Posted on 05/26/2005 7:23:17 PM PDT by KevinDavis
There may be many problems apparent at NASA and among the U.S. aerospace giants these days, but there also are signs that space exploration is about to undergo a renaissance, with an explosion of creativity unseen in decades.
To explain this conclusion will require telling a personal anecdote, which begins in the mid-1980s.
At the time, I had become fascinated with the sport of caving and was getting involved in several exploration projects. Together with other enthusiasts, we pushed the limits of known caves to find virgin and previously unexplored passages - to go literally where no one had gone before.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacedaily.com ...
Space Watch: Signs Of A Renaissance
Illustration of Kistler's reusable K-1 rocket, aimed at providing cargo to the International Space Station.
by Robert Zimmerman
Washington (UPI) May 26, 2005
There may be many problems apparent at NASA and among the U.S. aerospace giants these days, but there also are signs that space exploration is about to undergo a renaissance, with an explosion of creativity unseen in decades.
To explain this conclusion will require telling a personal anecdote, which begins in the mid-1980s.
At the time, I had become fascinated with the sport of caving and was getting involved in several exploration projects. Together with other enthusiasts, we pushed the limits of known caves to find virgin and previously unexplored passages - to go literally where no one had gone before.
Most American cavers in the 1980s still used carbide lamps, technology first developed in the 1800s for miners, whereby water would drip onto carbide to generate acetylene gas that, once ignited, would produce a bright flame.
The light that came from these carbide lights was unmatched, a soft and clear glow that was easy on the eyes.
In contrast, the electric lights of the time produced a harsh light with uneven illumination. Moreover, carbide was lightweight and compact, able to fit easily on a caving helmet, while electric lamps required heavy battery packs worn on a belt around the waist.
Carbide lamps had problems, which is why many cavers, including myself, wanted alternatives. They required endless maintenance and care to make them work properly. You also had to carry lots of gear to keep them running, including spare water and carbide as well as a place to safely store waste carbide.
Finding an alternative, however, was impossible. In the 1980s no suitable and comparable electric headlamp existed, despite the passing of more than three-quarters of a century since Edison had invented the light bulb. If the existing electric headlamps did not require a heavy or clunky belt battery pack, they were so badly designed they usually would break after one use.
Nor was this lack of good electric headlamps a problem only for cavers. The entire outdoor market, from backpackers to rock climbers to emergency rescue crews, needed a brighter, more dependable and compact illumination device, but could not find one.
Even more puzzling, despite such a strong need, no American companies came forward to try to capture the market. Except for a single family of compact electric headlamps made by one French company and produced only near the end of 1980s, no new headlamps of any practicality emerged for the outdoor market. Even the French version had its problems - the lamp was not very bright and its light was harsh and uneven.
Fast forward 15 years: With the advent of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs -- whose development occurred partly because scientists needed a lightweight and dependable way to illuminate greenhouses on the space shuttle - there now are more a dozen small American companies designing and marketing a whole range of electric headlamps for the outdoor market.
All are far superior to carbide - or any conventional electric lamp for that matter - and have made all previous products obsolete.
What does this have to do with the American aerospace industry?
Consider how little innovation occurred there during the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Just as there were no American headlamps developed and sold during that period - despite a desperate need - very few novel ideas appeared in the aerospace market. Except for the creation of one new launch company, Orbital Sciences, the industry establishment was content to rest on its laurels, doing the same old stuff for the government over and over again.
Today, things are far different. Leading-edge companies like Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and Elon Musk's SpaceX share the stage with dozens of start-ups, from the recently reborn Kistler Aerospace of Kirkland, Wash. - with its reusable K-1 rocket aimed at providing cargo to the International Space Station - to suborbital companies such as Rocketplane of Oklahoma City, Okla., which hopes to fly its first space tourist by 2007.
Just like the companies that began building LED headlamps, these new space firms all have raised and spent significant investment capital on rocket designs that are wildly creative and vastly different from one another.
Nor has this burst of creativity been limited to these two industries. From the rebirth of the inner cities to the birth of the computer industry and the Worldwide Web, U.S. society is increasingly undergoing an explosion of new ingenuity and inspiration.
What has caused this change? Why has innovation suddenly become so ubiquitous when it was so rare only two decades ago?
Trying to pinpoint an explanation for such social upheaval is difficult, but there is at least one consideration that - though it cannot possibly provide more than a small part of the answer - might at least clarify the difference between then and now.
When I was growing up in New York City in the 1950s and '60s, there were only three television networks, several dozen radio stations and a handful of newspapers.
Not only did most of these media outlets take pretty much same perspective on almost any issue of importance, their limited number restricted the amount of information available on any one subject.
Thus, exposed to such a narrow range of viewpoints, my generation got little practice in objectively judging many contrasting ideas or facts and thoughtfully weighing them to come up with a reasoned conclusion.
For the last decade or so, however, kids have been raised in an atmosphere of wild and enthusiastic intellectual turmoil. They can choose from hundreds of cable stations, talk radio and the vast variety of the Internet to seek answers to questions about any subject from many viewpoints.
In other words, they have been raised knowing there is no such thing as accepted wisdom. Though they might hear an issue or idea argued from one perspective, they know they can quickly ferret out another that might be perhaps even more persuasive.
Possessed with such a complex world view, it should not be surprising if today's enterprisers are far more willing to attempt to design, build and sell a new range of products - from headlamps to low-cost rockets.
Having an open-minded perspective, they know just because something has been done one way for decades it is not a reason to continue in the same manner. In fact, it might very well be a reason not to, and instead to devise a new approach to the problem.
Based on these patterns, the curtain might very well be rising on a new technological renaissance, making the colonization of the solar system in the coming decades not only possible, but very likely.
A very interesting thesis, I also think the way information can be manipulated by computers has resulted in an ability to design things virtually and the cost to try out radically different designs is minimal.
Holy crap is that picture of the lady real?
Yes. Those are all NASA images. The five sided pyramid is about two miles long, the two long sides around a mile and a half. Do your own google search on 'D&M Pyramid'.
About time. Very exciting times around the corner. We are also due for a breakthrough in propulsion technology.
Ive followed NASA my whole life. I have never been so optimistic, you can really feel it. President Bush has set the course. Thank God Kerry did not win.
Folks. Enough with the pyramids and cydonia garbage. Its MARS. Not some kind of Atlantis. There are no structures there. That is all natural phenomenon. If you see something, then congrats. Go look for Jesus in the tortilla. Look up Percival Lowell and the canals of Mars if you want a lesson about this kind of thing.
Yeah - and the Old Man in the Mountain of NH (may he rest in peace!) was ALSO built by an ancient spacefaring race!
Sigh... why do people insist on attributing look-alike phenomena to aliens?
I believe aliens are out there (somewhere), but there are a thousand natural formations here on earth that look like humanoid stuff, too. Let's not be hasty.
Those pyramids are very obviously artificial. Nature doesn't produce perfect triangles with mile-long sides.
OK:
1. Those don't necessarily look like "perfect triangles" to me.
2. The angle at which the photo was shot could be tricking the eye, too.
3. Who know how the natural forces shape things on Mars? We are just learning about how that planet really works.
If I had more time, I'd put some effort into finding pictures of big natural terrestrial features that look suspect. Call me a hopeless skeptic, but know of this evidence looks even remotely promising when examined with Occam's Razor.
know=none
Damn that is incredible. Remember that one face they found on Mars a few years back? What was the deal with that one? I heard some people said it was an illusion and some others said it disappeared. This stuff is wild.
For more commentary and some larger/better images.
The thing was apparently made by piling stones into the basic form and then covering it with some hard casing. You can see that the casing has fallen away to the right or leeward side and has been weathered on the windward side on the left.
Almost forgot to mention, NASA originally published an image which had actually been filtered to REMOVE detail and was basically called on it by other scientists. NASA and the JPL are about evenly divided on this stuff at present. About half of them refuse to hear about it and the other half see the artificiality of these structures as obvious from the images. You can't build stuff like this with spacesuits on; the planet has to be habitable for this to happen, and that just blows the standard theory of the history of our solar system straight to hell.
You do realize that Richard Hoaxland is a complete con artist nutcase?
The guy throws everything against the wall, hoping something will stick.
Hehehe. I've seem most of them! Many are from our favorite Mars 'expert', Richard C. Hoagland. He's the one whose pretty much attached to the 'Face on Mars' thing. While I personally am not in the group that believes that these are 'artificially' made without more evidence, they are interesting to look at.
And at least Richard C. Hoagland, when he's on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell/George Noory, he is entertaining!
Although I haven't seen the woman one though.
Sorry, I don't really buy into that way of thinking or into the notion that everybody with anything unusual to say is automatically some sort of a kook. Aside from Hoagland, you've got Tom Van Flandern, a former director of the Naval Observatory, making the same kinds of claims about the Cydonia region on Mars, as well as other thoroughly competent scientists.
Hoaxland has been doing this crap for decades, and always with a hand out, for the next "Big discovery"
The guy is a snake oil salesman, listen to him long enough, you will see.
The items I've seen on his website all seem to check out when I go to the original NASA photos. He's not making anything up.
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