Tag: Space

Nukes In Space

Does anyone remember the movie Meteor starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood?

There was a huge meteor headed toward Earth and the USSR and the US had to combine their nukes in space to thwart an ELE.

Well that was fiction there were no nukes in space or so we are told…..but that just may not be the case….

A Russian spacecraft launched higher than most satellites has long had the Pentagon worried — and new revelations about what it contains have made those concerns all the greater.

Launched in February 2022 just a few weeks before Ukraine was invaded, Russia’s Cosmos 2553 spacecraft is nominally built to test out “newly developed onboard instruments and systems.” According to new reporting from the New York Times, however, the mysterious satellite system contains a “dummy warhead” — a precursor of what could come should the Russians decide to arm the craft for real.

As scary as the concept of a space nuke sounds, it wouldn’t necessarily harm life on Earth — unless you consider eliminating all satellites in its vicinity harm, in which case the people down on the planet below would be seriously screwed.

Back in 1962, the US military actually did detonate a nuclear weapon in space, though the damage from the electromagnetic pulse it emanated seems mostly to have been limited to streetlights dimming in Hawaii, which was below the test.

Scientists learned from that formerly-classified test that doing so was probably a pretty bad idea, and in 1967, both Russia and the United States signed the Outer Space Treaty to prevent, essentially, space warfare. In the years since, however, concerns have grown that Russia may violate the treaty — especially as more and more communications satellites began littering our planet’s orbit.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/russian-space-nuke-revelations

Because of the test in 1962 the Outer Space Treaty was born…..in case the reader is not up on this thingy…..

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967

The treaty was aimed at preventing the militarization of space but that has fallen by the wayside….with the US Space Force and now this Russian news things could get a bit testy in space.

How long before the US side steps the treaty and launches its nukes into space?

Or is it possible they are already out there?

Something else to worry about in the coming year.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are Nukes In Space a Real Threat?

The blogosphere is a light with news and opinions on a new ‘threat’.

Recently a report came out the we had a ‘serious national security threat’….and of course I had to write and give my opinion….

Just a subtle reminder….

“A Serious National Security Threat”

I think it was a GOP ploy to game the system….but a smarter person than me had a different take on the news….

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said he is “skeptical” of the threat posed by the development of a Russian anti-satellite capability in a recent interview on CNN.

“[I]n terms of destroying another satellite, like I said, there [are] already ways to do that. There are these… what they call kinetic kills, where you can take a missile, no explosives necessary at all, because the satellite’s already moving 18,000 miles an hour,” Tyson said in the interview with CNN’s Abby Phillip.

“All you have to do is get in its way, and the thing explodes,” Tyson continued. “Russia’s done it, China’s done it, we’ve done it, India has done it. So… and then you can target the satellite at will. If you’re stuck in orbit, you might not be near a satellite that you wanna take out. You have to wait until the orbits line up… just seems so inefficient. So, I’m just skeptical of how dangerous this thing can be, relative to everyone’s emotions attached to it.”

White House national security communications adviser John Kirby also said Thursday that the anti-satellite capability wasn’t “active” or deployed yet, but called Russia’s pursuit of it “troubling.”

“We’re not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth,” Kirby said. 

(thehill.com)

While Tyson is correct I still like my opinion better (of course I would) the timing of the announcement was suspect to aid in the passing of the multi-million dollar aid package for Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan).

These slugs in Congress will try anything to con people into following their lead.

I’m finished now…..but I may return if news warrants more of my opinionated stuff.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That Hell Bent Meteor

From time to time I try to be an FYI blog…..giving my readers something besides my usual lip about the government or the situations we find ourselves having to deal with…..here we go another attempt on my part….

Almost weekly we read about this asteroid or that that is coming to our little corner of the universe….mostly they fly by without incident even though it was headed directly for us.

Americans are more worried about an asteroid strike than life on Mars….

Polling more than 10,000 respondents, Pew found that a whopping 60 percent of Americans said their top priority for NASA was to “monitor asteroids [and] other objects that could hit the Earth,” with roughly half of those 10,000 adding that “monitor[ing] key parts of the Earth’s climate system” was among their top desired goals for the agency.

Their fears could very well be a reality….

A comet named 12P/Pons-Brooks is speeding toward us as I type…..

An unusual volcanic comet flying toward the sun appears to have “grown horns” after it exploded, causing it to shine like a small star and shower supercold “magma” into space. It is the first time this comet has been seen erupting in almost 70 years. 

The comet, named 12P/Pons-Brooks (12P), is a cryovolcanic — or cold volcano — comet. Like all other comets, the icy object is made up of a solid nucleus, filled with a mix of ice, dust and gas, and is surrounded by a fuzzy cloud of gas called a coma, which leaks out of the comet’s interior. But unlike most other comets, the gas and ice inside 12P’s nucleus build up so much that the celestial object can violently explode, shooting out its frosty guts, known as cryomagma, through large cracks in the nucleus’s shell.

On July 20, multiple astronomers detected a major outburst from the comet, which suddenly became around 100 times brighter than it usually appears, Spaceweather.com reported. This increase in brightness occurred when the comet’s coma suddenly swelled up with gas and ice crystals released from the comet’s interior, allowing it to reflect more sunlight back to Earth. 

https://www.livescience.com/space/comets/city-size-comet-headed-toward-earth-grows-horns-after-massive-volcanic-eruption

Let’s say instead of passing in close proximity it made a turn and hits the earth….how will we cope?

I am glad you asked.

Let’s say for a moment you want to camp alongside the dinosaurs. But not just any dinosaurs. You want to camp alongside the most famous. The most fearsome. So let’s say you spin the dials on a time machine to 66.5 million years ago and you travel back to the late Cretaceous period.

There’s the tyrannosaurus hunting the triceratops. There’s the alamosaurus, one of the largest creatures to ever walk the earth. There’s the tank-like ankylosaurus crushing opponents with its wrecking-ball tail. And just as you settle down on one particular evening, there’s a brand-new star in the northern hemisphere sky.

The star won’t flash, flare up, or blaze across the horizon. It will appear as stationary and as twinkly as all the others. But look again a few hours later and you might think this new star seems a little brighter. Look again the next night and it will be the brightest star in the sky. Then it will outshine the planets. Then the moon. Then the sun. Then it will streak through the atmosphere, strike the earth, and unleash 100 million times more energy than the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated. You’ll want to pack up your tent before then. And maybe move to the other side of the planet.

The day the Chicxulub asteroid slammed into what is now a small town on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula that bears its name is the most consequential moment in the history of life on our planet. In a prehistoric nanosecond, the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began. Not only did the impact exterminate every dinosaur save for a few ground-nesting birds, it killed every land mammal larger than a raccoon. In a flash, Earth began one of the most apocalyptical periods in its history. Could you survive it? Maybe.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-survive-a-killer-asteroid

You might want to read this closely for the possibility is there for an asteroid hitting the earth at any time.

Fore armed is fore warned.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Don’t Forget Your Umbrella

That would be sage advice for my friends in the UK……but I do not believe they need to be reminded.

Since the rising heat on earth and the fact that this topic is generating a lot of  post and Chatbot writings I would offer a post on how to ‘cool’ the planet down.

The ‘umbrella’ I am speaking about is plan for our space projects and a way to help control our climate change.

Scientists think they have come up with a new approach to mitigating global warming: put up a giant “umbrella” in space to protect the Earth from excess sunlight.

István Szapudi, an astronomer at the University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy, said a workable design for a solar shield could be ready in decades.

“In Hawai’i, many use an umbrella to block the sunlight as they walk about during the day. I was thinking, could we do the same for Earth and thereby mitigate the impending catastrophe of climate change?” he said.

According to ongoing temperature analyses, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1 Celsius since the Victorian era. It has led scientists to pursue new ways of reducing the effects of climate change.

The solar shield plan would require an exceptionally large structure to prevent solar radiation, and it would need to be heavy enough not to blow away. Therefore, the study published recently in the journal PNAS proposes using a captured asteroid as a counterweight.

Researchers said they wanted the “umbrella” to reduce the impact of solar radiation on Earth by about 1.7 per cent to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures.

Using a tethered counterbalance, such as an asteroid, would reduce the weight of the shield to 3.5m tons. That is light as a feather compared to previous estimates without a counterweight, which were about 100 times heavier.

Even the largest rockets in operation today can only lift about 50 tons to a low Earth orbit, however.

Looks like we’ve got a little time to wait before we get our giant interplanetary parasol.

https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/space-umbrella-climate-change

We could speed up the process by making it a massive profit generating program….that would bring Musk out of the woodwork.

Anyway….good idea or BS?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Random Space News

It is a Sunday and I try to bring a few things to my readers that they may if either missed or maybe just do not care….but anyway a bit of FYI….

It has been awhile since I posted on the doings in outer space….I hope to correct my oversight…..

First there have been a couple reports that would give ammo to those idiots that believe the Ancient Alien BS….

Some ‘experts’ believe that there are signals conning from the center of the Milky Way…..

Could intelligent aliens be lurking at the heart of the Milky Way? 

A new search for extraterrestrial life aims to find out by listening for radio pulses from the center of our galaxy. Narrow-frequency pulses are naturally emitted by stars called pulsars, but they’re also used deliberately by humans in technology such as radar. Because these pulses stand out against the background radio noise of space, they’re an effective way of communicating across long distances — and an appealing target to listen for when searching for alien civilizations. 

Scientists described the alien-hunting strategy in a new study, published May 30 in The Astronomical Journal. Researchers led by Cornell University graduate student Akshay Suresh developed software to detect these repetitive frequency patterns and tested it on known pulsars to be sure it could pick up the narrow frequencies. These frequency ranges are very small, at about a tenth of the width of frequencies used by a typical FM radio station. The researchers then searched data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia using the method. 

https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/repeated-signals-from-the-center-of-the-milky-way-could-be-aliens-saying-hello-new-study-claims

And the Pentagon is adding fire to this spurious saga….

Sightings of UFOs are nothing new.

But now the United States government is being more open about the fact that the sightings often cannot be explained

In one of the latest revelations, a Pentagon chief confirmed that unidentified metallic orb UFOs have been seen “all over the world.”

Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist and director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said Wednesday: “We see these [‘metallic orbs’] all over the world, and we see these making very interesting apparent maneuvers.”

Kirkpatrick made the comments during AARO’s presentation to NASA.

Kirkpatrick and Co. also made recommendations to the agency, such as erasing the stigma around UFO research and hunting for alien “artifacts” found int he solar system.

NASA Confession: Pentagon Chief Finally Admits ‘Metallic Orbs’ Have Been Seen ‘All Over the World’

All this talk about man moving and living on Mars….but it will take some sort of terraforming to make it so more and more can move for a better future…..

If humanity is going to colonize other planets, we probably have to start with Mars. But the North Pole is balmy by comparison with the Red Planet, and the surface of Mars makes Earth’s radioactive Lake Karachay look like a country spa. The solution, some futurologists and scientists believe, is to terraform Mars — transform the planet until it is more capable of supporting human life.

It’s a mammoth task. Mars is lethal in multiple ways. If you were to be teleported this moment to Mars, in the clothes you’re wearing now, the gas in your bloodstream would turn into bubbles. Like a shaken can of Coke, you would fizz to death. If somehow you avoided that, you would soon die of oxygen deprivation, cold exposure, or radiation poisoning.

Ultimately, a terraformed Mars would need a strengthened magnetosphere – the protective magnetic layer that shields Earth from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation – and a thicker atmosphere. That atmosphere is currently almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide, with negligible amounts of oxygen. The planet would also need to be much warmer; its surface temperature is, on average, -81 degrees Fahrenheit.

If we managed to warm the planet up, we’d release frozen CO2 reserves at the planet’s polar caps and elsewhere. That would help thicken the atmosphere, making it possible for water, rather than ice, to exist on the surface – conditions that would make it easier to introduce plants, which produce oxygen. But how would we even start that warming process?

https://www.freethink.com/space/how-to-terraform-mars

Then there is the imperialistic rhetoric coming from NASA…..over the water ion the Moon….

NASA chief Bill Nelson has Moon water on the mind. Specifically, he’s worried that China might get to that precious American — er, excuse us, internationally unclaimed — Moon water first.

“I think the United States will get [to the Moon] first,” Nelson told the Spanish newspaper El País when pressed about the burgeoning US-China race to Earth’s natural satellite. “What worries me more is that both they and we are going to land at the South Pole, where we think there is water.”

“Water is important because it is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, and that’s oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket fuel,” he added. “We want to preserve those potential reserves for the international community, and prevent China from coming in and saying that the water is theirs, as they have done with the Spratly Islands.”

There’s so very much to unpack here, not the least being that the US has historically also claimed various island nations as its own. But Moon water is kind of a different thing, no? Feels a bit more finders-keepers, especially considering that if the US gets its hands on that water first, it presumably won’t be sharing with China, either.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-head-china-moon-water

“Our God Given water”?

When did the Moon become a colony of the US?

Apparently NO one remembers the Outer Space Treaty we signed in 1967…..but then the US has never been one to honor its treaties….just ask the Native Americans.

Enjoy your Sunday.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Kim Has A New Toy

Lil Kim has his share of toys, war toys, from rockets, missiles, nukes and now a eye in the sky.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un examined a finished military spy satellite, which his country is expected to launch soon, during a visit to his country’s aerospace agency, where he described space-based reconnaissance as crucial for countering the US and South Korea. As the AP reports, Kim during Tuesday’s visit approved an unspecified “future action plan” in preparations for launching the satellite, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday. North Korea hasn’t disclosed a target date for the launch, which some analysts say may be in the next few weeks. That launch would use long-range missile technology banned by past UN Security Council resolutions, although previous missile and rocket tests have demonstrated North Korea’s ability to deliver a satellite into space.

There are more questions, however, about the satellite’s capability. Some South Korean analysts say the satellite shown in North Korean state media photos appears too small and crudely designed to support high-resolution imagery. Photos that North Korean media released from past missile launches were low resolution. Photos released by the Rodong Sinmun newspaper of Tuesday’s visit showed Kim and his daughter—dressed in white lab coats—talking with scientists near an object that looked like the main component of a satellite. The newspaper didn’t identify the object, which was surrounded by a perimeter of red tape. The visit was Kim’s first public appearance in about a month, following a previous visit to the aerospace center on April 18.

Kim said acquiring a spy satellite would be crucial for his efforts to bolster the country’s defense as “US imperialists and [South] Korean puppet villains escalate their confrontational moves” against the North, the KCNA said. He was apparently referring to the expansion of joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea and the allies’ discussions on strengthening their nuclear deterrence strategies to cope with threats from North Korea, which has test-fired around 100 missiles since the start of 2022. The next step in North Korea’s launch preparations, or the “future action plan” state media mentioned, could be installing the satellite on what would likely be a three-stage space rocket, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies.

The launch could be conducted as early as mid-June, although Pyongyang might also time the event to major state anniversaries that fall in July, September, or October, the professor said. Spy satellites are among a slew of advanced weapons systems Kim Jong Un has vowed to develop. Others on his wish list include solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered submarines, hypersonic missiles, and multiwarhead missiles. North Korea has tested some of those weapons in recent months, including its first test flight of a solid-fuel ICBM last month, but experts say the North may need more time and technological breakthroughs to make those systems functional. In response to North Korea’s military spy satellite, Japan’s military last month ordered troops to activate missile interceptors and get ready to shoot down fragments from the satellite that may fall on the Japanese territory.

Kim keeps expanding his capabilities and eventually the US will have to come to terms with that….but right now China is the mind filling stuff the Pentagon has to deal with….for now.

How far will this go?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Space News Sunday

I am always on the look out for some weird news about space stuff…….most readers are not interested but what the Hell….it beats the major news of the day.

I like to read the stories about all those aliens that have been coming here for a long long time (we know those ancient alien sickos).

It is a Sunday and I thought I would share some of the news I found.

I read a couple of doozy about ‘time travelers’….

A person claiming to have travelled back in time from more than 800 years in the future says this year will see humans at war with extra-terrestrials.

The TikTok user took to the platform to warn people of natural disasters and alien encounters on the horizon in 2023, claiming of an “inter-dimensional” which will break out before the year is up.

Named only as “beyondtimetraveller” and purporting to be from the year 2869, the mystery user gave a list of dates to be aware of this year with the first just two months away, Daily Star reports.

Predicting a major disaster for the US, the user prophesised: “Remember these dates, humans may reconsider the existence of us, time travelers [sic]. March 18th, 2023: A 8.1 earthquake on the Richter scale hit in Wisiller in Alaska.

“June 26, 2023: A new creature bigger than the blue whale is discovered in the Pacific Ocean, it measure 350 feet.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/time-traveller-claims-2023-see-28999314

Then there is the one about 2 ‘time travelers’ that are stuck in 2027…..

Two ‘time travellers’ who claim to come from 2027 have been sharing videos which they say prove they are alone in the future.

Javier and Maria have been posting on social media claiming to be stuck alone in 2027 with only each other for company and “no sign of human life”.

Neither of the self-proclaimed time travellers ever show their face in the apparent clips from four years’ time which are clearly deserted.

Maria, who claims to be a scientist and goes by the TikTok username of @socmia, says in her bio: “Time is an illusion. Alone in the world with unicosobreviviente.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/time-travellers-2027-share-footage-29023776

Then there is the paper about messages sent by alien space probes….

If we ever detect an Extraterrestrial Civilization (ETC) and start communicating with them, the messages could take years, decades, or even centuries to travel back and forth.

We face a challenging 49-minute long delay just communicating with the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, and that’s well within our Solar System. Communicating with an ETC that’s hundreds of light-years away or even further is a daunting task.

It’s even worse if we’re sending probes.

Imagine if a robotic probe arrived in our Solar System, sent by an ETC. They detected us and sent their probe to introduce themselves and learn more about us. We would be shocked, and the event would change civilization’s trajectory forever.

Imagine we waited for another one, and imagine that we had to wait centuries. Generations of humans would live and die, we would’ve learned all we could from the probe, and it would sit in a museum somewhere.

As humanity waited for the next probe, the scientific community would publish a flood of papers on the probe and what might happen next. A whole new field of study would be born. Politicians would stake entire careers on the issue, and opinion-piece writers, artists, and musicians would have a field day. Scams would appear, and cults might spring up.

https://www.sciencealert.com/space-probes-sent-by-aliens-could-arrive-in-reverse-heres-why

Watch SciFi movies and shows and all aliens seem to have two legs and two arms…..but will that be accurate?

Sarah Stewart Johnson was a college sophomore when she first stood atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. Its dried lava surface was so different from the eroded, tree-draped mountains of her home state of Kentucky. Johnson wandered away from the other young researchers she was with and toward a distant ridge of the 13,800-foot summit. Looking down, she turned over a rock with the toe of her boot. To her surprise, a tiny fern lived underneath it, having sprouted from ash and cinder cones. “It felt like it stood for all of us, huddled under that rock, existing against the odds,” Johnson says.

Her true epiphany, though, wasn’t about the hardiness of life on Earth or the hardships of being human: It was about aliens. Even if a landscape seemed strange and harsh from a human perspective, other kinds of life might find it quite comfortable. The thought opened up the cosmic real estate, and the variety of life, she imagined might be beyond Earth’s atmosphere. “It was on that trip that the idea of looking for life in the universe began to make sense to me,” Johnson says.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-search-for-extraterrestrial-life-as-we-dont-know-it/

As long as we are talking about ET….

My friend Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired and my partner at Recomendo, says, “I have some strongly-stated, loosely-held hunches about the probability of life elsewhere in the universe. My certainty about these beliefs is quite low, but it is much higher than my belief in the alternatives.”

You can read all 12 assumptions here, but here are the 10) and 11):

10) The only reason for an advanced civilization to visit another planet is to see if there is another civilization which has invented things it has not, and perhaps could not invent. Invented resources are thus unlimited in scale and scope, and can be discovered only in unique places in the cosmos. Interstellar travel is essentially not travel through cosmic space but travel through possibility space. You visit another planet to visit other possible minds to see if they have thought of fabulous technologies your collective minds cannot reach.

11) Every day a few probes of these billions of interstellar civilizations visit our planet scoping out our technological state. These technological probes appear briefly in order to see us, and disappear once they have inspected our inventory. So far we have little to offer; nothing that can’t be found on millions of other planets.

Author Kevin Kelly’s “12 assumptions for extraterrestrial life”

That was fun…..absolutely worthless news that will entertain or it will be ignored.

I try to give my readers a diversion from the crappy news that we deal with everyday.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend….be well and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine And Space

It is the weekend and the Ukraine situation is hot and chaotic….and could this extend to space?

Well according to the Space Force, our newest branch of the military, the situation could readh to space…..

Top U.S. space officials this week said it’s likely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will extend to space, predicting continued GPS jamming and spoofing and urging military and commercial space operators to be prepared for possible cyber attacks.

“Ensure that your systems are secure and that you’re watching them very closely because we know that the Russians are effective cyber actors,” National Reconnaissance Office Director Chris Scolese said Feb. 23 during a National Security Space Association conference in Chantilly, Va. “It’s hard to say how far their reach is going to go in order to achieve their objectives, but it’s better to be prepared than surprised.”

Reports from the Secure World Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies document Russia’s use of non-kinetic disruptive space capabilities in Ukraine in recent years, including spoofing and jamming as well as cyber attacks.

“Russia places a high priority on integrating electronic warfare into military operations and has been investing heavily in modernizing this capability,” the Secure World Foundation said in its 2021 Global Counterspace Capabilities report. “Russia has a multitude of systems that can jam GPS receivers within a local area, potentially interfering with the guidance systems of unmanned aerial vehicles, guided missiles and precision guided munitions, but has no known capability to interfere with GPS satellites themselves using radio frequency interference.”

https://www.militarytimes.com/battlefield-tech/space/2022/02/24/us-space-officials-expect-russia-ukraine-conflict-to-extend-into-space/

Sounds to me like the Space Force is afraid they may miss out on any emergency funds to deal with the Ukraine conflict.

Not to be outdone Russia has threatened if the sanctions are implemented….the action could be to allow the space station crash into the US……

On Thursday, amid new announcements of sanctions on the Russian economy by the United States and NATO in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine, Dimitry Rogozin, the chief of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, made an eyebrow-raising threat: that if the sanctions continue, Russia could stop maintaining the orbit of the International Space Station and allow it to crash into the United States.

“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe?” tweeted Rogozin in Russian. “There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure on India or China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, so all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?”

https://www.rawstory.com/russia-sanctions-2656787558/

God I love this stuff!

Everybody wants to be part of the story…..and a piece of the money pie for this conflict.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Space Colonization

I am one of the few bloggers that has an interest in the developments centered around space and its exploration.

I have made my thoughts known on the push for corporate dominance of space…..for one it violates the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that most of the UN members signed including the US.

But if the treaty escapes you then I can help bring in the light.

Old Prof’s Look At Space Law (Again)

I also enjoy visiting the debate sites on the web…..sites like ….

https://www.debate.org/

https://www.procon.org/

On the later site there was a debate on space colonization…..

https://www.procon.org/headlines/space-colonization-top-3-pros-and-cons/

Most of the pros and cons were about this planet and the need to find alternate living space….I both agree and disagree with that premise.

Yes since we are apparently incapable to fixing our climate and planetary problems we will need to look elsewhere for a place to live so we can do it all again…..most likely making all the same mistakes.

My first objection is the term ‘colonization’ …..it has a sinister implications….

Colonization, or colonisation refers to large-scale population movements where the migrants maintain strong links with their – or their ancestors’ – former country, gaining significant privileges over other inhabitants of the territory by such links. When colonization takes place under the protection of colonial structures, it may be termed settler colonialism. This often involves the settlers dispossessing indigenous inhabitants, or instituting legal and other structures which systematically disadvantage them.

In its basic sense, colonization can be defined as the process of establishing foreign control over target territories or people for the purpose of cultivation, often through establishing colonies and possibly by settling them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization

The term has imperialistic overtones for me.  The treaty of 1967 made it clear that there should be NO military hardware in space and all innovations were for the benefit of all humanity…..instead the whole deal is to claim and exploit the resources found in space

Now the treaty means nothing like most treaties that keep greed from ruling.

From Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden….all have extended the reach of corporations into space and beyond (not sure what beyond actually means).

I think ‘colonization’ will create more problems than it will solve.

Like nukes in space…while most of the rhetoric is about nukes for rocket power….but like anything nuke there could be another under the table plan for nukes.

The Push for Nukes in Space

Not only will there be a threat of nukes from countries that have a stockpile but also from space….a scenario that should be unacceptable for humanity.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Sunday Space News

It is that time again…..I report on all the news about space…..news that no one can use……

The world’s largest telescope is underwater…..

Russian scientists on Saturday launched one of the world’s biggest underwater space telescopes to peer deep into the Universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.

The deep underwater telescope, which has been under construction since 2015, is designed to observe neutrinos, the smallest particles currently known.

Dubbed Baikal-GVD, the telescope was submerged to a depth of 750-1,300 meters (2,500-4,300 feet), around four kilometers from the lake’s shore.

Neutrinos are very hard to detect and water is an effective medium for doing so.

The floating observatory consists of strings with spherical glass and stainless steel modules attached to them.

https://www.sciencealert.com/russian-scientists-deploy-a-floating-observatory-in-lake-baikal

“Take us to warp 4″….a captain aboard the Enterprise….that might sound like a line from a movie but it may not be so far fetched…..

The speed of light is a big constraint when it comes to space exploration. It’s the rate at which light travels in a vacuum, precisely 186,282 miles per second (29,9792,458 metres, or 300,000 kilometers, per second). It’s unchangeable, and as far as we currently know, nothing can exceed that speed. That may seem pretty fast, but compared to the sheer size of space, it’s like trudging through molasses. 

For scale, the moon is approximately 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth; It takes about 2.51 seconds for light to make a round trip from the Earth and back. Mars is 3 minutes and 2 seconds for a one-way trip, or six minutes and four seconds both ways. It would take 4.6 hours for light to reach Pluto, and another 4.6 hours to bounce back. Finally, it would take us 4.24 years traveling at the speed of light to reach Alpha Centauri Bb—the closest exoplanet from Earth. That’s traveling at top speed.

https://interestingengineering.com/direct-fusion-drives-flying-across-space-blink-of-an-eye