Wanderlust: Making the War-Lord see red!

One issue with habitation of Mars is that it has a thin atmosphere. To paraphrase what this article  states - the thin atmosphere causes problems. These problems vary from an inability to contain water, breathe, and so on. Ergo it is necessary for Mars to have an atmosphere before humans may attempt to habit there.

Earth retains it's atmosphere, in no small part, because of it's magnetic field. In turn the magnetic field is generated by the liquid core deep beneath this planet we call Earth. A magnetic field is necessary for Mars to maintain an atmosphere.

So we were having these thoughts on how to kick-start Mars' magnetic field.

It just struck me (pun intended!) that a rock may be the start of an answer. Our Earth collects anywhere from 5 to 300 tons of space-dust daily to 300 tons of space-dust daily. So why restrict ourselves to a big enough rock? Make it lots & lots of littler (pardon my English!) rocks. So many that the cumulative mass of the planet increases the pressure to the extent the core liquifies again.

Another alternative could be to have an external/artificial magnetic field. Earthlings have already proven themselves capable of sending craft as emissary to meet the War-Lord. Make it several craft instead! Each in an areostationary orbit (emulating the GPS satellites here on Earth), each transmitting over a broad-spectrum omnidirectionally. Voila!

Of course both solutions are easier said than done ... and mutually exclusive. The first, of course, is the issue of motive, and electro-motive power required. But they are available options that may be placed upon the table before they may be discarded (if so!).

Wanderlust: A bum rush!

Solid bodies in the Solar System are relatively few; IMO the inner planets, asteroids, comets, and a few satellites around the Gas Giants. To the best of my knowledge, asteroids & comets lack an atmosphere - and are pock-marked to the extreme.

Out of Mars, Earth, Venus & Mercury - Mercury's atmosphere is ... mercurial, the Venerean atmosphere is lush in the extreme. Mars has a thin atmosphere, whereas Earth's is (for us humans, and a few other species) just right.

Of these 4 terrestrial planets, Earth has the greatest escape velocity at 11.2 km/s followed closely by Venus 10.3km/s, Mars 5km/s, and finally Mercury 4.3km/s.

At it's closest, Venus is around 38 Million km from Earth. Mars is around 54.6 million kilometers in it's turn.

No body is immune to impact by other bodies. Earth too is no stranger to body-play; Micro-micro meteorites accumulate by the giga-ton annually in the form of dust. Larger impact bodies such as the Chicxulub capable of delivering several as much as 100 Teratons equivalent of TNT are also out there - but less frequent. As many as 132 meteorites found on Earth are identified as of Martian origin.

On October 17, 2013, NASA reported, based on analysis of argon in the Martian atmosphere by the Mars Curiosity rover, that certain meteorites found on Earth thought to be from Mars were actually from Mars.

Back in the 1960s/70s, Project Orion was a theoretical study on a nuclear pulse propelled space-ship. Several devices being flung out opposite to the desired direction of thrust. Each device imparting an absurdly humongous specific impulse on detonation.

What I therefore find myself wondering

1. How large would the impact have been on Mars to impart escape velocity to the rocks that eventually turned up on Earth?
2. Even given the turbulent environment on Mars, is there a possibility one of the impact craters - the source of an eventual martian meteorite, may be discovered by one of the missions presently on/under-way to Mars?
3. Is there a probability of discovering a Venerean meteorite here on Earth?
4. Could Chicxulub, or a comparable impact may have dislodged a rock and sent it to Mars, or Venus?

 

Wanderlust: Kayoed

The Solar System is comprised of the Sun, Jupiter, and other debris of creation. A portion of the debris are called planets; these are broadly classified as Gas Giants (Jupiter Saturn Uranus & Neptune ), and Terrestrials  (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars).

A planet usually has reasonably well-defined orbit. Smaller bodies have a well-defined orbit too, but are more liable to suffer perturbation from larger bodies. These smaller bodies are either comets, or asteroids.

Wikipedia has a great article on meteorites This article defines a meteorite as below

A meteorite is a solid piece of debris, from such sources as asteroids or comets, that originates in outer space and survives its impact with the Earth's surface.

But there are also the rare meteorites that may have originated on Mars. The wikipedia  article on Martian meteorite writes to say

On October 17, 2013, NASA reported, based on analysis of argon in the Martian atmosphere by the Mars Curiosity rover, that certain meteorites found on Earth thought to be from Mars were actually from Mars.

This raises a few questions in my mind

a. Do these martian meteorites contain significant quantities of extra-martian particles? (E.g. Those that belonged to the original asteroid/meteorite which impacted Mars, OR those that were collected during the course of it's journey through space)

b. How much velocity, and mass would the original meteorite have had to impart escape velocity to the rock? Is it possible to formulate these figures & say if a comet has mass X, and velocity Y it may impart escape velocity to Z mass of the impacted body?

Where could the Malaysian Airlines MH370 be?

So a great many people are wondering about the Malaysian Airlines MH370 which apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth a few days ago.

Guess I may as well as add my two-bits of randomness

Thinking aloud.

Either it pranged, or did not.

Assuming it did not prang near the specified location

• from the absence of debris, and 
• failure of the ELT

it went, or was taken, else-where

 

Reasons may be

•  some passenger was of value to someone
•  some cargo was of value to someone
•  the assembly was of value to someone
•  the response of the various nations was of value to someone

Examination of the passenger/cargo manifest would *hopefully* have revealed something along the first two possibilities. So I'll think about the last two in my list above.

If the assembly was/is of value - someone (or someones, pardon my grammar!) went to some effort to get hold of it. Either it is to be disassembled, or mothballed.

Disassembly in the ocean ... uh - the imagination boggles! So regardless of disassembly, or mothball - it is on/in Terra Firma until it ceases to be valuable. Perhaps debris may appear once it is no longer valuable.

If mothballed, at some point it may need fuel/consumables/parts - parts may be acquired/fabricated. Fuel, and consumables OTOH are perishable unless stored by trained hands in proper containers.
Ergo, it may be in a 'hangar' - near a rejuvenated (surely someone would have noticed new construction?) strip (perhaps fitted with arrestors) capable of tolerating the mass of such a large aircraft under heavy braking.

That leaves the last possibility - the response (or response pattern) of some nations to the incident may be of value. Errr ... Oops!
 

Extra-terrestrial dis-corporation

Last year the Mars One Foundation invited volunteers for a one-way trip to take up residence with the War-Lord. Over 200,000 humans volunteered; amongst them close to 20,000 Indians. A fraction of this number - 62 to be precise, have since made the cut for further participation as is evinced from this article. Space is known to be a hostile environment; the journey and destination environment even more so.

Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code writes to say

309. Attempt to commit suicide
Whoever attempts to commit suicide and does any act towards the commission of such offence, shall he punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year 151[or with fine, or with both].

The hazards involved may be considered a trade-off for a journey that attempts to take man to mars, and return safely. A one-way trip, on the other hand, may be construed suicidal - even if a technologically complex, and highly creative way to discorporate one-self.

Will any Indian in the final crew of the Mars One missions invite action under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code?

Wanderlust: Crawling on hands & knees

The European Space Agency writes to say
The applicant must have the normal range of motion and functionality in all joints.

Historically, IMHO, astronauts came from a flight/test-pilot background. Physical fitness may have been mandatory for orbital flight, and for the lunar programme. It may even be necessary for any missions that involve actually landing on a body exhibiting significant gravitational attraction. It might _not_ be necessary, say, for a mission to Phobos.

I'm sure NASA and other Space Agencies have similar physical mobility requirements for their astronauts.

In this context, Wikipedia writes to say
What began as the selection of military fighter and test pilots in the 1960s, with a considerable focus on physical capability, has evolved into a selection that now selects for aptitude in engineering, sciences, life sciences, and mathematics

Say instead the astronaut is headed to the ISS where she/he is expected to be in free-fall most of the time. A person with a reduced range of motion (I'm specifically of the mind of restricted movement of the lower-limb) might actually be better suited for free-fall - as long as other physical, social, mental health parameters are met. About the only time I imagine full-range of motion in the lower-limb/s might be necessary would be at launch/landing.

I've never been an astronaut, or even close to medicine let alone space-medicine so I may be wrong. Feel free to poke me in the rib if my premise is flawed!

Is the physical fitness requirement that an astronaut prove full-range of mobility in all limbs relevant to astronauts headed to the ISS, or low-gravity bodies such as an asteroid?

 

Wanderlust: A doe-eyed toddler

There's a lot of hullaballoo about the sky falling on our heads.
It all started when someone in the Space Program read an Asterix comic ... no, it didn't really. But there is some truth to the sky falling on our heads; except that it is about orbital debris.

According to wikipedia -
Currently, about 19,000 pieces of debris larger than 5 cm (2.0 in) are tracked, with another 300,000 pieces smaller than 1 cm below 2000 km altitude.

Now 5cm, and 1cm seem to be laughably small - and they would be laughably small under normal circumstances. In orbit though, there is no such thing as laughably small. What makes orbital debris dangerous is that an object in orbit travels at extremely high velocity! What's your first guess? 100km/h? 200km/h? 1000km/h? Objects in orbit travel at a velocity of over 25000 km/h!

For instance, the heaviest artifact in orbit at present is the International Space Station. This has a mass of 450,000 KG ... and an average velocity of 7.66km/s OR approximately 27576km/h!

For the sake of comparison, the fastest bullet (well, it can be called a bullet!) fired by a tank gun is around 1.7km/s.

In case you think this 7.66km/s is fast, let me point out to you Voyager 1 (now out of the Solar System) is toddling along at over 17km/s . Given the immensity of interstellar space and huge distances between objects in space, even this 17km/s is slow! Remember that Voyager 1 was launched over 36 years ago - about the time I was born. So in my lifetime, Voyager 1 has only gone out of the Solar System! It will take 40000 (yes, Forty thousand) years to even get close to another star!

The good thing about orbital debris being small is that if it encounters Earth Atmosphere, it will burn away as a meteor! Besides, space is so immense an object may spend an infinity in orbit without anything eventful happening.

But these artifacts are scattered beginning from around 200km above Earth to 36000km above Earth. The renewed interest in space exploration promises to increase the population of objects orbiting Earth. As an example, Kicksat is a program to launch miniature personal satellites!

But what can be done about this situation? Why not turn the debris into an advantage? Easier said than done, I know ... and I'm no space scientist so my take could be wrong.

Having made that qualification, I shall now proceed to put my foot in it -

The ISS is up there anyway ... can all this debris be collected to construct a small module - assembled in orbit? The ISS uses fuel to balance it's orbit anyway; we may perhaps even haul fuel, and cannibalize an engine from the ISS instrumentation to send the module elsewhere out of Earth orbit! This could also be an experiment for the Pir module due to be undocked in 2014

One for all ...

Looking for a courier service I found myself scratching my head going through the "About Us" page on the web-site. The line seemed so familiar - it invoked a sense of deja-vu.

A quick google search for the line
" would like to associate ourselves as providing services in all areas related to logistics." 
brought several pages of results. One such page of matching results is embedded here as an image.

I'm no statistician -
What are the odds of so many different companies constructing a page with so many sentences verbatim?

Is Terraformation a pipe-dream?

With all the hullaballoo going in with the Space Program lately, the subject of terraformation in the context of Mars could not fail to crop up. There is a general misconception about the term itself - Terraforming is not about making the target body identical to Earth. 'Terraforming' refers to the sustainable transformation of a place into one suitable for habitation by Earthlings.

Typically mentioned candidates are Mars, Venus, and Europa. Albeit perhaps some asteroids may be legitimate candidates too.

Earth's ecosystem is fragile.

Organic & inorganic participants - flora, fauna, physics, chemistry, biology, time; All contribute.

It is difficult to imagine an isolated part, or parts - bacteria/animals/plants/chemicals maintaining a balance without being complemented by the rest of that environment. If complemented adequately (we may be talking biochemistry here) the systems may conceivably take off on unexpected scale in an unexpected direction. Perhaps one way to control terraformation from going badly wrong is to keep the program uniform, and in strict check.

Should terra-formation be common to all targets?

Is it possible to define something like a process/framework like -
1. Determine composition of atmosphere, and soil (leave in-depth exploration the colonials)
2. Thoroughly map the surface contours
3. Determine the critical path for terra-formation E.g.
    - Change atmospheric pressure (increase/decrease surface temperatures) if required
    - Determine the existence of indigenous macro organisms, and value thereof
    - Introduce/Induce the water cycle
    - Transplant workers (robots, bacteria, viruses) to get to work at the microscopic level

Every planet, to our present knowledge, is unique. Given that so simple a macro as the water-cycle is barely in control here on terra-firma; Is terra-formation, at our present levels of technology a pipe-dream?
If not, what would make a suitable test-bed for theory before attempting to put it to practice millions of miles away?

Shadow Boxing: The right to life ...

su·i·cide 
/'so?oi?sid/
Noun
The action of killing oneself intentionally: "he committed suicide at the age of forty".

Nothing new, I'm sure. Almost every day the newspaper reports one self-discorporation, or the other. In fact, according to the internet nearly ten thousand indians attempt suicide annually. Nearly 300 per day, and the majority are in the prime of life - around 40 years old! Fortunately there is a strong deterrent against suicide in the form of Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. This section enforces Article 21 of the Indian Constitution - "Protection of Life and personal liberty".

Historically suicide was deemed a crime in many cultures, and nations. The logic being that killing oneself was contrary to the laws established by God & Nature; some more references are available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#History

To paraphrase John Donne, "No man is an island" - which may be interpreted to mean that an individual is a part of the society that forms the civilisation of the period in which he lives. Suicide, when successful, leaves a society with a gap which may be difficult to fill; particularly when the individual happened to possess specialised knowledge. Understandably therefore, suicide, was deemed a crime against society & civilisation by the individual - and therefore punishable as such.Yet the sceptical mind wonders about the rationale historically put forth to justify opposition to this step.

Society is in a state of continuous flux. Towns and cities were few and far between perhaps until the industrial revolution. Prior to the industrial revolution most communities were relatively small, clustered in the vicinity of and administered by a liege lord.It is difficult to imagine a despotical medieval warlord being concerned about the welfare of the community around him to the extent of a fiat to deter suicide. In an agrarian society one could easily miss a peasant ; a feudal mindset would simply write-off the peasant. The same despotic feudal mindset would, perhaps, find it a little more difficult to write-off losses in the form of material assistance given to, and taxes owed by the same peasant. He would be in a sorry state if the entire community were to decide to discopororate! Hence the despot would probably also attempt to recoup losses caused by suicide through higher taxes and levy on the living. As a corollary the decree that made suicide illegal would punish even more clearly the individual who failed the attempt. To the simple souls that formed the majority of the rural community yet another obstacle to the so-called easy way out would be any edict that touted suicide as an irredeemable crime against God.

It is easy to imagine the law being applied in the Colonies ; after all the peasants in the colonies were in the worst state. The executive told them what to sow, the law told them what taxes were owed, and the law also held out varying degrees of punishment if the peasant were to be lax in his farming, or payment of his dues, as also in attempting to take the easy way out!

These thoughts came to mind after I watched 'Guzaarish' earlier this month; the topic is owed deeper thought than perhaps it gets.

The world seems to be going crazy about Mars. If one is to believe news reports now India too has joined the bandwagon! Since the 1960s there have been over 30 missions focussed on Mars. Admittedly this span of 50 years has seen technology change, and therefore improved our knowledge as also perhaps our path-finding skills.

The question is this - Do we, as nations, duplicate, ... and duplicate redundantly, each other's efforts by building independently?

Apart from incomplete understanding, and one-upmanship between space agencies - what stands in the way of an international consortium to chalk out, develop, and execute missions to bodies in the solar system?

Doomsday: A Phoenix

Continuing from my last blog on the subject of using DNA as a repository I find my thoughts venturing into the realm of hard extrapolation. This post therefore qualifies as pure synapse action.
Chromosome pairs in the DNA are closely bound to hormone action. Keep this point in mind, and move onward. Although theology is not really my forte I would venture to state that almost all belief/support systems tell the individual something along the lines of "Believe in yourself", or "The Kingdom of God resides within you", or even succinctly "Man, know thyself". Such statements are also echoed in the age old "Mens sana in corpore sano".

Hindu mythology is replete with examples of ordinary men acquiring and applying abilities far beyond that of their fellows. How did they do so? Myth & Legend tell us such achievement had one fundamental requirement - call upon a member of the hindu pantheon until she/he would open the gateway to desired knowledge. For such meditation a necessary precondition was knowledge of Yoga as it would provide the necessary control of one's physiology - to the extent of being in meditation for years on end!

Even today an accomplished Yoga instructor may tell his disciples that the secret to Yoga is that the individual develops the ability to use/control muscles that would otherwise atrophy unnoticed in 'modern' life. Such fine musclular action could serve to trigger some glands or suppress others such that specific hormones may appear in the bloodstream. Hormones that may serve as the 'unlock code' for specific base pairs.

Could our ancestors/predecessors have left us a message that will only be available when we pursue a certain life-style/dharma/karma? That is to say such knowledge will not be available until we are ready for it ... which serves to paraphrase yet another idiom "... in the fullness of time"

Doomsday: Through the valley of the shadow

So all the brouhaha about the 'doomsday' recorded in the Mayan Calendar for the month of December 2012 got me thinking.

To the best of our knowledge we do not go back much more than a few millenia - not even a score of them. The thinking goes that if there had been an older civilization there would be signs of it - as there is proof of the ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Mesopotamian, and Eblan civilizations. Ergo, we are the first modern scientifically advanced civilization since Homo Sapiens evolved 4.5 million years ago or so.

Assume now our civilization were to be utterly destroyed - with a few thousands of survivors out of the present population of more than 6 billion. In the absence of the ability to communicate, these survivors might (within a few generations) return to living off the land. In a pinch, even the many libraries may not survive the new savage.

The knowledge of several millenia of nearly uninterrupted progress might be lost!!

One solution would be to store this knowledge - perhaps the equivalent of the Encylopedia Brittanica in a 'stasis'. This stasis field would preserve until such time as the survivors would again acquire the minimum scientific knowledge to reach into the stasis field. But what kind of stasis field could possibly maintain power for an unforeseeable duration? Sooner or later even a plutonium power-supply would wind down.

The question had me flummoxed until it occurred to me that there is atleast one means to make knowledge available to future generations after maintaining it in stasis for an indefinite period.

Although organic we are creatures of electricity. Our nervous system, our bodies are susceptible to electricity & magnetism - which makes it possible to perform EKG, EEG, etc. From the amoeba up this applies to other animals too. Of course, our bodies use electricity in the microvolt range -
perhaps even a lower order of magnitude. But a human body wouldn't last even if provided with nutrition. Yet there are additional paths on this track of thought. So - why not store the information in such a manner that it would last as long as life itself did? This way, whatever the life-form, any information would be stored and maintained as long as the life-form continued to exist.

Use the genome of several species to record data and act as your repository. Choose lower animals rather than higher for they are more likely to survive - the trade-off being that they may have a shorter life-span, and faster mutation rate.

Now as long as the species ; your repository, survives - your data may be retrieved; subject to the ability of that later new civilization to follow your train of thought.

 

Doomsday: Peering over the edge

The Mayan Civilization calendar is similar to the Calendar of other ancient cultures (Hinduism, Judaism ... to name a couple) in that it attempts to identify the end-time, and prepare it's people for it. According to the Gregorian equivalent of the Mayan Calendar, this end-time would occur either on Dec. 21 2012 AD (Gregorian), or Dec. 23 2012 AD (Gregorian).

Such an apocalypse is no new event ... albeit it may have a different description across cultures. We, Earthlings, have sprung to existence on a planet which every few years (well, every few million years anyway) is utterly destroyed - and life then begins anew. Geology identifies several distinct time-periods A similar theme reverberates in religion. So many religions mention humanity coming to an end - and then starting anew.

An apocalypse for our civilization is similar to a person losing memory to trauma, and having to learn from scratch how to crawl, walk, run, read, and write. Whatever we learn is scarcely ever totally unique. The fundamental rules - physics, chemistry, biology, math remain the same. Yet every time a civilization comes to a screeching halt it must work it's way up through the gears learning and losing that knowledge until it develops the cultural defect known as 'writing'.

Earth came into existence around 4.5 billion years ago. Subsequently, according to fossil/genetic record, the humans emerged from the ape family around 5 million years ago. Our present culture is highly advanced compared to our ancestors of a few millenia ago. But ... is it really advanced? Knowledge is lost easily - 3 or 4 generations are probably all that seperate us from the states/empires of old that squabbled amongst themselves. If our civilization were to begin to end today... and if it were then to take a millennium for civilization to recover to the stage when our descendants started to wonder about us, their ancestors, what would they find? Unlike our ancestors who constructed the 7 wonders, our greatest works are in cement, concrete, iron, paper, silicon and most recently glass (read CD/DVD/Blu-ray). These works would hardly be accessible if buried under volcanic lava, volcanic ash, or if inundated by the oceans/snows. If not volcanoes, earthquakes, or oceans it still wouldn't take very long for paper to decompose; Sooner or later nature, and vegetation would reclaim their domain and bury any artifacts beneath humus, or silt, or ash, or rock, or sand.

How would one go about preparing a repository of our civilization's knowledge? A repository that would be highly likely to survive an apocalypse, be virtually indestructible, and also be available to our descendants - with reasonable minimum scientific development, and effort.

First there was ASCII ...

Most people who use a computer are usually well-versed with English. Sufficiently so to be able to use the necessary command/response sequences ... even if it is by rote.

i18n is still very new. Although i18n, or internationalization/localization as it is known has grown to include more and more locales each year - it appears to be restricted to applications. To write an application the developer is limited either a GUI drag/drop interface, or to the roman alphabet. Along the same lines I am yet to see an Operating System that allows a command input any language other than english commands! The same applies to the address-bar in a browser window.

With the growth of services such as Google's Translate, would one expect the foreseeable future to see the layman able to type the URI 'www.google.com' in the vernacular (devnagari, japanese, urdu, hindi, bengali ... whatever) and for the DNS Server to recognize it and return the same page?

Physics of psychology

Every once in a while I let water out from the well to soak the grounds. This is a traditional process known in physics as 'Evaporative Cooling'. The heat in the soil is taken up by the water to evaporate, and leaves the soil itself cooler than before. It is necessary to avoid an excess of water here - hence usually requires half-an-eye as frequently as possible.

So I had half an eye my attention was drawn to motes being carried along by the current. Every time the water flowed through a dip the mote 'fell' into the depression and swirled in the eddy for a while before eventually finding their way.

I'm tempted to compare what I observed here with the way most of us humans appear to 'think'. Our thoughts usually tread a defined path - one constructed by our social environment, education, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Now and then we encounter a scenario alien to us - one where we are out of our depth (pardon the pun), one that demands we draw upon all our previous experience for comprehension ... just like the mote encountering an eddy in it's path that it must travel before moving on.

The rules of physics govern not only our physical perception of the world, but also how we comprehend the world around us.

Are there such things as high-altitude air-currents the way there are sea/ocean currents? Does the meteorology department maintain such a map? What is the average velocity of such an air-current? What is the depth of such a high altitude air-current?

Let's assume for a moment the answers to the questions raised above are favourable. Laugh a moment if you will at my naivete, it may be possible to use balloons (See? I told you to laugh at my naivete already) to lift such an airship working with the currents. The questions to answer here are

• How would one control altitude and attitude here?


• How much payload could such balloons take?


• How close to GEO can this idea take us?

Venting the gas to atmosphere would be wasteful. Perhaps the volume of gas to be vented could be collected in a container. Any discardables (such as soiled clothes/uniform/consumables) would then be used as ballast to to return the excess volume to the surface. A low-power beacon could be used to home in on the returned balloon to reuse the gas for the next trip.
An alternative would be carry on board apparatus to filter/extract lift gas (hydrogen/helium) ; but would the volumes be feasible here? The alternative would be to carry apparatus to condense (such as water) fluid into empty containers.

Both mechanisms above restrict us to the limits of atmosphere. The perishability of the container used also comes into play because temperatures may vary from 1500C to -100C.

Using a balloon, How does one rise higher once outside Earth's atmosphere? One mechanism is to vent the contents within the balloon to provide thrust in the desired direction ... hmm. I'm not satisfied with this - will have to think more.

One giant step ... done using baby-steps.

Since the Mars One programme appeared in the news a couple of days ago, I find myself letting my thoughts freewheel. The idea of dispatching a team to live permanently on the Red Planet and earn their living from the people who choose to watch them live on the media here on the Third Planet seems extremely unusual to me. For instance, what happens when more people want to watch the team in delayed video rather than live? How long before the audience are sated?

Somehow the concept of providing serviceables from Earth on a regular schedule (every two years) too makes one pause for thought. Not that it's unachievable - the Apollo teams were on the moon for 2-3 Earth Days at a time. Two years is just a few orders of magnitude larger. But I digress - I wanted to make this post about launching off-earth, instead of off Earth's surface. Because it is easy to talk and throw ideas around instead of learn from experience, throw ideas around is what I'm going to do.

When we talk of space flight we begin with escape velocity. Escape Velocity is the velocity necessary to escape the gravitation pull of a body to it's surface. Here this is atleast the velocity necessary to escape from Earth's gravitational pull. This value is calculated using the formula


Here, v = escape velocity
g = gravitational acceleration
r = radius of Earth

Solved using the MKS system, this value is 11200 metres per second.

That is, 11.2km/second. It doesn't seem much, until one thinks about it. Just to give an idea of the scale involved the longest public runway on Earth at present is 5.5kilometres. Therefore to be able to escape from Earth's gravitational pull, one would have run up-and-down the runway in less than 1 second! Even the famed SR-71, the fastest aircraft on record with a velocity of approximately 3.6 Mach (4410km/hr), can't do that! Hence the need for rocket technology.

The tricky thing here is that escape velocity is not necessary! Once up at the geostationary earth orbit (GEO), it is quite possible to change the shape of the orbit. The Apollo moon programme called this technique 'Trans Lunar Injection' (TLI). The trouble is getting up to GEO altitude 35786 km ! Well now, most programmes try to reach that altitude in hurry - but I say, 'Wait'.

Why not up to 35786 km in stages?

Let the first stage be high altitude aircraft - carrying food, provisions, and capable of independent movement ... say capable of moving upto 100km above Earth. But this still leaves us with 35686 km to travel. Traditional aircraft encounter loss of lift at such high altitudes. But materials - carbon nanotubes, and such that are extremely strong, and lightweight. Perhaps a lift surface constructed of such material may be used to marry several engines to lift upwards? I'll post more later when the idea is a little more mature in me mind. What say you?

The Warlord of Barsoom beckons

All our eggs lie in a single basket. No matter how distant they may be placed - they're still on Earth, still subject to the caprices of Nature. We, Humans, have only inhabited Earth for a few million years at most. Compared to the Earth's age of nearly 4 billion years, the miniscule duration for which we have been around makes us fragile humans vulnerable as a species.

We need to spread out a bit - except that particular option is limited by prohibitive costs, and imagination, and a touch of laziness. Going by popular science fiction of the heady years when the 'move to space' ruled people's imagination - by 2001 there should have been a permanent colony on the moon. 2001 - 11 years ago! Of course, Science fiction being fiction the timeline may be a little behind the times. George Orwell's classic '1984' technology of high end communications networks only began to become available globally in the early 2000s. By this yardstick we are still on track - except that the global financial crisis, and the restive behaviour of various peoples makes it very unlikely to establish a base on the moon in the next decade.

In all this though, we have forgotten a bit of history. The last age of exploration - although initiated by the Imperials, was consummated only by private enterprise. Perhaps the Moon, and Mars too shall follow the same model. The age of sea exploration was undertaken first by various Princely States even before the Industrial Revolution. As soon as new lands, and markets were discovered they were followed by private enterprise.

Perhaps private enterprise, and individuals should consider investing in resources off Terra. Escaping gravity is prohibitively expensive, ergo - it is necessary for private enterprise to justify the expenditure on their balance sheets here on Earth. The Mars One project may, or may not succeed. Regardless, it will kindle imaginations for a while. It's already giving me ideas... ideas to marry with various science fiction 'concepts'.

To each his own SCM

Everybody offers a scheme. Retail shops, malls, online marketplaces ... nobody misses an opportunity to bundle goodies (3 for the price of 2, and a 1 year warranty instead of 6 months) and make a killing. By-and-large, I opt-in when such a scheme fits my plans.

But why say it here on this blog? The reason is, I am primarily a programmer. Retail, and 2-for-the-price-of-1 sale of end-user goods is one thing; the same applied to software applications of reasonable complexity can be a recipe for disaster. A software program is rarely ever totally standalone; there may be the odd application which may run off a CD/USB drive but such are few and far inbetween. A typical application relies upon API provided by the operating system, support libraries locally and online, thrown together in the right configuration for it to work. It only takes one small casual change for the whole house of cards to come crashing down. A support DLL updated online, a different JAR deployed, the PATH variable modified to change which directory appears last to an application ... these are a few changes that invite trouble.

Glassfish + jdk, or Eclipse + Borland compiler, XYZ assembly + Microsoft Office are a couple of examples in point. Applications that bundle software together use internal variables to reference the bundled library. When some such bundled library is also used by other applications the user may decide to reference the library across applications. This is fine ... until some such application executes an update for the bundled library which the original application can not use. Depending upon the boot sequence for the original application; not only will the original application now fail to start, but the user may probably see an error-free log too. Disaster!

To prevent such an error happening both application users, and developers must be educated. First, the latter must learn not to bundle a referenced library; instead use the installer to tell the user to install the library ... or fail installation. The latter must learn to use their internal variables to reference system variables. Too the former must learn to maintain a restore-point, or it's equivalent when an application is installed/uninstalled. Whilst this may not serve as a catch-all, it will probably serve to reduce user/support developer frustration ... a little and those who tinker continue to have fun!!