So to recap the big news this week... Damn, space science is off to a heck of a start for 2013. A shame it's all downhill from here for the foreseeable future with funding cut to nothing.
At least 17 billion earth size planets in our galaxy alone? I think 17 billion is laughable, I'd be willing to bet it's several times that. But there are definitely a crapload of planets lurking in the darkness.
Something like 15 planets discovered by 'citizen scientists' within stars' habitable zones. All/most gas giants, but factoring in moons they are still potentially harboring forms of life.
Explosion ten times more powerful than the biggest supernovae discovered in a galaxy's central black hole. Can't imagine what it ate or belched to give off so insanely large an amount of energy. Strange, and further proof we still don't have much of a grasp on what goes on out there.
Moving an asteroid to orbit the moon by 2025 from NASA? Cool concept, but no way it'll be done. Not by NASA, at least. Certainly not in the next decade.
Some private group recruiting folks to move to Mars? Awesome. Not gonna bother looking it up, but I believe they're planning it for the 2020s. Not gonna happen so soon by anyone, but would it ever be a nice surprise if it did.
Interestingly, their plan is a one way trip. You go, you don't come back. I watched the film Another Earth yesterday, where mention was made that explorers of the seas were all madmen or convicts. In the age of Thar Be Dragons, expectation that the ocean ended in a cliff where you fell off the earth, anyone making the voyage had to halfway expect to end up dead.
I wish the modern world would get off their moral highhorses and allow explorers to explore. We've become so sensitized that it's sickening. Any shuttle explodes, the reaction has been 'Shut them down! We're sending people to their deaths! Horrible!' I bet at least one of the astronauts who have died in such a manner, if asked whether seeing our planet from space was worth the risk still would have gone up.
If someone is fine with it, we ought to allow a one-way mission to Mars. This commercial venture isn't a suicide mission, but a colony with the expectation of just living out their life on Mars. If that isn't realistic, and a Mars and back mission can't happen for decades still because of funding or logistics, then let brave souls go to Mars for as long as possible with a cyanide capsule. Heck, so long as I didn't have a family to take care of, I'd be first in line. First folks to walk on another planet, going into space, and truly searching for life on Mars at the price of not making it back? Totally worth it.
Everybody dies in the end, if it means dying a decade or two early to be able to set foot on Mars... A couple decades of humdrum life on Earth only to die in obscurity, or setting foot on Mars and becoming immortalized for doing so is an easy choice. Back in the day of ocean exploration, few expected to make it back, and quite a lot of them didn't. It's insane the public demands guaranteed safety or else don't go for space flight. So long as the folks going know what they're signing up for, more power to them.
