What’s on your desktop this week? I’ve gone back to outer space. This image originally came from an article on the Sputnik satellite. I flipped it around and simplified the background.
beep... beep... beep...
It’s amazing to think that this was the first spacecraft. It was basically just a flying radio beacon, and was only in orbit for a few months, but it led the United States and the Soviet Union into the space race.
Yesterday, it was announced that a small amount of water was discovered on the moon. It’s been said that, depending how much they find, it can be used as fuel for interplanetary rockets, to make Lunar concrete, or can be drunk by astronauts. In reality, it probably won’t be used for any of these uses any time soon.
I would imagine that the next step would be to build a probe similar to the Phoenix Lander sent to Mars. The probe would then be sent to one of the shadowed craters, where it would dig in the Lunar soil until it located some water. It could then either analyze the sample onboard or launch it back to Earth. Of course, on one infamous sample return mission, the cannister cracked on impact, contaminating the sample. It would be just our luck to obtain a sample of Lunar water and then discover that not only did it contain a zombie virus, but also that its container was leaking.
On the other hand, if the water was drinkable and present in large enough quantities, it could then be possible to build a research station on the Moon. I would imagine that the easiest way to construct a habitat on the moon (other than by flying it there whole, like some sort of cosmic Winnebago) would be to send some construction robots that could be operated by telepresence. They could then go about building domes to protect visiting space scientists from solar radiation and cosmic rays. Of course, a better choice might be to find a nice cave somewhere to build in, since tons of rock would probably make a better radiation shield than some flimsy dome flat-packed up from Earth like so much Ikea furniture.
Then again, if the water’s not drinkable but is in sufficient quantities to use for fuel, why even send humans at all? Why worry about radiation and space suits, and food and water, and especially air, when we might get away with sending telepresence androids? Not tractors with pincers, mind you, but human-shaped (and better still, human-looking) androids walking proudly across the surface of the Moon.
It’s the second day of the year that we commonly pronounce as Two Thousand Nine. I wonder when we’ll be able to stop saying Two Thousand X and start saying Twenty X without sounding like a stranger from another decade. Don’t believe me? Say Twenty Oh Nine to somebody and tell me what sort of strange looks you get.
Will next year be the turning point? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Twenty Ten doesn’t quite have a good ring to itself. It sounds rather like a made-up word that somebody’s trying to insert into the language, like truthiness.
I suspect that 2011 will be the year we hear the adoption of the Twenty notation, as Two Thousand And Eleven is quite a mouthful at seven syllables. (Yes, the "and" is not proper, but many people do say it that way.) Twenty Eleven is only five syllables long. Think of all the time that will be saved by eliminating the other two syllables.
Of course, by that logic, we should all start saying Twenty Ten now, since it’s only three syllables long, as opposed to Two Thousand And Ten, which is five syllables long.
Either way, I wonder if we will then start using the Twenty notation retroactively? As in, "I remember back in Twenty Oh Nine I posted that very question to my blog. What? Well, a blog was a sort of a place on the Web where one would post messages and wait for people to comment. What? Well, ‘Web’ was what we called the hypertext part of the Internet back then. No, we didn’t have virtual reality yet. All we had were MMORPGs, and we liked it. We had to sit in one place and look straight ahead to play, and we liked it. And we had to pay money for the privilege, and we liked it. Back in Twenty Oh Nine… heh heh…Two Thousand Nine… *snore* *snore*"
A Life in the Day
Calvin's Canadian Cave Of Coolness
Cleverly Foolish
Cthulhu's Family Restaurant
Drill & Hammer
Just A Dude Talking About Life
Mathias N Oz
Nice to see StevieB
The Geek Inside
The Mangina Monologues
The Muttonchopped Mutant
ERIK
