onestagetospace

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Projecting Gizeh onto Mars leads to mythical Garden of Eden

Projecting Gizeh onto Mars leads to mythical Garden of Eden

When we project the Gizeh plateau onto Mars, we might not immediately expect to see a correspondence. But, as we find out in this next chapter of our series “From the Pyramids to the Garden of Eden”, there is. Quite mysteriously, there is an region on Mars, the Tharsis Regio, which groups the highest volcanoes in the solar system, whose precise geography is a good approximation to the pattern of…

[onestagetospace]

Satellites discover Biblical Garden of Eden

Satellites discover Biblical Garden of Eden

Satellites discover Biblical Garden of Eden In 2017 I became certain that I discovered the location of the Garden of Eden. Unsurprisingly, I never ever intended to find the Garden of Eden. Although my interests are broad and varied, include archaeology, religion, mythology, international politics and ancient cultures, my main focus has always been on Space and Aerospace related technology.…

[onestagetospace]

We Are Sending Our Name To Mars To Become Immortal (Or Find Brains)!

We Are Sending Our Name To Mars To Become Immortal (Or Find Brains)!

I am going to Mars!!!!

  Pffft. Well. Close enough…for now.

If you go to the site https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/, you, or in actuality your name, will be etched onto a silicon chip destined for an impressive interplanetary ride.

  Marshmallow travel

Not only will you -I mean your beautiful, intrepid and adventurous name, but who is nitpicking- launch on top of a fiery…

[onestagetospace]

Humans To Mars Summit 2019 Humans to Mars is one of our favorite yearly Mars-related events. This year it took place from 14-16 May 2019 in the Washington D.C.

[onestagetospace]

Jeff Bezos Sneakily Building Mars Domes in Plain Sight

Jeff Bezos Sneakily Building Mars Domes in Plain Sight

Luna

Last week we saw Jeff Bezos announcing O’Neill Cylinder colonies and a beautiful design for a Lunar Lander he has been working on for three years. Blue Moon will be soon capable of landing between 3.5 and 6 tons allowing for both cargo and manned missions to and from the Lunar Surface.

The announcement was made on the heels of similar announcements by NASA and the American Vice President…

[onestagetospace]

LIFT OFF!!! 1S2S selected as ASTROPRENEUR!

LIFT OFF!!! 1S2S selected as ASTROPRENEUR!

ONESTAGETOSPACE PRESS RELEASE May 10, 2019

Today, the team at ONESTAGETOSPACE woke up to a pleasant surprise.

Want to know why we smiled?

“Dear applicant,

We are very happy to inform you that your application to Astropreneurs Space Startup Accelerator was accepted. 

Welcome aboard!

You are now an ASTROPRENEUR!”

Call it good Karma. We have always believed in the value of prizes and competitions…

[onestagetospace]

It appears Humans are in a Race Against Robotics Engineers… Nothing much to add here. Except that robotics engineers really want you to become paranoid about ...

[onestagetospace]

Fecal transplantations for astronauts? When astronauts stay in space for extended periods, they get bombarded with radiation. This accumulated radiation not only damages tissues, but it will also damage the helpful bacteria in our intestines, our gut microbiome.

[onestagetospace]

Not content with having a worldwide reputation developing innovative ingredients and supply solutions for bakers, pastry chefs and chocolate factories, Belgian bakery giant Puratos decided to team up with Urban Crop Solutions, a Belgian indoor agriculture startup in its fifth year.

The goal: learn to bake bread on Mars.

Urban Crop Solutions is responsible for the engineering, the supply of the vertical farming equipment and the plant science support towards the growing of crops in difficult circumstances.

The core of the ‘Mars simulation’ installation built by Urban Crop Solutions and Puratos is a Farmflex plant grow container that serves as a biosphere: a closed environment where crops and humans live in harmony. The crops produce, in this airtight environment, the oxygen for the people who in turn produce the CO2for feeding the crops. This installation located in Belgium is the second largest fully controlled biosphere in the world with its 225 cubic meters of magnitude. The Lunar Palace in China is the largest with 550 cubic meters.

Urban Crop Solutions’ team of plant scientists managed to reduce the regular growth period for wheat (grains) of 120 days to a mere 60 days by optimizing all controllable elements supporting plant growth in a lab environment. All this was realized with only a fraction (5%) of the water requirement compared to normal open-air conditions. No herbicides nor pesticides must be used in this controlled environment growing solution. The result being a ‘beyond organic’ natural product. Test results open huge opportunities for sustainable agriculture on earth. The controlled environment vertical farming solutions of Urban Crop Solutions make it possible to give back economically challenged large agricultural areas to mother nature. The lack of fresh and healthy food will no longer be an issue in inhospitable or very dry regions, a topic that received a lot of attention in the last couple of months.

Urban Crop Solutions is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. In February 2016 the Flemish Minister President Geert Bourgeois inaugurated the largest automated indoor vertical farming installation of Europe. The keynote address of this event, presented by Urban Crop Solutions’ co-founder and Chairman, Frederic Bulcaen, brushed upon the topic of a dream come true when one day its vertical farming solutions would supply fresh food for citizens of planet Mars. Thanks to the cooperation with Puratos realizing this dream is approaching in a very fast way.

Urban Crop Solutions develops tailor-made indoor vertical farming solutions for its clients. These systems are turnkey, robotized and able to be integrated in existing production facilities or food processing units. Urban Crop Solutions has its own range of standard growing container products. Being a total solution provider, they can also supply seeds, substrates and nutrients for clients that have limited experience with (indoor) farming. Currently the company has developed plant growing recipes for more than 220 crop varieties that can be grown in closed environment vertical farms. Some of these recipes (ranging from leafy greens, vegetables, medicinal plants to flowers) are developed exclusively for its clients by the Urban Crop Solutions team of plant scientists. With headquarters in Waregem (Belgium – Europe) and operations in Miami (Florida, US) and Osaka (Kansai, Japan) they are globally active.

“Studies demonstrate that it is likely that by 2030 the first humans will land on Mars and will establish a permanent colony” says Maarten Vandecruys, co-founder and CEO of Urban Crop Solutions. “Our approach to partner with ambitious global industrial groups and research institutions for controlled indoor farming solutions is finally paying off. We feel to be at the cutting-edge with our technology, products and services in this fast-emerging industry of Urban Farming, whether it is in space, in cities, on the surface or beneath it.” 

It is very likely a Belgian is ever to set foot on Mars, since we are after all the home of  Tin-Tin, professor Professor Cuthbert Calculus, and the high altitude and the working home deep sea explorer that inspired the characters of both Professor Calculus and the the Star Trek character Jean-Luc Piccard*.  Auguste Piccard was the was the first human to reach the stratosphere (15,781 m, 1931). Later, Piccard and his son, Jacques, built a bathyscaphe and together they dove to a record-breaking depth of 3,150 m (10,335 ft) in 1953). The fact that he was born Swiss, is just an unimportant detail. He did live in Belgium. Besides, Swiss and Belgian chocolate make good friends.

Nevertheless, even if we, Belgians, are to explore or destined find alien life on Mars, we must have our bollekes, volkoren brood and pastry (flantaart, rijsttaart, chocoladetaart, soezen, maybe some waffles, … name your favorite). Otherwise we will either have to cause a mutiny or mutate.

Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer, wearing improvised crash helmets, September 1930 – Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-11505 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Piccard’s bathyscaph Trieste being lifted from the water – Retrieved from NH 96801 U.S. Navy Bathyscaphe Trieste (1958-1963), Art collection, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command website. Released by the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory, San Diego, California.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Photo by anna-m. w. on Pexels.com

  For more information: Urban Crop Solutions press release

Gene Roddenberry named Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek after one or both of the twin brothers Auguste and Jean Felix Piccard, and derived Jean-Luc Picard from their names cf. University of California, Berkeley et al. [and informal sources on Jean Piccard talk page] (2003). “Living with a Star: 3: Balloon/Rocket Mission: Scientific Ballooning”. The Regents of the University of California

Belgian Bakery Bold about Baking Bread on Mars. Not content with having a worldwide reputation developing innovative ingredients and supply solutions for bakers, pastry chefs and chocolate factories, Belgian bakery giant…

[onestagetospace]

NASA invests in Cutting Edge Concepts, such as Flexible Optical Telescopes and Soft-Robotic Astronaut Suits

NASA invests in Cutting Edge Concepts, such as Flexible Optical Telescopes and Soft-Robotic Astronaut Suits

While each of the projects below would deserve its own in-depth article, we desire to give a quick overview of the crop of new futuristic projects cooking at NASA in 2019.

NIAC, NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts, is a shining example of small investments helping to proof forward-looking concepts and giving individual or small teams of innovative thinkers the financial oxygen they deserve. For…

[onestagetospace]

1000 km range Electric Vehicles in sight thanks to Swiss E-tech company Innolith AG. Their 1000Wh/kg batteries also promise rapid adoption of electric aviation. Ever wondered if medium to long-range electric aviation or 1000km/charge electric vehicles, eliminating range anxiety, could happen within the next five years?

[onestagetospace]

Is the Garden of Eden story a divine command not to eat certain fruits? Was God giving dietary advice?

Is the Garden of Eden story a divine command not to eat certain fruits? Was God giving dietary advice?

by Joris Luypaert

Is the Garden of Eden story a divine command not to eat certain fruit?

In the Garden of Eden story, God commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of knowledge of good and Evil, while no such command exists for the tree of life.

Eventually, and supposedly convinced by a walking snakelike figure, the wife of Adam, Eve, walks up to the fruit and eat from it. Finding the fruit to be…

[onestagetospace]

The ESA 2019 Budget is 5.57 B, a 40% increase over 2014.

The ESA 2019 Budget is 5.57 B, a 40% increase over 2014.

Ever wondered how much Europe spends on space activities?

While the national space agencies of Western Europe have separate national programs, they also contribute to ESA, The European Space Agency, a Treaty based intergovernmental body.

This intergovernmental structure makes it that the sovereign countries can freely decide how high their contribution to programs will be.

This often makes it…

[onestagetospace]

Terrestrial Microgravity experiment now fits on desk. It creates Martian soil by gobbling perchlorates. Partial gravity? On Earth? Most of us, including the author, assumed extended duration microgravity or partial gravity research is not possible on Earth.

[onestagetospace]

First: Dealing with renewable terawatts on Terra

Cheap mass storage of grid-level energy has been the conundrum of the expanding renewables market. It is all good and well to have energy when the wind blows and the sun shines, but very often the production window does not match the hours when demand is high.

Equally, our electricity grids are created for stable base power supply and cannot handle power surges well. The more intermittent energy sources we add to the grid, the less reliable it becomes and the more we need to spend on extra infrastructure to add reliable flexibility. The result is that, even if the production cost of renewables is now at parity with traditional coal power production plants, when we include infrastructure upgrades, the cost to the nation as a whole is higher.

However, if we could store large amounts of energy locally, where they are produced or used, say at the base of a windmill/solar park, or at the level of a park for heavy industry, the suburbian neighbourhood, the county or municipality; and furthermore transferred or distributed at the most appropriate time, then existing infrastructure might suffice and the necessity of spending a high cost to upgrade it might lower or sometimes vanish. Adding the distributed battery system would still add cost, but the equation would already look much better.

Nevertheless, till recently the required power storage systems would be either too bulky and costly for many applications. So is there no compact economical solution?

Down under, the South Australian company CCT Energy Storage might have cracked the code. Both in power density, compactness and operational cost, the system seems to turn the heads of professional analysts. Understandably, the developers are proud of their baby:

“TED is the first battery of its kind and will be a game changer in the renewables space, with the ability to significantly reduce power costs while providing versatile and long-lasting energy with little to no environmental effect.” says CCT Chief Executive Serge Bondarenko.

TED stands for Thermal electric battery. TED stores electrical energy as thermal energy by heating and melting a unique phase change material. The energy is stored at more than 12 times the density of a lead acid battery, before being extracted by thermic generator to provide electricity when, and where it’s needed.

That phase change material is the non-toxic silicon, which we find, among other places, in beach sand. The secret is that with its high melting point of 1414 °C (and a boiling point of 3265 °C) it takes a lot of energy to heat and cool. This explains why it can store so much energy for later use. After oxygen, silicon is the second most abundant element, with 90% of the Earth crust or 28% of its weight, composed of it in the form of silicate minerals (and in beach sand). With a silicon density of 2,329 kg/m3 the system does not lend itself for mobile applications like electric cars or trucks, but in stationary modules, the technology shines.

And the system is not limited to small trickles of power either:

“TED’s scalability means it can be used in small scale 5kW applications to large scale applications of hundreds of megawatts of instantaneous power,” Mr Bondarenko said in a press release. A standard TED box holds 1.2 megawatt-hours of energy, with all input and output electronics on board, and fits easily into a 6-m container.

“And unlike some renewable energy sources, TED can manage input variations, produce base load output and charge and discharge simultaneously – minimizing energy wastage and making it applicable to numerous commercial industries.”

The Lonsdale-based business will supply at least 10 TED units to commercial customers this year, with production expected to increase to more than 200 units by 2020.

While serving the Australian home market, CCT energy storage is already expanding its commercialization to other parts of the world, with European energy partner MIBA Group to exclusively manufacture and distribute TED to Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

The Martian connection

It is not an application the creators might have in mind but thermal battery storage might have a future off-world as well.

Combined with a viable source of energy which on Mars can be nuclear (such as a 10KW nuclear NASA reactor), solar or aeolian in nature, just as on Earth, storing the produced energy for later use will be an essential piece of any off-world power infrastructure.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In our application, a Martian power grid, the advantage of using a TED comes from the fact that only the well-insulated chamber would require transport. Mars has roughly the same fractions of Silicon by weight. Elemental composition maps show that the largest mass in the TED module is easily accessible on the surface of Mars and does not have to be sourced from Earth. 

PIA04256 Map of Martian Silicon at Mid-Latitudes. This map shows the elemental abundance surface concentration (by weight percent) of the element silicon based on data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) Suite on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Similar maps exist for a number of other elements. NASA/JPL/University of Arizona – Catalog page – Public domain

Admittedly, the production and purification of the silicon is a challenge in itself, but there is nothing stopping one of the In Situ Research Utilisation startups, to adapt terrestrial technology to the Martian environment.

Since it can release large amounts of power in bursts while being able to be fed with even wimpy sources of power, this well managed power dense battery could serve to run energy-intensive industrial production processes, such as conversion of chemicals, the creation of plastics, running a swarm of 3D printers.

Slowly but surely all the required infrastructure elements to inhabit Mars are coming together.

Will Silicon Thermal Batteries provide high-density storage on Mars? First: Dealing with renewable terawatts on Terra Cheap mass storage of grid-level energy has been the conundrum of the expanding renewables market.

[onestagetospace]

Spacehopper. If you have not heard about it, it is time to feed your inner space geek.

  Starhopper completed tethered hop. All systems green. https://t.co/0m5Bm5slD2

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 4 april 2019

  Elon Musk from SpaceX has never been hesitant to speak about his goals for starting his space launch company early in the 2000’s: the colonisation of Mars and making humanity an interplanetary species.

This probably contrasts somewhat with your more humble life-goals, like world peace and an end to hunger, but it is neat that at least some billionaires spend their money on existentially more important issues like preventing humanity goes the way of the dinosaurs, which, as far as scientist have checked, did not invest in a space program or a dinosaur presence on other planets, and are now extinct.

SpaceX has been promising an interplanetary reusable spaceship for several years now and behind the scenes they have been working on a powerful rocket engine ‘raptor’ for the better part of a decade. With the engines now ready, SpaceX has started testing the upper stage of their rocket vehicle, which is the part that will actually reach orbit.

On paper it is an impressive piece of kit, able to throw and land 100mton on the Martian surface after a trip of 400 Million Kilometers through interplanetary space. The intermediate term goal is to learn to live of the land, create propellant from the Martian air and return to Earth to do it again. These are essential capabilities SpaceX has to develop before colonists can apply to invade Mars. The NASA Space Launch System (SLS) can launch about the same mass into orbit, but cannot be refueled, cannot be reused and cannot land payloads.

Lately, some doubt has even been publicly raised by NASA administrator Bridenstine that NASA contractor Boeing can even successfully complete its rocket given that it has repeatedly delayed its first flight with several years. While the SLS should have flown in 2017 then 2018 and at the latest 2019, Boeing has demanded to delay the flight to 2020 (and possibly 2021). In a thinly veiled attempt to publicly shame Boeing into action, Bridenstine said that NASA should be able to keep its schedules, and is open to seeking for alternative commercial options if subcontractors could not adhere to their delayed timelines. After some muttering by the political support system for SLS, it is clear that Boeing understood the message and has vowed to make an effort to make the 2020 deadline.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In contrast, the SpaceX hopper tests should have demonstrated hovering and landing capability before the end of the summer and a first orbital flight is planned for next year.  The fact that SpaceX is able to do this in such a short timeframe is a testament to their ability to rapidly iterate and learn from past mistakes and improve on successes. SpaceX is also in a hurry because they are a commercial entity and need to turn a profit, which is not the case for SLS. This means they actually need to fly their vehicle ASAP.

While MARS is the ultimate destination (and from there the rest of the solar system), SpaceX desires to flex its muscles by delivering payload to the Moon and potentially even deliver high-value cargo or passengers to the other side of the Earth via a suborbital trajectory. Such trips would require only half an hour, dramatically shortening intercontinental travel.

Surprisingly, it is the latter scenario (and not the MARS-thing) which has become the more exotic project. This is because US VP Pence has recently announced a return to the Lunar surface by 2024 (and we have the technology to do this), while antipodal rocket flights flirt with our disbelief about such a transportation system being an economically viable idea.

To doubters, I would say: SpaceX would have built the BFR project anyway, with proceeds from other profitable launches such as Falcon and Falcon Heavy, even in the absence of a clear economic rationale to outside observers. We are dealing with a founder with a philanthropic goal. Philanthropic means ‘man’-loving. And what better way to show your love to humanity, than to give it a credible way to survive any natural catastrophe.

Cloud of smoke announces birth of an interplanetary humanity? Spacehopper. If you have not heard about it, it is time to feed your inner space geek.

[onestagetospace]

A New international Space Resources regime? Belgium and Greece take initiative to create ownership rules. OPED. A space Resource? Is it yours? Is it ours? Is it all of ours? Should we share?