Category: Technology

I’m surprised by how much interest there was in the Mars post.  I guess one would expect that Mars colonization would appeal to gun nuts.  What better place to go to be left the hell alone by the powers that be?   But as much as the idea of sending people off to Mars to colonize it is appealing, I think the engineering challenges of keeping people on Mars would be just as daunting, if not more daunting, than bringing them back.

Mars is an incredibly hostile planet to human life.  It has an unbreathable atmosphere that is 100 times thinner than that of Earth.  This translates into very cold temperatures, and much higher radiation levels.  Mars is also only about a tenth of the mass of Earth, which translates into about a third of the gravity .  Mars’ average surface temperature is -63 degrees centigrade, and can hit lows of -140 degrees centigrade.   Mars also has no magnetic field, so solar storms can send unsafe levels of radiation to the Martian surface.

The only way humans are going to survive on Mars is to bring along an ample supply of food, a sustainable energy source, a way to manufacture breathable air, and enough construction equipment and materials to bury a habitat underground.  And all this will have to be done while in space suits, because Mars is too hostile and too cold to just walk around with a heavy coat and breathing apparatus on.  Humans on Mars would be totally dependent on supplies from Earth. and would probably require a steady stream of materials and equipment to be launched.

And after constructing a habitat on Mars, we don’t know whether we could get crops to grow, what effect the low gravity environment would have on humans or other animals we’d need to sustain a colony.  We don’t know how easy it will be to get liquid water on Mars.

I think humans will have a colony on Mars eventually, but I think sending scouting missions, where the astronauts come back, is going to be easier as a first step than jumping right to colonization.  With current technology and costs, I’m afraid any one way trip to Mars isn’t going to be much better than a suicide mission.

The New York Times ponders a one-way-trip to Mars:

There is, however, a way to surmount this problem while reducing the cost and technical requirements, but it demands that we ask this vexing question: Why are we so interested in bringing the Mars astronauts home again?

Apparently there’s no shortage of people who would be willing to take a one way trip, knowing that would mean they die on Mars.  For me, a successful mission means bringing the astronauts home again.  It wouldn’t have mattered much if Christopher Columbus had sunk in the Caribbean, never returning home to tell everyone of the New World.  No, a successful mission has to bring the explorers home.  The problem is that space is full of radiation, and shielding is expensive and heavy.

I’ve pretty much lost all faith in government space initiatives.  I do think we’ll go to Mars.  But we’ll go to Mars because there’s money in it.  If someone is willing to take a one-way-trip, there’s someone else who will pay a lot of money to go and return.  All we need is for private industry to make it cheap and routine.

Ran out to the Apple Store in King of Prussia yesterday to pick up a copy of Snow Leopard.  Installation went off without a hitch, and the main reason I decided to upgrade quickly, which were the time machine speedups, seem to work OK.  The integration of Apple Mail with Exchange 2007 seems to work well.  My iCal synchronizes with my Exchange calendar just fine, and the e-mail part works fine too.   I’m happy about this because it gives me an opportunity to stop using Entourage, which works fine, but is a bit more slow and bloated compared to Mail.  I also switched to using Safari instead of Firefox, because it’s much faster, so I thought I’d give it another chance.  We’ll see how it goes.

If American immigration policy had any brains at all, which it does not, we’d find this guy and offer him a green card.  Anyone who builds a helicopter out of spare parts and flies it to 2600 feet based on a middle school physics education and what he managed to find on his cell phone browser is OK in my book.

Every range is going to need one of these.  Total geek factor.

Glenn Reynolds has an interesting link on “100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About.”  I’ve set IRQs before, but anyone who rembers NuBus knows this was the inferior way.  It was nice when PCs finally caught up.  What things am I too young to remember doing?  Not much.  Definitely remember using Mosaic for the first time.  I remember Gopher and Archie, and I’ve uudecoded more than a few things in my life.  I still have a lot of negatives on disk film somewhere.  This list had to have been made by guys in their mid 30s.  You know, at some point, I should probably look at getting all the video footage from when I was a kid, all on 8mm, transferred over to DVD.

UPDATE: How many have kid pictures on this medium?  How many kids today will know that the term “slides” in power point actually dervives from this, and also the term “Slideshow” in image programs.

This looks really neat, and would be a great training tool, but I suspect I’d get one nasty case of simulator sickness.

Kevin Baker was there, but has the TV broadcast from 40 years ago.  I would never see one.  The last Saturn V rocket was launched a year before I was born.  Most children grow up dreaming of visiting other worlds, but this guy actually grew up and built rockets that did it.  I think the era of public manned space programs is probably nearing an end.  This is the future of space travel.  I hope that in my lifetime, I will also get to see men walk on other worlds.

Due to the recent departure from my company of the only other Mac user, I have acquired a new MacBook Pro 15″, and begun to use it.  For two years I’ve used my own personal laptop for work matters, so I figured it was time to use a company computer once again.  I even have one of the new chicklet keyboards.

The only difference, other than being a bit faster, and various other things you’d expect from a more modern laptop, is that it has a glossy screen rather than a matte screen.  Every machine and LCD display I’ve had up until now has been matte.  I’m not sure how I feel about glossy.  On the one hand, the glossy display is pretty clearly more crisp and true, but I can also see myself in it, which I find annoying.  But I love the clarity and sharp contrast of the display.

One of my other pet peeves about monitors is fingerprints.  I hate them.  I have long loathed people coming into my office and putting their booger hooks all over my display.  With matte displays, I’ve found some measure of relief from my obsession with clean glass, but now the obsession is back with the glossy display.  I actually had to get a matte screen filter for my iPhone, because I couldn’t deal with the fingerprints.

The last leg of today’s virtual flying was from Ryan’s Creek Airport on Stuart Island, New Zealand, to Sydney International Airport in Sydney, Australia, following a course along the Tasman Sea.  I have to say, even in a virtual world, southern New Zealand is quite beautiful.  I continue to be impressed by how much flight simulators have improved since I was younger.  While I still would not get in a plane with myself, at least my landing in Sydney would be in the realm of respectable, I think.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4NRsQG-eEo[/youtube]

X-Plane has a feature that allows you to record flight footage as if you had a camcorder in the pilot’s seat.  I’ve always enjoyed approaches over water, where as you dip closer and closer to the drink, you look to the guy next to you and think “I hope you like fish.”  Only at the last minute to have a runway roll out underneath you.  Sydney would seem to be one of those approaches.

The Cirrus Vision being simulated here likes to be in the air, and can land even at low speed under full flaps.  I find it to be very easy to fly compared to some of the other jets available within X-Plane.