Nerd Honor

Besmirch at your own risk, to be honest.

Tomorrow's love couple

Real people, as it were. Who choose to surgically change themselves into likenesses of dolls.

Our modern society is so decadent.

Easily strong

What are you looking at?

Would you like to play a game?

Resistance is

Sexy! Like sexbots aren't inevitable. And so ethically gray!

Not logical

As Data's emotion chip continued to degrade, he took up risky behaviors in the desperate search for more intense emotions.

What is "real"?

Who's to say my love for this RealDoll is not equal to your love for another person? Hmm?

Nice night for a walk

The Terminator, I'd argue, is an enormously important film not only because it's awesome, but because it launched the idea of the ROBOT APOCALYPSE into popular consciousness. And since it came out in 1984, that idea has spread and taken root - we all know of it. Many joke about it. Some work to bring it about.

I say to you, fellow meatbags! The future is

Eyes of a Robot

It's cool visuals, but not realistic. There's no way we could ever smash all the cameras they'll deploy. In the sky, on the sides of buildings, on street poles, on power lines, etc. Drones flying overhead. Satellites far above. Cameras everywhere.

Curiosity, on Mars. Not sure how this photo is made, since Curiosity is all alone on Mars.

Spirit's Tale

Spirit was sent to Mars with it's twin Opportunity for a 90 day mission. This is the sad story of Spirit...

Opportunity, however, roves on, no doubt terrified, having been left on Mars so long.

Where we're going

You're living a dream, Mr. Anderson.

Our only hope

As I've said many times right here on this here blog, a large asteroid strike on Earth is inevitable, and when/if it hits, most life on Earth, including all human life, is done. It will be something like a 90-96% extinction rate of ALL life on the planet, including bugs and bacteria and slimy stuff swimming in the seas. Consider this danger deeply, for it's very real. Here's but a taste:

And these are just the ones very close, and none of them are very big, and we're missing many, many smaller ones - the 150 meter ones mentioned below, for example. Large enough to cause widespread chaos and death on Earth (though not an extinction event). Asteroids vary greatly in size:

Vesta is bigger than many moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but not the biggest asteroid (that's Ceres, where the Dawn spacecraft is heading as I type). However, asteroids the size of Steins and even smaller are our real threat. Look how tiny! But big enough to kill us all. All it would take is 5-10 mile wide asteroid to do us all in.

And what could we do about it today? Very little if on short notice. If with 20-30 years to prepare, we could probably save ourselves, starting from scratch. But why start from scratch THEN, when we all know the answer TODAY?!

Figuratively, of course. An armada of Asteroids fighters flying around space blasting rock is not very likely.

Sad, I know. Believe me! I'm the best Asteroids Ace you've ever seen. Go ahead and try your skills here.

But no, it won't be people in triangular spaceships that save us from the asteroids, but rather small robotic spacecraft that can attach to and then redirect these Earth impacting asteroids. Imagine 50 small bots flying to then landing on an asteroid on a direct impact course, each using its rocket to steer the asteroid in a different direction. It don't take much in space.

For your regular asteroids. If a Vesta like object were coming at us, better to move off planet. Here's a closeup from Dawn:

"The Snowman".

Once again, people of Earth! Rather than a'fuedin' and a'fightin' with each other, we should instead be building a space infrastructure that 1. Enriches all life on Earth, 2. Protects all life on Earth, and 3. Spreads life from Earth.

We're all Pro-Life, right? Let's get it together, humanity! As we're the only ones here who know better. We cannot count on the other monkeys.

Titanomachia

Titan (and Mimas - the Death Star moon)! Second biggest moon in the Solar System, and maybe first in our hearts (tough choices). It is one of two moons with an atmosphere, and a very thick one at that. Nitrogen based, like Earth's. However, Earth has no views like this:

An excellent art piece as well. For reference, Titan is bigger than Mercury, and far more interesting, though that's an opinion I suppose. What Titan tells us - and all the other cool moons, but especially Titan - is that moons can be quite diverse, and that large planets can have quite many of them, acting like mini "solar" systems. Saturn to date has a confirmed 62 moons, with more likely to come. More art:

I can't tell you all their names correctly, except Titan at center, occulted. Each moon can exert a gravitational influence on the other moons, and I'm sure one day we'll discover a moon with a moon. It will be cool. For now, appreciate Titan:

False color Titan pics showing the changing cloud formations. It rains on Titan. There's lakes:

More false color. "False color" means scientists have assigned colors to the image based on the data at hand. It's accurate for what it is, but also subjective to a degree, though also close enough. For the record, just about any cool color space shot you've seen is false color to some degree. Here's the real deal:

More lakes! The fishin' ain't so good though, one assumes. As the liquid on Titan is methane, and the mountains and valleys and boulders and rocks are ice. Wicked hard ice - the temp on the surface is around -200 degrees Celsius. Cold as heck. It is truly an alien world, but oh so familiar:

Titan seas, with islands. One day our robot children will vacation on the shores of Methane Sea.

Rivers of methane emptying into methane seas. It's like Earth, but will never be like Earth. Titan is highly inhospitable to us, and so it will be left to the robots. Check out this amazing pic:

The surface of Titan, as seen by Huygens - a probe shot from Cassini during its early years. Another feather in the cap of this amazing science mission. Those are little pebbles of ice. Rounded from some type of erosion, be it liquid or wind. Titan has all the weather we have on Earth, except it's methane raining down from the orange clouds. So cool.

Is there life? Seems hard to imagine, but every year we find life on Earth in the strangest of places - super heated volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean; 6 miles below ground deep in the bedrock; way, way high in the sky, floating bacteria living forever in the clouds. Life is everywhere on Earth, and it seems it has always been so - evidence of life now goes back to just a few hundred million years after the creation of Earth as we know it - which is not the original Earth, not by many iterations.

Perhaps some form of life similar to life on Earth exists on Titan. Or perhaps a life unlike life on Earth exists on Titan. Or, more likely, life does not exist on Titan, at least not on the surface. It is possible Titan has a vast underground ocean of warm liquid water, and imagine what kind of sealife might evolve there. Gnarly stuff, like everything in the ocean. One day we'll find out - we need to send out the bots in our name.

Satellite Photographers

Earth and the Moon as pictured by Voyager 1 back in the 70's. Beautiful, haunting, evoking a wonder and loneliness that is life. And the artist is a historical explorer. Yay culture!

Earth and Moon as seen by the Mars Global Surveyor, a craft currently snapping lovely pics on assignment at Mars. MGS is the foremost auteur in Red Planet Studios.

Earth and Moon as seen by the Juno space probe, launched last Summer for a mission to Jupiter. Currently, Juno is getting ready to swing by Earth for the last time, obtaining a huge sling shot of gravity assisted speed which will scoot it on the way to Jupiter in 2016. Prospects there are rated "ridiculously good". The moons of Jupiter in all their glories!

Speaking of Moons - Saturn's got a lot of them. But, see that bright dot in the upper right, between the rings? That's no Moon. Magnified in the inset, hey, it's Earth! As snapped by a contender for greatest space artist of all time, Cassini, currently orbiting around Saturn making fantastic discoveries.

All thematic riffs on the PBD, of course, but why wouldn't you love this shot? Only a handful of photographers ever get the opportunity, and it certainly is a lesson in perspective.

Begin the Begin

This was the picture in my first ever post on this olde blog, so many (4.5) years ago. I post it again because it fits the theme, it's awesome, and as a symbol of the new year.

Opportunity spotted this almost pure iron/nickel meteorite near its landing spot, and so dubbed "Heat Shield Rock" by NASA wags. Lame. But the meteorite itself is incredible - consider that iron meteorites are far, far rarer than stony meteorites, for the simple reason that an iron meteorite only comes from one place: The core of a differentiated planet. This planet of course was destroyed, a small piece of its core sits on the surface of Mars, right beside Opportunity. The odds!

Longtime fellow redshirts might recall that I have a bit of a love affair with Iron - the chemical substance. Fe 26, yo. It is only created in one place - a star. Either in the core of a huge star and as that happens, the star soon explodes, spreading the Iron hither and yon. In that explosion even more Iron is created. And every bit of Iron you know of - including the Iron in your blood (think about that, man) - came from an exploding star. This Iron now scattered to the four corners coalesced with clouds of hydrogen and helium and other gases, which if lucky began spinning fast enough to create a new star, with new planets - all of which will have Iron cores. Iron lies at the root of all creation, and destruction.

For it's true! Stars happily chug along creating all the elements up to Iron, glowing and casting their life giving light across space, and onto many, many exoplanets and exomoons, but then as soon as a star produces Iron in its core, it's doomed. So Iron is the end of the fusion line, and literally poison to stars. And yet, on the other side of the scale, all the higher number Elements - like gold, silver, plutonium, uranium, etc - all decay, over time, to Iron, and in so doing cease being radioactive. In fact, a definition of "radioactive": anything higher than Iron on the Periodic Table. This decay will take trillions of years, but eventually there will be a time when all higher elements have decayed to Iron, and lo, that will truly be the Iron Age.

Iron is literally - and figuratively - the balance point of creation, of our very reality. Everything we know of is made up from Elements (which in turn are made up of combinations of electrons, neutrons, and protons, which in turn are made up of combinations of quarks, which in turn, current theory posits but has not proven, are made up of combinations of preons, and I'm sure there's some other turn to be discovered in the future), and Iron sits in supreme harmony among them, destroyer and creator, ultimately, of all.

Yay, Iron!

Also, kudos to you Opportunity - you rule. But let's also pour one out for Spirit:

NASA lied to the rovers, of course, the cold hearted bastids.

Bonus Spirit pic, snapped 3/8/04:

Earth, as seen from Mars by Spirit. I'm on "Team Spirit" in case you couldn't tell. Opportunity's awesome and all, but too obsessed with being cool and down with the "in crowd". Spirit would talk to goths, for example. Also understands mortality, as any good redshirt should.

And so with that, I begin again. As we all do, every day. But some days more so than others.

Martian dreaming no longer

Look at that beautiful planet! Look at it - click for big. Stunning. The large scar running across the center is the Valles Marineris and is over 4,000 KM long. Picture 10,000 Grand Canyons stretched across America for reference. Awe inspiring, and that's Mars - planet of Marvels. Behold the tallest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons:

In addition to the two rovers currently wheeling over the surface, dealing with stuff like

Epic Dust Devil. True theory: It is theorized both Spirit and Opportunity were saved on several occasions by small Dust Devils, which cleaned them of accumulated dust, dust which was covering their solar panels and thus a threat to their continued operation.  Thanks!

We also have several satellites in orbit around Mars, snapping awesome pics every dang day.  Like so:

Sunrise over Olympus Mons. Sweet.

My point? Other than general awesomeness of our reality - space, time, matter, all of it - is that Mars, the Moon, and pretty much the entire Solar System is the province of robots, and not man, for the foreseeable future. I say this with much chagrin, since it has long been my dream to see space colonies and space stations and all the Star Trek/Apollo future you could give me. Which will be none.

Putting men in space is expensive, dangerous, and ultimately not very productive. Robots can do  - and will get ever better - most anything a man could do science wise, and much more. Other than a flag planting, why should man go to Mars? Sure, it'd be awesome, and I'd love to see it, but there's not much logical reason to it. Better to send the droids.

And so it will be forever, until we find a way to cheaply and safely get into orbit. Once that's figured out, and many other things (radiation, gravity, food, etc), then and only then will mankind venture into space in numbers that mean something. Till then, we're just engaging in an Extreme Sport. Alas!

Never to be. :(

Mars Curious?

Curiosity's descent to the Martian surface. Note the mountain chain below in fine detail. Curiosity's landing was described by the crack NASA PR guys as "7 minutes of terror", and for once they were close to accurate. Hitting the Martian atmosphere at incredible speeds, plowing through the first and hottest layer heat shield only, then POOF, mega parachute:

But given the thin atmosphere of Mars, even a giant parachute only does so much, thus, onto the rocket engine/sky crane:

And you think we're not living in the future? Look at this futuristic shit! Robotic rocket platform slowly lowers the Mini Cooper sized Curiosity gently to the Martian ground, then cuts the cables and bugs out, crashing as far away as possible. Check out the aftermath:

That's at least like 2000$ in littering fees. Probably far more. Keep Mars clean! Curiosity is watching.

O hai! Curiosity here, checking stuff out on Mars. Whatchya doin'? Oh, just surfing the Internet? Cool, well, I got things to do. Ciao.

Seriously, this is a self portrait of Curiosity, and despite reading an explanation, I still am not sure how it's done. Apparently the giveaway is by the front wheel. You tell me.  While you figure that out, here's one of Curiosity's first production level shots:

Click for epic. Just another day on the Martian beach. At this point we have two functional rovers on Mars - the August landed Curiosity, and the incredible Opportunity, which landed on Mars on January 25, 2004 for a 90 day mission of exploration, yet is still operating today. It's also incredible twin, Spirit, ceased operations on March 22, 2010. RIP, Spirit.  Spirit joins Phoenix, several Vikings, and some weird Russian probes as silent testimonials to Earth's achievements. Perhaps one day all these plucky bots will become museum sites or statues, at least. Right? Once mankind has colonized Mars and there's three boobed ladies in seedy bars and this dude's hiding in a cavern?

Start the reactor, Quaid.

Mechanical Spider Cars of the South

Imagine, if you will, a reality where dinosaurs were not wiped out by a terrible asteroid, but instead continued to prosper and evolve. After millions of years, one species got real smart, real fast, and then turned this world  - and space itself! - into their Kingdom, and all other creatures mere subordinates. Continue imagining, if you're still willing, that at the heights of their glory and power they became arrogant and crass, stupid drunk on their power, and they wiped themselves out. Alas!

Here's some ruins from their glorious but now departed culture. They liked mechanical spiders, according to scholars.

Also too: Nice pine trees!

Ambassador to Mars

Say hello howdoyado to Curiosity, mankind's latest robotic explorer to Mars. And robots are likely the only explorers we'll send to Mars, or anywhere else, for many, many years. If ever. Manned missions of exploration are mostly vanity projects, and expensive ones at that. Robots will be able to do everything we can far more safely and cheaply and in vastly greater numbers.

If people are to go to space, it should be to colonize, not explore. Otherwise, it's a waste of time. Send legions of robots first to pave the way, and then in time, send fleets of people to different destinations and make our stab at the immortality of the human species. Until then, robots will have to make due.

Oreo understands.

Mount Sharp. Very tall. Curiosity will be ascending it over the next years, sampling the geology along the way. The mountain is built of geologic layers and thus Curiosity will get a sample of many millions of years of Martian history as it climbs.

So, in sum: Space robots are cool. Earth robots are scary!