Recent content by ChrisA

Do you need to save actual DNA? Why not sequence the DNA and back up the data? Perhaps the title of the article is misleading and they want to save more than just the DNA, maybe whole frozen organisms? The other thing is that it is pointless to store anything unless you have a means of...

Yes, in theory, they could enter the atmosphere at low speed. But it takes a lot of energy to slow down. In fact it takes as much energy to reduce speed as it took to gain all that speed. SO they would literally need a huge rocket like the one that sent them to the moon and of course all...

"Mars as a backup is not even logical. Let's say there is a disaster scenario on Earth like this: Global warming. is left unchecked and it gets to the point where agriculture is impossible in many places of the world. War breaks out as starving people fight over the remaining water and...

All these "how to grow food in space" articles are pointless. OK maybe the science is interesting but in practical terms a human needs about 2000 kilo-calories per day to live. and that works out to about one million Kcal per year, allowing for some waste. How many chickpea plants must...

This was the propaganda we were told in the 1960's. It really was not true then and is CERTAINLY not true today.

That is not what JPL does, despite its name. JPL makes what goes inside the nose cone of the rocket. The engine is that thing at the other end of the rocket. As it turns out the thing at the top end has historically cost at least 10X what the engines cost. The lander that went to Mars is a...

No. What you should say is "The dumb bloggers covering Perseverance only seem to show pictures and never discuss other data." So that is all the general public on Earth ever sees. The web is all about "clickbait" and Spectrometry is something people don't click on, they want something they can...

There is no way a first mission is going to depend on extracting and using water from Mars. Maybe they will do an experiment to see if it is possible to extract water. But they would never let the mission depend on extracting water. They will bring EVERYTHING they need for a round trip with...

A water shower is one extreme solution. Less extreme is a blast of high-humidity air and then the suspended dust gets sucked through a filter. Water is a good idea but it is heavy. Likey the real, final solution is robots that don't need to come back inside. The only reason to send...

What would we do? First off we'd never send humans on a 10,000 year long trip. They would die of old age before getting even 1% of the way there. We would send some kind of very advanced AI-powered robotic mission. Aliens would do the same. These robots would not crash-land their ships...

He is saying that no one who is smart enough to travel 10,000 light years is stupid enough to do what people claim these UFOs are doing. The only explanation is that teenage aliens are stealing their dad's spaceships and visiting Earth. I doubt these are teen aliens but how else to explain...

He said "non-human pilot." That is very specific. The claim is completely bogus unless we see the pilot and can verify it is not human. Saying "It does not fly like an airplane" is not enough. All that means is that it is not an airplane. Do you know how EW (Electronic warfare) systems...

Even if he has material that is impossible to exit, that does not mean space aliens exist. It only means our understanding of physics is very wrong. The only way to prove aliens exist is to produce an actual alien. Even if very advanced technology were found, it only proves that it was...

This "evidence" is always the same: "I do not know what this thing is, therefore I know it is an alien spaceship" The logic flaw is obvious after pairing the argument down to its basics. It is that "What else could it be?" argument. It is like an ancient Greek saying "I don't know why the...

We use the convention of always using Earth's reference for events. If we didn't and allowed any arbitrary reference we could rig them so that all events in history occurred at the same time. To avoid such absurdities we like to use the Earth's reference point. This also helps to keep...