Podcasts about space exploration initiative

Almost 50 years ago, in December 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, marking the end of the Apollo program. In the half-century since, no crewed mission — not Americans nor anyone else — has ventured beyond low Earth orbit. Despite a series of presidential promises, NASA has yet to return to the Moon, let alone venture to Mars. And despite recent declines in launch costs, thanks in large part to SpaceX, NASA remains in many ways committed to the old, Apollo-style way of doing things. To learn more about why NASA's manned missions always seem to run over budget and behind schedule — and to get a sense of the way forward with commercial space companies — I'm speaking with Lori Garver.Garver was previously Deputy Administrator of NASA during the Obama administration, from 2009 to 2013. Previously, she worked at NASA from 1996 to 2001 as a senior policy analyst. Garver is the founder of Earthrise Alliance, an initiative to better use space data to address climate change. She also appears in the 2022 Netflix documentary Return to Space. Her fascinating memoir, published in June, is Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.James Pethokoukis: In December of this year, it will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 splashdown and the end of the Apollo program. Humanity has been stuck in low Earth orbit ever since. And for a while, the United States couldn't even get to low Earth orbit on its own. What happened to all the dreams that people had in the ‘60s that just sort of disappeared in 1972?Lori Garver: I think the dreamers are still out there. Many of them work on the space program. Many of them have contributed to the programs that we had post-Apollo. The human space flight program ended and took that hiatus. [But] we've been having, in the United States a very robust and leading space program ever since Apollo. For human space flight, I think we got off track, as I outline in my book, by really trying to relive Apollo. And trying to fulfill the institutions and congressional mandates that were created for Apollo, which were too expensive to continue with more limited goals. The Nixon administration actually had the right idea with the Space Shuttle. They said the goal was to reduce the cost of getting to and from space.Money was no object for a while.When you have your program tied to a national goal, like we did in Apollo of beating the Russians and showing that a democratic system was a better way to advance society and technology and science, we built to a standard that tripled the budget every couple years in the early days. We [NASA] then had to survive on a budget about half the size of the peak during Apollo and have never been able to really readjust the infrastructure and the cost to sustain it. So I'd say our buying power was greatly reduced.We'll talk about government later in the interview, but to some degree, isn't this a failure of society? If politicians had sensed a yearning desire from the American public to continue moving out further in space, would we have done it?It's hard to know how we measure public support for something like that because there's no voting on it per se. And there are so few congressional districts whose members are really focused on it. So the bills that come up in Congress are funding bills. NASA is buried among many other agencies. And so I think the yearning on the part of the public is a little more diffuse. What we want to see is the United States being a leader. We want to see us doing things that return to our economy, and we want to see things that help our national security. Those are the ways space contributes to society. And I think what we got off track in doing is delivering hardware that was built in certain people's districts instead of being a purpose-driven program as it was in Apollo.Even though the Space Shuttle wasn't going to fly to the Moon, people were really pretty excited by it. I'm not sure polls always capture how interested people are in space.We don't really gauge based on people who are attending launches. As someone who's been to a lot of launches, there are lots of people enthused. But that's not 300 million people in the country. I think that polls tend to show, as compared to what? And NASA tends to be at the bottom of a list of national priorities. But, of course, its budget isn't very large. So these are all things that we try to evaluate. I think if you believe that network news was able to track public interest, by the time of the Challenger accident — which was only the 25th shuttle launch — they weren't showing them live anymore. So that's the kind of thing that you can look into. We really like things the first time. And those first couple missions were very exciting. Or if we did something unique, like fix the Hubble Space Telescope, that was interesting. But we had 134 missions, and not every one of those got a lot of publicity.I saw you in the fantastic Return to Space documentary, and you had a great statistic saying that basically it cost about a billion dollars for every astronaut that we sent to space. Was there just fundamentally not an interest in reducing that cost? Did we not know how to do it? Was it just how government contracts [worked]? Why did it stay so expensive for so long?A combination of all those things plays into it. It's about the incentives. These were government cost-plus contracts that incentivize you to take longer and spend more, because you get more money the longer it takes. If you've worked in any private sector, they want to expand their own profits. And that's understandable. The government wasn't a smart buyer. And we also really like to focus on maybe doing something exquisite or a new technology instead of reducing the cost. [It's a] really interesting comparison to the Russian program where they just kept doing the same thing and it costs a little less. The Space Shuttle, we wanted it to be reusable. But it cost as much to refurbish it as it would have to rebuild. It wasn't until recently that we've had these incentives reversed and said, “We will buy launches from the private sector, and therefore they have the incentive to go and reduce the cost.” That's really what's working.If you look at what presidents were saying, they certainly still seem to be interested. We had the George H.W. Bush administration: He announced a big plan to return us to the Moon and Mars. I think it was like about a $500 billion plan. What happened to that? That was the Space Exploration Initiative?SEI, yes. I go into this in the book because, to me, it is really important that we not forget how many times presidents have given us similar goals. Because you come in, and I was the lead on the Obama transition for NASA. I was outgoing in the Clinton administration for NASA, leading the policy office, and supported lots of those Republican presidents in between in their space proposals. Never met a president who didn't love NASA and the human space flight program. They have various levels of success in getting what they want achieved. I think the first President Bush tried very hard to reduce the cost and to be more innovative. But the NASA bureaucracy fought him on that quite vociferously.Why would they? Wouldn't they see that it would be in NASA's long-term interest for these missions to be cheaper, more affordable?It was not dissimilar to my time at NASA in that the administrator was a former astronaut. And they didn't really come there with a mandate to do much other than support the existing program and people at the agency. When you're at NASA and you just want to do the same thing, you don't want to take a risk to change what you're doing. You want to keep flying your friends, and you have really come to this position because other people did the same thing as well. I call it, in the book, the “giant, self-licking ice-cream cone,” because it's this sugar high that everyone in it has. But it doesn't allow for as much progress.So no one anywhere really had an incentive to focus on efficiency and cost control. The people in Congress who were super interested, I imagine, were mostly people who had facilities in their districts and they viewed it as a jobs program.Yes. And they want contracts going to those jobs. Really, the administration, the president, is the one who tends to want a more valuable, efficient, effective space program. And within this, throughout the last decades, they've had a bit of tension with their own heads of NASA to get them to be more efficient Because Congress wants more of these cost-plus contracts in their district, the industry likes making the money, and the people at NASA tend to say, “Well, I might be going to work in one of those industry jobs down the road. So why do I want to make them mad?”It's really a fairly familiar story, despite sort of the interesting, exotic nature of space. It could be … banking and financial regulation, where you have the sort of a revolving door…That's what's difficult. And for me, I think writing the book was challenging for some of the people within the program to have this out there, because NASA is seen as above all that. And we should be above all that. What's a little ironic is to the extent that we're above all that, it's because we've now finally gotten to a point where there are some private-sector initiatives and there's more of a business case to be made for human space flight. Whereas previously, it was just the government so the only reason was this self-licking ice-cream cone.So we had the first Bush administration, they had this big, expansive idea. Then … canceled— right? —by President Clinton?Really by Congress. Congress did not fund president H.W. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative. But the tension was between what his space council wanted to do — which was led by Vice President Quayle — and what NASA wanted to do. A couple years in, he fired his head of NASA, brought in someone new, Dan Goldin. Dan Goldin was the head of NASA then for 10 years. The Clinton administration kept him, and the second Bush administration kept him for the first year. He drove a lot of this change. And as I talk about in the book, I worked there under him and eventually was his head of policy. And really, he was trying to infuse these incentives well before we were successful in doing this with SpaceX.So then we had the second Bush presidency, and we had another big idea for space. What was that idea, and what happened to that?We had the Columbia accident, which caused the second President Bush to have to look at human space flight again and say, "You know, we need to retire the shuttle and set our sights, again, farther." And this was the Moon-Mars initiative, it was referred to as the Vision for Space Exploration. Again, we had a change of NASA administrator under him. And I truly believe if you look, the changes aren't as much driven by presidents as they are heads of NASA. So it's who do you appoint and how long do they last? Because President Bush, it changed with his second administrator to be this program called Constellation, which was a big rocket to take us back to the Moon. Government owned and operated.So we were talking about how the legacy of Apollo has just loomed large over the program for decades. And this is another good example of that?This was referred to as “Apollo on steroids.” That is what the head of NASA wanted to do, and for a lot of good reasons, including because he knew he could get the congressional support for the districts, for the contracts that were typical for the time. You could use the NASA centers that already existed. This was never going to be efficient. But this was going to get a budget passed.Was there a real expectation that this would work? Or was this fundamentally a way of propping up this sort of industrial jobs complex infrastructure?I struggle with this question because I believe that the people creating these programs are very smart and are aware that when they say they're going to be able to do something for this amount of money and so forth, they know they can't. But they clearly feel it's the right thing to do anyway, because if they can get the camel's nose under the tent, they can continue to spend more money and do it.“Let's just keep it going, keep the momentum going.”Yes.When did we decide that just kind of redoing Apollo wasn't going to work and we need to do something different and we need to try to bring in the commercial [sector]?I take it back to the 1990s under Dan Goldin. As head of NASA, he started a program that was a partnership with industry. It was going to be a demonstration of a single-stage reusable launch system. Lockheed Martin happened to win it. It was called the X-33. They planned to develop a fully reusable vehicle that would be called VentureStar, but it ran into technical problems. They were trying to push doing more. And the Space Shuttle was still flying, so there weren't these incentives to keep it going. They canceled the program. Lockheed wasn't going to pick it up. The dot-com bubble burst. The whole satellite market that was going to be where they got most of their money — because the premise is “NASA just wants to be one customer, not pay for the whole system.” So really, the second Bush administration in the same post-Shuttle Columbia accident policy initiative said, “We are going to …” — again, very consistent with previous presidents, but again said — “… use the private sector to help commercialize and lower costs.” And the first Bush administration did that with a program — not for people, but for cargo — to the International Space Station. SpaceX won one of those contracts in 2006. So when I came back in 2008, and then 2009 with our first budget request, we asked for money for the crew element, meaning taking astronauts to the space station to also be done privately. Most people hated that idea at first.I've seen a video of a hearing, and a lot of senators did not like this idea. Apollo astronauts did not like this idea. Why did people not like this idea?Well, let's see: There were tens of billions of dollars of contracts already let to Constellation contractors. And this meant canceling Constellation. Because the first part of that, although it was designed (at least in theory) to go back to the Moon, it was going to take us to and from the space station. But the program in the first four years, had slipped [to] five years. It was costing a couple billion dollars a year. And again, we're still sort of doing that program. And maybe we'll get to that.I don't think it ever really goes away.The Commercial Crew Program, we were able to carve out enough dollars to get it started. And this was not something that was easy. It was not something I think most people in the Senate, or the former Apollo astronauts who testified against us, thought was possible. I think there was just this sense — and again, Elon and SpaceX was very, very likely to be the winners of these competitions. People just didn't believe he could do it.They thought only government could do something this spectacular. Elon Musk encountered a lot of skepticism from astronauts. And he found this personally and emotionally really hurtful, to see these astronauts be skeptical. To be charitable, they were skeptical.I did too. I knew them, and I knew that they thought the policies I was driving were wrongheaded. Gene Cernan said it would lead to the end of America as we know it, the future of his grandchildren were at stake. So these were not easy things to hear. And I'm often asked, why did I even believe it would work? Well, let's face it, nothing else had worked. It had been 50 years since Apollo! And we hadn't done it, as you said in the opening of the program. We also know that in every other aspect of transportation or large initiatives that the government takes on, the idea isn't to have the government own and operate them. We didn't do that with the airlines. So this was inevitable, and the private sector was launching to space. They had been since the '90s. We had turned over management of the rocket systems. So I didn't necessarily know SpaceX was going to make it, but I knew that was the way to drive innovation, to get the cost down, and to get us to a place where we could break out of this giant, self licking ice-cream cone.But now we have a system that's sort of betwixt and between. The next sort of big thing is this moon mission, Artemis, that is a little bit of the old way and a little bit of the new way. We're going to be using a traditional Apollo-style developed rocket, the SLS. I think a SpaceX lander. Why aren't we going to launch this on a very big SpaceX rocket? Why are we still doing it a little bit of the old way?Because I failed, basically. This grand bargain that we made with Congress, where we got just enough money to start a commercial crew program, kept the contracts for Constellation.SLS is Constellation, for the listeners.It is. It's the same. They protected the contracts and the rocket changed a little bit, but the parts — again, the money; follow the money — all are still flowing to Lockheed, Boeing, Aerojet. The Space Launch System is often called the “Senate Launch System.” I don't happen to agree, because it wasn't just the Senate that did this. The call, as I say, was coming from inside the house: NASA people wanted to build and operate a big rocket. That's why they came to NASA. They grew up seeing Apollo. They wanted to launch their version of the Saturn V. And they ultimately were willing to give up low Earth orbit to the private sector, if they could have their big rocket. So that's back in 2011 that this is established, this bifurcated system. They were supposed to launch by 2016. It's now 2022. They haven't even launched a first test flight. This first test flight, now at $20 billion-plus — the capsule on top, called Orion, is exactly from Constellation, so it's been being funded at more than a billion a year since 2006. This is not a program that should be going forward, and we are about to do a big test of it, whether it works or not. We'll have a bigger decision, I think, when it's over if it's successful than if it's not. I think if it's not successful, we ought to just call it.Even if it's successful, is this the last gasp of this kind of manned space exploration? I mean, even if we get to the Moon by … when? I'm not sure when the current moving target is.Well, I believe we're continuing to say now, 2025, the current NASA administrator.Any program that expensive is not going be sustainable, even if it should work technically.This is my view. This is the whole premise of Escaping Gravity, is we have to get out of not just our gravity well of Earth, but the system that has been holding us back. And I'd love to say it's the last gasp, but I thought that about Constellation. And it should have been true about the shuttle.Can you give me a sense of the cost difference we're talking about?The Space Launch System with Orion, which is the rocket and capsule, together have cost us over $40 billion to develop. Each launch will also cost an additional $4 billion, and we can only launch it once every two years. So in Apollo, we launched I think 12 times in five years, once we started the program. If we start now with the program, in next five years the most we can launch is three times. This is not progress. And those amounts of money, compared to the private sector… It hasn't launched something bigger than SLS yet, but let's just take the Falcon Heavy, which launches about 80 percent of the size of payload that the SLS can. SpaceX developed that without any public money. And the per launch costs are in the $100-150 million range. It's just not comparable.Does the current head of NASA understand these cost calculations?Well, he recently said — Administrator Bill Nelson, former Florida senator — that he thinks that this cost-plus system that NASA has been using is a “plague” on the agency. So this is fascinating, because he's basically patient zero. He required us to do the SLS. He's very proud of that to this day. So he can brag about the monster rocket, he calls it that, and yet still say the way we are doing it is a plague. So you'd think he doesn't want to do things this way anymore. And as you said, SpaceX is developing the lander for the Moon program. So it's really hard to know what the outcome will be because, like you, I don't believe it's sustainable to spend so much for something we did 50 years ago that isn't going to be reusable, the costs aren't coming down, we aren't going to be able to do it more often. All the things that mean “sustainable.” But yet, that is the government's plan.It just seems hard to believe that that plan is not just sustainable to go to the Moon and develop a permanent moon facility … and then to Mars, which obviously is going to cost even more. It seems like, if as a country we decide this is something we want to do, that inevitably it's going to be a private-sector effort.You know, it's really related to, as a country deciding what we're going to do. Because if there was some compelling reason, as there was in the ‘60s, the nation's leaders felt to go to the Moon for the first time. If that came together for Mars, maybe the public would be willing to spend trillions. But if you can reduce the cost through the private-sector use of vehicles, you can still advance US goals. I try to make the case. This isn't an either/or. This can be a NASA-led and industry-developed program, just as we have done with so much of our economy. And to me, that is inevitable. It's just, how much are we going to waste in the meantime?Is the threat of China enough of a catalyst to give more momentum toward American efforts in space?China is certainly a threat to the United States in many ways — economically, politically, and so forth — and therefore, I think, seen as a big reason for us to return to the Moon. (We say it's a race with China. I'm like, “Okay, for the 13th person. Because don't forget, we won.”) But doing that in a way that drives technology and leaves behind a better nation, that's how you win in these geopolitical races. And so to me, yes, we are making the case (I think NASA, in particular) that we need to beat China, in our case, back to the Moon. It's about leadership. And I don't think we lead or help our nation by protecting industries that then aren't competitive. I still see the need to evolve from the system, and I fully believe we will be back on the Moon before the Chinese. But they are someone we have our eye on. They are really the only other nation right now with an advanced human space flight program.One of my favorite TV shows, which I probably write too often about, is the Ronald D. Moore show For All Mankind. And for listeners who don't know, the premise is that the space race never ends because the Soviets get there first. They beat us to the Moon, and then we decide that we're going to keep going. And the race just keeps going through the ‘60s, the ‘70s, and the ‘80s. I'm sure somewhere in NASA there were great plans that after Apollo we were going to be on the Moon. … Can you imagine a scenario where all those plans came true? Was it inevitable that we were going to pull back? Or could we at this point already have Mars colonies or Moon colonies? That the wildest dreams of the people in the ‘60s, that we actually could have done it, there was a path forward?Of course. I could be on a much longer show about For All Mankind, because I, too, am really invested in it.We did a great podcast with Ronald D. Moore.Oh good. I know of the astronauts who advise. And of course, I find it hilarious what they take out of it. And the astronauts' perspective about how things are actually run in Washington is just hilarious. And one of the reasons I wrote Escaping Gravity, all astronauts should understand that presidents don't sit there at their desk, wondering what NASA's doing today.If I was president, I would be wondering that.And they have, of course, a former astronaut becoming the president. They want it to go well. Like I said, all presidents love it. But of course NASA's plan, and really from von Braun, was Moon on the way to Mars and beyond. Science fiction really wrote this story. And I think people who were drawn to NASA are all about trying to make that a reality. And in many ways we're doing it.What would things look like right now without SpaceX? I'm sure you know that SpaceX, as well as Blue Origin, there's a certain criticism that this is some sort of vanity effort by billionaires to take us to space. But I'm assuming that you don't view this whole effort as a vanity effort.Yes. My book is called Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age. And I'm very clear in it that there wouldn't be much transformation going on without SpaceX. So yes, they are absolutely critical to this story. It would've taken longer without them. We don't even have Boeing, their second competitor, taking astronauts yet to the station. But we would've had competitors. There were people before Elon. I think Bezos, and Blue Origin, is making progress and will do so. There are other companies now online, the Dream Chaser, to take cargo to the space station, private sector. But make no mistake, without them, without Elon and his vision and his billions, Artemis wouldn't be even more than a great name for a human space flight program. Because we didn't have the money for a lunar lander that anyone else bid, except for SpaceX. They have overachieved. They have set the bar and then cleared it. And every time they compete, they end up getting less money than the competition and then they beat them. So it's impossible, really, to overstate their value. But I still believe that the policies are the right ones to incentivize others in addition to SpaceX. And if they weren't here, we would not be as far along for sure.I am now going to ask you to overstate something. Give me your expansive view of what a new space age looks like. Is it just humans going out into deep space? Is it a vibrant orbital space economy? What does that new space age look like?To me, it is a purpose-driven space age so we are utilizing fully that sphere beyond our atmosphere. So that's in lower Earth orbit, using that to help society today, we can measure greenhouse gases in real time, the emissions. We can, as we look forward, go beyond certainly Mars, to places where humanity must go if we want to be sustained as a species. I think the purpose of space is like saying, “What was the purpose of first going into the oceans?” It's for science. It's for economic gain. It's for national security. Similar to the atmosphere and now space. It's a new venue where we all can only just imagine what is possible today, and it we will be there. I personally like that Jetsons future of living in a world where I have a flying car on another planet.Lori, thanks for coming on the podcast.Thank you for having me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

On this week's episode, we'll discuss lunar surface waste management, the important role this will play as humanity scales to a presence in space, and attempt to answer the very important question, “who takes out the trash on the moon?”My guest on the show, Nadia Khan, is a first year graduate student at MIT pursuing an M.S. in Technology and Policy at the Institute for Data Systems and Society.  Nadia has a dual research assistantship position at the Engineering Systems Lab in the AeroAstro department as well as being a project leader at the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative, where she is leading the development of MIT's Lunar Open Architecture platform.  Nadia has an eclectic background, in international relations, disaster risk reduction, space weather and space exploration.  She's also the operations lead for MIT's Global Start Up Workshop, a member of the MIT Grad Arts Forum's Executive Committee, professional development lead and executive committee member at the Graduate Women of Aerospace at MIT's AeroAstro lab.  Prior to starting her second M.S. at MIT, Nadia was an Aziz Foundation Scholar at University College London where she completed a MSc in Space, Risk and Disaster Reduction.  She also completed a BA in International Relations from Queen Mary, University of London.  In 2019, Nadia was recognised by HM Queen Elizabeth II for her services to mental health in the UK, in setting up her award winning Not for Profit - The Delicate Mind C.I.C.  Nadia is a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum and a Local Leader as part of the Franco British Programme.Support the show

Ariel Ekblaw and her Space Exploration Initiative colleagues believe we are at the cusp of interplanetary civilization. They are building the tools, environments and knowledge that will speed the transition and solve problems on Earth. Ariel has published Into the Anthropocosmos, a beautiful celebration of SEI's fifth anniversary that presents many of its innovative projects. Someone will win a copy of the book in the new What's Up space trivia contest. There's more to explore at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2021-ariel-ekblaw-mit-space-exploration-initiative See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Janet Biggs Photo Régis Figarol Janet Biggs is an interdisciplinary artist known for her immersive work in video, film and performance. Biggs’ work focuses on individuals in extreme landscapes or situations, navigating the territory between art, science and technology. Her work has taken her into areas of conflict and to Mars (as a member of crews at the Mars Desert Research Station and Mars Academy USA). Biggs has worked with institutions from NOAA to NASA and CERN. She has collaborated with high energy nuclear physicists, mathematicians, neuroscientists, Arctic explorers, aerospace engineers, astrophysicists and a robot named Shimon. Last year, Biggs sent a project up to the International Space Station as part of MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative. Biggs has had solo exhibitions and film screenings at the Museos de Tenerife; Neuberger Museum of Art; SCAD Museum of Art; Blaffer Art Museum; Musee d'art contemporain de Montréal; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; among others. Her work and research have been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Reviews of her work have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, ArtForum, ARTNews, Art in America, and many others. Biggs is a member of the New Museum’s cultural incubator, NEW INC with the support of Science Sandbox. She works with Cristin Tierney Gallery, CONNERSMITH, Galerie Analix Forever and Hyphen-Hub. Learn more on Instagram. Here is a link to RSVP for the April 8th performance discussed n the interview: https://www.cristintierney.com/events/26/ The books mentioned in the interview are Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire, the biggest ideas in science from Quanta, Edited by Thomas Lin, The Sublimity of Document, Cinema as Diorama by Scott MacDonald, and Women Artists, The Linda Nochlin Reader, edited by Maura Reilly. "Singular Value Decomposition" announcement for upcoming July 8th performance. "A Step On the Sun," 2012. Four-channel HD video installation with sound. "Weighing Life Without a Scale," 2018. Three-channel HD video installation with sound.

在家也可以观测天气吗？在太空中如何种土豆？在卫星以前是如何拍摄地球的？第一张地球全景照片又是如何拍到的？在太空中拍摄是否会出现“手抖”的情况？播客“传送门”的第五期，我们邀请艺术家刘昕和建筑系在读博士翁佳用她们的研究和艺术实践来一一解答。[03:20] 刘昕最近的创作实践——在家的后院搭起了天线接收台，接收天气卫星信号；[05:25] 在观察当中是否有限制，在国内和美国卫星观测的区别；[08:30] 翁佳介绍在她的研究中，建筑和媒介、天气观测以及控制的关系；[11:05] 在无线电广播和成像技术之前，美国曾经征用德国的V2火箭，并通过TIROS气象卫星，拍摄了云层照片；[13:03] 刘昕通过MIT最近“非地球的未来”合作项目中把地球的土豆种子发送到低空地球轨道；[18:20] 上了太空的土豆和地球土豆的区别和亲缘关系；[22:30] 翁佳在研究TIROS卫星中发现，早在1964年NASA就通过拼贴的方式发布地球照片集，在1968年才出现第一张非拼贴的地球全貌照片（地出）；[24:45] 在卫星拍摄地球的时候，1像素真的是对应1km吗？（继续听后面有惊喜）天气地图的发展历史反映了人们对地球的认知情况的改变，Harry Wexler画的地球全貌图；[27:30] NASA当时有目的性地刻意对风暴进行拍摄，以及尝试通过人工降雨改变风暴系统的路径；[28:22] 刘昕答疑：卫星在拍摄时为何会在太空中有轻微的wobble（晃动）？[30:50] 从最早在月球拍到“Earth Rise（地出）”和“The Blue Marble（蓝色弹珠）”直到现在，地球全貌照片的拍摄其实并非如想象中容易；[33:15] 翁佳更正卫星拍摄地球照片时的一个像素对应的大概是700km（窄角）至100km（广角），更像是在“扫描”地球；[36:00] 种云实验（人工降雨）预测风暴是不可行的，但是在历史上有很多实验，比如设计了真空显像管的Irving Langmuir；[37:30] 如何想象一个太空旅行团？翁佳希望进入近地轨道来观察卫星，捕捉太空垃圾作为礼物带回地球；刘昕认为太空旅行团引申的意义受它与地球的距离影响，人类可能无法预测新的星球生物带来的可能性。刘昕，艺术家和工程师，目前生活工作于纽约。她的作品讲述了与空间、科学、时间和个人身份有关的故事。她是洛杉矶郡立美术馆艺术+技术实验室（LACMA Art+Tech Lab）的顾问，也是Strelka学院2020年的新研究项目The Terraformation的教员。刘昕是麻省理工学院媒体实验室太空探索计划（MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative）的艺术策展人。翁佳，建筑设计师，建筑历史研究者及写作者，目前正在攻读耶鲁大学建筑历史与理论的博士学位。她的工作领域涉及媒介研究，建筑技术史，和全球化研究。她的建筑绘图和设计作品曾在2018年威尼斯建筑双年展，OCAT上海馆，以及耶鲁建筑学院北画廊展出。

The time when space exploration was only a matter of government has ended. In the past few years, a number of private space companies have skyrocketed. Elon Musk claims that the first manned crew to Mars will happen in 2024 whereas NASA plans to send humans to the same destination in the middle of the 2030s. There is a lot of interest expressed on how we will get there, yet no particular plans on HOW we will sustain our presence in the severe environment. Yet, NASA estimated that the crew behavioral health is a secondary risk in manned space missions after radiation exposure. Human factor considerations increase with the longevity of missions, in particular, their application to where future travelers will be living to support the wellbeing of the crew in an enclosed environment. What does the future of living in space look like? Is it going to look like the promise of sci-fi movies? Or somewhat different? Join Anastasia Prosina for a peek at what aspects need to be habitable modules to thrive in long-duration missions to Mars and why you should care. Visit Stellar Amenities to learn more about the future of living in space: https://stellaramenities.space/ Bio: Anastasia Prosina is an award-winning aspirational futurist and practitioner in Space Architecture, the nascent field of helping people thrive in small spaces in space. She is the Founder & CEO at Stellar Amenities, a company with the mission of complementing space habitats with lightweight, deployable & reconfigurable elements to support wellbeing in space. Anastasia has been involved in numerous space projects, from designing lightweight interior habitation structures for the TESSERAE self-assembling space station at MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative to working on an Iceland-based Martian Analog Habitat commissioned by Mars Society. Her other places of work include aerospace company Excalibur Almaz, 4th Planet Logistics, and Galaktika Space. Anastasia holds a Masters in Space Architecture from Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture in proximity and collaboration of NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. Anastasia received a Bachelor's in Urban Design from Novosibirsk State University of Architecture, Design, and Art. Lived her entire life in Siberia, Russia, she is now paving her way in the Los Angeles space sector. Twitter handle @glazizglago #spacearchitecture

仮想通貨・ブロックチェーンに特化した幻冬舎のメディア「あたらしい経済 https://www.neweconomy.jp/ 」がおくる、ラジオ番組です。毎日最新ニュース解説とコラムをお届けします。 ・トロン創業者ジャスティン・サン氏が謝罪文を公表 ・米SECがゲーム企業のICOセールに対し、有価証券とみなさない判断を下す ・LINEのブロックチェーンプロジェクト「4CAST」が8月26日にサービスを終了 ・0x Protocolを使ったNFTマーケットプレイスをBlockBaseが公開 ・VISITS Technologiesが総額約22億円を調達 ・デジタルガレージがMITメディアラボの宇宙研究プロジェクト「Space Exploration Initiative」に協賛参画 ニュースの詳細や、アーカイブやその他の記事はこちらから https://www.neweconomy.jp/

What are the obstacles are for a permanent base on the Red Planet? Ed Butler puts that question to Dennis Bushnell, the chief scientist at Nasa's Langley Research facility. He also hears from Ariel Ekblaw, the founder and lead of the Space Exploration Initiative at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chris Lewicki, President and CEO of the firm Planetary Resources and Therese Griebel, the deputy associate administrator for programs within Nasa's Space Technology Mission Directorate. (Photo: Nasa InSight spacecraft launches onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V rocket on May 5, 2018, from Vandenberg Air Force base in California. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Thirty years ago, Dr. Mark Albrecht led the National Space Council when President George H.W. Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, an ambitious effort to send humans to the Moon and then on to Mars. Political divisions and a budget-busting cost estimate grounded the effort before it ever got off the ground. A new NSC is attempting to implement a new lunar plan from the Trump Administration. Can the lessons of a failed moonshot help today's lunar ambitions succeed? More resources about this month’s topics are at http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/space-policy-edition-37.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thirty years ago, Dr. Mark Albrecht led the National Space Council when President George H.W. Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, an ambitious effort to send humans to the Moon and then on to Mars.

Thirty years ago, Dr. Mark Albrecht led the National Space Council when President George H.W. Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, an ambitious effort to send humans to the Moon and then on to Mars.

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about the latest in SLS Hot Drama: the 2020 budget request and a Bridenstine appearance in the Senate that might just go down in history. This week, NASA has proposed flying the three prime missions of SLS on commercial vehicles, setting the stage for an interesting few months of politics and engineering, and introducing some serious questions about the future of SLS. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Rui, Julian, and six anonymous—and 229 other supporters on Patreon. Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) | Twitter Eric Berger | Ars Technica New White House budget spells trouble for NASA’s SLS rocket | Ars Technica NASA to consider use of private rockets for first Orion lunar mission | Ars Technica MARS WARS: The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative.: Thor Hogan.: Amazon.com: Books SpaceX completes a historic mission, crew flight possible later in 2019 | Ars Technica Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to anthony@mainenginecutoff.com Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon Music by Max Justus

In a longer than average after talk; Host and Producer discuss the famous 'face' on Mars, the Space Exploration Initiative under President Bush, NERVA nuclear rockets, the problem of space junk, finding life on other planets, and the options for traveling to Mars. For listener questions and comments, email us here: show@universeuniversity.space MUSIC: "Slow Burn" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The private sector is muscling in on space exploration, and the biggest commercial opportunity could be tourism.Ed Butler meets the star-gazers at the Future in Review conference of tech entrepreneurs in Utah. Ariel Ekblaw, who founded the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT, discusses the logic of self-assembling space hotels. Nasa chief scientist Dennis Bushnell talks cosmic beach combing. And Chris Lewicki, head of space mining start-up Planetary Resources, explains why he thinks it makes more sense to mine water on asteroids than bring it with us from Earth.(Picture: Fictional space station with astronauts and space ships; Credit: ZargonDesign/Getty Images)

Join the MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative in designing our Sci-Fi Space Future! Learn about our latest research and how we are working to make Space accessible and engaging for millions—and someday billions—of people. Space will be hackable. Space will be playful. Our goal is to invent, create, and deploy ideas that seem exotic and impossible today, but could be commonplace in 10 years. Humanity stands at the cusp of interplanetary civilization and space is our next, grand frontier—this opportunity to design our interplanetary lives beckons to us all. Full video: https://youtu.be/u2XBFQnMY0E All about TNW Conference: https://tnw.to/conference