In Case You Missed It/Podcast: The Second Monster in Aliens

Posted on by onespaceman2000

A few months back, NPR’s Planet Money podcast had a terrific episode titled, “The Real Horror of ‘Alien’ and How It Explains Why We’re Not Paid Enough.”

In the episode, we learn more about Weyland-Yutani, the company in the 1979 film Alien that employed the crew on the space tug Nostromo. You may remember that this crew eventually became little more than a meal and incubator for more monsters.

Maybe there was another monster on the ship as well. Maybe it was even a bigger monster, because it had already inflected the entire Earth economy. Something called monopsony, which is basically when all of the workers become the quasi-slaves of a few corporations. Unread contracts and absent labor unions became the basis for much abuse on and off the spaceships.

It’s a fun episode that allows you to see the film from the perspective of an economist as well as an everyday worker.

You can also hear from Fede Álvarez, who directed and co-wrote a subsequent film Alien: Romulus. It will probably be no surprise that Weyland-Yutani doesn’t become a better place to work.

Science fiction is often a mirror on society, even if we don’t see our reflection right away. Think about all of those drug commercials on television where everyone is dancing, yet the announcer keeps telling you about the horrible side-effects and possibility of death. Sometimes you just need to close your eyes and listen. The mirror can work even without your eyes.

Podcast: Jupiters Around Other Suns

Posted on by onespaceman2000

NASA’s Curious Universe podcast has a special series on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Titled “Roman Series: Jupiters Around Other Suns,” it is the second episode in the podcast’s 13th season. The first episode in this series is titled “Roman Series: NASA’s New View of the Dark Universe.”

This second episode discusses the Roman Space Telescope’s upcoming search for exoplanets, noting that space telescope is expected to discover as many as 100,000 new exoplanets within 26,000 light years from Earth. More importantly, it should be able to detect Earth-like exoplanets that have been very difficult to detect up to this point.

In the episode, Vanessa Bailey, a scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, states:

I’m quite excited, because the Nancy Grace Roman mission, one of the two cameras on board the Wide Field instrument, will use the microlensing method to get the most complete census to date of smaller planets orbiting at distances more like Earth, Mars, Jupiter, a real part of parameter space we’ve never been able to access before, and that’s what’s going to tell us, is our solar system common or rare, at least go a long way to answering that question.

The Roman Space Telescope will also analyze the light smudges represented by an exoplanet so it can learn more about the nature of that world. These smudges represent reflected light from the host sun, but it help us to identify the contents of the exoplanet’s atmosphere. And getting that smudge is a lot of work, which is described in detail in the podcast.

The podcast also discusses the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a future mission to discover even more about the atmospheres of exoplanets.

The efforts of the Roman Space Telescope should help to pave the way for the HWO and more amazing missions after that.

Podcast: Is It Really an Exomoon?

Posted on by onespaceman2000

The recent news about the discovery of the first exomoon stirred up the astronomy community, including astronomy professor David Kipping, who needed to address it immediately on his Cool Worlds podcast.

The episode, “We Need to Talk About That “First Exomoon” Discovery,” is basically an hour-long monologue by Dr. Kipping as he discussed the discovery, compares it to earlier similar discoveries, goes over the current definition of a exomoon, and quotes other astronomers regarding their position on the discovery.

The bottom line is that the media may have overplayed the discovery, similar discoveries happened in the past, and the lack of a good definition for an exomoon makes any decision on this new discovery troublesome.

Dr. Kipping has a particular interest in exomoons, and he admits this bias at the start of the show, but he does a good job covering all of the terrain. It is an informative one-man debate reminiscent of the difficulties in defining Pluto.

I recommend you check it out.

Note: The episode can also be found on YouTube. Also, go to this earlier story for more by Dr. Kipping on exomoons.

Podcast: AI Data Centers in Space

Posted on by onespaceman2000

If you are following the debate about whether data centers belong in orbit, this Freakonomics Radio podcast titled “Should A.I. Move to Space?” may be for you.

Guest host Steve Levitt talks to a number of experts about the role of AI in our economy. I recommend listing to all of the podcast since much of it touches on the logistics of data centers in orbit, but it is the later part of the podcast involving a discussion with Will Marshall, co-founder and C.E.O. of Planet Labs, that peaked my attention. He discusses both the role of Planet Labs as its satellites monitors every corner of the Earth’s surface as well as the need for AI data centers in space.

In terms of the Planet Lab satellites, I found his most intriguing statements were related to the reduced costs of satellites. While most of the stories in the press seem to be about the decrease in rocket costs, Mr. Marshall said the real transformation is the miniaturization of satellites. Even under the earlier rocket system (pre-SpaceX), the drop in satellite costs due to smaller satellites would have been incredible.

In the quote below, Mr. Marshall is referring initially to the lower rocket costs, but then he expands into the real cost saving:

But remember even a four or five x reduction in cost, which really helps the whole space industry and has helped spawn it, is less significant, purely from an economic standpoint, than the 100 to a 1,000x improvement in cost performance of satellites that are going in. So, in each kilogram that you put up into space, if you can get a hundred times more data, because you’ve made the satellite way smaller, then you have won big time, even if the launch cost didn’t change one iota.

In his discussion about AI data centers, Mr. Marshall also has a unique view about the role of the Earth’s surface versus space:

I think it’s inevitable that, within a 10-ish year timeframe, most computers being built on the Earth will be going to space. I actually think not only is it going to be economically cheaper, but it’s going to be more sustainable. Earth’s life is so precious, it’s incredible, but yet we’re whittling away a lot of it. We’re doing deforestation for lithium, for cows, for whatever, we’re doing it. And we need to put our energy-intensive infrastructure into orbit, if we can, to not have a collision course with the biodiversity on the planet,

The podcast episode is in two parts, so be sure to listen to the second part when it comes out.

Podcast: The Future of Space Stations

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Design of Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef space station. (Blue Origin)

The latest podcast episode of the Planetary Society’s Planetary radio had an informative discussion about space stations, including why we need them and who should be financing them. The episode, What’s Going on with Commercial Space Stations, is a conversation between Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy for The Planetary Society, and Clayton Swope, Deputy Director of the Aerospace Security Project and Senior Fellow for The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Mr. Swope wrote an story last month for CSIS titled “NASA Changes Course on Commercial Space Stations.” In it, he notes that NASA’s recent change to its program for commercial space stations was due to greater skepticism about the private sector’s ability to make a business case for a space station and then properly construct one in a timely fashion. This is the crux of his discussion with Casey Dreier, which is fun to follow.

Should the federal government continue to take the lead on both the financing and construction of manned space stations to replace the International Space Station (ISS) once it is retired? And why do we even need another manned space station? Does it serve a commercial purpose that cannot be replicated with robots? Or is it more akin to our nation’s support and participation in the Olympics, where we can show American prowess while hopefully taking sports to a new level?

The conversation covers a fair amount of ground, while the Planetary Radio website offers a variety of background links as well as some useful information on the proposed commercial space stations, including:

  • Axiom Station,
  • Orbital Reef,
  • Starlab,
  • Cygnus spacecraft captured by Canadarm2, and
  • Sierra Space LIFE habitat.

NASA and the private sector will need to find a way to make this Earth-orbiting commercial space station a viable option before the ISS is little more than a shooting star. NASA has already killed the Moon’s space station earlier this year (aka Gateway), demonstrating that it is willing to move quickly and break things.

Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of Gateway orbiting the Moon. (NASA)