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Armchair Astronomer from Isle of Mull, Love the Show, write Articles about Space Exploration

robertinventor

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robertinventor

robertinventor

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Hi, I'm Robert, live on the Isle of Mull in Scotland.

I got interested in astronomy as a child back in the 1960s, and followed the Apollo landings live and Patrick Moores and others commentary on them. 

Never been much of an observing astronomer - usual thing watching for meteorites remember a very memorable Leonids with lots of bright zero magnitude and brighter shooting stars - and looked at galaxies and saturn through friends telescope, watched the Venus transit etc - do enjoy all that - but never been a dedicated regular observer.

But do a lot of reading and following of the astronomical news. So call myself an armchair astronomer.

Recently started writing articles for a columnn at science20 - that's for Science 2.0, encouraging new web based ways of working in science - with collaborative work and publishing for discussion without going through formal publication in academic journals.

Most of my articles are about issues to do with planetary protection and Mars colonization, top ones so far in terms of publicity: Trouble With Terraforming Mars, Ten Reasons NOT To Live On Mars - Great Place To Explore, Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths, Need For Caution For An Early Mars Sample Return - Opinion Piece. Some of these have generated a lot of interest and my own personal highlight was when recently David Livingstone invited me to give a Space Show talk - you may not know about it, but it is a radio show in the Seattle region of the US which has many of the best known figures in the Space industry as guests - such as for instance, Elon Musk, our own astronomer royal Martin Rees and science fiction writer David Brin, Astronauts, Engineers, Robert Zubrin of course of the Mars society - many of the top names - along with a fair number of less well known guests. It was a great honour to be invited to his show and was a great session too with interesting and challenging questions to answer.

List of guests on the space show: - My talk there - article I wrote after the talk as a follow up: "Ten Reasons Not To Live On Mars, Great Place To Explore" - On The Space Show

One frequent theme of my articles is that Mars is not at all suitable for colonization - in the near future or next few centuries at least even if it can be terrafomed - and is of great interest in its pristine state - but that humans do have an important role that involves astronauts in orbit around Mars exploring it via telepresence.

I just posted about this to the science section of the starlounge here as a follow up to the discussions of Mars in last two episodes of Star Gazing Live:

Mars for exploration, not colonization, at least not yet - we could mess it up badly

Just to be clear - I earn nothing at all from this writing, and never have - and have disabled ads for my column so get no ad revenue either as you'll see if you read my articles. I do it just because of love of the subject and my own enthusiasm for it.  So is no conflict in interest posting about it here.

Anyway so hi, nice to meet you all, and I think both Sky at Night and Star Gazing Live are great shows - and will be wonderful if it is a good aurora tomorrow night for the show, rather a fine coincidence if it is - and so glad that Sky at Night was saved (I was one of the many thousands who signed the online petition to save it).

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robertinventor

robertinventor

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BTW just been out looking for aurora - clear sky, was a glow towards North but suspiciously orange in colour and over the nearby village and not due north - I think was reflection from the street lights in some low lying fog which happened to not be over where I live. Not likely to have an orange aurora here :).

I've seen the aurora in the past just faint white glow, too faint to see any colour not a coloured bright one, would love to see it, one of my sisters says she saw an amazing one one night many years ago from Isle of Skye where she lives.

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swag72

swag72

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Hi Robert and welcome to SGL - Looks like you keep yourself busy! I am embarrassed to say that I have little understanding in much theoretical and scientific I just like taking pretty pictures now and again :grin: What's great about the forum is that there's room for us all!!

Look forward to seeing you around :smiley:

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robertinventor

robertinventor

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Hi everyone, thanks for the warm welcome! Some blue sky just now, here. It's been went and windy for weeks here now, and I think these may be the first blue skies for weeks, well maybe occasional patches before but certainly best day for a long time.

So, promising to have a chance to see it if there is a good aurora. Seems still nobody knows what it will be like http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/08/260854919/solar-flare-will-hit-earth-thursday-northern-lights-may-expand-south

Forcast tonight for Mull: "The odd shower continuing over Argyll and the West Coast though most of the region will be dry with some clear intervals."

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robertinventor

robertinventor

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Hi Robert and welcome to SGL.

I must say that I think colonization is something that we need to do as it is the next step in the human experience. Whether it be Mars, the Moon, or somewhere else.

Okay, yes, myself I'm not so sure that we need to do it but makes sense as a way to explore the solar system that eventually we need permanent colonies in space. I see it as more like the Antarctica - as more inhospitable than Antarctica - an advanced research base to start with with scientists and others there - which might eventually build up to a larger colony as time progresses - e.g. in Mars orbit then there is so much to do by way of exploring the planet from orbit - far more so than for Antarctica so once we can afford it, reduced cost to get there, faster transits etc surely will have thousands of scientists and others maintaining the station and driving the telerobots etc.

Also - there is great potential for energy from space and low cost materials mined in space (could send it back to Earth with capsules and parachutes so don't need a lot of rocket fuel to export to Earth from space once you have a colony there) - and that could be the way it becomes commercially viable - as well as tourism.

With the Moon also - then there is much good science there. Infrared telescopes passively cooled to ultra low temperatures without refrigerants in the craters of eternal night at the poles - by far coldest places in the inner solar system. Exploring the surface looking for meteorites from Earth, Venus and Mars from the early solar system quite possibly with preserved organics. Studying the ice deposits at the poles and generally exploring the Moon - we barely know what it is like from the surface, no ground truth since Apollo and only on the last Apollo mission was the first geologist sent to the Moon. He quickly ran out of time and had to be called back to the spaceship as he tried to gather as much interesting rocks as he could in the time available - so had all too short a visit to the Moon and that was the only scientist sent there (and of course couldn't see much detail live from Earth with the primitive live feed at the time).

I think the peaks of eternal light at the poles of the Moon are by far best place for near term colonization - plus space stations - probably build one in the L1 position around the Moon - which can then easily navigate, it happens, to the L2 position with little nudges to see the far side of the Moon - reason to go there is to get rid of the 2 second delay from Earth which is not much, but is enough to make real time driving and picking things up and doing things on the Moon a bit tricky to do via telerpesence from Earth so may be enough of a benefit to send astronauts to do it. But a lot we can do remotely from Earth not like Apollo days when telerobotics was in its infancy.

But - longer term - for idea of a second home for humans - I'm personally more and more interested in the idea of cloud colonies in the atmosphere of Venus. It has a lot going for it - seems at first an absurd idea. But a habitat filled with an Earth atmosphere just happens to float naturally in the dense Venus atmosphere at just the right height - with pressures equalized inside and out - for an Earth normal pressure inside. And far lighter construction than anywhere else in the solar system - could start with a Bigelow type inflatable hab, but much larger than for anywhere else in solar system - later could grow trees as trees are 90% water + CO2 and use to make tensegirty or buckminster fuller type huge light habitats - and also stronger than a jet aeroplane wing but easily light enough to float there with the atmosphere so dense- plenty of nitrogen (3 bars) in the Venus atmosphere - Oxygen can be extracted, you can get water from the sulfuric acid via chemical reactions, 

I think it has been not studied enough. Only two papers in recent times plus old article in Russian - the Russians in the 1970s had the idea of Venusian cloud colonies long before anywhere else.

Anyway that is going to be my next science20 article, have a bit about it in the Trouble with Terraforming Mars but have found there are lots of forum discussions about it amongst astronomers, engineers, general public etc on the web so gathering that together in an article to draw attention to all this discussion and hope eventually researchers will look at it more thoroughly and do proper studies of the possibility. Has some planetary protoection issues as there just might be interesting life in the Venus atmosphere so plans could change - and there is the issue of how you get back from Venus - Venus to stay is easier - but - may be possible with orbital airships - or space planes but they can't get oxygen from the Venus atmosphere just heat it up  -  or conventional rockets - have advantage you don't need to build a launch pad but can just suspend your rocket in the air before launch held up by hydrogen balloons - again may seem unlikely at first sight and details need to be worked out but may be reasonably feasible.

So anyway that is the main thing on my mind as regards colonization and second home for humanity - plus use of asteroid material for habitats of course. 

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robertinventor

robertinventor

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Also for the Moon of course, major thing likely to happen eventually - to build radio telescopes on the far side shielded from interference from Earth so can do radio astronomy throughout radio spectrum, probably best place for radio astronomy anywhere near the Earth.

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