Over at Phil Plait's place, he wrote about a NASA story comparing the tech in 2001: A Space Odyssey to today's real space program. Phil took issue (and I agree with said issue) with their comparing the massive space station in the movie to the ISS.

Discussion ensued, and one pure-blooded pro-robots in space type showed up. He was pretty patient, taking on several of us at once at times, though in the end he said we were talking past each other. In many of these cases, the discussions are similar to those about politics, where so many initial assumptions are made on both sides that, unless those are fleshed out as part of the talk, the talk isn't useful. I hadn't thought through some of the topics that came up in a while, so I'll take this time to spell some of my thinking out.

• If you only want to learn some of the basics about the environment around our planet, you want to use robots. Robots' capabilities will increase over time as well to return information about our neighborhood.
• Humans remain the viable option for an in-depth study of any particular body. This is especially true if the humans can analyze their discoveries on-site with time for re-evaluation. Robots can help in this endeavor, though the correct mix must be found.
• I think that it's a good idea to have some portion of our human population live off the planet. I hope that colonization is never automated through robots.
• Resource utilization from space, while it faces a huge barrier because of the havoc it will play on Earth markets, is one of few viable options for allowing continued expansion of our species.
• Space efforts so far have not had the goal of developing utility or practicality. The customers (usually governmental) can accept high costs for what they believe to be high reliability, so there's been no market force driving costs down.
• Aircraft manufacturing and operations changed radically after its started because it had a 'garage' mentality, in that many people could experiment. Space is just entering that phase.

Earlier I did some analysis on good candidate asteroids for a sprint class (less than 6 months) mission. One of the best ones I came up with was 2000 SG344. If intel is correct, NASA is looking at the same asteroid for a mission. I've learned about some new tools since my labor-intensive study, like JPL's Horizons public software, and there are a few close approaches in the 2028-2029 timeframe, and though the one I discussed was the closest, others have a lower relative speed, which can make a big difference on fuel. This table lists the close-approach date, statistical mean distance (in astronautical units), and relative velocity (in km/sec):

2028 May 07	.020199	2.034
2029 Feb 16	.053647	1.471
2029 Jul 28	.035037	1.189
2029 Nov 21	.045229	1.253

Pictured at the right is a sequence of images from Landsat 7 showing the growth of the Palm Islands and the World Islands from 2002 through 2007. The last image was taken after a failure within the instrument, giving it the 'venetian blind' effect. The image will be on the front page for a week, thereafter it can be found here.

Update: I posted this while watching a good movie, and forgot to mention that I don't have a problem with Dubai's approach to spending their oil money. I think it's a very good idea to build a huge tourist mecca using the money while it's coming in. Another such project is a robotic Jurassic Park.

I've got some studying to do, and spent this weekend reminding myself why I became an engineer by installing a new kitchen floor with my brother. Test on Wednesday, then a few posts in the queue.

Looks like Opportunity's shoulder joint is acting up. I'm amazed the equipment has lasted this long, and I think it bodes well for future exploration on Mars that the dust there will be manageable for the equipment at least. Potential toxicity is another unknown, though I rarely hear parallels drawn between Mars dust and Earth dust.

Well, I doubt that many (any?) Congresspeople would be able to pick a Landsat spacecraft (the program I currently work on) from a lineup, but they did take some time to put in the record the contributions the program has made, and their desire to see it continue. It's too bad that they didn't get more specific describing HOW Landsat would keep going into the future (LDCM, NLIP, etc.), but I guess it's an honor to just be mentioned.

On a humorous note, when I searched for just the bill number "HR 891" here, I came across a bill called the "Dog and Cat Fur Prohibition Enforcement Act", and laughed out loud.

Dr. Stephen Hawking has some more thoughts related to life on other planets, and whether or not we should be trying to get out there. I agree with his ideas that we should devote a small portion of our GDP to that effort.

And, as a blast from the past (related to NOVA's coverage of Sir Isaac Newton), Here is a classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data plays cards with Newton, Einstein, and Dr. Hawking (who played himself).

Saturday's return from the ISS was rougher than originally thought. Jim Oberg has the details. I haven't read them yet, but he's usually got the skinny.

Well, they'd chosen the instrument vendor and booster vendor. All that was missing was the connection between the two. That's been rectified today. General Dynamics (formerly Spectrum Astro) will be building the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (likely to be called Landsat 8 eventually) spacecraft. Nothing mentioned in the release about which option was taken (note: the Goddard website isn't updated with the new GD logo next to the satellites...they're still listed as Spectrum Astro), but my guess is that it's one of the higher-end buses.

The last week of May will see the International Space Development Conference here in DC. I've been involved in getting a NEO and Planetary Defense plenary discussion as well as a separate track going on Saturday. The events and current confirmed attendees are listed in the schedule (download the pdf).

It's been a weird week, with no real time to post. Here are some of the highlights as I see 'em:

• There's the story of a 13-year-old boy who, the news says, proved scientists wrong about the 2029 encounter with Apophis. One problem...he did no such thing. NASA's statement saying "no, we had it right, and here are some details why" came soon thereafter. I recently made a graph of a person's likelihood to make a useless, useful, and paradigm-shifting observation based on their knowledge level on the subject, and may have to post it soon. One note: The only group at fault in this is the media for reporting such a story without more fact checking.
• I'd forgotten about the 2009 'test flight' of the CEV that President Bush specified in his 2004 announcement of our new direction in space. Well, looks like a cobbled-together rocket is scheduled to fly, though it may be delayed.
• Mars Phoenix is on target for its north-pole landing on Mars. I haven't looked that closely, but there's been little mention about how short its mission will be. Since it's landing at a pole, the sun angle will change radically over time, and it will have to be shut down, unlikely to be heard from again. That shouldn't stop it from doing some great work, just from keeping going like the Mars rovers.

I was looking through the spaceflight gallery today, and came across this gem, showing the auroras as viewed from the space shuttle and/or station. It's not a high-res picture, so I'm not sure of its source. I like the effect of the auroras showing up over the lit side of the Earth, because of the darkness of space beyond. What floors me most is that you can see some astronomical objects in the picture as well. I believe the brighter dots to be photographic artifacts (though they could be bright stars), but the galaxy in the upper left is fairly obvious. The upper right appears to show a nebula, but it seems a bit big.

The start of the season premiere was a huge space battle, with some of the best special effects I've ever seen. After the battle, nothing was mentioned about repair actions, even though some ships were lost and others suffered heavy damage. Star Trek or other shows could have made a whole episode out of the repair effort. In BSG, the focus was on other things, and the repairs happened in the background.

Here is some commenting action going on over at Space Politics about a hearing over NASA's implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration, or whatever it's new term is nowadays.

In case you're wondering, I don't have comments open on my posts because my blogging software doesn't allow it. Plus, I think the low numbers of comments (translated into readers by some multiple) might bruise my fragile ego.

Looks like there's some legislation in the works to give NASA the lead role in near Earth object defense. It's good to see that someone's thinking about this, but I'm not sure if NASA is the group to lead it. Surely they'd have a role to play, but other agencies (DoD, Homeland Security, FEMA) have more experience in the overall problem.