Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/are-we-disappointed-with-space-exploration/237136/

A very interesting article and to be honest it is pretty hard to fault the logic.

My only observation would be that what is perceived as valuable often changes with the passage of time. There are potentially lots of opportunities for profit in outer space, unfortunately opportunities are not always apparent until you have spent some time in a place.

In my own country, the Dutch explorers arrived before the British and decided that Australia wasn't all that interesting to them from a commercial perspective. Curiously they made a similar decision about Manhattan Island! Then the British decided that Australia might make a nice prison camp.

Eventually someone worked out that money could be made on a massive scale growing wool for export; but it wasn't really until the 20th century that we began unlocking the vast mineral wealth lying beneath the surface.

At the end of the day I believe it will all come down to obtaining resources at the best price possible. I am betting that eventually we will need to look off-world to satisfy demand. If we can build a space tourism market in the mean time, then this will help to establish the necessary infrastructure to begin mining H3 on the moon or perhaps some other exotic minerals on passing asteroids.

The question to ask is: what resource that is scarce on Earth is otherwise readily available elsewhere in the solar system?

Also, I would add that the role of government is to provide an environment where private enterprise can flourish.

If we had insisted that the Australian government be solely responsible to mine the mineral wealth of Australia; we would have ended up producing sub-standard product at an uncompetitive price. Now that sounds a lot like communism to me, or the National Broadband Network or a host of other government programs in my own country. Perhaps there are even shades of NASA there too.

Instead I believe the role of government is to regulate in order to bring the best outcome for as many stakeholders as possible; then, I hasten to add, to happily collect royalties and taxes along the way. This is how you end up with world class mining companies like BHP-Billiton or RIO Tinto.

Don't leave outer space to NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, CNSA or JAXA. It is too important to be left with the politicians.

Let's encourage entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, John Carmack and Robert Bigelow. I only wish we could add some Australian names to the list -- Rupert Murdoch seems too focussed on his terrestrial concerns. Perhaps we should be looking at some of our mining magnates?

Running at Hawks Nest

We enjoyed an excellent time with other leaders from our church at Hawks Nest over this last weekend. Jonty, who one of our international guests currently doing a gap year with the church happened to take this amazing picture of the sunrise as we were running past.

I absolutely love running, but it is being outside enjoying creation that often thrills me more. Just before this photo was taken we had witnessed a pod of dolphins swimming in synchronized perfection among the morning breakers.

Lockheed Martin shows test spaceship

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8227136

It has been fascinating watching the progress of this with Obama wanting to cancel the Constellation program and Congress determined to keep as many pieces of it alive as they could manage. For all the wrong reasons in my opinion!

Don't get me wrong, I love watching the space program, but I would love to see NASA focus on the cutting edge stuff like the Nautilus X that I sent you links about a few weeks ago. I find it pretty hard to get excited about what essentially appears to be Apollo Mk2.

An old letter from 1978

My mum recently dug out an old letter she had originally sent to her mother in Perth back in 1978. It gives an interesting insight into my life when I was around 10 years old. I don't remember being 'keen' about piano lessons, but I can still play a couple of the pieces that Gem Buck taught us, so I guess something went in.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Hi family,

Dad has been having quite a clean up and came across this letter written to my Mum, dated August, 1978. Thought you might be interested in these excerpts:

"I can hear Natalie singing to herself in her room, but she's not complaining yet so I'll continue on here. She is a real delight right now and we feel as if we'd like to "freeze" her and keep her just as she is at 18 months old. She is learning to talk and says quite a lot of words and will try to repeat words we ask her to. She says 'bye-ee', and will often find me where-ever I am, carrying her bag and tell me 'bye-ee', wave and toddle off. She's a real bundle of mischief, more so than all the boys put together and is able to climb up and get into everything. However, for the most part she is very easy going and amuses herself well (even if it is up on my dressing table!)

This week is education week in NSW schools and this morning I have been up to the school to visit Leigh's classroom. I spoke briefly to his teacher and she said that she is delighted with him. I was aware that with his schoolwork he was way ahead and I know from what he brings home that he rarely makes mistakes, but it was good to hear that she is also very happy with his behaviour, so I have come away feeling quite proud of my little boy!

Tomorrow is sports day for the primary school, and on Thursday I have to visit Carey and Wesley's classes. They both brought home very satisfactory reports and while they're not genius standard, they were both average and above average and also very pleasing in the comments on behaviour and social adjustment. Wes has done particularly well with his 'book work' and is in fact quite a book worm (as his mother and grandmother before him).

Did I mention that all 3 boys have been learning music this term? Carey and Wesley are especially keen - I guess maybe Leigh is a little young as yet. One of the ladies from the church is teaching them all. Two of them go together on a Monday morning before school and they take it is turns to have a lesson alone on Wednesday mornings. It's a mad rush to try and get them there by 8a.m., but well worth it we feel. The only problem is that I get awfully sick of hearing that piano practice all the time, with three of them on the go!!"

It was great to find this letter. It was three pages all up mentioning things I have long since forgotten.

Love Mum

Deep divisions simmer in our cultural melting pot

A very interesting article:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/18/3142403.htm

I find myself in agreement with much of this article. I remember being at school in the 70's and 80's and gaining the impression that Australia had little if any to offer in terms of culture before the wave of post WWII immigration.

It has definitely fueled my own determination retain the core values of what it means to be Australian.

The extract from Paul Keating's speech is pretty good:

"The first loyalty of all Australians must be to Australia, that they must accept the basic principles of Australian society. These include the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as a national language, equality of the sexes and tolerance".

Wes the space shuttle pilot

From our recent trip to Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Nautilus-X could be NASA's first manned deep-space explorer

I am very excited about Nautilus-X.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/nautilus-x-coul.php

http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Holderman-Henderson_1-26-11/Holderman_1-26-11.ppt

The PowerPoint is a thing of beauty.

This is the sort of thinking, planning and building that NASA should be doing. This is a proper spaceship!

My friend suggested that we still some way off working out how to overcome the debilitating effects of long term space travel both physically and psychologically.

However, I believe that the centrifuge with artificial gravity will make a big difference. They are hoping to test a version of it on the ISS. With the Mars 500 mission underway in Moscow we are already doing long-term psychological experiments on the type of isolation required for a long range space flight.

I'm just excited that there appears to be some original thinking and planning going on inside NASA.