Cazadores de Estrellas | Observatorios | Chile - Page 12

erbse · November 26th, 2012, 11:50 AM

Concerning SpaceX...

(Don't forget about it - the company is the biggest supporter/supplier of Mars One):

Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk

23 November 2012 - Space.com
Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.

In Musk's vision, the ambitious Mars settlement program would start with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who would journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

"At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big," Musk told an audience at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Friday (Nov. 16). Musk was there to talk about his business plans, and to receive the Society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.

Mars pioneers

Accompanying the founders of the new Mars colony would be large amounts of equipment, including machines to produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen from Mars’ atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and the planet's subsurface water ice.

The Red Planet pioneers would also take construction materials to build transparent domes, which when pressurized with Mars’ atmospheric CO2 could grow Earth crops in Martian soil. As the Mars colony became more self sufficient, the big rocket would start to transport more people and fewer supplies and equipment. [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight]

Musk’s architecture for this human Mars exploration effort does not employ cyclers, reusable spacecraft that would travel back and forth constantly between the Red Planet and Earth — at least not at first.

"Probably not a Mars cycler; the thing with the cyclers is, you need a lot of them," Musk told SPACE.com. "You have to have propellant to keep things aligned as [Mars and Earth’s] orbits aren’t [always] in the same plane. In the beginning you won’t have cyclers."

Musk also ruled out SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which the company is developing to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit, as the spacecraft that would land colonists on the Red Planet. When asked by SPACE.com what vehicle would be used, he said, "I think you just land the entire thing."

Asked if the "entire thing" is the huge new reusable rocket — which is rumored to bear the acronymic name MCT, short for Mass Cargo Transport or Mars Colony Transport — Musk said, "Maybe."

Musk has been thinking about what his colonist-carrying spacecraft would need, whatever it ends up being. He reckons the oxygen concentration inside should be 30 to 40 percent, and he envisions using the spacecraft’s liquid water store as a barrier between the Mars pioneers and the sun.

A $500,000 ticket

Musk’s $500,000 ticket price for a Mars trip was derived from what he thinks is affordable.

"The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip," he said, comparing the purchase to buying a house in California.

He also estimated that of the eight billion humans that will be living on Earth by the time the colony is possible, perhaps one in 100,000 would be prepared to go. That equates to potentially 80,000 migrants.

Musk figures the colony program — which he wants to be a collaboration between government and private enterprise — would end up costing about $36 billion. He arrived at that number by estimating that a colony that costs 0.25 percent or 0.5 percent of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be considered acceptable.

The United States' GDP in 2010 was $14.5 trillion; 0.25 percent of $14.5 trillion is $36 billion. If all 80,000 colonists paid $500,000 per seat for their Mars trip, $40 billion would be raised.

"Some money has to be spent on establishing a base on Mars. It’s about getting the basic fundamentals in place," Musk said. "That was true of the English colonies [in the Americas]; it took a significant expense to get things started. But once there are regular Mars flights, you can get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to move to Mars. Then I think there are enough people who would buy that to have it be a reasonable business case."

Rest of the article, esp. about reusable rocket systems: http://www.space.com/18596-mars-colo...elon-musk.html

He's not following the Mars One model at all with his thoughts, but I generally agree with him. There could be different concepts and efforts to settle Mars and the Solar System, anyway. After all, the colonization of America e.g. wasn't a centralist, homogenous procedure. So it probably won't be for Mars or any other place.

I'm all in favor of competing models and concepts. In the end, we're still stuck with loads of wealthy industrial nations, who all want to get their ass up and make money first in space.

erbse · December 9th, 2012, 01:08 PM

We indeed need to focus on the big issues again! Let's finally get humans to Mars!

beat&vintage · December 16th, 2012, 12:24 AM

Una de las cualidades que tiene el Universo como tema que atrae, es su capacidad de asombrarnos, de sentirnos descubridores y de entregarnos muchas veces un sentido de humildad y deslumbramiento permanente.

Sin embargo, muchas veces es muy difícil de comunicar en términos cercanos. Desde la partida de Carl Sagan ha sido muy difícil encontrar a alguien que pueda "comunicar" el universo a las masas.

Hasta que apareció Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrofísico de la U. Harvard..

Por lo que se sabe, deGrasse asumiría el papel de Sagan en un nuevo Cosmos, aún por ser producido y emitido. El siguiente video demuestra el porqué vale la pena estar atento a este nombre y su capacidad de comunicar las estrellas a nosotros, los siempre fascinados como niños por el universo.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

[/B]

beat&vintage · December 16th, 2012, 01:40 AM

En esta última imagen se muestra a la región de formación estelar LHA 120-N44 [1], localizada en la Gran Nube de Magallanes, una pequeña galaxia satélite de la Vía Láctea. La imagen combina la vista tomada en luz visible del Telescopio MPG/ESO de 2,2 metros (ubicado en el Observatorio La Silla de ESO en Chile) con imágenes en luz infrarroja y rayos X provenientes de los telescopios espaciales en órbita.

En el centro de esta poblada región compuesta de gas, polvo y estrellas jóvenes se encuentra el cúmulo estelar NGC 1929. Sus masivas estrellas emiten grandes cantidades de radiación, expelen materia a grandes velocidades en forma de vientos estelares, y suelen tener una acelerada vida, terminando su corta pero brillante existencia estallando como supernovas. Los vientos y las ondas expansivas de las supernovas han abierto una enorme cavidad, llamada superburbuja, en el gas circundante.

Las observaciones realizadas con el Observatorio de rayos X Chandra de la NASA (aparece aquí en color azul) revelan regiones con altas temperaturas creadas por estos vientos y ondas, mientras que datos recolectados con luz infrarroja del Telescopio Espacial Spitzer de la NASA (en rojo) demarcan el lugar donde se encuentran el polvo y el gas más frío. La vista tomada en luz visible del Telescopio MPG/ESO de 2,2 metros (en amarillo) completa la imagen, y muestra tanto a las estrellas jóvenes calientes como a las resplandecientes nubes de gas y polvo que las rodean.

ESO

***Mariosantiaguino*** · April 8th, 2013, 02:18 AM

!!

erbse · April 14th, 2013, 07:03 PM

Yay! Go Russia, go! Space race of the 21st century is ON!

Putin unveils $50 bn drive for Russian space supremacy

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a live link-up with the multinational crew of the International Space Sation (ISS) from the new Vostochny (Eastern) cosmodrome Russia is building in the Amur region of the Far East, on April 12, 2013. Putin unveiled a new $50bn drive for Russia to preserve its status as a top space power, including a new cosmodrome from where humans will fly to space

President Vladimir Putin on Friday unveiled a new $50 billion drive for Russia to preserve its status as a top space power, including the construction of a brand new cosmodrome from where humans will fly to space by the end of the decade.

Fifty-two years to the day since Yuri Gagarin became the Soviet Union's greatest hero by making the first human flight into space, Putin inspected the new Vostochny (Eastern) cosmodrome Russia is building in the Amur region of its Far East district. Putin said in a live link-up with the multinational crew of the International Space Sation (ISS) that Russia hoped to have the first launches from Vostochny in 2015 and the first manned launches in 2018. "It's going to be a great launch pad.

It took a long time to choose but now work is fully underway," said Putin in comments broadcast on state television, adding that Vostochny would be fully operational by 2020. Russia still carries out all manned launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan—the same place where Gagarin made his historic flight.

But this has been clouded in recent years by disputes with the Kazakh authorities over lease terms. Putin announced that the town being built around the new cosmodrome to house its engineers and families would be called Tsiolkovsky, in honour of the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who pioneered rocket design in the early Soviet era.

The Russian space programme has been hurt in recent years by a string of launch failures of unmanned probes and satellites, but Putin vowed Moscow would ramp up spending. He said that from 2013-2020, Russia would be spending 1.6 trillion rubles ($51.8 billion, 38 million euros) on its space sector, a growth far greater than any other space power. Putin complained that Russia was behind other states in space activities other than manned flights, which he said had long been the "priority" of the Russian space programme "to the detriment" of other projects.

With up to 58 percent of the Russian space budget going on manned space flight, Russia had lost ground to other powers, in particular in unmanned deep-space exploration, said Putin. "We need to preserve what we have achieved in manned space flight but also to catch up in these other areas," said Putin, who said he also did not rule out the creation of a ministry of space.

One of Russia's most embarrassing failures was the loss of its Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars in 2012 which ended up crashing back into Earth rather than even coming close to completing its mission of visiting a Martian moon. The disaster underlined Russia's weaknesses compared with US space agency NASA, which has basked in the huge public successes of its unmanned Mars missions in recent years.

But speaking to Canadian spaceman Chris Hadfield, currently commander of the ISS, Putin hailed cooperation in space which meant world powers could forget about the problems of international relations and think "about the future of mankind." Russia's veteran Soyuz rocket and capsule system, based on the same principles as the system that launched Gagarin, is currently the sole means of transporting humans to the ISS since the retirement of the US shuttle.

Putin said that cosmonauts returning to Earth after lifting off from Vostochny would most likely splash down in the Pacific Ocean rather than land as they currently do in Kazakhstan. "Most probably, according to specialists, they will come down on the ocean. So our cosmonauts will splash down rather than touch down," Putin said. The head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, meanwhile said Moscow was targeting 2030 as the year in which it could begin creating a base on the moon for flights to Mars.

"The moon is a great launch pad, it's basically a big space object on which a whole load of things could be accommodated. Not using it would be sinful," he told state television. (c) 2013 AFP

Source: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-putin-u...ian-space.html

erbse · May 2nd, 2013, 11:43 AM

Human mission to Mars is no longer just a sci-fi dream

The notion of landing astronauts on Mars has long been more fantasy than reality: The planet is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth, and its atmosphere isn’t hospitable to human life.

But a human voyage to the planet is now, for the first time, within the realm of possibility, according to space advocates inside and outside government. As a result, plans for a mission around the planet, and ultimately for lengthier stays, have been sprouting like springtime flowers.

The new momentum, some space experts say, comes from the successful landing of the large rover Curiosity in a Martian crater last year, the growing eagerness of space entrepreneurs to mount and fund missions to Mars and encouraging new data about the radiation risks of such an expedition. NASA says it hopes to land astronauts on the planet within the next two decades, and the agency is developing a heavy-lift rocket and a new space capsule to achieve this goal. It has even established an optimal time frame for this event — in the early 2030s, when the very different orbits of the two planets brings them closest to each other.

The challenges of space technology — including how to keep astronauts alive en route and on the planet — as well as government support and funding remain daunting, but the goal of landing humans on Mars is seeming less and less like a pipe dream. “A human mission to Mars is a priority, and our entire exploration program is aligned to support this goal,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. NASA has “overcome the technical challenges of landing and operating spacecraft on Mars” robotically, Bolden said. “We’re developing today the technologies needed to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.”

‘Human destiny’

With both the promise and the obstacles in mind, Bolden and other top NASA planners, rocket developers and scientists, as well as leaders from the commercial space industry and organizations and agencies abroad will meet Monday at a conference at George Washington University. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon in 1969, will be a keynote speaker at the three-day gathering. He has just written a book that he refers to as a manifesto laying out the reasons humans can and should set their sights on not only landing on Mars but also setting up a permanent settlement there.

It is “human destiny” to explore space and settle on other planets, he writes in “Mission to Mars,” which is being released this week. He has his own step-by-step plans on how to accomplish a Mars campaign, but he makes room for others as well.

“Our world isn’t just Earth anymore, and we need to get much more serious about that,” Aldrin said in an interview, adding that the leaders who take us to Mars and the pioneers who inhabit it “will go down in human history as heroes and be honored for thousands and thousands of years.”

[...]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...6dd_story.html

Guiche Rex · May 3rd, 2013, 05:17 AM

Me acordé de una noticia de hace unos días diciendo que hay 3 chilenos postulando a Mars One

November 26th, 2012, 11:50 AM	#221
erbse Leave UiG alone! Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Mecklenburg, California of Germany ja! Posts: 20,320 Likes (Received): 4923	Concerning SpaceX... (Don't forget about it - the company is the biggest supporter/supplier of Mars One): Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk 23 November 2012 - Space.com Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip. In Musk's vision, the ambitious Mars settlement program would start with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who would journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane. "At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big," Musk told an audience at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Friday (Nov. 16). Musk was there to talk about his business plans, and to receive the Society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space. Mars pioneers Accompanying the founders of the new Mars colony would be large amounts of equipment, including machines to produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen from Mars’ atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and the planet's subsurface water ice. The Red Planet pioneers would also take construction materials to build transparent domes, which when pressurized with Mars’ atmospheric CO2 could grow Earth crops in Martian soil. As the Mars colony became more self sufficient, the big rocket would start to transport more people and fewer supplies and equipment. [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight] Musk’s architecture for this human Mars exploration effort does not employ cyclers, reusable spacecraft that would travel back and forth constantly between the Red Planet and Earth — at least not at first. "Probably not a Mars cycler; the thing with the cyclers is, you need a lot of them," Musk told SPACE.com. "You have to have propellant to keep things aligned as [Mars and Earth’s] orbits aren’t [always] in the same plane. In the beginning you won’t have cyclers." Musk also ruled out SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which the company is developing to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit, as the spacecraft that would land colonists on the Red Planet. When asked by SPACE.com what vehicle would be used, he said, "I think you just land the entire thing." Asked if the "entire thing" is the huge new reusable rocket — which is rumored to bear the acronymic name MCT, short for Mass Cargo Transport or Mars Colony Transport — Musk said, "Maybe." Musk has been thinking about what his colonist-carrying spacecraft would need, whatever it ends up being. He reckons the oxygen concentration inside should be 30 to 40 percent, and he envisions using the spacecraft’s liquid water store as a barrier between the Mars pioneers and the sun. A $500,000 ticket Musk’s $500,000 ticket price for a Mars trip was derived from what he thinks is affordable. "The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip," he said, comparing the purchase to buying a house in California. He also estimated that of the eight billion humans that will be living on Earth by the time the colony is possible, perhaps one in 100,000 would be prepared to go. That equates to potentially 80,000 migrants. Musk figures the colony program — which he wants to be a collaboration between government and private enterprise — would end up costing about $36 billion. He arrived at that number by estimating that a colony that costs 0.25 percent or 0.5 percent of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be considered acceptable. The United States' GDP in 2010 was $14.5 trillion; 0.25 percent of $14.5 trillion is $36 billion. If all 80,000 colonists paid $500,000 per seat for their Mars trip, $40 billion would be raised. "Some money has to be spent on establishing a base on Mars. It’s about getting the basic fundamentals in place," Musk said. "That was true of the English colonies [in the Americas]; it took a significant expense to get things started. But once there are regular Mars flights, you can get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to move to Mars. Then I think there are enough people who would buy that to have it be a reasonable business case." *Rest of the article, esp. about reusable rocket systems: http://www.space.com/18596-mars-colo...elon-musk.html* He's not following the Mars One model at all with his thoughts, but I generally agree with him. There could be different concepts and efforts to settle Mars and the Solar System, anyway. After all, the colonization of America e.g. wasn't a centralist, homogenous procedure. So it probably won't be for Mars or any other place. I'm all in favor of competing models and concepts. In the end, we're still stuck with loads of wealthy industrial nations, who all want to get their ass up and make money first in space. __________________ MARS☻ONE *Making a Mars Settlement a Reality! (FAQ • SSC Thread • Mars One Fans Forum)*

December 9th, 2012, 01:08 PM	#222
erbse Leave UiG alone! Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Mecklenburg, California of Germany ja! Posts: 20,320 Likes (Received): 4923	We indeed need to focus on the big issues again! Let's finally get humans to Mars! __________________ MARS☻ONE *Making a Mars Settlement a Reality! (FAQ • SSC Thread • Mars One Fans Forum)*

December 16th, 2012, 12:24 AM	#223
beat&vintage • • • • • • • • • • • • • Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Prisma y Proa Posts: 1,042 Likes (Received): 62	Una de las cualidades que tiene el Universo como tema que atrae, es su capacidad de asombrarnos, de sentirnos descubridores y de entregarnos muchas veces un sentido de humildad y deslumbramiento permanente. Sin embargo, muchas veces es muy difícil de comunicar en términos cercanos. Desde la partida de Carl Sagan ha sido muy difícil encontrar a alguien que pueda "comunicar" el universo a las masas. Hasta que apareció Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrofísico de la U. Harvard.. Por lo que se sabe, deGrasse asumiría el papel de Sagan en un nuevo Cosmos, aún por ser producido y emitido. El siguiente video demuestra el porqué vale la pena estar atento a este nombre y su capacidad de comunicar las estrellas a nosotros, los siempre fascinados como niños por el universo. Neil deGrasse Tyson [/B] __________________ AustralChile Aut Consiliis Aut Ense • Por la Razón o la Fuerza /\|\|\|/\|\|\|\/\|\|\| /\\|\|\|\| /\|\|\|\|\| \| \|\| \|\|\|\ /\| \|\|\|\

December 16th, 2012, 01:40 AM	#224
beat&vintage • • • • • • • • • • • • • Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Prisma y Proa Posts: 1,042 Likes (Received): 62	En esta última imagen se muestra a la región de formación estelar LHA 120-N44 [1], localizada en la Gran Nube de Magallanes, una pequeña galaxia satélite de la Vía Láctea. La imagen combina la vista tomada en luz visible del Telescopio MPG/ESO de 2,2 metros (ubicado en el Observatorio La Silla de ESO en Chile) con imágenes en luz infrarroja y rayos X provenientes de los telescopios espaciales en órbita. En el centro de esta poblada región compuesta de gas, polvo y estrellas jóvenes se encuentra el cúmulo estelar NGC 1929. Sus masivas estrellas emiten grandes cantidades de radiación, expelen materia a grandes velocidades en forma de vientos estelares, y suelen tener una acelerada vida, terminando su corta pero brillante existencia estallando como supernovas. Los vientos y las ondas expansivas de las supernovas han abierto una enorme cavidad, llamada superburbuja, en el gas circundante. Las observaciones realizadas con el Observatorio de rayos X Chandra de la NASA (aparece aquí en color azul) revelan regiones con altas temperaturas creadas por estos vientos y ondas, mientras que datos recolectados con luz infrarroja del Telescopio Espacial Spitzer de la NASA (en rojo) demarcan el lugar donde se encuentran el polvo y el gas más frío. La vista tomada en luz visible del Telescopio MPG/ESO de 2,2 metros (en amarillo) completa la imagen, y muestra tanto a las estrellas jóvenes calientes como a las resplandecientes nubes de gas y polvo que las rodean. ESO __________________ AustralChile Aut Consiliis Aut Ense • Por la Razón o la Fuerza /\|\|\|/\|\|\|\/\|\|\| /\\|\|\|\| /\|\|\|\|\| \| \|\| \|\|\|\ /\| \|\|\|\

May 2nd, 2013, 11:43 AM	#227
erbse Leave UiG alone! Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Mecklenburg, California of Germany ja! Posts: 20,320 Likes (Received): 4923	Human mission to Mars is no longer just a sci-fi dream The notion of landing astronauts on Mars has long been more fantasy than reality: The planet is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth, and its atmosphere isn’t hospitable to human life. But a human voyage to the planet is now, for the first time, within the realm of possibility, according to space advocates inside and outside government. As a result, plans for a mission around the planet, and ultimately for lengthier stays, have been sprouting like springtime flowers. The new momentum, some space experts say, comes from the successful landing of the large rover Curiosity in a Martian crater last year, the growing eagerness of space entrepreneurs to mount and fund missions to Mars and encouraging new data about the radiation risks of such an expedition. NASA says it hopes to land astronauts on the planet within the next two decades, and the agency is developing a heavy-lift rocket and a new space capsule to achieve this goal. It has even established an optimal time frame for this event — in the early 2030s, when the very different orbits of the two planets brings them closest to each other. The challenges of space technology — including how to keep astronauts alive en route and on the planet — as well as government support and funding remain daunting, but the goal of landing humans on Mars is seeming less and less like a pipe dream. “A human mission to Mars is a priority, and our entire exploration program is aligned to support this goal,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. NASA has “overcome the technical challenges of landing and operating spacecraft on Mars” robotically, Bolden said. “We’re developing today the technologies needed to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.” ‘Human destiny’ With both the promise and the obstacles in mind, Bolden and other top NASA planners, rocket developers and scientists, as well as leaders from the commercial space industry and organizations and agencies abroad will meet Monday at a conference at George Washington University. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon in 1969, will be a keynote speaker at the three-day gathering. He has just written a book that he refers to as a manifesto laying out the reasons humans can and should set their sights on not only landing on Mars but also setting up a permanent settlement there. It is “human destiny” to explore space and settle on other planets, he writes in “Mission to Mars,” which is being released this week. He has his own step-by-step plans on how to accomplish a Mars campaign, but he makes room for others as well. “Our world isn’t just Earth anymore, and we need to get much more serious about that,” Aldrin said in an interview, adding that the leaders who take us to Mars and the pioneers who inhabit it “will go down in human history as heroes and be honored for thousands and thousands of years.” [...] http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...6dd_story.html __________________ MARS☻ONE *Making a Mars Settlement a Reality! (FAQ • SSC Thread • Mars One Fans Forum)*

May 3rd, 2013, 05:17 AM	#228
Guiche Rex Concepción (L) Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Concepción Posts: 3,243 Likes (Received): 88	Me acordé de una noticia de hace unos días diciendo que hay 3 chilenos postulando a Mars One __________________ Concepción Se Levanta!!

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