Is the Backlash to the Titan Tragedy Coming for the Space Industry?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Recent Axiom Space crew that visited the International Space Station. (Axiom Space)

Axiom has an interesting article, “Titanic Sub Tragedy Stokes Fears for Space Tourism,” on how the recent Titan tragedy may impact the space tourism industry, noting:

Congress has explicitly prohibited the Federal Aviation Administration from enacting any regulations designed to protect the safety of people flying into space. It can only concern itself with the safety of people on the ground.

That may not be an acceptable state of affairs after last week. Yet Congress seems to have little focus these days, so it is unlikely it will get involved in new regulations. So potential passengers beware because your government is not really all that engaged in your welfare.

One big difference between a sea versus a space mission is that I do not foresee an extended rescue mission at taxpayer expense. While the Titan exploded in an environment that made it difficult to locate, involving enormous resources to find the wreckage, any space explosion or incident will be easy to see from the ground and come to a quick close with little need for additional resources. That may not sound good to the tourists on the spacecraft, but it is one less thing the taxpayers need to worry about.

Television: Black Mirror Has Another Space Episode

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett from Black Mirror. (Netflix)

While I recommend the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to anyone looking for a good program (now that the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard has ended), you can also tune into the new season of Netflix’ Black Mirror for a space episode.

You may remember the “USS Callister” episode from season 4 back in 2017, which played off of the Star Trek series. It was one of the better episodes of the series. Well, in season 6 that just started you get to see another space-related episode called “Beyond the Sea.” It is a strange story about astronauts living on a space station while their replicas live back on Earth. The astronauts can slip into the replicas at any time to be back on Earth with their families.

The story starts out well enough (as does with acting, with Josh Hartnett and Aaron Paul playing the astronauts), but then it gets weird, as one might expect with this series.

I do not want to give too much away, but the time period is very odd as is the ending of the story. It makes little sense to me and does not seem to be a completed thought. One would almost expect a follow-on episode, but it is not clear how that could ever correct what we just witnessed.

Hence, I am not recommending the episode, but instead pointing it out for the curious. Even poorly plotted episodes can have minor merits. You decide.

And then go back and watch the “USS Callister” episode to clear your head. That one I can recommend.

$10 Billion for Some Martian Rocks?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Hole left by the Perserverance rover as it collected its 14th sample of Martian rock. (NASA)

A recent ARS Technica article, “NASA’s Mars Sample Return Has a New Price Tag—and it’s Colossal,” discusses the potential plans to retrieve rocks from the Martian surface at a total cost of $10 billion. This has the potential to crowd out other important NASA projects and may need to be reconsidered at a time of budget constraints.

NASA has been seeking innovative solutions from the private sector to lower the retrieval costs, but the mission may be on hold for some time. Getting rocks from the Moon and even an asteroid seems easy by comparison.

Maybe NASA needs to seen another private sector solution – a study of Martian rocks on the surface of Mars. It may be easier to land a laboratory and conduct long-term experiments in situ rather than attempting a journey back to Earth. It is something to consider for now and may give us quicker access to the rocks.

Of course, we can always wait until Elon Musk lands on the Red Planet and retrieves them.

Pic of the Week: Jellyfish Galaxy JO206 

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team)

This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the jellyfish galaxy JO206, which is about 700 million light-years away. A close-up of the galaxy iteself is provided below.

Here is more about the image from the European Space Agency (ESA):

[Galaxy JO206 is] showcasing a colorful star-forming disk surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of foreground bright stars with crisscross diffraction spikes stands out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image…

Jellyfish galaxies are so-called because of their resemblance to their aquatic namesakes. In the bottom right of this image, long tendrils of bright star formation trail the disk of JO206, just as jellyfish trail tentacles behind them. The tendrils of jellyfish galaxies are formed by the interaction between galaxies and the intra-cluster medium, a tenuous superheated plasma that pervades galaxy clusters. As galaxies move through galaxy clusters, they ram into the intracluster medium, which strips gas from the galaxies and draws it into the long tendrils of star formation.

The tentacles of jellyfish galaxies give astronomers a unique opportunity to study star formation under extreme conditions, far from the influence of the galaxy’s main disk. Surprisingly, Hubble revealed that there are no striking differences between star formation in the disks of jellyfish galaxies and star formation in their tentacles, which suggests the environment of newly formed stars has only a minor influence on their formation.

Image (Credit): Close-up of the jellyfish galaxy JO206 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team)

Space Quote: NASA and Another Type of Tourism

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): OceanGate’s Titan submersible. (Associated Press)

“OceanGate is doing for deep sea exploration, discovery, and research what companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, World View, and Virgin Galactic are doing for space exploration and discovery…I look forward to supporting OceanGate’s effort to document the Titanic and its role as a deep ocean artificial reef when I join the expedition as a crewmember this summer.“

-Statement by NASA planetary scientist Alan Stern in an OceanGate press release from March 2022. Dr. Stern is best known for his role as the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The press release also discusses NASA’s assistance to OceanGate in the development of the Titan submersible that is still lost in the Atlantic after a mission to take tourists to see the late Titanic. While Dr. Stern mentions exploration and discovery, this was simply tourism gone wrong. Tourism is a lucrative aspect of the four space companies listed above, but it is not without its risks. Fortunately, Dr. Stern had a good trip last summer, and we can only hope the five individuals on the Titan will also return safely to the surface.