Humans in Space

Not everyone got caught up in the Mars methane maelstrom though! We have a bunch of great posts about the past, present and future of humans in space and the (awesome) technology that we might use.

OrbitalHub has an interesting article about the historic Soyuz 4/5 mission, which successfully carried out the first docking and crew transfer between two spacecraft 40 years ago.

Collectspace has the answer to the age-old question: “What do the first American to command five space missions, the first commander of the ISS and the first satellite repairman have in common?”

Over at the awesomely named Potentia Tenebras Repellendi, Alexander DeClama will tell you all about the very cool Chariot lunar rover which made an appearance in the inaugural parade. It can drive sideways!

Speaking of the Obama administration, Bruce Cordell at 21st Century Waves outlines ten space trends for 2009 and speculates about how the current issues facing the administration will influence the near-future of the space program.

Sometime in the slightly-less-near future, we will be back on the moon, so before you buy your one-way ticket to the moon base, you will want to take a look at Out of the Cradle and Ken Murphy’s review of a new book about the challenges of establishing a lunar outpost. (Hint: Driving the Chariot rover is the easy part)

Given the new administration’s commitment to energy independence and sustainability, the sun may be shining on Space-Based Solar Power. Alex and Ralph at The Discovery Enterprise have a posted their very interesting debate about whether Space-Based Solar Power is really feasible.

Solar power may also be crucial for our return to the moon, but the long lunar night makes it somewhat problematic. To hear about some ideas to work around this problem, check out the summary of a 1989 paper on “Solar Power for the Lunar Night” at Altair VI.

The problem with all these ambitious plans in space is that it’s really hard, and therefore rather pricey, to launch things into orbit (and beyond). That’s why I was happy to read over at Next Big Future that a Cambridge University team is making progress on creating carbon nanotube ribbons, a vital component of that coolest-of-cool ideas, the space elevator.

Once we have unlimited, cheap access to space, and clean, endless power from space-based solar arrays and are cruising around on the surface of the moon, will we be satisfied? Heck no! We’re going to Mars! And when we get there, we’re going to terraform it! It’s easy! Ethan Siegel over at Starts With a Bang concludes that there are only three things that we would really need to do.

And then, once we have settled Mars and are getting really cocky, we’ll want to start looking for other planets outside our solar system. And after all the work of terraforming, we’ll probably want to just skip that step and look for habitable planets. Luckily, Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams reports that vegetation on distant planets is detectable!