by Chris Impey
8: The Next Space Race
1. “Profiles of Government Space Programs 2014” published by Euroconsult, with a summary analysis online at http://spaceref.biz/commercial-space/global-spending-on-space-decreases-for-first-time-in-20-years.html.
2. “China: The Next Space Superpower” by E. Strickland 2013, a detailed analysis for IEEE Spectrum magazine, online at http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/china-the-next-space-superpower.
3. China’s Space Program: From Conception to Manned Spaceflight by B. Harvey 2004. Dordrecht: Springer-Verlag.
4. Hadfield’s video went viral on YouTube, attracting more than 22 million views. But he only had agreement from David Bowie to keep it up for a year, so it was taken down in May 2014.
5. Reported by Space Daily, online at http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China_launches_longest-ever_manned_space_mission_999.html.
6. “Chinese Super-Heavy Launcher Designs Exceed Saturn V” by B. Perrett 2013. Aviation Week, online at http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_09_30_2013_p22-620995.xml.
7. Online reporting from Space.com, at http://www.space.com/14697-china-space-program-military-threat.html, and http://www.space.com/25517-china-military-space-technology.html.
8. “The Man Who Says He Owns the Moon” by R. Hardwick, article and interview on Motherboard, online at http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-man-who-owns-the-moon.
9. The full text of the treaty, in English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, is on the United Nations website at http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html.
10. The committee was formed in 1959 by the UN General Assembly. There are seventy-six member states taking part, and it held its 57th session in 2014 in Vienna. There are two standing subcommittees: Scientific and Technical, and Legal. The website is http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/COPUOS/copuos.html.
11. The UN Moon Treaty entered into force after being ratified by five countries in 1984. The full text is online at http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html.
12. “Is NASA’s Plan to Lasso an Asteroid Really Legal?” by L. David 2013, at the Space.com website: http://www.space.com/22605-nasa-asteroid-capture-mission-legal-issues.html.
13. Quoted in the article “To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: Culture, Law, and Ethics in Space-Faring Societies” by L. Billings, presented in 2006 at the 21st annual conference of the International Association for Science, Technology, and Society.
14. Michael Griffin, quoted by Linda Billings in chapter 25 of Societal Impact of Spaceflight, ed. by S. J. Dick and R. A. Launius, NASA Special Publication NASA-SP-4801, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC. Peter Diamandis is quoted in “The Final Capitalist Frontier” by M. Baard, in Wired magazine, online at http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2004/11/65729.
15. “The Space Elevator: A Thought Experiment or the Key to the Universe?” by A. C. Clarke, in Advances in Earth Oriented Applied Space Technologies, Vol. 1, 1981. London: Pergamon Press, pp. 39–48. See also “The Physics of the Space Elevator” by P. K. Aravind 2007. American Journal of Physics, vol. 45, no. 2, p. 125.
16. The state of the art just after nanotubes were developed was given in “Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millennium,” compiled by D. B. Smitherman Jr., NASA Publication CP-2000-210429, based on findings from the Advanced Space Infrastructure Workshop on Geostationary Orbiting “Space Elevator” Tether Concepts, held at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in June 1999. Since that time, Bradley Carl Edwards has pursued the carbon nanotube route to a space elevator with the support of NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts.
17. As with suborbital flight, progress has been spurred by a series of competitions similar to the Ansari X Prize. Elevator: 2010 ran challenges every year from 2005 to 2009 and NASA raised the prize money, using its Centennial Challenges program. Meanwhile, the Europeans started their own competition in 2011.
18. “Carbyne from First Principles: Chain of C Atoms, a Nanorod, or a Nanorope?” by M. Liu et al. 2013. American Chemical Society Nanotechnology, vol. 7, no. 11, pp. 10075–82.
19. Space Elevators: An Assessment of the Technological Feasibility and the Way Forward by P. Swan et al. 2013. Houston: Science Deck Books, Virginia Edition Publishing Company.
20. “The Economic Benefits of Commercial GPS Use in the United States and the Costs of Potential Disruption,” by N. D. Pham, June 2011, NDP Consulting, online at http://www.saveourgps.org/pdf/GPS-Report-June-22-2011.pdf.
21. “The Economic Impact of Commercial Space Transportation on the U.S. Economy in 2009,” a 2010 report by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
22. “Space Tourism Market Study: Orbital Space Travel and Destinations with Suborbital Space Travel,” an October 2002 report by the Futron Corporation, Bethesda, Maryland. A more recent report by the FAA, “Suborbital Reusable Vehicles: A Ten-Year Forecast of Market Demand,” reaches similar conclusions.
23. Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets by J. S. Lewis 1998. New York: Basic Books.
24. “Orbit and Bulk Density of the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroid (101955) Bennu” by S. R. Chesley et al. 2014. Icarus, vol. 235, pp. 5–22.
25. “Profitable Asteroid Mining” by M. Busch 2004. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 57, pp. 301–5.
9: Our Next Home
1. The working group’s deliberations are described in the epilogue to “Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft” by C. G. Brooks, J. M. Grimwood, and L. S. Swenson 1979, published as NASA Special Publication 4205 in the NASA History Series.
2. “Costs of an International Lunar Base” by J. Weppler, V. Sabathier, and A. Bander 2009, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, online at https://csis.org/publication/costs-international-lunar-base.
3. “How Wet the Moon? Just Damp Enough to Be Interesting” by R. A. Kerr 2010. Science, vol. 330, p. 434, and a subsequent set of research articles in the special issue of Science.
4. “Mining and Manufacturing on the Moon,” from the Aerospace Scholars program, online at http://web.archive.org/web/20061206083416/http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/cirr/em/6/6.cfm; and “Building a Lunar Base with 3D Printing,” a research program at the European Space Agency, online at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Technology/Building_a_lunar_base_with_3D_printing.
5. “The Peaks of Eternal Light on the Lunar South Pole: How They Were Found and What They Look Like” by M. Kruijff 2000. 4th International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon (ICEUM4), ESA/ESTEC, SP-462. Also: “A Search for Lava Tubes on the Moon: Possible Lunar Base Habitats” by C. R. Coombs and B. R. Hawke 1992. Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century (SEE N93-17414 05-91), vol. 1, pp. 219–29.
6. “Lunar Space Elevators for Cislunar Space Development” by J. Pearson, E. Levin, J. Oldson, and H. Wykes 2005, Phase 1 Final Technical Report under research subaward 07605-003-034, submitted to NASA.
7. Information is routinely updated online at http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/.
8. “Estimation of Helium-3 Probable Reserves in Lunar Regolith” by E. N. Slyuta, A. M. Abdrakhimov, and E. M. Galimov 2007. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference XXXVIII, pp. 2175–78.
9. “Nuclear Fusion Energy—Mankind’s Giant Step Forward” by S. Lee and L. H. Saw 2010. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Nuclear and Renewable Energy Sources, pp. 2–8.
10. “China Considers Manned Moon Landing Following Breakthrough Chang’e-3 Mission Success” by K. Kremer, as reported in Universe Today, online at http://www.universetoday.com/107716/china-considers-manned-moon-landing-following-breakthrough-change-3-mission-success/.
11. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 1898. London: Bell, quote from chapter 1.
12. “Metastability of Liquid Water on Mars” by M. H. Hecht 2002. Icarus, vol. 156, pp. 373–86. Also:
“Ancient Oceans, Ice Sheets, and the Hydrological Cycle on Mars” by V. R. Baker et al. 1991. Nature, vol. 352, pp. 589–94. More recent discoveries are covered in “Introduction to Special Issue: Analysis of Surface Materials by the Curiosity Mars Rover” by J. Grotzinger 2013. Science, vol. 341, p. 1475, and subsequent articles in the special issue of Science magazine.
13. Water on Mars by M. H. Carr 1996. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14. The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by R. M. Zubrin and R. Wagner 1996. New York: Simon & Schuster; Mars on Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic by R. M. Zubrin 2003. New York: Bargain Books; How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet by R. M. Zubrin 2008. New York: Three Rivers Press. His most recent book brings Mars exploration up to date with the Mars Direct proposal using the DragonX rocket: Mars Direct, Space Exploration, and the Red Planet by R. M. Zubrin 2013. New York: Penguin.
15. NPR Science Friday interview, online at http://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137555244/is-settling-mars-inevitable-or-an-impossibility.
16. Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration, by the Committee on Human Spaceflight 2014, National Research Council, Washington, DC.
17. “Circadian Rhythm of Autonomic Cardiovascular Control During Mars 500 Simulated Mission to Mars” by D. E. Vigo et al. 2013. Aviation and Space Environmental Medicine, vol. 84, pp. 1023–38.
18. From a post by Buzz Aldrin on his website: http://buzzaldrin.com/what-nasa-has-wrong-about-sending-humans-to-mars/.
19. The website of Inspiration Mars, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is at http://www.inspirationmars.org/.
20. For more information, see: Inspiration Mars online at http://www.inspirationmars.org/ and Mars One online at http://www.mars-one.com/.
21. While the launch date has receded to 2024 at the earliest, the media angle is moving full steam ahead. In June 2014, Lansdorp inked a deal with the Dutch TV giant Endemol to start filming a reality series based on the training and culling of the final set of space travelers.
22. Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth by M. Bjornerud 2005. New York: Basic Books; and Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by A. H. Knoll 2004. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
23. “Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars” by R. M. Zubrin and C. P. McKay 1993, technical report for NASA Ames Research Center, online at http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm.
24. Red Mars by K. S. Robinson 1993 covers colonization; the quote in the following paragraph is from p. 171. Green Mars by K. S. Robinson 1994 covers terraforming. Blue Mars by K. S. Robinson 1995 covers the long-term future of human habitation. All are published by Random House (New York).
10: Remote Sensing
1. “Why Oculus Rift Is the Future of Gaming,” online at http://www.gizmoworld.org/why-oculus-rift-is-the-future-in-gaming/.
2. Intriguingly, telepresence doesn’t have to convey the remote scene with perfect fidelity, because the brain has a tendency to “fill in the blanks” and “smooth out the rough edges” of any representation that is familiar. See “Another Look at ‘Being There’ Experiences in Digital Media: Exploring Connections of Telepresence with Mental Imagery” by I. Rodriguez-Ardura and F. J. Martinez-Lopez 2014. Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 30, pp. 508–18.
3. Brother Assassin by F. Saberhagen 1997. New York: Tor Books.
4. See http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet.
5. “Multi-Objective Compliance Control of Redundant Manipulators: Hierarchy, Control, and Stability” by A. Dietrich, C. Ott, and A. Albu-Schaffer 2013. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Tokyo, pp. 3043–50.
6. Human Haptic Perception, ed. by M. Grunwald 2008. Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag.
7. “Telepresence” by M. Minsky 1980, Omni magazine. The magazine is defunct, but the paper can be found online at http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Telepresence.html.
8. Feynman delivered his lecture at the American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. A transcript of the talk is online at http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html. He concluded his talk by posing two challenges and offering a prize of $1,000 for each one. His challenge to fabricate a tiny motor was won a year later by William McLellan. His second challenge was to fit the entire text of the Encyclopædia Britannica on the head of a pin. In 1985, a Stanford graduate student won the second challenge by reducing the first paragraph of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities by a factor of 25,000.
9. Feynman reprised his idea after nanotechnology began to take off. “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” by R. P. Feynman 1992. Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, vol. 1, pp. 60–66; and “Infinitesimal Machinery” by R. P. Feynman 1993. Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, vol. 2, pp. 4–14.
10. “Prokaryotic Motility Structures” by S. L. Bardy, S. Y. Ng, and K. F. Jarrell 2003. Microbiology, vol. 149, part 2, pp. 295–304.
11. Synergetic Agents: From Multi-Robot Systems to Molecular Robotics by H. Haken and P. Levi 2012. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH. The book that started off the entire field was Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by E. Drexler 1986. New York: Doubleday.
12. “The Next Generation of Mars Rovers Could Be Smaller Than Grains of Sand” by B. Ferreira 2012, in Popular Science, online at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/why-next-gen-rovers-could-be-smaller-grain-sand.
13. Research at Goddard Space Flight Center: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/ants.html.
14. Nanorobotics: Current Approaches and Techniques, ed. by C. Mavroidis and A. Ferreira 2013. New York: Springer.
15. From the Earth to the Moon by J. Verne 1865. Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel.
16. Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Flight by G. Vulpetti, L. Johnson, and L. Matloff 2008. New York: Springer.
17. The Cosmos 1 concept is described in “LightSail: A New Way and a New Chance to Fly on Light” by L. Friedman 2009. The Planetary Report (The Planetary Society, Pasadena), vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 4–9. After its initial failure, the project is transitioning to the use of CubeSats, described in Small Satellites: Past, Present, and Future, ed. by H. Helvajian and S. W. Janson 2008. El Segundo, CA: Aerospace Press.
18. Sunjammer was canceled after $21 million had been spent, due to problems encountered by the contractor L’Garde Inc. Congressional representative Dana Rohrabacher made the ironic comment: “We never seem to be able to afford these small technology development projects that can have potentially huge impacts . . . but we can find billions and billions of dollars to build a massive launch vehicle with no payloads, and no missions.” He was referring to NASA’s SLS heavy lift rocket.
19. “Nanosats Are Go!” in The Economist magazine, online at http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603240-small-satellites-taking-advantage-smartphones-and-other-consumer-technologies.
20. “NAIC Study of the Magnetic Sail” by R. Zubrin and A. Martin 1999 (slide presentation), online at http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/nov99/320Zubrin.pdf.
21. “Searching for Interstellar Communications” by G. Cocconi and P. Morrison 1959. Nature, vol. 184, pp. 844–46.
22. “The Drake Equation Revisited. Part 1,” a retrospective by Frank Drake in Astrobiology Magazine, online at http://www.astrobio.net/index.php?option=com_retrospection&task=detail&id=610.
23. SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. by R. D. Ekers, D. Culler, J. Billingham, and L. Scheffer 2003. Mountain View, CA: SETI Press.
24. “Neuroanatomy of the Killer Whale (Orcinus orca) from Magnetic Resonance Images” by L. Marino et al. 2004. The Anatomical Record Part A, vol. 281A, no. 2, pp. 1256–63.
11: Living Off-Earth
1. “Biospherics and B
iosphere 2, Mission One” by J. Allen and M. Nelson 1999. Ecological Engineering, vol. 13, pp. 15–29.
2. “Life Under the Bubble” by J. F. Smith 2010, from Discover magazine, online at http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/20-life-under-the-bubble#.UkvfALNsdOA.
3. Several Biospherians have written about their experience. See Life Under Glass: The Inside Story of Biosphere 2 by A. Alling and M. Nelson 1993. Santa Fe: Synergetic Press; and The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 by J. Poynter 2006. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. After the second failed experiment, the facility was taken over by Columbia University, which hoped to use it as a research station and “west campus.” But urban students didn’t flock to take classes there, so it passed from Columbia University to the University of Arizona in 2011. As a lab for studying the complex interplay of climate, soil chemistry, and flora and fauna, Biosphere is unrivaled, even if it can never be operated as a sealed and self-contained ecosystem. The project’s deep-pocketed investor, Ed Bass, once intended to sell small-scale biospheres as a commercial proposition.
4. “Two Former Biosphere Workers Are Accused of Sabotaging the Dome,” April 5, 1994, from the archives of the New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/05/us/two-former-biosphere-workers-are-accused-of-sabotaging-dome.html.
5. Dreaming the Biosphere by R. Reider 2010. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
6. “Calorie Restriction in Biosphere 2: Alterations in Physiologic, Hematologic, Hormonal, and Biochemical Parameters in Humans Restricted for a Two-Year Period” by R. Walford, D. Mock, R. Verdery, and T. MacCallum 2002. The Journals of Gerontology, Series A, vol. 57, no. 6, pp. B211–24.
7. “Coral Reefs and Ocean Acidification” by J. A. Kleypas and K. K. Yates 2009. Oceanography, December, pp. 108–17.
8. “Lessons Learned from Biosphere 2: When Viewed as a Ground Simulation/Analog for Long Duration Human Space Exploration and Settlement” by T. MacCallum, J. Poynter, and D. Bearden 2004. SAE Technical Paper, online at http://www.janepoynter.com/documents/LessonsfromBio2.pdf.