Reach Into The Dark

I wanted to put my list of books I've got on Kindle that are space related so far in case others are looking for something to read. Non-Fiction Biographical Astronauts " Endurance " - Scott Kelly's account of his year in space " An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth " - Chris Hadfield's book Other " Von Braun " - the man who helped America in spaceflight (the other notable name being Goddard) " Failure Is Not An Option " Gene Kranz book over his time being flight director at NASA " Elon Musk " - tangentially related to space, obviously " The Right Kind Of Crazy " - engineer Adam Steltzner at NASA Planning For Space Spaceflight, Humans In Space " The Case For Mars " - Robert Zubrin's plan to get people to Mars " Packing For Mars " - A look at the various things humans would have to account for in a mission to Mars. It can get pretty hilarious at times.

I've been on a tear for various ideas related to trying to increase capital for missions for the US as well as expanding commercial space's reach. I often wonder if I'm just wasting my time. I've always wanted to go back to school now in my 30s and study a STEM field to apply myself towards something spaceflight related. For various reasons that's just not feasible right now with various responsibilities. So I find myself trying to listen to and educate myself as much as I can in space related items. I listen to a ton of podcasts, I read a ton of space related groups, and I've got about 15 or so books in my Kindle backlog that are related to space that I need to finish reading; and that number is slowly growing. I'm not sure how I could contribute to expanding humanity into space. I'm a member of the The Planetary Society . I read and try to educate myself as much as I can. I'm currently drafting a letter on my Google drive to be sent to all 100

I'm making my way through Scott Kelly's new book " Endurance " and there's a couple of things that have stood out to me so far. One is a mention of the feeling that astronauts on the International Space Station get to missing feeling something related to nature. As far as I know there isn't a word for that yet, but it makes sense. Being in what basically is an office for a year with artificial lighting makes me wonder about the first astronauts to Mars and what feelings the astronauts will have being disconnected for so long from seeing anything Earth related for months and possibly years at at time. The second notion is just how much Scott Kelly had to deal with mechanical problems on ISS, namely his problem with the CO2 scrubbers throughout his time up there. It makes me realize just how much when we engineer for things for the mission to Mars the need to keep shit as simple as possible. The more time spent trying to solve things and taking apart things

"We choose to return to the moon because we have unfinished business in space. America will not be left behind in scientific and commercial enterprises. This will be the start of America restoring its place in human spaceflight on the high frontier. We will open new doors to research, commerce, and industry on other worlds with this endeavor. We will establish a lunar research post in orbit and on the moon. We will provide the platform for celestial industries with a mind to opening new markets and new discoveries. And along the way we will discover more about our universe than we have ever imagined. America will be the factory that manufactures what was once fiction into reality. We have always been an entrepreneurial people and with these steps we will demonstrate our ability to do so and to succeed.” 

I've been kicking around in my head for the past couple of days now about wanting to go to the moon and how to enable that endeavor in the future. I've come to the thought that the way we've been doing things for the past decade or so isn't worth it and that we should change around a bit the way we go about building hardware and setting goals for ourselves in space. I don't have full solutions, just a bunch of ideas, of which I wanted to share here. These are really just extensions of existing concepts. Current Problems  There's been a lot of back and forth about the usefulness of SLS as well as problems with NASA keeping direction in between differing Presidential administrations. SLS is considered some what of a "jobs" program by some as it isn't being built in the most efficient manner, and has been incredibly slow to build. As well, SLS only came about as a concept after the Obama administration cancelled the Constellation program.

I've been evolving the idea of America's return to the lunar surface in my head over the past few days to setup a permanent lunar laboratory as well as the eventual further commercialization of space to get humanity into the sky. As in my previous post; there are a lot of people who believe that the Moon is a distraction from going to Mars. I don’t disagree. As mentioned, the problems you solve for the Moon aren’t going to be translatable for the problems you solve for Mars. Many people want to see humanity as a multi-planetary species, and if you’re Elon Musk you want to get to Mars within your own lifetime.  I find these as admirable goals, but I’m afraid that the leap from Earth to Mars doesn’t allow us enough time to properly study the effects of humanity in low G and high radiation environments. To be clear, I fully believe that there’s enough smart people to solve all the problems of creating a Martian colony. I am simply just afraid of the logistics of the probl

Recently TMRO did an episode on the National Space Council (NSC)  event that had me thinking about America's role in space in the next decade. As a space fan, I'm disappointed in the overall direction the US has taken in the past 10 years in space. While I'm happy about the robotic missions NASA has done in the past decade , human spaceflight has gone nowhere in America. I'm aware that SLS  (Space Launch System) is coming (possibly, I'm doubtful) but I feel that we need to develop SLS and at the same time grow commercial launch providers with purpose . Moon versus Mars For those that watched the NSC event, the intent is to get America on a "Moon, Mars" plan. For some online, there's a lot of disagreement about going to the Moon first before Mars. For the uneducated, I'll briefly go into the reasons why many feel the Moon is a distraction to Mars. Essentially the arguments boil down to the fact that the engineering problems for Mars are diff