Moon and Venus: Photo

A beautiful night…enjoy!   RT

Moon and Venus: Photo.

Amundsen, Scott, and KSR: How We Get to Mars

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The concept of terraforming Mars has pursued me, in a leisurely kind of way, ever since I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy back in the mid-1990s. I’ve already recommended this excellent near-future science fiction novel set during the settlement and terraforming of the Red Planet. But, as I noted in my last post, getting there is not going to be so easy.

So what do we do? Turn to history, of course! Specifically, I’m thinking of the race to reach the South Pole, which Roald Amundsen won, planting Norway’s flag on the spot on December 14, 1911. Happy 100th Anniversary, Mr. Amundsen and his team!

Let’s not kid ourselves: anyone trying to reach the South Pole in 1911 was taking his chances, pushing the envelop of that era’s technology really hard, and totally committed to the idea of exploration for exploration’s sake. Just to get an idea of how dangerous the enterprise was, let’s consider Amundsen’s competition, the team of Robert Falcon Scott, which reached the South Pole only 34 days after Amundsen. Slightly over a month may not seem like a huge margin in terms of safety, but then we’re talking about the Antarctic. Scott was handicapped by faulty equipment, an unwise choice of ponies over sled dogs, and the encroaching winter. On March 29, 1912, he perished with his men on the Ross Ice Shelf. They were 11 miles from a supply depot. Be that as it may, RT salutes their courage and spirit of adventure!

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I cannot continue without mentioning Ernest Shackleton’s mind-boggling escape from the jaws of death (1914-1917); his ship, the Endurance, trapped and then crushed by pack ice, Shackleton led his men across the ice, then across the ocean in open boats to land on Elephant Island, and finally captained one of the boats in a journey to South Georgia Island, where the local whaling colony was able to mount a  successful rescue of the remaining men on Elephant Island. Not a single life was lost during the voyage. Wow! WOW! This is the stuff of epic!

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So why did Amundsen survive, where Scott failed to return? Careful planning and knowledge of arctic conditions lay at the root of Amundsen’s successful (and at moments, ridiculously easy–they enjoyed a jury-rigged sauna on the way back!) expedition.

Which leads to RT’s suggestion for reaching Mars: place supply depots and at least a couple of rest stations (with saunas, of course!) along the way. Assembling the expedition spacecraft in orbit or at a moon base would also lighten the load.

Yes, with full attention to detail & logistics, the trip to Mars is doable. And here’s to the spirit of discovery!

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Photos: Top: Roald Amundsen; Bottom: Robert Falcon Scott. WikiCmns. Public Domain.

Mars & More (or, Why the Jetsons Got it Right)

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More than any other single image returned by the Mars Rovers (Opportunity and Spirit), this view of Victoria Crater brought home to me the reality of the Red Planet. Though we have learned that the surface of Mars is a frigid desert and its atmosphere thin and poisonous, there is something absolutely terrestrial about the photograph. It could have been taken in any desert on Earth–a crater under a sky dark with dust. All that is missing is a human figure, dressed in burnoose, cowboy hat, or loincloth, it doesn’t matter. In our guts, we know this landscape.

Over the last two decades, America’s robotic exploration of Mars has returned a massive amount of information concerning the atmosphere, climate, and surface of the planet most likely to become New Earth. We know that water once flowed on the surface, that there is an ocean of water lying frozen in subterreanean glaciers, and that some of this water may still escape above ground, where it soon evaporates in the minimal carbon-dioxide atmosphere. And our last planned rover, Curiosity, will arrive at Gale Crater in August of this year with the task of finding signs of life in an area that satellite photography has indicated may well have supported at least primitive lifeforms. Curiosity, by the way, is about five times larger than either of the current rovers.

But that’s it. NASA plans no further landers, only a single orbiter to continue investigating the atmosphere.

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So, you might be wondering, why the sudden lack of enthusiasm? The answer is: the scale of the project. We’ve sent orbiters and rovers to Mars for a few pennies a mile; putting a man on Mars will undoubtedly cost much more than has ever been spent on a manned space mission: Mars is (at closest approach) 36 million miles from Earth; it takes spacecraft 9 months to get there (and, of course, another 9 to return); and the intense solar radiation experienced during transit (and on the surface) might give anyone second thoughts about going.

So, we have to wonder: wouldn’t the money be better spent someplace else (like putting people in houses)?

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Nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough. The question is, how badly do we want Mars? Pretty badly, if we look at the global population explosion. And while there are still large, mostly unpopulated tracts in various places, other locales, say Japan, China, and India, are dealing with population densities that challenge their ability to survive.

Not so incidentally, it is precisely these countries that are entering the Space Club with ambitious unmanned–and manned–missions. India has said it will put a man on the moon by 2020; China plans to follow suit by 2030.

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& it’s not like a country gets nothing from its investments in space; just think of the computer revolution. Why is that the United States seems to be willing to fall behind in applications of technology like high-speed trains; high-density, low-energy housing developments; and space colonization? Are we really going to let someone else build the first space elevator? Whatever happened to American ingenuity and initiative?

RT may be a poet, but he can see that science creates real improvements in quality of life. So what are we going to do?

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Photo: Victoria Crater Seen From its Edge; Opportunity Rover; WikiCmns; NASA-JPL; Public Domain w/ attribution.

Titan–Home, Cold Home!

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Imagine this: a moon covered with frozen gasoline. The surface is certainly diverse: it includes volanoes that spew ammonia, mountains more than a kilometer tall, impact craters more than 440 km wide, and lakes of liquid ethane scattered around the north and south poles-one of which is bigger than Lake Superior. And did I mention the temperature? -290 degrees Farenheit.

That’s Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the second largest moon in the solar system.

What we are talking about here is a doppleganger of earth–a moon where it rains (methane drizzle); that probably sports rainbows (visible in the infrared); and that offers sand-dunes more than 300 meters high (the sand might be composed of organic materials).

Titan is the only moon enveloped by a significant atmosphere–half again as thick as Earth’s–composed mainly of nitrogen, methane, and ethane, with traces of other hydrocarbons. It also the only terrestrial object in the solar system, other than Earth, that features a complete hydrological cycle–liquid raining onto the surface, flowing in rivers into large lakes, and then evaporating back up into the atmosphere.

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Is the doppleganger alive? Maybe. This moon looks more like Earth than any other candidate in the Solar System. Life forms could feed off acetylene and hydrogen–or exist in the hydrocarbon lakes or underneath the surface.

But then, I still think that Europa is our best bet for finding extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

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& for those who are wondering: we owe the beautiful topographical map & just about everything else we know concerning Titan to the Cassini space probe.  RT

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Map: Titan’s Surface; NASA-JPL; WikiCmns; PD w/ attribution.

Music of the Spheres

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It’s been a while since I’ve been on NASA’s Cassini webpage…Cassini, the NASA/ESA spacecraft that hove into orbit around Saturn in 2005 and started sending back mind-blowing images of the planet and its moons. First, it launched the Huygens space-probe, which successfully landed on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, sending back amazing images along the way and from the surface (postcards from a billion miles away), then it started photographing the planet and its other moons, discovering four new moons, Methone, Pallene, Polydeuces, and  Daphnis, as it went about its work. Cassini has also mapped the surface of Titan–the second largest moon in the solar system–with cameras designed to penetrate Titan’s thick, smoggy atmosphere.

And then it discovered the ice geysers on the moon Enceladus.

Whoa! Let’s give the probe an A+ for achievement. So, at some point, I figured the fireworks were over, Cassini had sent back all the amazing data it could.

Wrong! The photo above, taken in May 2011, is as fine as any image the spacecraft has sent us so far. Who knows what else we may discover before the batteries run out on this mission. I’ll do my best to keep you posted.       RT

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Photograph: Saturn’s Moons Titan and Dione Seen Against the Planet’s Rings. NASA website. NASA-JPL. Public Domain w/ attribution.

A Poulter’s Dozen: RT’s Selected Posts, 2011

Remember this little guy? He appeared all the way back in February as a kind of tropical antidote to winter. Now it’s nearly 2012, and soon (but don’t quote me on this), WordPress will be sending us our annual stats & list of most popular posts. It’s a great service, and an e-mail I’ll be posting, but I’m not sure that it’s completely representative of a year that saw more than a hundred posts added to The Rag Tree.

RT’s solution? Make my own selection of 2011′s best, and in particular, those posts that won’t make WP’s Top Five. So here are twelve posts, chosen from across the months, that I have a soft spot for–and think deserve a second viewing:

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1. Print, Applause and $$. January. Perhaps a bit argumentitive, this essay defends my claim: Writing isn’t about getting published; writing is about community. A consideration of the larger issues at play in the writer’s life.

2. Sappho. February. She defined the lyric poem in the West, is perhaps the greatest woman poet who ever lived–and her poetry survives mostly in fragments. Here is my translation of one of her most intense moments.

3. Gliese 581. February. You couldn’t say that it’s a next-door neighbor, but the star Gliese 581 has a mind-boggling solar system, and Gliese 581-g is the most earth-like planet discovered so far. What a vacation!

4. Did Jacob Climb his Ladder? March. For centuries, scholars have been working to identify the sources that were compiled to create the Hebrew Bible. This post introduces the Elohist, the most mysterious of the Bible’s four main sources.

5. Sor Juana. March. A consideration of a woman who has been called Mexico’s greatest poet–and of the more enlightened side of Spanish colonial rule.

6. The Tax to Ceasar. April. Over the centuries, this episode from the Gospels has been used to define Christianity’s relationship to political authority. RT thinks the Tax is just one of the most extraordinary moments in Jesus’s life.

7. The Novgorod Codex. July. The discovery a decade ago of a hyper-palimpsest–a document that contains hundreds of pages of over-written text–has spurred one Russian scholar to extraordinary lengths in deciphering the material.

8. How to Eat an Essay. July. Ladies and gentlemen: tuck in your napkin, pick up your fork and knife, and dig in!

9. A Global Trust Bank? August. It could help track funds used in relief efforts–and other monies, too.

10. Idiolects. September. A big topic, a surprising answer.

11. Pitman Shorthand. October. Working on your first novel? Lighten the load.

12. Confessions of a Disorganized Poet. November. Paper, paper everywhere! I mean, what do you do with all this stuff?

& now for the extra eggs:

13. The Thunder Throne. January. An amazing work of art–created by a black janitor.

14. Ni L’Un, Ni L’Autre. August. OK, OK, it’s one of RT’s own poems; on the other hand, it’s pretty good!

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& here’s to a productive 2012!   RT

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Photo: Microcebus Rufus. Photographer, Alex Dunkel; Camera, Freddie Barber; Modifications, WolfmanSF. Source: Wikipedia; License: CC 3.0 Unported.

Mystery & Perfection: The Sombrero Galaxy

Sometimes things just work out right. We’ll never understand all the reasons, and sometimes there’s no need to. Mystery and perfection…  Happy Holidays!!   RT

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Photo: The Sombrero Galaxy; Source: Hubble Telescope, NASA; WikiCmns; Public Domain w/ attribution.

15 June 763 B.C. (the Bible & the Z Revolution, Part 4)

Plagues and an eclipse of the sun…such were the attendants of Asshur-Dan III, a minor Assyrian king whose reign may nonetheless have marked a turning point in the fortunes of his kingdom–and the entire region.

To call Ashur-Dan’s reign inauspicious might be an understatement; Assyria suffered not one but two outbreaks of plague (in 765 and 759 B.C.), and in the summer of 763, a portentous eclipse darkened the skies–an astronomical event that set off a revolt that lasted until 759. Things got so bad that in 764, the king was unable to carry out a military campaign (something expected of Assyrian monarchs each year). Assyria’s lingering weakness ended only in 745 B.C., when Tiglath-Pileser III seized the throne and instituted a thorough reform of the army and bureaucracy, thus setting the stage for rise of the House of Sargon.

Disaffected Assyrians were not the only people watching the skies in 763. Hosea began his prophetic activities in the 760s, followed by Amos in about 750. Both were active in the Northern Kingdom (Israel)–the fortunes of the Assyrians and their tributaries were in decline.

At bottom, we must ask–did the Assyrians view this eclipse as a signal that their traditional policy of indirect rule through tributary nations (and a loose, semi-autonomous bureaucracy) was inadequate? Did the appearance of first the “E” Source and then the “J” Bible send shock-waves through the Mesopotamian priests and bureaucrats? After all, saddled with the unwieldy cuneiform writing system, they were incapable of producing masterworks of prose literature themselves–and the Israelite documents certainly challenged the Assyrian worldview. Could the Assyrians have construed the Israelite bibles as serious acts of rebellion that had to be dealt with forcefully? If so, the power of these first biblical texts was felt early on.   RT

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Map: Total and Annualar Solar Eclipse Paths, 780-761 B.C. NASA. WikiCmns. Public Domain.

One Tough Moon

Figuring out what happened to Uranus’s moon Miranda is going to keep astrogeologists busy for some time. A close encounter with another moon? Some cataclysm early in the moon’s history? A cold and battered moon, a distant planet, something to ponder in the quiet of winter…  RT

Moon Walk

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DNA evidence suggests that mankind’s exodus out of Africa began 70,000 years ago. We are still at it, and in the next couple of centuries may settle Mars. Then someone or another will overturn (or more likely, complete) Einstein, and we will be hopping from star to star…

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Photo: Buzz Aldrin on the Surface; WikiCmns; NASA; Public Domain.