Tales of the Heliosphere

With all the attention focused on national manned space programs and private space entrepreneurs, India's space program often gets overlooked. Well, the world's largest democracy is preparing to send an unmanned spaceship to the moon. (Here.)

After posting this, I finally received this week's edition of The Space Review in my email inbox. Dwayne Day reports on a recent conference on India's space program. Krishnaswami Kasturirangan, former head of India's space program, was a speaker.

"Now that India has not only developed significant space capabilities but also experienced substantial economic growth, the Indian space program has entered into what Kasturirangan describes as its 'expansion phase.' India can afford the luxuries of space science and possibly even human spaceflight. The country’s first lunar spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, is scheduled for launch later this month. The government has also created the Antrix Corporation to market Indian space capabilities around the world. The country’s next goals are development of a heavy launch vehicle, lunar exploratory missions, a two-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicle, human spaceflight, and further international cooperation. (Here.)

Later, Kasturirangan spoke about India's manned space plans.

"Kasturirangan explained that right now India’s government has not officially approved a human spaceflight program. Although he did not say so, other sources have indicated that India will pursue a two-person capsule. ISRO is currently studying technology options and questions and he rattled off a long list, including life support, reentry, tracking and human-rating a launch vehicle, clearly indicating that he was personally familiar with the studies. Only after the Indian space agency has answered these questions and defined the kind of vehicle they want to build, its costs, and the timeframe for the first human space launch, will ISRO officials take those plans to the Indian Parliament for formal approval. Simply put, India’s human space program has not yet been fully defined or approved."

Meanwhile, in other news from the subcontinent, a new solar powered ricksha developed by the Indian government is hitting the streets of New Delhi.

"It's been touted as a solution to urban India's traffic woes, chronic pollution and fossil fuel dependence, as well as an escape from backbreaking human toil.

"A state-of-the-art, solar powered version of the humble cycle-rickshaw promises to deliver on all this and more.

"The 'soleckshaw,' unveiled this month in New Delhi, is a motorised cycle rickshaw that can be pedalled normally or run on a 36-volt solar battery.

"Developed by the state-run Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), prototypes are receiving a baptism of fire by being road-tested in Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk area." (Here.)

-tdr

Republished once to add content.

Labels: Energy, Environment, Leviathan, Nationalism, Space Exploration

Fear of global warming is leading governments to regulate people's lives at lower and lower levels. For instance, there's the move to ban standard light bulbs and replace them with compact fluorescents.

"Touted as a greener alternative to traditional lighting, CFLs are about four times more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. This increased efficiency lessens the energy demand on generating stations powered by fossil fuels and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the amount of packaging and old light bulbs that end up in landfills. But unlike incandescent light bulbs, CFLs contain mercury, a toxin with potentially hazardous effects that can be released during manufacturing and disposal.

"'It's always good to promote energy efficiency, but it's always a tradeoff,' said lead author Matthew Eckelman, a graduate student in Yale's Department of Chemistry and the Center for Industrial Ecology. 'You may get a lower energy bill at home, but you don't see the emissions or the runoff downstream.'

"While the researchers stress that their study isn't an excuse to ignore the energy problem and stick with old, inefficient technologies, they caution that nation-wide strategies such as recent bans on incandescent bulbs, adopted by several countries including the U.S., may be too general. 'All sustainability issues are local,' said Zimmerman. 'We need to ask if we should be making decisions on a national level, or if this is something better left to local governments.'" (Here.)

I would ask whether the regulation is necessary at all.

-tdr

Republished once to correct omission and spelling.

Labels: Energy, Environment, Technology

Factcheck.org is more active again now that the presidential campaigns are in full swing. The website does reality checks of statements and positions taken by America's political leaders.

The site recently looked at the feasibility of ethanol replacing gasoline. Turns out it's not as easy as the Presidential wannabes and their allies in Big Corn and Big Green would have us believe.

"Still, even if the oil companies immediately began giving 1 percent of their profits toward the installation of E85 pumps, other obstacles — like limitations on how much corn the nation can produce or the fact that many flex fuel vehicle owners aren't even aware that their cars can run on E85 — are significant.

We do not dispute that ethanol along with other renewable fuels such as methanol and biodiesel have the potential to play a significant role in moving the U.S. away from foreign oil consumption and lessening greenhouse gas emissions. But ethanol has a long way to go before the campaign promises made by Clinton, Edwards and Obama can be fulfilled." (Here.)

-tdr

Technorati: elections, politics, energy, environment.

Labels: Energy, Environment, Leviathan, Politics, Technology

Dennis Overbye, science writer of The New York Times, recently questioned why America is going back to the Moon when Mars is so much more interesting. (Here.) Robert Zubrin, interviewed in US News and World Report, expressed similar thoughts. (Here.) No surprise that.

Common to each opinion is the belief that the Moon is a dead world with nothing to offer whereas Mars has all the resources necessary for human life and is just a much more interesting place to study. Putting aside the false dichotomy of "either-or" thinking in Moon versus Mars debates, there is something to be said for exploring desert wastelands, as oil company executives will tell you.

An article in the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday (here) described the problems with batteries for cellphones, laptops, and other portable electronics. Fuel cells are being touted as the future power source for these devices. But as the article said about fuel cells, "They are costly to make; their electrodes are usually fashioned from platinum, an expensive metal."

Which brings us back to the future direction of human space exploration.

What if Dennis Wingo is right and there are remains of asteriod impacts under the Lunar surface chock full of platinum group metals? In a future fuel cell economy, the people who control all that platinum could be very rich indeed, even if they do live on an arid, lifeless, little world, orbiting the Earth. And then there's all that sunlight falling on the Moon's surface (here) plus the potential use of Helium-3 for future fusion reactors (here).

Arab princes today have lucked into prosperity and political power by living in a desert wasteland on top of all that oil. Will future Lunar energy princes possess similar political power and bring the Moon to life using the money they make providing platinum, fuel, and power, to an energy-hungry Earth?

-tdr

Technorati: Moon, mars, nasa, energy.

Labels: Energy, Luna, Mars