That’s amazing. 18 months in hard vacuum and unprotected from radiation, and the stuff thrived.
Maybe the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that eventually lichen takes over everything. All hail our fungal overlords!
Shades of Andromeda Strain!
from the article:
We also think some fungi (including mushrooms) might EAT radiation through 
radiosynthesis:radioactive:. Let’s take a quick detour to the Chernobyl disaster site.
In 1991, remotely piloted robots discovered a black fungus growing INSIDE one the Chernobyl reactors. The black colour was caused by melanin, the same pigment in human skin, eyes and hair than helps US withstand radiation!
Further research revealed that these fungi grew faster when exposed to more radiation. They weren’t growing DESPITE the radiation, but BECAUSE of it!
Any planet with flying dinosaurs and nuclear-powered fungi is probably not one we’re safe on for the long term.
That’s why we’re trying to get out of it!
NASA has a negative report out on space-based solar power:
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4737/1
Full report:
Ouch. In a sentence:
First we get Starship going at full cadence. Then more miracles occur. Then space-solar-to-earth electricity still costs 20-50x as much as terrestrial green generation.
As mentioned here
a SpaceX falcon 9 was supposed to launch a non-SpaceX payload to the Moon overnight on Tue-Wed 2/13-2/14 and is now tentatively rescheduled for overnight Wed-Thu = 2/14-2/15.
I have always thought that powersats were a ridiculous idea.
Even if starship brings launch costs down to Elon’s best hope, why put your solar panels tens of thousands of miles from where the power is needed, in an environment which makes maintainance very difficult?
Sure, you get less power per square meter on earth, clouds and night reduce it further… but you don’t have to use exotic transmission techniques to get it to where it’s needed. Technologies for storing electrical energy are improving all the time. And half the planet is in sunlight at any time, so long-haul high voltage DC distribution can help there. I mean, we know how to do that, as opposed to microwave transmission systems which are still fairly experimental.
I think you really meant
Except for politics, we know how to do that.
Transoceanic and even transcontinental gridded power will never cross hostile political blocs. And there are even issues wholly within friendly blocs.
One of the key attractions for space solar is entirely the idea of 24/7/365 delivery wholly subject to domestic control with a small and nearly NIMBY-free footprint on the ground.
My bottom line:
Humans can do large scale engineering. As we can see by casually glancing around, humans cannot do large scale politics.
The queation you always have to ask about power is at what price?
We are awash in energy. We are short of inexpensive energy. Access to more extremely expensive energy is useless. Solar Power Satellites represent crazy expensive electeicity. It will never beat nuclear power on cost. Not even close.
Energy is the fundamental input of the economy. The price of just about everything depends on the price of energy. It is critical that our energy supply be cheap and reliable. We are on a path to make it more expensive and less reliable. Solar power satellites are even worse.
Granted solar space power is stupid expensive. But that wasn’t obvious until it was researched.
And, as we all know, if prices represented all the externalities, the price of fossil fuels would be saddled with a lot of the world’s total military spending, and also the full costs of atmospheric carbon prevention / remediation.
Fossil only seems cheap when our system pretends those other costs don’t exist. They do, and we’re all paying them. Now, and even more in the future.
Except for politics, we know how to do that.
Transoceanic and even transcontinental gridded power will never cross hostile political blocs. And there are even issues wholly within friendly blocs.
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True. Engineers know how to do it, but politics is a horrible mess.
Which may be why it keeps getting brought up and even funded to some extent, even though the logistics seem ridiculous?
I’ve always wondered about the cheap scifi trope of a bad guy taking control of a space power downlink and frying downtown Metropolis with a pure beam of energy.
In a similar vein, this was always an elephant in the room for the Reagan-era ‘star wars’ projects.
Although touted as a defensive shield, a lot of what was proposed could quite easily be used as offensive weapons.
In the end it seems that nothing much came of it… though who knows just what the US military may have in orbit on the quiet…?
Two losers merging?
My initial inclination is that it’s like two drowning people holding onto each other as they sink beneath the waves.
However, I think this is a little unfair. ULA does have a functional methane rocket. Blue Origin has working new engines. ULA should get BO some juicy contracts (plus lobbying power) and maybe some useful infrastructure. Blue Origin probably needs something to tide them over while New Glenn is in development.
It’s a big step down from SpaceX to second place, but the US really does need a second player here, and BO and ULA are too weak on their own. It’s possible or even likely there will be some cultural disaster here, but if they can make things work it’s probably a net positive. Frankly, it would be hard to do worse than the current Boeing/LM control.
Frankly, it’s only this that makes either company even remotely viable. The US government has to maintain an alternative domestic launch service for “critical” flights - even if that launch service is less reliable and ridiculously more expensive.
Until other companies learn and implement reusability and rapid cadence, they will simply suck off the government tit as the backup player until the government gets tired of it (i.e., money runs out). I suspect they will get few commercial launches unless Uncle Sam is picking up large parts of the tab.
At least BO has a reusability plan with New Glenn. It’s a big and challenging rocket, and yet still not as ambitious as Starship, but if they can make it work they’ll be in a reasonable position. All else being equal, it’s a step up from Falcon 9 (though it’ll be a long time before any other rocket can match its cadence and reliability).
In an ideal universe, BO would just go completely all-in with New Glenn and forget the rest. But I don’t think they’re culturally capable of it. ULA gets them a working rocket, which keeps the BE-4 engine line running, and maybe brings a little experience in actually running a rocket program.
The question is whether one of the new launch companies like Relativity Space will achieve that position in not too many years–replacing the Blue Origin/ULA combination.