Arthur C. Clarke, former Space Cadet of the British Interplanetary Society, and Science Fiction writer on the occasion of his 90th orbit around the sun. He is currently wheelchair bound, and sleeping 15 hours a day. But this does not keep his mind from roaming the Universe.
“I have a great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.”
Sixty two years ago Arthur C. Clarke of the British Interplanetary Society sent a letter to the editor titled Peacetime Uses for V2 which was published in the 1945 February issue of the Wireless World magazine suggesting the use of Geostationary Satellites for the instant global communications.
A recent documentary from BBC’s Horizon about the possible colonization of the Moon for its fusion fuel, Helium-3. He-3 is a light, non-radioactive isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. Moon rocks trap these isotopes from passing solar winds, Earth’s atmosphere repels them. Advocates claim that it is economically feasible to be strip mining the moon by 2020. China, Russia, and the US seem to be in the race.
This sounds like a disaster. Imagine the rocket fuel stink in the air, when we are trucking up tons of miners, food, water, equipment, housing and air daily. How is the He-3 to get back down to us, railgun/parachute or earth-orbit ferry? Having a moon cannon pointed at us, or more rocket fuel stink, which is it?
On the other hand, Moon walker Edgar Mitchell says: “We have to learn to live within our means here.” He advocates restricting the Moon for scientific research as we do Antarctica.
Also featured in the video: America’s funniest astronaut Moon stumbles, someone who has made Nine Million Dollars selling fake deeds to Moon property, and a scientist (Larry Clark) who heats up artificial moon dust and harvests H2O.
• In particular, there is ‘’substantial concern” about the pending loss of an important satellite-based instrument employed by tropical weather forecasters and hurricane researchers.
The QuikSCAT information helps scientists estimate wind speeds at the ocean’s surface. That information contributes to year-round forecasts of marine conditions, and it’s crucially important to hurricane specialists, helping them assess the strength of storms that are far from land and often enabling the identification of new tropical systems.
OUTDATED DEVICE
But the device is well past its designed lifetime, which was expected to end by 2002, and budget concerns and technical compromises prompted NOAA to replace it with a less sophisticated instrument that still hasn’t been launched, the committee said.
• Much of NASA’s budget and many of its scientists are being diverted to the human space program that was reenergized by President Bush’s proposal to send astronauts back to the moon and onward to Mars.
The president’s 2007 budget reduced NASA’s research and analysis budget for science missions 15 percent compared to 2005. Since 2000, the agency’s earth-science budget has been slashed 30 percent. That caused the elimination of some projects, including measurements of solar radiation and Earth radiation that could help scientists understand global warming.
