Good Article: Looking Ahead in Astronomy

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): An imagined Martian settlement. (NASA)

Astronomy magazine has a good article titled “Predictions for the Next 50 Years of Astronomy.” Five astronomers provide their ideas about what we might experience in the field of astronomy in the 2070s.

For instance, S. Alan Stern, a planetary scientist and member of the U.S. National Science Board, had this prediction:

By the ’70s, I expect we’ll have human exploration taking place on multiple worlds in the solar system, with Antarctic-like, semipermanent bases scattered around the globes of at least Luna and Mars. I also expect we may by then have much larger and more powerful launch vehicles, even fusion-based or high-power electric propulsion, making trip times an order of magnitude shorter than today. Just think: Mars in a few weeks, Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in a year!

I just want to see the Moon landing get underway before any predictions about the Kuiper Belt, but it is all exciting and in many ways unknowable given what has happened in the last 50 years. For instance, how many people 50 years ago believed that we would have a catalog of thousands of exoplanets, many similar to Earth?

Of course, predictions are tough. Here is what some scientists were saying in the 1970s about the fate of our little planet, as reported by the American Enterprise Institute:

  •  {Paul] Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
  • Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

We have our issues today, but I am very happy that these earlier scientists did not have the gift of prophesy.

Good Article: Telescope Mishaps on Earth and in the Heavens

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Copy): The Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO). (WIRO)

The New York Times had a good article on various mishaps related to telescopes here on Earth (such as WIRO above) as well as those now floating in space. The story, “From Bullets to ‘Bird Residue,’ the Many Trials of Telescopes,” shares stories about various natural (bird poop) and man-made (dropped tool) events that have left their marks on astronomy.

We have all heard about the misshaped mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope as well as micrometeors hitting the James Webb Space Telescope, but have you heard about the employee who shot and hammered the primary mirror at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas?

Take a look at the article. You will find plenty of stories to amuse you as well as give you pause.

Good Article: The Sad State of Russia’s Space Program

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit):  A destroyed Russian tank in the village of Dmytrivka, Ukraine. (CNN/Alex Chan Tsz Yuk/SOPA Images/Sipa/Reuters)

Wired magazine’s latest article, “Russia’s Space Program Is in Big Trouble,” summarizes a sad trend since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With all of the nation’s attention on an unnecessary war, the space program, like many things nowadays in Russia, has taken a back seat.

Problems can be seen with the spacecraft – two Russian capsules at the International Space Station (ISS) sprung leaks – as well as ground control. Assets at Russia’s spaceport in Kazakhstan are being seized, while corruption and other problems are delaying a new spaceport within Russia’s borders.

Russia also lacks a partner for a new space station after the ISS, and its mission to the Moon with China look’s tenuous. Does the country have a plan for the future beyond militarizing space?

The article concludes with these words:

The Soviet Union may have put the first human into space—but now, 60 years later, Russia faces a near-future in which it is no longer able to do that. 

No Pyrrhic victory in Ukraine will change this.

Extra: The Wall Street Journal also had a good article about the situation in Russia. The article, “Russia’s Economy is Starting to Come Undone,” includes an interview with Oleg Mansurov, who hoped to create the next SpaceX with his company SR Space. However, the situation in Ukraine has caused his investors to flee. As a result, he is staying afloat as an IT company for now. He notes:

We became more focused not on the development of a long-term product that would make some kind of qualitative leap but on simply becoming a classic business and generating revenue…We understood we just had to survive.

Good Article: The Old and the New in Space Telescopes

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Costs and timescales of past, current and future NASA missions. Cost is at launch, i.e. does not include servicing missions. Development timescale indicates time from survey recommendation to launch. For future missions, the estimated cost is a minimum, assuming immediate start and optimum budget profile. (PhysicsWorld using data taken from the NASA Astro2020 decadal survey)

The above table from a Physics World article, “‘Great observatories’ – the next generation of NASA’s space telescopes, and their impact on the next century of observational astronomy,” gives you some idea about what is already floating in space and what we hope to launch in the future.

Take a look at the article to learn more about the science and politics surrounding space telescopes and the likelihood we will see other great space telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope in the near future.