SCIENCE ANYONE? ANYONE AT ALL...?

I’ve posted before about Mars One, the Dutch-based project that plans to send four astronauts to found a colony on Mars in the year 2023. They officially began taking applications on April 22 and at last word have received 30,000 of them. They expect at least 500,000 by the end of August when the application window ends. Half a million people claiming they want to make a one-way trip to live on Mars for the rest of their (possibly very short) lives!

The applicants have come from all over the world. I found it really disturbing when one article I read quoted a 39-year-old bookseller in China offering his reasons for going, including that “the air must be a lot fresher and easier to breathe than here.” Uh…that would be a No. No breathable air. Temperatures that make Antarctica look good. No liquid water, no plants, no animals, no shopping malls, no hospitals, no restaurants, theatres, hockey rinks, ball fields…. No fresh supplies if a subsequent rocket malfunctions, either. And no escape from your three human companions. Do I need to go on?

My point is, how many of these applicants really know anything about Mars? How many people anywhere know any better? About real conditions in space? Or anything involving Astronomy? Particle Physics? Microbiology? Science…anyone?

We have vastly more scientific knowledge available to us than at any time in human history, often no more than a few mouse clicks away. Some of the most amazing scientific television programming is ready for public consumption all day every day. We have higher and higher rates of education, including college and university. But how many people really pay attention to all this science? Even the most basic stuff about our bodies, our planet, our solar system? If you think the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us is large (and it is), I’d have to believe that the gap between the science nerds and the average population is even larger, and growing all the time.

While huge numbers of people spend their nights watching “celebrities” risk life and limb on the dance floor and high diving board, and the antics of buffoonish rednecks in all their grotesque variety, the founders of tech companies are making the money and staking their territory in the future of the race.

The nerds won’t have any problem inheriting the Earth, ‘cause the rest of us just aren’t paying attention.

CARS TO PROTECT US FROM OURSELVES

In my part of the world the police have declared this week to be Distracted Driving Week because last year more people were killed in highway car accidents involving distracted drivers than in accidents involving alcohol. That’s really saying something.

Distracted driving can include drinking a coffee or talking to a passenger, but most often we think about cell phone calls, tinkering with a GPS, applying makeup, and especially texting.

Really, with Facebook Home on our phones to alert us whenever a friend sneezes, and Twitter to make sure we don’t miss a single Kim Kardashian labour pain, how can we be expected to pay attention to something as trivial as what lies ahead of us on the road? This whole ‘controlling a speeding car’ thing is seriously cramping our style when it comes to what we actually want to be doing.

The answer? Robotic cars, of course. They’ve been a dream of science fiction writers almost since the genre began.

Since 2006 when the Lexus LS arrived in North America we’ve had cars that will park themselves. Now you can get different versions of that feature even on cars as low-priced as the Ford Focus. Mostly they use ultrasonic sensors to determine the measure of the parking space and guide the car into it.

But why have a driver at all? There are cars that can drive themselves. There have been for a while. In 2010 an Italian company named VisLab sent a convoy of vehicles more than eight thousand miles from Italy to China and several of them were unmanned the whole way. Mind you, the ones that did it with no human intervention were following the track of a vehicle just ahead of them that did have humans tweaking the course from time to time. But the technology has improved by leaps and bounds since then. With arrays of laser and radar sensors and other navigation systems that would put many fighter jets to shame, autonomous cars are proving their stuff. And more and more of their systems are making their way into commercial cars: gadgets that will warn you if you steer out of your lane (and steer you back), warn you of a potential front collision, and even hit the brakes for you in an emergency. The robotic cars that gets the most attention are the self-driving cars from Google. They’re already legally allowed on roads for testing purposes in Nevada, Florida, and California.

Experts at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2013 World Congress recently predicted that fully driverless cars won’t be commercially available before 2025, but I think they’re being pessimistic. Whenever that day arrives, it should spell the end of distracted driving, shouldn’t it?

Just please, nobody teach the robots how to tweet!

SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH GOOGLE-COLOURED GLASSES

If you can’t remember how you ever lived without your smartphone, you’ve probably heard about Google’s big project Google Glass. If you haven’t, come out of your cave and, well, Google it. Glass is what they call an augmented reality (AR) head mounted display (HMD). That means a mini computer that you wear like a pair of sunglasses which will display information in front of your eyes and take pictures or video of what you’re seeing. It won’t exactly replace your smartphone for now because it will need to be tethered to your phone by Bluetooth to make use of cellular data services where WiFi isn’t available. But it will have pretty amazing capabilities, controlled by voice commands. Within the next few months it will be tested out by a corps of volunteers and then made available to the public.

As a science fiction writer, I’ve thought about where this kind of technology will lead us within the next decade or two.

On the good side, it might make it more feasible than ever for you to work from home. Just remember that your boss will want to access the headset feed and see whatever you’re seeing. So no surreptitious glances to catch a few moments of Ellen or Dr. Oz, and be sure to remove the headset when you take a bathroom break.

One or two politicians in the States are already making noise about banning Google Glass while driving (too distracting). But a few years from now I’ll bet police will want us to wear connected headsets, so they can catch us speeding or running red lights, and subpoena the video feeds of accident or crime witnesses. They might get permission for that, too. After all, the F.B.I. is pushing hard right now to be able to monitor cellular calls and texting in real time. And, of course, Homeland Security can get just about anything they want in the name of battling terrorism.

Insurance companies will support the police in these measures. In fact, you can bet they’ll offer reduced premiums if you let them tap your headset feed (and thereby confirm that you’re not smoking, drinking excessively, using drugs, or engaging in high risk behaviours).

But it won’t all be business. What about Reality entertainment? Imagine getting home from work and immediately twinning yourself for the rest of the night with a next-generation Kardashian, or even Lindsay Lohan still milking her notoriety. Why, you wouldn’t have to miss a second of her binge drinking, judge baiting, and rehab sampling. Up close and really personal.

Suddenly those one-way expeditions to Mars don’t sound so bad.

WALL STREET IN SPACE

When you think of space travel, do you think of NASA? The Russian space program? The Chinese government?

Old thinking, because the newest players in space may be taking over the game. I’m talking about global corporate interests. Big money. While governments continue to keep the budgets of organizations like NASA in near-starvation mode, the corporate stars of the world are stepping to the front of the line. People like Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines, Larry Page of Google, Elon Musk from PayPal, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. They’ve been getting together over martinis (or something expensive) and forming new companies to explore—and exploit—outer space. We’ve known for some years that Virgin Galactic plans to fly tourists to the edge of space and back (for $200,000 a crack, thank you very much), and they are getting closer to their first paying trips. I’ve written before about SpaceX, whose Dragon spacecraft are already flying supply missions to the International Space Station. But there are also new startup companies like Moon Express, preparing to build (and use) landers for the Moon. Planetary Resources intends to mine asteroids, and maybe even save us from those threatening meteor strikes we keep hearing about. Deep Space Industries is another would-be mining company. And we shouldn’t forget less commercial, but equally enterprising ventures like Inspiration Mars (mentioned in my last post), planning to send a married couple to Mars in about five years from now, and Mars One, a group that hopes to have a colony on the Red Planet by 2023.

These people are not fruitcakes, but some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the new economy. And their plans sound like fantastic dreams, but they’ve got solid scientists working with them. The space race is going corporate.

Was this inevitable? Since we taxpayers tend to cast our eyes closer to home on our hospitals and our roads, maybe governments just can’t continue to back the exploration of space and it’s up to the moneymakers to do it.

You can see the attraction for them. Talk about your offshore tax havens! Claim an asteroid and make the rules—who’s really going to stop them? Laws? The law of gravity is the only really important one, and it’ll ensure monopolies for the companies rich enough to break it. But lets not forget tourist opportunities: what high roller wouldn’t want to show off to his friends in a casino in Earth orbit, with all of we peasants zipping past below?

By the way, we’ll still be funding all of these ventures—by being the customers of Google, PayPal, Amazon and the like, and then buying the products these new companies bring back from way out there.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. Did you think Columbus sailed to America because he felt like tanning on a new beach?

MARRIAGE MARS-STYLE

Could your marriage stand sixteen months of togetherness with no chance of escape?

If the answer is Yes maybe you should sign up for the trip of a lifetime.

In case you missed it, Inspiration Mars, a private non-profit group, announced last week that they plan to send a man and a woman on a spaceflight to the Red Planet. The mission would involve a straightforward flight to our nearest planetary neighbour, one loop around it at a height of one hundred miles, and then the return to Earth. The proposed launch date is January 5^th, 2018 because at that time Earth and Mars will be in their best alignment for the shortest possible trip (which only happens twice every fifteen years) and, coincidentally, the sun will be at the lowest point of its eleven-year sunspot cycle. That reduces the hazard of solar radiation, although there will still be plenty left—enough that the astro-couple should be past their child-bearing years because the voyage will probably make them sterile. This isn’t just a fantasy: Inspiration Mars has the support of some big (and wealthy) names along with some reputable organizations and companies. The mission is intended to re-inspire the American people and provide an opportunity for important research.

The group wants a married couple so they’ll be able to give each other emotional support over such a long trip, far away from every other living soul.

Is that really the way it would work out? Let’s think about the possibilities:

The Good? Zero-gee sex. The Bad? With the way zero-gravity pools blood in the body, she may have a headache the whole trip.

The good: she’ll know exactly where he is every night. The bad: no girlfriend time…for either of them.

He’ll get to watch TV in the bedroom. On the other hand, if some of the funds come from filming a reality TV show, everyone on Earth could be watching them in the bedroom.

Good: there’ll only be room in the closet for one pair of her shoes. Bad: before the ship clears the orbit of the Moon his dirty socks will be floating everywhere.

He’ll look for any excuse not to shave or bathe. Zero-gee will make them both puffy: try to imagine 501 straight “fat days.”

And then when they turn to Dr. Phil for marriage counseling, it will take four minutes for the TV doctor’s questions to get to them by radio, so he’ll hear each answer eight minutes after he’s asked the question. Dr. Phil’s not that patient.

On the other hand, since the spacecraft won’t actually land on Mars but only make an uninterrupted round trip, that means the husband will be able to travel 374 million kilometers without stopping to ask directions.

This just might work.

PUTTING METEORS TO GOOD USE

Unless you were taking a sabbatical from electronic media last week, or decided to catch up on all the seasons of Dexter in one mad marathon, you know that a 17-meter-wide asteroid exploded over Russia, leaving more than a thousand people injured, mostly from the fragments of windows shattered by the sonic boom. The cleanup was expected to require about twenty thousand workers. The same day saw the asteroid 2012 DA14 fly past the Earth close enough to be inside the orbit of communications satellites, but that asteroid had been tracked and scientists knew it wouldn’t hit us. So why didn’t they know about the meteorite over Russia?

In the vastness of space, pieces of rock that size are too small, too dark, and too fast to be easily seen. It takes a lot of observation time with specialized equipment to spot them, and there could be millions of them.

Scientific American has a great article about the efforts underway to catalogue Near Earth Objects (NEO’s) here and good information about the Russian meteorite here, so I won’t repeat it. But even with those efforts, we won’t have a track on every potentially dangerous object out there anytime soon, and it will be even longer before we can do anything to prevent a serious strike (if ever).

What could we do about them? That’s where science fiction thinking comes in.

Giant laser platforms. Nuclear missiles. Gravity rays. Dozens of ideas have been tossed out over the years—some intended to be practical, others just to serve as plots for movies like Armageddon. My own thought is that we should kill two birds with one stone: develop a system that will sweep up the space debris for safety reasons, but then use it for something worthwhile. Perhaps an electromagnetic scoop system or shield that will absorb and utilize or even distribute the huge kinetic energy these things represent (travelling at speeds of nearly twenty kilometers per second) and then make use of their raw materials in the construction of space platforms, colonies, and spacecraft. Many asteroids have significant metal content, and getting metals from the surface of the Earth into space is terribly costly in energy. Far better if the stuff we need is already up there.

I’m not saying it’ll be easy to engineer something like this, but if we ever do we just might find ourselves wishing for more space rubble out there. Deep Impact? Bring it on!

SPACE EXPLORATION HELPS HERE ON EARTH

When the subject of space exploration comes up many people roll their eyes. Others complain outright about the waste of money. All too often people ask: what’s it for? What are we going to do out there anyway?

The answer to that would be a whole science and science fiction library in itself, so I decided to point out what space exploration efforts are doing for all of us right now, right here on Earth.

Most of us recognize that our whole system of modern communications depends on satellites in Earth orbit, from global phone and cell phone networks, to satellite TV, radio communications, GPS and more. If you think a while you might also remember that observer satellites help predict weather, crop yields, and pest infestations, not to mention giving warning of natural disasters like tornados and hurricanes (and yes, climate change). They can also locate mineral and fossil fuels deposits.

If you’re of a certain age you might remember that the NASA space program gave us Tang, Space Food Sticks, and dehydrated ice cream. But there’ve also been a few spin off benefits you might not know about:

- digital imaging technology created for the Moon landings is used in CT and MRI scanners.

- data storage software created to handle the reams of data from NASA satellites is now used by hospitals and businesses.

- material invented for the parachute shrouds of the Mars Viking landers is the heart of modern radial tires.

- the Jaws Of Life that save people trapped in car wrecks came from the system created to separate the space shuttle from its booster rockets.

- special metal alloys and micro-miniature components produced in space are helping to revolutionize medicine.

Even American speed skater Chris Witty, an Olympic record holder, owes her performance, in part, to skate blades sharpened by a tool created for the optics of the Hubble Space Telescope.

And believe me, those are only a few examples.

It isn’t simply that the mysterious black void of space, sprinkled with pretty sparkling lights has called to us since our cave-dwelling days. It’s the human capacity to look outward: to look beyond our small lives and communities to something larger, which has produced so many benefits we can also enjoy in our regular day-to-day lives.

I hope that never changes.

LET IT SNOW...IN 3D

There’s an old saying that no two snowflakes are alike. Apparently our best proof of that until now was a study from the 1970’s that captured snowflakes and put them between glass layers on microscope slides—a few thousand of them. Talk about an exercise in patience!

Now the science of snowflake research has taken a big leap forward with a specially-developed rig that uses three high-speed cameras and infrared sensors to take thousands of 3D pictures of falling snowflakes in a single night. It’s called the Multi Angle Snowflake Camera and the University of Utah researchers who developed it have already created a spin-off company to manufacture the things.

Why should we care? (Other than the fact that the pictures are really pretty, as you can see.) It turns out that snowflakes can be so different under various conditions that weather forecasters’ computer models (based on those 1970’s snowflakes) can’t accurately predict what they’ll do, which helps explains why forecasts of snowfall amounts can be so wrong. These new cameras might make a big difference. Just for fun, you can even watch a live feed of falling snow at the Alta Ski Area where the research was done (when it’s snowing).

Maybe soon this technology will be able to warn us when we’re going to have to come up with a major bribe for our neighbour with the snowblower.



MISSED US BY THAT MUCH

Astronomers had some good news for us this week. An asteroid called Apophis passed by in its orbit about fourteen million kilometers away from us. But if the name sounds familiar (beyond references in the Stargate TV series) it’s because in 2004 there were alarming predictions that Apophis could strike the Earth. It didn’t then, but scientists calculated that it would come close in 2029, and had a 1 in 250,000 chance of impacting our planet in 2036. Now, Apophis isn’t huge but it’s moving at tremendous speed, so it would cause a lot of local damage if it were to hit us (though not planet-wide extinctions).

This week’s pass gave astronomers a much better look at Apophis. The bad news is that it’s actually bigger than they’d earlier thought—about 325 meters in diameter. But the good news is that the chance of it hitting Earth in 3036 has been downgraded to 1 in more than 7 million.

You might be breathing a sigh of relief (or you might say, “Hey, I still buy lottery tickets.”)

In any case, if you really want an excuse to cry that the sky is falling, there is one asteroid that will actually pass by the Earth closer than the orbit of some satellites this coming February 15^th. It’s called 2012DA14 and it’s about 45 meters across—say, a large building lot.

Checking your home insurance policy fine print for asteroids?

People are already saying we need to wake up and prepare defenses against this kind of hazard, and there are projects in the brainstorming stages, but it will be years before any of them are ready.

For now, we call these objects “near-Earth asteroids”. Maybe one day we’ll call them “target practice”.

MARS, HERE WE COME

It was announced this week that the hunt is now on for colonists for Mars. No, not by NASA (who really believed George W. Bush when he announced plans to go to the Moon and Mars back in 2004, and what’s really been done since then other than some paperwork?) No, I’m talking about a private initiative based in the Netherlands called Mars One which hopes to raise a ton of private money and put human colonists on the Red Planet by 2023. Recruitment will begin over the next few months, and training for the…(dare I call them Martianauts?) will take about eight years.

Chief Medical Director for Mars One, Norbert Kraft, a former Sr. Research Associate at NASA states, “In my former work with NASA we established strict criteria for the selection and training of astronauts on long duration space flights. Gone are the days when bravery and the number of hours flying a supersonic jet were the top criteria. Now, we are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others, in the long journey from Earth to Mars and for a lifetime of challenges ahead. Psychological stability, the ability to be at your best when things are at their worst is what Mars One is looking for. If you are the kind of person that everyone chooses to have on their island, then we want you to apply too.”

You need to be 18 or older, and have lots of other qualifications, but you can read all about it here.

The catch? Well, they have a chance of coming up with a way to get you to Mars, but there won’t be any way to get you back. It’s a one-way trip, and you’ll be alone on a whole planet with the rest of your team for two additional years, until the next group of colonists is expected to arrive.

Do you really feel like getting away from it all? How do prepare yourself mentally for something like that? Watch all the reruns of Gilligan’s Island?

Or maybe just haul out all of those lists that end “...would you take with you to a desert island?”