Collaborate Disseminate
Launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes have been operating non-stop for over 45 years, making their way from Earth to our solar system’s outer planets and …read more Continue reading NASA’s Voyager Space Probe’s Reserve Power, and the Intricacies of RTG-Based Power Systems
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have eliminated a major bottleneck in the production of plutonium-238 for deep space exploration through automation. Continue reading Scientists Are Automating Plutonium Production So NASA Can Explore Deep Space
In The Martian we saw what kind of hacking was needed to stay alive for a relatively short while on Mars, but what if you were trying to live there permanently? Mars’ hostile environment would affect your house, your transportation, even how you communicate. So here’s a fun thought experiment about how you’d live on Mars as part of a larger community.
Radiation on Mars comes from the solar energy particles (SEP) and galactic cosmic radiation (GCR). Mars One, the organization planning one-way trips to Mars talks about covering their habitats in several meters of regolith, …read more
Continue reading Living on Mars: the Stuff You Never Thought About
It’s been 6 years since the hacker’s treat of a book, “The Martian” by Andy Weir, was self-published, and 2 years since the movie came out. We’ve talked about it briefly before, but enough time has passed that we can now write-up the book’s juicier hacks while being careful to not give away any plot spoilers. The book has more hacks than the movie so we’re using the book as the source.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, Mark Watney is an astronaut who’s left for dead, by himself, on Mars. To survive, he has a habitat designed for six, …read more
