The Phoenix

Phoenix is well on its way to Mars. This site, http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mission.php, talks about the mission itself, mostly being a lineup of credits from some of the most important (or at least highly ranking) people. The site also details organizations and other contributors to the project, and this time there's actually a serious Canadian contribution. Information on landing site and broad objectives are detailed. So what exactly is there to find on Mars? Hopefully we'll figure that out.

The Viking missions have already been there, though they didn't find much. There are some interesting finds (such as methane, deposits, soil systems, and frozen water) that can suggest the presence of liquid water or life, but it isn't as if they couldn't have been caused by other things, as critics to these theories have noted. With a very low atmospheric pressure relative to Earth's, combined with very low temperatures and the fact that we're having one hell of a time finding visible, liquid water that didn't just fizzle into gas or freeze, life won't be straightforward to find, if it's there. What happens if this mission fails to find life, anyway? That's a question just like if it does pretty much assert that there is, in fact, some form of life, ending that debate. If there's more inconclusive evidence, then will there be another Phoenix mission? Meta-Phoenix? Imagine what would happen if we were to establish permanent residence on Mars and find, after many expensive failures, that there was no life on Mars. Alternatively, it would give us some faith in pursuing such goals if life was found that wouldn't be passive to our serious invasion. If we do find something like life on Mars, will it have all the traditional characteristics of life on Earth, or at least all of the fundamental ones? Might this theoretical life prove to behave as life, but have no genetic code as we know it, or no cellular structure?

In the end, I don't think that, relative to our capabilities, finding life on Mars would have been such an epic and consuming search compared to where we could have had to go, in this scenario. Other solar planets, masses, and beyond are massively more difficult to reach than Mars, even with just robots, as I've repeated incessantly. May the next question be: is there life outside of our solar system? Outside groupings of stars we're in, our area of the galaxy, the galaxy itself, our group, etc? I don't know what would lead the universe to create life restricted in some odd way to a star cluster, but we really don't know yet.

Beyond Extremely Dangerous...

Going into the atmosphere at this point carries risks, but people shouldn't die too often. Going further out gets progressively more dangerous, as the distance to bailing out gets longer and some systems more systems would have to work, for longer, to get a vessel in trouble back to Earth and then land safely. The Moon hasn't happened in a while, but I'm not assured that another mission would meet safety and reliability standards for most people today. We haven't sent people further than that. Mars has weather that might not have been currently insurmountable, if not for the fact that we sometimes don't get satellites that far simply in the void, and then the aforementioned weather is made much more problematic by extreme lack of hospitality (food, unfrozen water, heat). Getting further out in the solar system is even more annoying and then I have to mention going beyond it. That would be interstellar space; with extremely little matter in it and light years to cross in order to find another star, leaving looks a lot like space launch did before aviation.

When we get into the issues of even more dangerous things, like intergalactic voids and black holes, it doesn't seem too fearful to say that maybe those things will sit merrily in theory while humanity concerns itself with the possible. That doesn't get us anywhere. We don't claim to know much about the universe. It may very well be that we'll find something(s) that would allow such travel that we've imagined, and been stumped by. Stations and self-sustaining colonies are interesting theories, but they still have to assume we have technologies we don't have now. I have a saying for this I made up just now: browsing for a future. Humanity is looking around at some things it might be able to pull off, then works on a few of them. In history, things we find weren't in the booklet. They don't ever seem to be in the damn booklet that is our imagination. That isn't entirely true, there are discoveries that have to do with where we want to go. Accidents and wonderfully epic failures usually aren't in the booklet. Thanks, Mr. Observation. Messing up our perfectly conceived universe. At least you make it a bit easier to find Ms. Reality. From step by step to a fell swoop/a few fell swoops, we may yet figure out the hazards of space, and travelling safely.

Adapted Technology

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/spinoffs2.shtml

When I searched 'space inventions' on the Internet, I got a section of the kids zone of the NASA site. Initially I was wondering if I would find anything useful, but there is in fact interesting info over there on what has been adapted from space. Things on Earth based on space research is broad, as I have been led to believe, but what I find really odd is why so many technologies here are based on innovations made for space travel. These are quite obviously based on problems that would usually be mission and life threatening in space. For example, let's take satellite dishes. These, as seen in the site, were used for correctly interpreting noise when data was transmitted. Here, this would be needed for making some forms of wireless communication clearer, like on a TV when images are being sent at a constant rate. Noisy pictures and transmissions could make an incredibly expensive mission fail on account of the information being imprecise or just useless. We also use systematic redundancy in emergency equipment. As here, when emergencies rely on equipment that won't malfunction easily, space exploration requires systems that will not only stay intact in the event of a beating, but another equally tough backup has to be somewhere else and kick in if primary systems fail. A final example, plastics used as cheap, solid, and versatile materials were developed in space for dependable structures that weren't expensive and yet still reliable. Such plastics are now used often for containers of many sorts. In space, circuits were printed onto these plastics, provided with an effective base. Still, why weren't some of these things thought of on Earth, where the uses for all of these are invaluable?

Taking the expression that necessity is the mother of invention, it makes sense here. Though some of these inventions here are even saving lives, they aren't an absolute necessity to existing on this planet. They are all requisite, like others such as advanced imaging, wireless equipment and aerodynamic design on a smaller level for a successful and productive mission. Even if they aren't all completely necessary, it's reasonable to say some other things rode on the wave of discovery of space technology. This is possibly the greatest immediate benefit of space; we come up with technology that's excellent here, but would take a long time to come up with without pushing ourselves and finding it through a direct problem in space. If we were to find all those things easily just by thinking of them without space it would be great, but it doesn't look like such numerous, similar realizations come up without some sort of other problem we try to solve.

In other news, for all those getting time off due to spring break, it's over now. Depressing as it may be, another day or two off is coming up due to Easter. Thank you March! I hope everyone had a nice break (or just a nice week like any other), I'll be waiting through April and May for the part of summer with a lot of time off in it. Thanks for reading (as I always wish, if I don't ever actually write it...)!

Bio Energy? (In Space!)

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article2331.html

I thought this looked very intriguing. Not only here did they have ideas for using very self-sustaining biological ideas here, there were a good number. Let's see... using microorganisms that generate current with sugar, doing the same with waste and pollution products (biological and industrial, take your pick!), protein surfaces that could produce some combination of power from radiation and kinetic sources, and more bacteria that could take the waste of other energy producing bacteria in a cascading effect. Power aside, some algae in the process could take waste CO2 and give oxygen! These sources alone would run out at a point, and the effectiveness awaits testing. However, even if it isn't massively efficient, we can modify the bacteria or even chose other candidates as we please to see if anything better is available. Even using these on a short trip would conserve a decent amount of resources for life support when in spacecraft. Innovative ideas like this work sometimes, check it out!

Also, happy spring break! In addition, I forgot a few months ago... happy winter holidays. There, I finally said it. To all the people who come here, have a nice break, I'm going to assume that if you come here you deserve it :).

United States 2006 Policy: Privitization and More Ownership

"...departments and agencies shall: ...

-Continue to include and increase U.S. private sector participation in the design and development of United States Government space systems and infrastructures;

-Refrain from conducting activities that preclude, deter, or compete with U.S. commercial space activities, unless required by national security or public safety;

-Ensure that United States Government space activities, technology, and infrastructure are made available for private use on a reimbursable, non-interference basis to the maximum practical extent, consistent with national security..."



http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/usa/SpacePolicy2006.pdf



Of course, why would a country like the United States seriously restrict space commercialization? This ties deeply into the previous idea of who owns space anyway, but this starts to go into companies, their ties to countries, and how those relations work. Sovereignty over space can be hotly disputed, but large economic powers like the U.S. can unleash the might of capitalism all over space and claim it has basically nothing to do with them! Through a subtle system of regular taxation and piggybacking, the benefits would have enormous potential, keeping loose laws would draw the business to the States, and the economy would have a new source! Brilliant! Still, other countries could do the same. The next major space breakthrough could happen anywhere, seeing as the EU, Japan, China, India, and friends are all working towards space observation and advancement too. This is still a major unresolved factor (or unresolved factors) of who gains power in space first, if it even happens. It could happen that a country or a private entity would gain new access, and this would seriously influence how the whole story would play out. The U.S. is saying that they will make working in space fairly straightforward, in essence, don't threaten the people and the people won't threaten you. The exploiting of space can happen fairly easily here in the United States.

This is probably the conclusion of my analysis of the U.S.' space policy, but I've given it already three installments. This fairly substantial attention, I believe, is well justified, because of their current status as an economic superpower. As I have said before, their influence, if different in decades to come, will likely still be felt. Policy will almost certainly morph dramatically when capabilities improve as such (policy, after all, is supposed to be based on reality, which is usually different than expectations), meaning that the current ideas will be very different at the time and possibly entirely different concepts will emerge, smaller areas could be magnified intensely with what comes next. My opinion is that for the initial stages of space commercialization, a watchful eye should be kept on activities, especially where people are directly involved with getting farther from earth. However, for the industries to bloom, some liberties will likely be needed. I eagerly anticipate the budding ideas that look into the short term, for the future gets exponentially fuzzier the farther out we go. Sticking closer to the present can see more planned discoveries, the little steps that are more likely to occur as planned.

United States 2006 Policy: Ownership of Space

The title is somewhat misleading, in that it stands for what is more or less not to the document:

"The United States rejects any claims to sovereignty by any nation over outer space or celestial bodies, or any portion thereof, and rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in an acquire data from space."

-Fas.org, U.S. National Space Policy

There doesn't appear to be any section in the policy to suggest that the U.S. would disallow themselves from taking control of aspects of space, as the assumption would be that the U.S. wouldn't and thus shouldn't mention it, or they would deem themselves empowered to seize aspects of space to fight... whichever war that may be plaguing the world at any time. Of course... how will space (likely the celestial bodies) be shared among humanity in research? With spatial commercialization, as well as war, establishing how research entities far beyond Earth's atmosphere function and who would be in charge of it. I theorize the UN or a similar power with the idea of representing Earth as a whole would be in charge of it, but a solution that simple would be miraculous in the event it held out in the long run. If we figure out how to efficiently colonize, or simply establish a colony, regardless of the initial cost, that has the capability of eventually producing its worth, then there's doubtless going to be debate about the power structure out there. It might not be a bad idea for such establishments to become self-governing, if not self-sufficient for awhile, in the event of a permanent presence.

In the end, I believe that there will be ownership issues to sort out that will likely come to be in the long-term, if it comes to be at all. Establishment of elsewhere in space will have politics tied in, but in what way may or may not be a total mystery from the thoughts at the present. One of my favorite authors, John Scalzi, had very interesting scenarios in his trilogy of Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and especially the more politically focussed and final The Last Colony. In these books, humanity and its numerous colonies are all tightly governed by a greater power, the Colonial Union. The CU is technically all-powerful within humanity, as it is truly the power controlling the links to all colonies. They control communications, as well as having the definitive Department of Colonization (DoC) and the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF). Alltogether, the CU has total control of humanity in space matters (which is most of what concerns humanity, what with there being hundreds of other major sentient, space-faring races, many of which are actively at war with humanity). The CU, being all-controlling, has very important ups and downs. Some of the negatives include vice-like grip on information flow and massive secrecy, extremely aggressive space diplomacy, constant lying about greater intentions in space, non-democratic system, etc. Positives, however, include greater coordination of humanity's power as a result of being the sole power (no internal wars occur on an interplanetary scale, technology is for the most part freely circulating, etc). These books include massively advanced technology, including the ability to use multiple universes to instantaneously travel from one place to another, actually transferring conciousness from one body to another, nanotechnology that can assemble into incredible constructs extemely quickly, and the like. So given advances humanity may never have, how would we manage the power?

United States 2006 Policy: Scope

http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/usa/SpacePolicy2006.pdf

Space policy of various powers could easily be critical building blocks of any sort of unified space program in the future. In my search for such policies, I first found what the U.S. had to say in 2006. Considering my deep-space outlook (think edge of the known universe; kiloparsecs), I was mildly annoyed yet not really surprised to read this in the "Goals" section:

"Implement and sustain an innovative human and robotic exploration program with the objective of extending human presence across the solar system."

-Fas.org, U.S. National Space Policy

Solar system? That's only one star! One star with only a handful of objects we give the 'dignity' of being called planets! Of course, we hardly know how blow a craft out to Pluto and get mere information back, never mind pushing the stakes up a few orders of magnitude and going off to the nearest star. This doesn't sound promising. With policy for recent times, the whole idea of going into space that we understand mostly in theory make it's way mostly into fantastical musings, like my own. Is that where they'll stay? I believe that step by step, we may yet reach beyond the boundaries of this star system, and to use something I've practically singlehandedly clichéd, to test the boundaries of beyond with matter we send to gather, and maybe even retrieve...

Space Policy in the Twenty First Century: War

War affects a lot of things, including... space. However, space is one of the things that affects war back. In the days of the Cold War, the war was primarily affecting space, and the race for the moon in turn affected how people looked at the war and the powers fighting it. This went back and made its mark on the war. The Cold War was greatly a war of internal stability too. Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had to deal with raging problems of one kind or another at home, and it was ultimately the latter that couldn't deal with the problems it was coughing up and dissolved. Though the mission to the Moon, the previous, and the later missions didn't culminate in weapons and combat, they had the potential for incredible power. Though not used to nearly the fullest extent, these technologies have come to fruition. That being, there isn't much justification for using such power today. The consequences for launching an ICBM these days would be fierce, to put it very lightly. Still, defences against space-based offenses are researched and used (orbital defence systems). Back in the Cold War, there was still more direction. The book discussed the drive of Apollo, and how such motivation and money could possibly never be found again in space. That was the time when the war against communism drove America to those kinds of expenditures, but that's been over for awhile. I don't see the faintest sign or omen of a space race against Al-Qaeda.

I don't doubt that going much farther in space will require virtual world peace. Every power that has even a shred of usable resources and/or can cause chaos would need to be in on the program, or just not interrupt. A program could be anything previously mentioned, such as a mission to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto... and simply further...

Space Policy in the 21st Century (Lambright): Part 1

I was very fortunate when my dad handed me this book. Admittedly, he's found most of the material, and I've really been writing about what I read. I barely know where to look, be he's fixing that. Recently he gave me this book and told me that I really shouldn't lose this book. I've only read a small part of it, but I too now see it has much to tell me and anyone who would read it about how people think about space.




There are three underlying (and often overlying) goals in space that remain fairly constant that the book brought up: commercialization, science, and human exploration. The first is fairly well established in the form of satellite communication. Though that's the only major component that has any legs yet, it's still massive and has revolutionized how we send information across the planet. However, there isn't much else in the way of humanity's personal presence (the I.S.S. is first of all property of governments, and it's hardly a solid, permanent, bustling place). This goes into people actually being in space. Though there are plans for space tourism, a crewed mission to Mars doesn't have the technological strength to get there, have someone take a step, and fly back off. The shuttle is aging, and what can we do to replace it? Though an enduring design, we need something more efficiant. Maybe a new design for a ship, or maybe a new method of safely moving an object from the Earth would solve questions of efficiancy and safety, or just improve our current situation. One of the goals of the project is to find what we're working on right now for human spaceflight, but all I've seen so far is satellites and trips into low-G.



The last thought here is science. This looks like a completely different story. Thought it obviously hasn't gone far in getting people out into the void and has had some serious success in satellites and even materials develloped in space that we use on earth, the science behind it all is going mad with findings. We cannot go out and even examine a black hole with a robotic scout, nor can we send one to draw information from other stars, or floating space objects that could be rocks, gaseous masses, forms of dead star, or the great undefined forces that continue to puzzle us. However, we know they're there. We have seen these things, and we know what some of them are made of (namely stars, the ones that are on fire) by breaking down the spectrum of colours emitted. We 'see' black holes by the lack of any light escaping, and the trajectories of surrounding objects. We see galaxies as massive areas of illumination, we see supernovas when they occur, as the usual occurance (as far as we know) is violent enough to give off the light of a galaxy. We can observe other forms of radiation given off by such violent events, forming models of what we think happened. On the very deeply theoretical level, there are forces we don't understand at work, which is collectively referred to as 'dark matter'. Dark matter accounts for much more than normal matter, from what we can draw, and we only know it functions in ways that require us to rethink physics. Though much of this science doesn't do much for us down here, it's so fascinating many people can't take their eyes off of it. There's also speculation that some day we'll be hit by a meteor. Through several false alerts from objects that look threatening, it's still nice to know we'll see it coming. Through observing other celestial bodies we even know fairly well what the earth is doing around the Sun and where all the other planets are, their trajectories, etc. Withough actively doing much staring into the universe remains my funnest roller-coster ride of space talk.

Going into the book, I know that we the humans of Earth have our hands full trying not to annihilate ourselves. How many people care right now? Can we still afford to pursue these studies right now or ever?
What are we going to do anyway?

Weightless tourism!

http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/297780

We push for space tourism... will we make it? For the millions that some people have payed to get into orbit and float a while, this isn't much. The "Mothership" of the travel looks more like a plane than a command ship, and it basically is. However, it can go fairly close to areas of very low G, and then a rocket can be launched from its centre safely, where it will fly farther out and then dip back to the earth. The plane could also, possibly, provide cheap transport and launching for satellites. So this is a craft that can obviously stand conditions further away from Earth than the average plane and have things launched from it. Will this mean a baby step taken so long ago become not only visited territory, but truly an outer domain of humanity?

The project is scheduled to be ready in two years, and industry almost certainly pounce at such an opportunity. However, will this be done on time? In addition, well... will it work? The plan is only to take a short 'dip' into low-G for a couple hundred thousand dollars, hang on nothing for a few minutes, and then drift back down here. The height is around 15.5k metres from sea level, so we're talking not even twice the height of Everest here. We are talking people who are paying and expecting not to die. Space is notorious for making a mockery of models, but we've improved. This is also a lot closer than the greater virtual void to which we dare not send extensively trained astronauts yet. Mars, technically our neighbor, has an order of magnitude of hundreds of millions of kilometres when measured from us. That's close compared to all the other planets, objects, and major groups of objects around the solar system. All that aside, can we pull 15.5 thousand kilometres as a lucrative tourism business?

My opinion is that there will be setbacks. All it takes is lemon juice. But I think it will at very least get some decent swing.

Other people musing... about colonies.

http://www.l5development.com/d_space_sys/d_colony/b_Design/DesignTheory.php

Here, volume, mass, gravity, area, etc. calculations were made in planning a colony ship, using sophisticated math (or, if not as sophisticated as it appears, then a lot of arithmetic. Compared to other models it may or may not be considered big, but the estimate for materials is 1.6 million metres cubed of materials, enclosing 46 million cubic meters of volume. Now, of course, the environment for structures is very different in space than on earth. First, collapse works very differently; it could usually only be crushed by its own mass, which would require some serious size and/or rotation. It could also risk obliteration or massive loss of course if another body's gravitational pull was great enough to affect our structure. Satellites can ignore many of the things mentioned here, because they're small, orbiting slowly and relatively safely around the earth, and they don't usually have to survive impact with a planet (however gentle). A colonial ship would not only have to brave all the bits of debris that floated around space at very high speeds, it would have to get its human cargo off onto another planet safely. If we can't just teleport or shoot people off the craft, then the craft likely has to go down too. First, if it can survive its incredible bulk being launched off of the earth (if possible, an assembly station off of Earth), then it has to survive entry into another planet too. If each cubic meter of material weighs an average of 15kg (likely more), and then the craft loses, say, 1million tons of material (propellant and small amounts of unreusable waste?), then that's 15million tons of stuff that has to survive planetfall. Now, even if said planet has very low G, we're trying to get 15 million tons in a 46 million cubic metre thing to unload cargo into another major gravity well. Good luck working those physics (not too much sarcasm).

The technology for a self-sustaining environment of such, to me, doesn't seem incredibly far off, if we can't do it already. Small systems of plants and animals, in a jar, with sunlight and usually in water, have worked. Making it spin around in space and resist the forces it will create (rotating decks big enough to produce around a G) is a challenge. Part of the challenge here is getting incredibly strong materials with various properties to suit the needs of craft and passengers. Another dead end question that only continued research can come up with a real answer to.

Closer to Home

Most of the things we've done in space have actually been right here at Earth, relative to what we've seen (most of which has spent billions of years in an unknown to us). Orbiting around the Earth, satellites represent most of what we've actually sent into space. When talking about space, we have great ambitions for launching things ('things' because we don't know now what these 'things' will actually be) much further than our significant gravitational pull and even our solar system. Great projects like finding a new place for humanity, life outside of our solar system, and unlocking the mysteries of the enigmatic, from supermassive objects to mathematical manifestations, have so far not even had a decent planning stage initiated. What we've done with satellites, in communications between distant places, observing geographic phenomena, and studying the composition of our atmosphere and space, in both physical and energetic ways, have been massively rewarding for us. Warning systems for natural disasters are now realistic and in motion, and we can send signals around the globe like never before. Eventually there is the slightest chance we may extend into the stars, but for now we should think both on that level on down where we are still advancing life at home.

Robots in Space!

Space exploration, to date, has a number of steps its fundamental planning. The first is observation from Earth (or, even from a while ago, from Earth's orbit). All the sensors for information that we can receive are assembled, checked, run, checked again, and then we ponder the results. The second part is the vaguest, yet among the most immediate concerns to physical exploration: theorising with regards to what's there, the obstacles that need facing and/or piles of cosmic trivia that ends up useful immediately or later on, all based on part one. Part three is building the craft. All it takes is lemon juice to mess this part up, but it can be used more creatively in other parts to similar effect. Once the explorer is constructed, it's time to fire it off wherever it's going; part four. With the potential to yield the massive fruit of all the other parts, there are various ways this could be designed to end (either it makes it back to earth ok, it crashes on earth, or it's just annihilated by the environment it's observing*).

Though the article wasn't solely related to this point, "Interplanetary Pioneers" from Space: 50 Years and Counting, it goes over the basics of what spacecraft were capable of and what we want them to do now. Among the things I read here that I found interesting was that the Moon is theorized to have once been part of the Earth, but some event split us apart "in the early days of the solar system". Probe launches in the future and more or less recent past include:

U.S.:
-Clementine (1994)
-Lunar Prospector (1998)
-Messenger (2004)

India:
-Chandrayaan 1 (2008)

E.U. with Japan:
-BepiColombo (2013)

*"Some simply fell silent, their fates shrouded in mystery."
( Space: 50 Years and Counting, 2007)

Musing....

Research is going to be the main element of this project. Information is the name of the game; statistics, reports, thoughts, etc. I'm not one to try to predict what humanity will have in the future based on vague ideas and no deep insight into the science, for science fiction has a history of being so hilariously wrong it's scary and confusing. Still, necessity is the mother of invention. Even if it may not seem necessary at this point (or never be necessary at all), we also have some technology that we don't really need (think... yellow food colouring?). Though advances of some sort or another happen fairly frequently, we often don't know where they're going. Scientific discovery has a tendency to bob and weave like a drunk trying to get to an ever-changing destination. Still, there is destination, there is drive, and every small step can be on the course or way off. The groundbreakers, the discoveries that completely overhaul (or solidly reinforce) a great swathe of science, those behave in pretty much the same manner.





When going about space theoretically, we can see (in some way or another) a very, very long distance. However, considering light travels at about 299,792 km/s in a vacuum, we don't even see an instantaneous rendition of our hands in front of our faces (and it takes even more time for your eyes to process and send the information to your brain, which in turn has to realize it just saw your hand). When looking into space distances measured in light years and parsecs (which are roughly three light years), the measurement itself is stating it takes that much time for the light to come back in years... if all it's crossing is vacuum. So we are, in fact, only seeing the light that is arriving ATM. Information can only go that fast; the tentative experiments upon information going faster than light have yielded no useful results. I've been doing some reading, and so far I've found (and been handed) some papers that looked like they could tell me something. So far I've read Space--How Far We Have Come, How Far There Is to Go by Steve Kilston and Ed Friedman. I didn't find anything that truly startled me. I would be at least somewhat concerned if I did; the predictive paper was written in 2000, and so far it was wrong (more explanations in another post).

I have more papers left to read, and I will find many, many more. I will interview people (I have at least one person I might be able to find). At the end of this project, I plan on being able to speak somewhat more meaningfully on how projects are coming along, and how they can be expected to continue.

Preliminary Info

Ok world, I'm going on a winding path to the point because I'm not sure how to introduce a blog. I'm currently working on the (yes, the) major science project in my grade and course (grade 9 extra science). I'm required to commit to an active component of the project (that isn't a report). I landed on the idea of a blog. Basically I thought this would be a great way to get my lazy self into the world of Web 2.0. And by interactive web, I mean a bit more than online games. Throughout the life of this blog (which will be until a bare minimum of until April 08), I will document all of my work, observations and musings on this blog about my grand project. What is this project?

The Practical Use of Space Exploration to Humanity.