. Whether politics and national pride will push American and European entrepreneurs to compete is open to question, but it's possible they will sit alongside raw commercialism as a driving force, with science taking a poor fourth place. Then again, President Obama's speeches have contained arguments along just these lines. Following on from the 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, NASA instigated several ISS-orientated programmes such as Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) and Commercial Resupply Services (CRS), the intention being to free NASA from mundane day-to-day operations thus leaving more resources for R&D (research and development, if you weren't sure). Although initially intended to be cargo craft only, the potential for private sector crewed spacecraft, such as the SpaceX Dragon, is seen as the obvious next step. The problem is that some of the potential private contractors have very little experience of space operations. Or indeed, none. For every Boeing or Lockheed Martin there are an awful lot of small companies looking for a piece of orbital pie; if the success rate matches that of earlier attempts, there are going to be a lot of aerospace corporations filing for bankruptcy.

As early as the 1970's private companies attempted to build satellite launchers, such as OTRAG (go on then: Orbital Transport und Raketen AG, if you must know), only to founder due to technological difficulties, funding shortfalls and political pressure. More recent failures include the now defunct Rotary Rocket company's Roton crewed transport, and NASA's dropping of Rocketplane Kistler in 2008, but in these cases the lack of technical success was the primary cause. It would appear the future, at least for the USA, lies in cooperation between state and industry. Whether the latter will gain riches from microgravity research in pharmaceuticals and smart materials remains to be seen; as Carl Sagan once argued, many of the so-called Apollo breakthroughs could have probably been made for far less money than was spent on the moon landing programme. Perhaps a decline in fossil fuels may lead to new exotic energy projects, such as the mining of lunar helium-3, but the global economy may have to be on much more steady footing for anything as epic as this to be considered. Otherwise it's difficult to identify just where a private contractor could be certain of potential returns from manned spaceflight. Perhaps Richard Branson's quick thrills approach may be the best bet for now!

But are there any indicators as to what the near future might hold? SpaceX Dragon and the recently curtailed Orion are both conventional capsule designs. More advanced projects such as the (initially unmanned) Lockheed Venture Star were cancelled due to difficulties with the engine design, perhaps a primary reason for NASA deciding to play it safe with the Constellation programme's Orion and the Altair lunar lander. Speaking of the latter, President Obama's speech earlier this year placed human expeditions to the moon and Mars in the 2025-2030 time bracket, a safe distance from his White House tenure. I seem to recall all US presidents since, and perhaps including, Reagan, have taken a pot-shot at a manned Mars mission (acronym: mmm - speaks for itself, really.) I would take any such timescale with a large pinch of salt. Admittedly, Obama has proposed large budget increases for NASA, guaranteed to generate more than 2,500 jobs in Florida alone. But like many aspects of the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans, is the intention to promote economic growth, the outcome of the projects themselves being on secondary importance? US presidents of the past few decades have not exactly been known for their scientific acumen. Competition between private companies is an ideal way of generating R&D whilst minimising tax payers' investments, but if these corporations don't succeed in establishing a comprehensive level of interaction with NASA there could be trouble afoot. After all, it isn't so many years since a software contractor mixed up imperial with metric units, causing the in-flight loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter.

One potential benefit of increased manned space travel that has been advanced by both the White House as and NASA is the promotion of spaceflight to the general public. With digital entertainment and web empowerment, along with environmental and economic concerns, having taken centre stage in the minds of the post-Apollo generations, an increase in space tourism may have greater impact on the public than the lacklustre coverage of the ISS. If Virgin Galactic can pull off it's enterprise (N.B. that's a joke - the first Spaceship Two will of course be named VSS Enterprise), then perhaps spaceflight will become cool again. This in turn may inspire a new generation of engineers and designers, especially to seek much-needed alternatives to fossil fuels. In an idea reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke's children's novel Islands in the Sky, last year the brewery company Guinness announced a competition prize of a seat on a Virgin Galactic craft. So although it may be a far cry from the Pan Am Orion spaceplane in 2001: A Space Odyssey, nonetheless it's very much a case of "watch this space..."

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