But why spend all this money on sending humans into space, it is dangerous, and relatively pointless, and robotscandosowellwithoutusthere. Well firstly there is at present a limit to what robots can do either on there own or with our help, problems such as they are generally designed with a specific purpose, where as a human in the same situation is much more versatile.
But the most important reason is that on this pale blue dot of ours there is a limited amount of resources and indeed time. At some point or another in the next 4 or so billion years that it has remaining, the Earth will no longer be able to support us and we will need to be somewhere else if our species is to survive. To that end we need to now begin the efforts of seeding the stars with populations of Humans (and for that matter cattle and grains etc. you know things that we will need to survive).
So by all means use the robots to find out where we can go and how we can get there and what we will find when we get there, but remember that the Earth is the cradle of humanity and one cannot stay in the cradle forever.
40 years ago tomorrow Micheal Collins in the Command Module Columbia snapped this pic of the ascent stage of the Lunar Module Eagle as they returned from the surface of the moon. And in the couple of years following this 10 more men walked on the surface of our planet’s orbital buddy, following in the historic footsteps of Armstrong and Aldrin (40 years ago today- so I will wish Tranquility Base happy 40th birthday).
Unfortunately to this day some people do not believe, for various reasons, that we never set foot on the moon (for example see here).
But one of the results of this walking/driving on our natural satelite is that we left an awful mess behind us. Descent stages of the lunar landers, flags, rovers, scientific equipment, footprints, the list goes on. One of the denier arguments goes along the lines of well if this stuff is there why can’t we see it. The answer to which is that it is too small.
That is until now. Recent photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which entered orbit around the moon in the last few weeks has a camera with enough resolution to quite clearly see that which we left behind. Many more details can be found here on the NASA site. These photos are awesome, I mean just look at this: You can even make out the path the astronauts took to set up the scientific experiments that they left behind. And the good news is that these photos were not taken at the final mapping orbit of the satellite and hence are not at the fullest resolution that the onboard camera will be able to see. So keep a look out there will be more and better photos of these sites as the LRO mission continues.
I am very excited as I have just received a brand spanking new copy of Phil Plait’s Death From The Skies! very kindly purchased for me by my library – OK not purchased for me but at least at my request and as such I get to be the first to borrow and read it. Of course I now have to decide whether or not to interrupt my current read (Science of Discworld III – also from the library but renewed over the weekend so there is plenty of time yet) or to finish that first. And of course now some friends are loaning me one of their books to read – and that always puts you under a bit of pressure to read and return.
Oh well the anticipation builds, might have to wait and in the mean time just read more of Phil’s excellent blog. Oh and I will do a little review here or provide some comments on the book at least when I am done.
Well everyone welcome (belatedly) to 2009. I have been busy over the last couple of weeks, helping with our Summer School Astronomy course, it is quite fun to teach and we get a real mix of students (it is maths-lite and we have tried to market it arts students and the such). It does keep me very busy and while I am trying to be more active on the blog at the moment it may have to wait until after next weeks optics lab (the only real experimental science lab that we get them to do).
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