NewsTrust - Space - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Seth Shostak: Life, But Not As We Know It

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Seth Shostak - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - The import of the discovery of a new arsenic-based microbe is that finding life as we don't know it will give us a better shot at testing for biology on worlds that are, both by definition and in fact, truly alien.

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Why we need to go back to Mars

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TED - By Joel Levine - Mar. 25 (Speech) - planetary scientist Joel Levine shows some intriguing -- and puzzling -- new discoveries about Mars: craters full of ice, traces of ancient oceans, and compelling hints at the presence, sometime in the past, of life. He makes the case for going back to Mars to find out more.

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Could Comet 17P/Holmes Be The Fabeled Star Of Bethlehem?

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

Justanothercoverup - By William Cormier - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - There's been a lot of talk about Comet 17P/Holmes, and even in today's world of modern technology, it was erroneously thought to be a new star when it was first noticed again when it unexpectedly brightened, making it visible to the naked eye on October the 23rd, 2007: Comet surprise makes it visible to naked eye * Comet 17P/Holmes explodes, making its cloud bigger than Jupiter * Comet can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus * Scientist: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness"

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Alien Life May Be "Weirder" Than Scientists Think

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:14:27 -0700

3 Quarks Daily - Jul. 08 (Opinion) - Instead of thriving on water, extraterrestrial organisms might live in a sea of liquid methane. Or instead of getting energy from the sun, they might thrive on hydrochloric acid. These possibilities could revolutionize future space missions in search of life elsewhere in the solar system, says the report, issued today by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

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War in Heaven: Stopping the Arms Race in Outer Space

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:10:24 -0700

AlterNet - By Helen Caldicott, Craig Eisendrath - Jun. 12 (Press Release) - In a democracy, power lies with an informed and energized public who can compel their political representatives to make the world safe for them and their children. This book aims to inform the public of the immense dangers posed by the weaponization of outer space. It seeks to galvanize public opinion to stop space weaponization and promote outer space for what it can be: a venue for human cooperation and benefit. We must act today if we are to avoid a war in heaven tomorrow.

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NASA Goes Deep

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:12:29 -0800

Edge - By Carolyn Porco - Feb. 28 (Opinion) - AFTER years of spending our nation's space budget building an orbiting space station of questionable utility, serviced by an operationally expensive space shuttle of unsafe design, NASA has set a new direction for the future of human spaceflight. Once again, we have our sights on the Moon ... and beyond. We are finally, bodily, going to make our way into space, this time to stay. It is an opinion long and widely held within the space-exploration community that the Nixon administration's termination of the program that built the Saturn V Moon rocket was a gargantuan mistake. One of the biggest challenges in exploring space is propulsion -- that is, getting from point A to B efficiently, safely and quickly. And when the cargo is human, the challenges are even greater. One of our crowning technological achievements during the 1960s was the Apollo program and, in particular, the development of the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was the largest, most powerful vehicle the United States had ever built. It had a launching capacity more than five times greater, a developmental cost 25 percent lower and a build-and-operate cost less than half of that of today's space shuttle. In those early days, the possibilities for human space travel were intoxicating. Back then, NASA plans called for an aggressive integrated human flight program that would expand on the developments of Apollo: the establishment of a 50-person lunar base, a 100-person Earth-orbiting space station and human landfall on Mars, all by the mid-1980s. Those plans also included a 50-person semi-permanent Martian base by the end of the 20th century. Instead, we went nowhere.

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