New Mars Forums

"Houston, Texas (SPX) Feb 8, 2006
New examinations of a Martian meteorite found nearly a century ago have strengthened the possibility that the red planet once harbored life.
"I don’t understand the sample completely just yet, but it’s exciting," research team member Kathie Thomas-Keprta told SpaceDaily.com.

The sample in question is from a meteorite named Nakhla, which was found in the Egyptian desert in 1911, and which has been held since by the Natural History Museum in London. A new examination of Nakhla has produced a very strong indication that it might have been imbedded with organic carbon - an absolute necessity for life - that did not originate on Earth.

Keprta, a specialist in microscopy techniques and a contractor for NASA at the Johnson Space Center, said she and colleagues recently obtained pristine samples of the rock -which is thought to be 1.3 billion years old - to probe its structure using the latest optical examination techniques.

"We have known for a long time about its carbon content via chemical analysis," she explained, "but up to now no one has been able to locate it."

The team took a tiny, polished piece of the meteorite only 30 micrometers thick that was sealed in epoxy and applied a technique called focused-ion-beam microscopy, or FIB, to carve out a small rectangle from the sample, and another technique called transmission electron microscopy, or TEM, to identify the deposits of carbonaceous material.

"For the first time, we can find the exact area" on Nakhla that harbors the carbon," Thomas-Keprta said. Further analysis by secondary ion mass spectroscopy, or SIMS, identified the sample as composed of carbon 13, which she said could only have come from an extraterrestrial source, not from any earthbound contamination.

All life on Earth contains some quantity of the isotope carbon 14, but no carbon 13.

The deposits, which Thomas-Keprta described as "shrubby," resemble similar structures on Earth created by the actions of ancient microorganisms that lived within volcanic rocks on the ocean floor.

Thomas-Keprta and colleagues will present their findings next month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. The team includes scientists who also presented evidence for microbial life in another Martian meteorite - ALH84001, which was found in Antarctica - in 1998.

All Martian meteorites are thought to have been ejected from the red planet’s surface during ancient impacts. The meteorites drifted in interplanetary space until captured by Earth’s gravity and dragged down to the surface."

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/New_Vi … _Mars.html

Oh wait I think I posted the wrong link. Anyways sorry... Well it does deal with interplanetary travel, although not hyperdrive...

Well it depends on transportation...If some form of FTL travel is developed then the government could be centralized. I envision a big Terran Confederation, where each planet or system (the units will depend on population) will have local autonomy, but still be under a Federal government. Each system/planet would send a local representative to the Confederation Senate, while a lower chamber would be voted on proportionally either in the entire Confederation or by sectors depending on how big the total entity is. There would be 3 levels of participation in the Federal entity. First two levels Core and Colonies would have basically the same rights and each local unit would send representatives to the central government. There would be a special third level called the Frontier, where all the world's that have begun to be settled only recently fall into. These worlds/sectors would still not have full political rights, but would instead be ruled by an appointed governor, while they're being developed. Their settlers would however still have full political rights back on their original worlds. After development of these sectors was judged good enough, then they would get full political rights.
This system would work good and fine for a few centuries or millennia, but as in any human government, cracks would start appearing, separatism would be born and systems will try to break away. Eventually this entity would split into several smaller entities.

U.S., Russian cultures clash in orbit

Moscow sends up batteries that NASA feared were a risk

Tuesday, November 11, 2003 Posted: 10:08 AM EST (1508 GMT)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- It was just four high-energy batteries, the kind that are found in a lot of military equipment such as walkie-talkie sets and night vision equipment. Similar batteries already were being used on the international space station.

But when NASA officials discovered last year that Russian space officials were allowing the four batteries on-board the space station without the proper testing, they objected strenuously. The batteries could be toxic and had a small potential to explode. The Russians went ahead anyway.

Nothing ever happened. But the friction caused by the batteries underscores the divide between the now hyper-safety-conscious Americans and what the Russians describe as their "more flexible" approach.

It's a different philosophy, explains Shirley McCarty, former head of NASA's safety advisory board: In the U.S. program you must prove it is safe. The Russian approach is "prove it's not safe."

After the Columbia space shuttle disaster, safety is getting even more attention by the U.S. space program.

Tensions over the two countries' approaches are being played out in Houston and Moscow as both programs debate whether to allow a spacewalk by the current space station crew of just two men -- astronaut Michael Foale and cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri. A spacewalk would leave the space station temporarily empty. Previous spacewalks at the international space station have depended on a third crew member inside.

Russians comfortable with risk

The Russians, however, are comfortable with the risk and carried out spacewalks on their Mir space station with just a two-man crew. They are pushing for a spacewalk in late February to do minor work involving payloads and preparatory work for a new type of cargo ship.

The Russians consider themselves less rigid and more inventive than the Americans, who tend to follow every letter in the technical manuals, said Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency.

"Here in Russia, we are more flexible in our approach to technical problems," Gorbunov said. "The Americans are more conservative in dealing with technical problems, but this isn't a fault."

It may not be a fault, but the different approaches contribute to communications problems that could lead to dangerous situations, NASA's safety advisory board warned in a report last year.

"They share safety concerns," Michael Suffredini, the station's operations and integration manager for NASA, said last week of the Russians. "Sometimes we have a different view."

Jerry Linenger, a former astronaut who lived aboard Russia's Mir in 1997, said there has to be a "happy medium" between the two approaches.

"The Russians are probably on one side of the balance, and the Americans are probably too much on the other side," Linenger said.

During Linenger's stay on Mir, the Russian space station suffered the most severe fire ever aboard an orbiting spacecraft, a near collision with a cargo ship, failures of onboard systems including an oxygen generator, loss of electrical power and an uncontrolled tumble through space.

The current space station crew also is experienced with close calls. Foale was on Mir when it collided with a cargo ship. Kaleri was on Mir along with Linenger when the fire broke out.

Cultural and economic differences

The differences between the Russian and U.S. approaches to safety are as much from cultural as economic factors, said Linenger.

Russian industry, for instance, doesn't have the commitment to worker safety that the United States has adopted in recent decades through agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In addition, workers in the Russian space program haven't shaken off the Soviet-era habit of following orders without question, Linenger said.

"The Russians don't want to lose a cosmonaut any more than we want to lose an astronaut," he said, but suggested that perhaps they were "less used to protecting the worker ... They're probably more willing to overlook a lot of things that we're not."

The limited budget of the Russian space program also contributes to how it approaches safety, Linenger said. The cash-strapped space agency, after all, has allowed U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth to pay for the privilege of being space tourists on the station despite the initial objections of NASA officials.

Most recently, the Russian space program disclosed that government funds allocated for building crew capsules and supply ships for the space station are only about half of what's needed.

"When you have a limited budget like they did when I was there, you can't afford to go to option B," Linenger said. "Maybe we misinterpret that they're cavalier about things when they have no options."

Linenger noted that NASA recently decided to send the current crew to the space station despite concerns from a NASA physician and scientist that exercise equipment and some water and air monitoring devices weren't working properly.

"When you're between a rock and a hard place, I'm not sure we would act any differently," he said.

Ed Lu, who returned from the space station last month after a six-month stay, said any differences in approaches to safety aren't noticeable.

"It's really one big program right now," he said during an interview from space before his return. "You can't really separate the organizations too much anymore."

But members of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel felt otherwise. They resigned en masse in September after being described as ineffective in a report by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Before resigning, members cited two other recent incidents in which miscommunication between the Russians and Americans on the ground had caused problems with how the space station was positioned.

"It just seems all the required operating procedures, the ground rules aboard the station, really hadn't been completely planned out between the various international partners," said Robert Schaufele, a former member of the safety panel and a professor of aircraft design at California State University.

But the two programs have learned from past problems, and new procedures have been put in place, said Bill Gerstenmaier, the space station's program manager for NASA.

Since the batteries incident, complaints or concerns can be taken up the command chain more quickly, said Arthur Zygielbaum, a former safety advisory board member.

And in recent years, eight NASA specialists have worked in Russia while 10 Russian specialists have worked with NASA in Houston to smooth out potential communication issues, said Joel Montalbano, lead flight director for the current space station mission.

With this communications foundation, Montalbano said, "we can work better and stronger."

I am going to post a bit off the direction that this topic has been heading. One argument that creationists use against evolution is how things like an eye or blood-clotting could have evolved. That it's impossible. However scientists have proposed several ways. If anyone is interested, I am posting some links...

blood clotting evolution
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/ … tting.html

evolution of eyes
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libra … 11_01.html

http://www.maayan.uk.com/evoeyes1.html

What do you think of the idea of a multiverse, where at every quantum decision a new parallel universe is born.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

Is anti-gravity even possible?
Are the stories that some scientific research has come close to it true?
For example Podkletnov.
http://www.americanantigravity.com/podkletnov.html
Supposedly some people in the US also took up research into this after that came out.

Quick...tell Bush. There might be oil on Mars!

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-atm … e-05b.html

Maybe an invasion should happen. Who knows maybe them little green Martians have weapons of mass destruction.  :band:

:angry:

some older stories on "anti-gravity"

http://www.janes.com/aerospace/civil/ne … _1_n.shtml

some discussion of podkletnov's concept
http://www.americanantigravity.com/podk … etnov.html

http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/ … avity3.htm

haha... but it's true that it's only the russians and their ability to get into space that are keeping the iss alive right now

however the food is running low
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s … ...station

i've got to be more attentive this topic had been posted before. somehow i overlooked it...

The Lizard Nazi guy isnt a Xindi Reptilian. He looks different. He was grey, while the Xindi Reptilians were greenish. Actually an interesting conspiracy theory

http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/exposing … ilians.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/ut/branton/naz … /nazi.html