Working in space is difficult and complicated. Human beings working in bulky spacesuits with specially designed tools have been doing the construction and repair work on satellites, space craft and space stations. Beginning with the Space Shuttle, robotic manipulator arms have been under development to assist and, in some cases, replace human beings for manipulating and repairing things in space.
        The International Space Station has a robotic arm developed in Canada called the Canadarm2. The first Canadarms deployed were directly mounted on the U.S. space shuttles for use in loading and unloading the cargo holds. They could only load at a little over two inches a second but could unload at twenty four inches a second. The early Canadarms had a reach of about fifteen feet. Their range of motion was similar to a human arm with a double-jointed shoulder, a single-jointed elbow and a triple-jointed wrist. These Canadarms moved cargo but also found use in removing ice, manipulating satellites and as camera booms.
        After the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, the Canadarm was redesigned. One of the new Canadarm2s was sent up to and installed on the International Space Station. It is capable of moving around on the surface of the ISS with the assistance of the Mobile Base System. It can use its Latching End Effectors to attach to Power Data Grapple Fixtures to draw power, and exchange video and data feeds. It has a similar configuration to the original Canadarm but its seven joints can move through five hundred and forty degrees. Its components can be replaced in orbit. It has force movement sensors that give it a sense of touch and four color cameras to keep track of motion and targets. The Canadarm2 can load cargo at about an inch a second and unload cargo at about fifteen inches a second. The new Canadarm2 has more capabilities than the first generation and it helped assemble the ISS. It can be operated by a human operator or by a computer.
        Following the development of the second generation Canadarm, Canada developed the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator also known Dextre.  It is a two armed teleoperated robot which is now a part of the Mobile Servicing System on the ISS. It is capable of doing repairs that would normally require a spacewalk. Dextre is has a central cylindrical “torso” with two very flexible eleven foot arms. It can pivot at its waist. Dextre has a grapple at the base of the torso which can be grasped by the Canadarm2. The other end of the torso has a connector that can attach to the ISS grapple fixtures also used by the Canadarm2 or the Mobile Base System.
        Various components are attached to the ORU/Tool Changeout Mechanisms on the wrists at the ends of Dextre’s arms. These include grasping jaws, a retractable socket drive, a monochrome TV camera, lights, and a cable with connectors to draw power and exchange data and video with external payloads. Dextre has a tool holster that contains devices that allow other tools to be attached to the arms such as wire cutters, safety cap removal tools, EVR nozzle tool and a multifunction tool with more adaptors.
Canadarm2:

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Dextre:

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      The rocket engines currently in use for the exploration and exploitation of space are liquid fueled. Because they have to work in the vacuum of space, the fuel must be mixed with an oxidizer in order for combustion to occur. Elaborate systems have been developed to hold the different varieties of fuels and oxidizers in use.  Complex systems of pipes and pumps deliver the fuel and oxidizer to the combustion chamber where they are mixed and burned. Creating combustion chambers which can withstand the heat of combustion that can reach over five thousand degrees Fahrenheit has been a long and difficult task.
      Ten years ago, the U.S. Space Shuttle engines were the most sophisticated rocket engines developed up to that point. The shells of the main combustion chambers were made of an alloy called Iconel 718. Iconel alloys are a combination of iron, nickel and chromium with traces of other elements. They are heat resistant and often used in high temperature applications. Iconel 718 is about fifty percent nickel, twenty percent chromium, twenty percent iron and ten percent other elements. The lining of the combustion chamber is an alloy of copper, silver and zirconium alloy called NARloy-Z that was developed specifically for use in rocket engines. NARloy-Z is ninety six percent copper, three percent silver and one percent zirconium. It has excellent heat transfer properties and is resistant to corrosion and oxidation. The lining of the combustion chamber contains hundreds of tubes that carry coolant to lower the temperature.
        During the use of the engines, the severe conditions inside the combustion chamber roughened the lining of the chamber in a process called “blanching”. This meant that every time the Shuttle landed, the combustion chambers had to be polished to make the surface smooth again.
      Special materials were developed to coat the lining of the chamber to prevent the blanching. Unfortunately, the difference in chemical composition between the coating and the liner resulted in different amounts of expansion under the heat of combustion. When this differential expansion reached a threshold, there was separation and flaking of the coating where it met the liner. So it was still necessary to perform maintenance on every landing.
             Special materials were developed to coat the lining of the chamber to prevent the blanching. Unfortunately, the difference in chemical composition between the coating and the liner resulted in different amounts of expansion under the heat of combustion. When this differential expansion reached a threshold, there was separation and flaking of the coating where it met the liner. So it was still necessary to perform maintenance on every landing.
       NASA worked to solve this problem by developing an advanced “vacuum plasma”  process for depositing both the coating and the lining of the combustion chamber in a mold in layers. The new coating is a metallic alloy of nickel, chromium, aluminum and yttrium. By mixing the coating and lining and slowly varying the ratio of the two between one hundred percent lining and one hundred percent coating, they eliminate the sharp boundary between the two. The combination coating/lining is able to withstand more than a hundred firings without developing the previous problems that plagued rocket engine combustion chambers.
       Recently NASA 3D printed a rocket engine combustion chamber liner complete with cooling channels. A powder of a special copper alloy called GRCop-84 was used to print the combustion chamber with a laser melting the powder as the part was printed. GRCop-84 is a high temperature copper alloy specifically developed by NASA for high-heat-flux application. It is composed of eighty eight percent copper, six and a half percent chromium and five and a half percent niobium and is superior to the NARloy-Z used in the Space Shuttle combustion chambers. After a shell of nickel alloy is deposited on the copper liner, the chamber will be tested. NASA hopes to be able to make rocket engine parts ten times faster than and at half the cost of the old manufacturing process.
3D printed copper alloy rocket engine combustion chamber:

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       I have spent a lot of blogs talking about all the exciting projects of governments and private companies in the exploration and exploitation of space. Three quarters the three hundred and thirty billion dollar space economy represents commercial investment as private firms rush to exploit the “High Frontier.” Unfortunately, there are serious challenges that are increasing the expense of launching and protecting satellites.
       Commercial networks are rapidly expanding their use of satellite communication which makes them tempting targets for hackers. There are individuals and groups that are working to illegally exploit space hardware. Hackers are attracted to both the communication hardware itself as well as the information that is being transmitted. Satellites in Earth orbit are becoming a battleground between security groups and hackers. The technology for space exploration is very sophisticated and proprietary design information is a tempting target for hackers working for other companies. Hackers are carrying out corporate espionage and other types of cyber attacks in order to gain commercial advantages over competitors.
       Space hardware manufacturers are forced to spend money to prevent malicious software from being loaded onto their hardware before it is even launched. The rapid growth of the space hardware market has attracted some unscrupulous players. A lot of the manufacturing is being done in Asia which make it more difficult for American and European companies to closely monitor the behavior of companies they are dealing with. At the annual meeting of the International Astronautical Conference in Israel last week, a representative of the European Space Agency discussed hardware that the ESA had purchased that turned out to have been tampered with to allow hackers to gain access to the satellite after it had been launched.
       There is so much debris from space launches and old satellites in orbit that it is becoming a serious threat to satellite launches. There are about half a million pieces of space junk in Earth orbit that are roughly the size of a child’s marble. Twenty thousand more pieces the size of baseballs are also in orbit. This junk is racing around the Earth at about ten times the speed of a bullet. There is a general understanding that satellites should be constructed and launched in such a way that they will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up on their own within twenty five years. However, there is no guarantee that current satellites being launched will follow this understanding.
       If the cloud of space debris gets much denser, it will be more difficult to launch satellites. This will increase launch costs. There are companies that are viewing this problem as a new business opportunity. Removal of space debris could become a lucrative market in the future. There are suggestions for systems that employ robotic arms, nets, harpoons, surfaces with adhesives and even robotic tentacles that could either drop the debris for burn up or move it into a unused orbit where it would be less of a threat.
       There is about a ten percent chance of failure in satellite launches from a variety of sources. This has resulted in an insurance market for space ventures where about ten percent of the cost of a satellite is charged for insuring a launch. This is the third highest cost for space entrepreneurs behind construction and launching. Insurance against hacking is not currently part of the space insurance market but some insurance companies are considering it.

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       I started this blog with a series of articles about the Chinese space program. My last blog covered a report on Chinese work to militarize space by creating satellites and ground based weapons that could damage or destroy the satellites of enemies in times of war. Liu Jizhong, the director of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program , recently gave a speech about Chinese peaceful plans for the Moon and other space missions. Today I am going to share some of the ideas mentioned in Liu’s presentation.
       The Chinese have already put a rover on the Moon and launched many low Earth orbit missions. They have plans for lunar exploration and lunar bases, Mars missions, asteroid exploration and exploitation and other deep space missions. Liu said “When exploring the unknown, we should not just follow others. China should be more creative.” The Chinese seem to feel that they will not be respected as a “space power” until they launch space missions that accomplish what no other country has done.
        Liu mentioned plans to put landers on the side of the Moon that faces away from the Earth and on the lunar poles. China plans to place satellites in orbit around the Moon to explore the north and south poles and provide communication for lunar far side missions. It is possible that there is water ice on the lunar poles that could be used for manned lunar bases which are also in the Chinese plans. China has settled on sending both robots and human beings on space missions.
       Liu proposed a heavy-lift launch vehicle that could carry a payload of 220,462 pounds that could be used to construct and supply a manned lunar base as well as launch deep space missions to Mars and asteroids. This launch vehicle would be much bigger than current heavy-lift launch vehicles being used by space-faring nations. As an example, the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle being developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX for use on commercial space missions will only be able to life about half of the proposed Chinese payload.
       Liu suggested that ant-like exploratory vehicles would be more flexible for lunar exploration than current lunar rovers. Robotic ants would have feet instead of the wheels used by lunar rovers. The feet would make it easier for them to move over uneven terrain. The small size would reduce the need for big landers to carry full sized rovers to the lunar surface. The Chinese are researching robots that have two, four and six feet. The comparison to ants is based on the fact that the research has revealed that a robot with six feet has advantages in mobility and flexibility in the complex lunar environment. Mass manufacture would lower the cost of each robot so more could be deployed. These robots could also assist in the exploration of asteroids.
       Liu also said that he wanted his team to develop faster propulsion techniques to enable deep-space probes to reach their destinations more quickly than is possible today.
Chinese Lunar Exploration Program logo:

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       I have talked about space weapons in general and Chinese militarization of space in particular in past blog posts. A new report expected soon from the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission will provide details of the Chinese space weapons programs. These weapons are referred to as counterspace arms because they are intended to destroy or jam U.S. satellites and limit American combat operations around the world.
       A late draft of the annual report from the commission states that “China is pursuing a broad and robust array of counterspace capabilities, which includes direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, computer network operations, ground-based satellite jammers and directed energy weapons. China’s nuclear arsenal also provides an inherent anti-satellite capability.” It is assumed that if there is a conflict with the U.S., Chinese military planners will utilize a combination of kinetic, electronic and cyber attacks against satellites or ground support structure for U.S. combat operations.
      The Chinese have two direct-ascent missiles that are able to hit satellites in low and high orbits. Tests of the SC-19 and DN-2 anti-satellite missiles were carried out last year. The DN-2 can reach the orbits of U.S. Global Positioning Satellites but would probably be used against U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites.
        China is developing what are referred to as “co-orbital anti-satellite” weapons. These space weapons are satellites that are launched into the orbit of other satellites and then maneuver to rendezvous with and damage or destroy the targeted satellites. They may utilize an explosive charge, a fragmentation device, a kinetic energy weapons, a laser, a radio frequency weapons, a jammer or even a robotic arm. In 2008, a Chinese small imaging satellite came within twenty eight miles of the International Space Station. There was no notification of the mission and U.S. experts believe it was a test of a co-orbiting anti-satellite weapon.
        The authors of the commission report say that they think that China believes that demonstrating the ability to damage or destroy other countries satellites is an important deterrence to other nations that may intend to use satellites in warfare against China. China believes that anti-satellite capability is more important today than nuclear deterrence. China is convinced that U.S. satellites are essential to the U.S.’s ability to sustain global combat capability. They think that destruction of U.S. military satellites will make it difficult if not impossible for the U.S. to properly utilize precision-guided weapons on global targets.
         China is also working on developing the ability to launch military cyberattacks to take control of enemy satellites by hacking into the microwave signals that are used to control the satellites. The commission report says that China will “attempt to conduct computer network attacks against U.S. satellites and ground-based facilities that interact with U.S. satellites. “If executed successfully, such attacks could significantly threaten U.S. information superiority, particularly if they are conducted against satellites with sensitive military and intelligence functions. For example, access to a satellite’s controls could allow an attacker to damage or destroy the satellite; deny, degrade, or manipulate its transmissions; or access its capabilities or the information, such as imagery, that can be gained through its sensors.”
        China has developed a number of electronic ground-based jammers to use against enemy satellites. In 2006, a high-powered Chinese laser temporarily disrupted a U.S. communication satellite. In addition, the detonation of a Chinese nuclear warhead in low earth orbit could disrupt unshielded satellites.
        The Chinese are preparing for 21st Century warfare and the U.S. is aware of and preparing to counter the threat. The commission report is expected later this month.

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       I am a booster of human space exploration. I enjoy writing this blog about it. Up until recently, space exploration was the exclusive province of the national governments. In the U.S. NASA is the primary federal agency responsible for space exploration. However, in the past few years, private entrepreneurs have begun building and launching spacecraft.
       While a lot of this business is under contract to NASA for government programs, a growing share is strictly private for profit. When new industries move into an area, there can be friction between the people who live there and the changes brought by the corporation that has moved in. The fracking industry has had a terrible impact on the people who live in North Dakota. Unfortunately, the new private space industry is not immune to this problem.
      Last year, SpaceX selected Boca Chica Village, a tiny beach town in South Texas with a population of twenty six, to be the locations for the world’s first commercial rocket-launch site. Up to this point, private space companies have been using government launch facilities. Boca Chica Village has about three dozen houses inhabited mainly by seasonal blue-collar workers and retirees.
      The State of Texas worked hard to win the SpaceX launch facility, beating out Florida and Georgia. Texas offered about fifteen million dollars in economic incentives to get SpaceX to move there and a local development organization added an additional five million dollars to the package.
      Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and former Governor Rick Perry came to Boca Chica Village last September to take part in a groundbreaking ceremony for the new SpaceX launch facility. SpaceX has been buying property in the town and renaming some streets with space-related names such as Rocket Road and Mars Crossing. SpaceX also purchased a rundown house in the middle of the tiny town. The house has been used for meetings so far but the neighbors are suspicious about the future of the property. The anger and resistance of residence of Boca Chica Village to the arrival of SpaceX was unexpected but could have been predicted if any of the Texas officials had put any thought into it.
       Recently residents of the town said that representatives from SpaceX told them that they would be required to register with the county. They would have to wear badges and pass through at least one checkpoint on days when launches were scheduled. Beginning next year, launches are expected to happen about once a month. In addition, within the fifteen hour launch window, movement around the area would be restricted and the public beach would be closed.
        One of the big concerns of the residents of Boca Chica Village is their safety. When Cape Canaveral shuttles were launched, viewers were required to be at least three miles from the launch pad. Boca Chica Village is only two miles from the SpaceX launch site. Being this close to the launch, the residents could be exposed to dangerous chemicals such as hydrazine. Debris from explosions could rain down on the town. Residents of the town have been told that they may be asked to leave their homes during some launches.
      SpaceX intends to enforce safety rules by video surveillance and drone flights over the beach. Needless to say, the residents of Boca Chica Village are not happy about this curtailment of their freedom of movement. Some of the residents have been talking about lawsuits and civil disobedience. The fact that SpaceX wants to close a public beach seems to be a violation of the Texas Open Beaches Act.
        This is a sad story of a powerful corporation taking over a town and abusing the residents. It would have been much better for SpaceX to have found an uninhabited place to build its new launch facility.

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       I have previously mentioned that Boeing was awarded a contract by NASA for building their CST-100 spacecraft. Now Boeing has renamed their reusable crewed spacecraft the Starliner. It will be built in a “repurposed” shuttle processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center. It will be used to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA is contracting the building of reusable spacecrafts to end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for access to the ISS.
       Boeing has a four billion dollar contract to build and test the first Starliner at the KSC. There are future plans to build an additional three Starliners which will each be certified for ten flights. The Starliner will be able to carry up to seven astronauts or a smaller crew and some cargo. It will be carried into orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It will use a combination of parachutes and airbags to land somewhere in the Western U.S. Five potential landing sites are currently be investigated. Following landing, the Starliner will be transported back to Florida for refurbishment and reuse.
       Boeing will pay for the training and use of NASA’s mission control staff to handle flight operations. Boeing is also considering the possibility of transporting rich space tourists, university researchers or astronauts from other countries if there are seats and cargo spaces available on Starliner flights.
      In May of this year, NASA contracted for a minimum of two Starliner missions and the possibility of as many as six flights. They named four astronauts who will begin training for commercial crew operations on the Starliner. Boeing is planning on an unpiloted test flight of the first Starliner in May of 2017. This test will be followed by an “on-the-pad” launch abort test in August of 2017. Then there will be a piloted test flight in September. If all these tests go well, the first operation crew ferry flight to the ISS will be conducted in December of 2017. 
      Boeing is also a bidder for another NASA contract for delivery of supplies to the ISS using a version of the CST-100 without a pilot. Now, supplies for the ISS are delivered by two private companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation. These two companies have thee and one half billion dollars worth of contracts that run through 2018.
       NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed an enthusiastic crowd of Boeing managers, employees and dignitaries in Florida recently. He said “In 35 states, 350 American companies are working to make it possible for the greatest country on Earth to once again launch our own astronauts into space. But right here, today, we’re focused on one state — Florida — and the incredible things the Boeing company has done with this former orbiter processing facility, transforming it into a state-of-the-art place where a new American spacecraft will emerge.”
      These plans for the Starliner depend on NASA getting the one billion two hundred million appropriation requested from Congress by the Obama administration. Drafts of budget legislation in the House of Representatives would cut the appropriation to one billion dollars. Similar work in the Senate would bring the appropriation down to nine hundred million dollars. In view of the uncertainty over the approval of the requested funds, NASA has said that it will spend about five hundred million to procure six Soyuz seats on flights to the ISS through 2018 and landing support through 2019. This is in addition to the four hundred and fifty million dollar contract that Boeing has with the Russians for six Soyuz seats through 2017.
        NASA has been complaining that the lack of Congressional funding for U.S. spacecraft has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, when U.S. spending on space should be used to create jobs in the U.S.
Artist’s concept of Boeing Starliner:

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             Conventional propulsion systems for satellite and spacecraft maneuvering in space utilize some sort of combustive fuel to direct explosive products out of the rear of the vehicle to move it forward. Because there is no oxygen in space, these systems must combine a flammable substance with an oxidizer. There are liquid fuel systems such as liquid hydrogen as fuel and liquid oxygen as oxidizer. There are solid fuels where the fuel and oxidizer are powdered, mixed and pressed into solid masses. These systems are heavy, complex and dangerous. Recently a different type of propulsion system has been gaining in popularity.
       Engines employing some sort of electrical effect have been suggested for over a hundred years as a viable means of space propulsion. There are several different types of systems that have been designed and tested. Ion thrusters ionized a gas and accelerate it with electrical fields to the rear of the engine where it is expelled from the back of the craft to provide thrust. Electrothermal thrusters utilizes electromagnetic fields to create a hot plasma which expands and is expelled from the rear of the engine to provide thrust. Electromagnetic thrusters accelerate ions to provide thrust but the direction of the field gradient is not in the same direction as the resulting acceleration.
        These types of engines do not require large amounts of propellant but they also do not provide a great deal of thrust. They are best for long missions where the gentle thrust they do provide can added over time to produce significant acceleration. They also require energy for the electromagnetic effects employed. Near the sun, solar power may provide sufficient energy. For deep space missions away for the sun, power would likely be provided by either nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. NASA has employed ion thrusters for deep space missions.
        In March of 2015, Boeing launched two Boeing 702 communications satellite which are the first commercial satellites propelled only by electromagnetic effects. They are powered by a Xenon Ion Propulsion System that is ten times more efficient than conventional liquid fuel propulsion systems. The Xenon ion thrusters are used for both station keeping and changing orbits. The 702SP satellites each weight about four thousand five hundred pounds and employ solar panels to generate between three and seven kilowatts of power to provide thrust. They only need eleven pounds of xenon per year for their four engines. They are about half the weight of comparable satellites employing conventional rockets for thrust. Launched aboard a Falcon 9 spacecraft, they were significantly cheaper than satellites with conventional propulsion systems. They will take about eight months to climb to their operational geosynchronous orbits.
       The success of the new Boeing 702SP communication satellites performance has resulted in more orders for these satellites from Boeing customers. Other aerospace companies have reacted to Boeing success of the 702SP satellites by working on electromagnetic engines of their own. With their low weight and high efficiency, ion thrusters are destined to be a major component of space exploration and exploitation in the coming decades.
Boeing artist’s concept of the 702SP:

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       One of the popular themes of science fiction is the concept of converting hostile planetary environments into places where human beings could live. This process is referred to as “terraforming.” Many different technologies and schemes have been suggest in fiction and non-fiction publications. Until we find a practical way to travel to other stars, we are limited on considering the terraforming of planets in our own solar system. The best candidate for the process would be the planet Mars. There have been scientific papers published with detailed plans for improving the conditions on the surface of Mars.
       Recently, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, was being interviewed on a TV show. He suggested that perhaps we could convert the Martian surface into a more benign environment by exploding a bunch of hydrogen bombs on the north pole of Mars. At first hearing, it sounds insane but there is actually science behind the idea.
“[Mars] is a fixer-upper of a planet, so first you’re going to have to live in transparent domes, but eventually you can transform Mars into an Earth-like planet,” Musk told the interviewer. “You’d warm it up. There’s the fast way and the slow way. The fast way to drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” Musk mentioned that you could warm Mars slowly with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide but there is already so much carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere that it would be poisonous.
       Nuking the poles of Mars would melt the water ice buried there. The water vapor injected into the atmosphere would provide greenhouse heating without the need for more carbon dioxide. However, scientists question whether hydrogen bombs would be powerful enough to provide the heat necessary to melt enough ice to make a difference. The biggest nuclear bomb ever made was a Soviet bomb called the Tsar. It had the equivalent power of twenty five million tons of TNT. Even if you detonated a series of bombs that powerful, it would take centuries to warm the atmosphere of Mars significantly.
      There is also the question of radioactive fallout. Exploding a series of powerful nuclear bombs would throw up a tremendous amount of dust, sand and water vapor laden with radioactive particles. With the powerful wind storms that rage over the surface of Mars, the radioactive particles from the bombs would be spread all over the surface. It is true that if we were talking about centuries and some of the radioactive isotopes would decay but there would still be plenty left to threaten plants, animals and people.
       Other scientists complain that we have gone to great lengths to insure that the probes we land on Mars are sterile because we are hoping to find evidence of life that evolved on Mars. The evolution of life separate from that of Earth would have huge scientific importance in our understanding of life in the universe. If we try to terraform Mars with nuclear bombs, we can probably forget about finding evidence of life that evolved there.
       Elon Musk is a brilliant inventor and businessman. He has been very successful at pushing the limits of technology in the field of transportation. And he is involved in the privatization of space but perhaps his idea of nuking Mars is pushing things a little too far. Hopefully we can find a better way to render Mars more habitable if it is something that the human race decides is important.

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        Two weeks ago I attended the Space Entrepreneurs Epicenter of Space meeting in Marina Park in Kirkland Washington. The Keynote Speaker was Chris Lewicki, the President and Chief Engineer for Planetary Resources, a company dedicated to asteroid mining. Their vision is to “bring the natural resources of space within humanity’s economic sphere of influence, propelling us into the 21st century and beyond…today.”  They say that “Asteroids will play a key role in the development of a space economy and be the main driver in allowing humanity to become a flourishing multi-planetary species. Water from asteroids will fuel the in-space economy and habitation, by creating rocket fuel and consumable water from space, for space. Rare metals will increase Earth’s GDP when mined from asteroids in our Solar System – the very same objects that brought them to Earth in the first place.”
      Arkyd Astronautics was formed in November of 2010 in the U.S. It was reorganized and renamed “Planetary Resources” in 2012. Seattle, Washington was chosen as their base of operation. Planetary Resources opened the doors of its Seattle headquarters in 2011. They are working on low-cost avionics and software, attitude determination and control systems, space communications, high delta-V small satellite propulsion systems and space-based observation. They have developed partnerships and investor relations with major companies and government agencies in order to provide services that will pave the way towards their ultimate goal of mining asteroids.
      In 2012, Planetary Resources released an overview of the first three satellites they were planning including the Arkyd Series 100 also know Leo Space Telescopes. The Arkyd 100s are going to be “Earth-observer and asteroid-locators.” Earth imaging will be sold at a low cost and the satellites will search for asteroids to mine. The Arkyd Series 200, also known as “Interceptors,” will be sent out to analyzed the physical characteristics of the targeted asteroids which will be within two and a half million to seven and half million miles of Earth. The Arkyd Series 300, also known as “Rendezvous Prospector,” will rendezvous with targeted asteroids to collect detailed information such as the size, shape, rotation and density. They will also analyze surface and subsurface composition.
       In 2013, Planetary Resources launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund a new spacecraft called the Arkyd-100. In 2014, the Arkyd-3 was launched to test technologies for the Arkyd-100. Unfortunately, it was destroyed when the launch vehicle blew up. In July of 2015, a second Arkyd-3 was successfully placed in orbit from the International Space Station to carry out a 90-day mission.
      The roadmap for the future of Planetary Resources includes a series of stages. The first stage is a survey and analysis of near-Earth asteroids to select the best targets for mining. These activities will be carried out by the Arkyd-100 satellites. A second stage will consist of sending survey probes to select which targeted asteroids will be surveyed, mapped, scanned and sampled. This will be done by the Arkyd-200 and Arkyd-300 satellites. Ultimately, they intend to set up a fully robotic mining operation on selected asteroids and return valuable minerals to Earth. Planetary Resources estimates that it will probably take at least a decade to realize their plans to mine asteroids.
      Chris Lewicki, the President and Chief Engineer for Planetary Resources, speaking at the Epicenter of Space event recently, made a point of emphasizing that the commercial exploitation of space would need to be profitable at every stage in order to create a successful mature commercial space industry.

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