December 2014
Terraforming Mars: from CFCs to Total Recall
...again a daunting task, although one might conceivably be able to block the solar wind by constructing a planet-sized shield at the L1 Lagrange point. (The Lagrange points are points of neutral gravitational stability. L1 is located between the planet...
December 2014
Necessity is the mother of invention
Since the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, and increasingly since the 1980s –including as recently as the summer of 2014 – the State of Israel has faced the problem of how to defend itself against a wide range of ballistic missiles of various ranges, ...
June 2015
Beagle 2: discovering the lost Mars lander
.../ drogue chute (still attached as intended) and the main parachute close by. The locations of the front heat shield and the airbags remain to be identified. The targets are within the expected landing area at a distance of around...
October 2015
Earth independence: new definitions of home on Mars missions and beyond
... space shuttle. In 2012, the Curiosity rover’s “Seven Minutes of Terror” to the Martian surface, which included a heat shield, parachutes, and skycrane, maxed out our current ability to land something on the surface of Mars – the one...
March 2016
Why We Need Space Artists
... dust-desert, with rocks eroded into strange shapes? Now it is a blistering, hostile hell-planet, with massive shield volcanoes, sulphuric acid rain and lightning bolts. Exploring Mars with mobile laboratory (Digital), from ‘Futures...
August 2016
Commercial space development spurs trend for public-private collaboration
... will also directly support space exploration initiatives by providing the water, fuel, raw materials and radiation shielding needed for humans to explore deeper into the Solar System and for longer periods of time. Opportunity...
