NASA's Orion spacecraft lifted off yesterday in a successful launch however does the future of human space travel go with it? Orion is supposed to be NASA's next generation of space travel. Video above is compliments of NASA
Orion is intended to take humans to Mars probably within the next 20 years. This un-manned rocket launch yesterday was the first successful lift-off, orbit, re-entry and landing procedure of this system. However, for this test, the Orion spacecraft is the capsule at the top of the Delta IV rocket, the old rocket of the 60's. Travel to deep space asteroids and Mars will be with NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS). NASA claims that the SLS will have 10% more thrust than the Saturn V and carry 3X more payload than the Space Shuttle. The SLS will be taller than the Saturn V and combines technology from the space shuttle using its booster rockets, with the stages of the Saturn V. NASA indicates the SLS will be the future of human space travel, taking humans to Mars by the year 2022. Hopefully the American government will see this rocket system as a necessary development in human exploration of space and continue its funding. Otherwise, It may be Space-X and Elon Musk who are the first humans to "boldly go where no man has gone before". Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena Video Above is compliments of Bloomberg
Will Elon Musk and his company Space X be the future of humans in space? He and his company are motivated to achieve safe space travel carrying a larger payload at a fraction of the cost of NASA. This promises to be a tremendous competition for the future of space travel and the future of humans in space. Private enterprise is motivated to get this job done. The price tag and risk are enormous but the pay-back could be astronomical. It is natural for humans to explore space. Ultimately it is also necessary for humans to travel beyond Earth. With NASA's budget slashed and space travel is becoming unpopular with the US public, the US government may find it difficult if not impossible to provide public funding for future space travel. The last time the US public opinion favoured space travel was in the space race against the USSR. The Saturn V program was arguably the most impressive rocket program to date carrying a huge payload into space. However motivation to fund the program came from the space race to the moon and also, it was used as a research program to perfect the intercontinental ballistic missile system. That's right, without a military purpose, the NASA program does not get the attention or funding. Therefore, it will likely be left up to private companies like Space X to be the future of human space travel. Al Maddalena Maddalena Environmental Inc. Image is compliments of Wikipedia
Europa is Jupiter's 6th closest moon and is the 6th largest moon in our solar system. It is considered relatively young at only 600 million years old. It has a thick surface of ice that is about 15 miles thick. The ice is constantly being flexed by Jupiter's intense gravitational pull creating huge, deep cracks in the surface ice. Jupiter's flexing pull influence creates the necessary heat that is the reason why it is suspected at having an enormous ocean of water beneath this surface of ice. Europa's ocean is suspected to be considerably larger than all of oceans on planet Earth. Europa is also a moon that (unusually) has an atmosphere composed of oxygen, likely because it was created like a planet orbiting a potential sun, which Jupiter almost became. This is why Europa is considered the best place to look for life within our solar system. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena One of Saturn's Moons, Titan was confirmed to have Lakes the size of Lake Superior except the lakes are not filled with water, they are filled with liquid ethane, methane and propane. This was confirmed by the Cassini–Huygens probe in 2004. Below is a comparison of one large lake on Titan with Lake Superior (i.e they are about the same area). This is truly amazing. Can you imagine a lake the size of Lake Superior composed entirely of liquid methane? Image above is compliments of NASA.gov.
The temperatures on Titan are about -290oF, so water could not be in liquid form there, but these petroleum hydrocarbons are liquid at those temperatures. Any water is permanently frozen into the rock of Titan. Also ice has a very low vapour pressure at that temperature, so the atmosphere does not contain water vapour. Therefore on Titan, it rains liquid methane! How alien Titan is to us, but it is still within our solar system. Maddalena Environmental Al Maddalena Image above is compliments of Quanta Magazine Quantum Computers-The Next Generation I am reading a book by Neil Turok called “The Universe Within”. It is an interesting book written for the non-technical public describing the history of theoretical physics for the last 100 years, where it began, where it is now and where it is headed. He describes the discovery of quantum mechanics and how promising it is in the world of theoretical physics as well as other disciplines. Quantum mechanics is also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory and is a branch of physics that deals with physical phenomena at the atomic level. The word quantum is derived from Latin “quanta” meaning discrete amounts. It is based on observations that some physical quantities can change only in discrete amounts and not in a continuous way. Turok talks about how quantum mechanics is being used in several different disciplines and how this field of physics is currently being applied to the next generation of computers. These will be called quantum computers and if you think today’s computers are fast, you “ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”. Moore’s Law and Its LimitThis amazing law was postulated in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and still applies today. He noticed a pattern in computer processing technology. Today’s computers are silicon chip based and the reason they have increased in power while decreasing in size is due to Moore’s Law which states the number of transistors that can fit on a microprocessor chip doubles every 18 months. This law is best illustrated starting with computers in the 1960’s when we had massive mainframe machines like the Burroughs 6700 (the size of our living room-kitchen combined) have been transformed into the sophisticated iPhone in 2012 that fits in your shirt pocket. While Moore’s Law still applies today, it has a limit due to the eventual physical size restriction of the silicon chip. Remarkably, we will not reach this limit for approximately another 10 years. When this limit is reached, the next generation of computation could be dominated by quantum computers. While existing computers work with ever decreasing size circuits on microchips, quantum computers will employ molecules and atoms to store information and perform calculations, and that is not all. Quantum Computers Harness the Power of Quantum PhysicsPutting to work the power of quantum mechanics, quantum computers will be able to do certain calculations significantly faster than any of our present-day supercomputers. Our existing supercomputers are lightning fast, but they still perform calculations in sequence, one at a time. Quantum computers will have the ability to store and process data that is in more than one state at the same time, therefore they will be capable of performing numerous calculations in parallel or SIMULTANEOUSLY. Their power lies in how they store information and access it. Today’s computers use binary code to store information, so all data is converted to 0s and 1s. Quantum computers would be able to store data using 0 and 1 as well as all fractions in between! For more information on quantum computers and quantum mechanics check out this article. As you can imagine, performance of many calculations simultaneously has tremendous potential in numerous applications, including those required in factoring large numbers. You see, large numbers are used for encoding secret information and are used for security protection online. For example, Turok indicates that if you write down a 400 digit number, then used one of today’s supercomputers to factor that number to its prime numbers, it would take longer than 13.8 Billion years (age of the universe). Quantum computers on the other hand, would be so fast and capable of such complex calculations simultaneously, that same task would be done in a flash! However, a functioning quantum computer is still many years away due to the numerous problems with such sensitive machines. Among others, they are easily disrupted by interference of almost any kind, like loud noise, vibrations etc. as Dr. Michio Kaku states in this video. Image above is compliments of bigthink.
Although there are numerous problems, the researchers at IBM continue to press on and venture into the atomic realm of the quantum world for the next generation computer. If they succeed, the jump in computing power will be so astronomical it will drastically change life as we know it! The rest of Neil Turok’s book is also fascinating and I would recommend it for anyone non-technical who is interested in the history and advancement of physics. It is truly a must-read. Neil Turok is one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists and was a professor of physics at Princeton as well as Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge. Professor Turok is currently the Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo Ontario. Maddalena Environmental Inc. Al Maddalena |