Destination Phobos?

Phobos is one of two small moons circling the planet Mars. The other is Deimos.

Phobos as photographed from the Mars Express

It is only 3,700 miles above the  surface and circles around Mars in only 11 hours 9 minutes, which is slightly less than half a Martian day (24 hours 37 minutes). As far as we know this is lower than the moon of any other planet in our solar system. As this photo shows its appearance alone is intriguing and there is reason to suppose that it could reveal secrets about the history of its parent planet, including any biological life that may have been present over its 4 billion year history. The low density of Phobos suggests that it may be partially hollow, with underground caves and rock consisting of lightly packed microfragments. Large amounts of interior ice are also probable. tThe furrows on the surface may be due to boulders ploughing across the surface during asteroid bombardment at the time of formation.


The most likely theory for its formation is that it comprises debris from the surface of Mars. This would have been thrown into orbit by meteorite collisions over the probably 4 billion years since the planet was formed and during this time the debris has coalesced to form the Phobos we see today. So within the material that makes up this satellite could be a record of life on the surface of its parent planet.



Why not go there? It would be much cheaper than visiting the surface of Mars or even that of our own Moon, which is never less than 140x closer than Phobos. This is because it is so small (mean radius 6.9 miles) that it has virtually no gravity for a spacecraft’s engines to have to battle against, so only a small amount of fuel would need to be carried and the larger distance would be covered largely by coasting from the Earth’s orbit around the Sun to that of Mars after an initial boost; similarly, but in reverse, for the return mission.

In my view this should seriously be considered as a priority destination for the MPCV (multi-person crew vehicle), also known as Orion, now being developed by NASA for missions beyond earth orbit. The Moon and nearby asteroids are other targets being evaluated for manned missions before the much bigger and more expensive step of landing men on Mars is taken. Russia and the USA both have experience of prolonged micro-gravity effects on humans, which is necessary since the trip out would take about 9 months.

I think Phobos should be the next step for a manned expedition for the following reasons:

• It would take less energy and money to get men to Phobos than to the surface of the Moon and back (as explained above).

• Phobos’s rocks could provide evidence of past life or absence of life on the Martian surface over billions of years.

• Underground caves would provide an ideal shelter from cosmic bombardment, a major problem for manned missions, and a logistic base for future descents to the Martian surface. 

• Humans on Phobos could observe Mars in great detail without risking contamination of the surface with terrestrial bacteria.

This last point is important because the occurrence or non-occurrence of any form of biological life independent of Earth would be of enormous significance in assessing the nature of its origin and putting terrestrial life into a cosmic context. Since the inception of terrestrial life there have been innumerable ejections of organic debris into space due to meteorite, asteroid and comet impacts, so that some of this is likely to have found its way to other planets. However, I believe it is possible to identifiy this life as terrestrial in origin or otherwise.

Interest in Phobos is growing. Russia attempted to send an unmanned probe there recently (November 2011) but this failed. China had experiments on board the Russian probe, called Fobos-Grunt and the USA is also interested.

To get there or anywhere else beyond  earth orbit efficiently we need to be able to launch materials, equipment and prefabricated structures into orbit more cheaply and frequently than was possible with the Space Shuttle, so that earth orbit can serve as a base. Once a vehicle is assembled there it can be launched off into deep space without having to fight hard against gravity.

 I am still mystified as to why the Skylon spaceplane, a UK design, with its revolutionary air breathing rocket engine (SABRE), is not being developed as a matter of priority. Skylon could get mass into orbit at a fraction of the cost of any other technology of which I am aware. Presumably politics is a factor since space exploration is moving towards international cooperative ventures to share costs and expertise. There is also a major trend towards private ventures and away from government-led programmes.

My view is that the universe is there to be explored, not ignored. International space exploration projects are a way of raising our horizons and cooperating instead of stewing up the biosphere and destroying ourselves spiritually and in internecine conflict.

John

see also Interplanetary mining

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The deep mystery of existence. 5. Life is from outside space-time

Every form of biological life, known or imaginable, depends partly on the arrangement of chemical elements in countless ways into hierarchically ordered goal-oriented systems, interacting in an astronomically large number of ways to create the Earth's biosphere of which humans are a part and in which they play a central role (e.g. by being aware that the biosphere exists and that they are meant to be stewards of it). Moreover, the latest biomolecular research indicates that the protein molecules (amino acids etc.) out of which life is formed are finely tuned to fold themselves into the 'building blocks' of life; so this propensity must have been embodied in the original creation design along with the finely tuned physical constants (i.e. laws of physics) also needed for life to be possible.

image from http://adoreabhijit.wordpress.com/tag/prayer/

In 1954 Fred Hoyle calculated that for this miraculous phenomenon of life to be possible a certain kind of nuclear reaction would have had to have occurred inside stars billions of years ago. He even forecast
the energy of the reaction – 7.6 million electron volts. He calculated that it would have only a small chance of occurring but without it carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and most other elements could never been produced in stars or anywhere else for that matter. Astronomers then searched for the gamma rays which would show the existence of this reaction, subsequently named the ‘Hoyle state’, and they found it within 5 years. 

This had a profound effect on Hoyle, who became convinced that the universe and the life in it was not just a chance throwing together of matter and energy. He did not believe in God and so was opposed to the idea of a created universe (subsequent observations have proved with growing accuracy that the universe was indeed created, as stated in Genesis 1.1 and John 1:1) : the only alternative for him was an eternal infinite universe which had a kind of mind. 

Hoyle was right in stating that the universe has a teleological nature. However, it is now accepted by most cosmologists that the universe is not infinite and eternal. It emerged from outside of space-time and indeed space-time only came into being as it emerged, i.e. during the Big Bang. So in a sense it emerged from the mind of God and its teleological properties can be seen as a means by which the Creator guides, permeates and holds in being the whole creation, including evolution of some kind. The creation and ongoing involvement of the God in the created order is now easier to imagine than it was before modern physics and cosmology. Life was dependent on these early stellar reactions and on the way the atomic output of these cosmic factories formed the protein molecules which assembled,  folded and arranged themselves into ultra-sophisticated systems that thrived under the right conditions – conditions which are very probably unique to Earth, judging by observations of the 4000 or so exoplanets detected to date and the specifically life-friendly nature of these conditions which modern science is revealing.

So where and when was life created? Where does all this information and intelligence come from? There can, it seems to me, be only one answer. Order cannot emerge from chaos. The ultra-sophisticated purposeful complexities of viruses, bacteria, plants and animals must have been designed before the universe exploded into existence. In essence, living systems, ranging from bacteria to mammals,  were created from outside the universe, not within it. 

Whether life formed early in the history of the earth, say 4 billion years ago, or only  few thousand years ago (I don’t believe that, incidentally) its real origin resides outside our reality, in the mind or being of the Creator, who is also able to exert ongoing influence on it. Life is not just extraterrestrial: it is supernatural. 

Life comes from a timeless and spaceless 'place', and it seems not surprising that life at some level should return ‘there’ in some form when it has finished ‘here’, having undergone a learning process. ‘There’ is the place of eternal life and from which eternal life is held within a living believer, to continue when he or she casts off the 37 trillion body cells.

 

John Sears

The story of a canned drink

It is customary to drink beer, Coke, lemonade etc. from an aluminium can. Given the convenience of storing and transporting the drink around this is not surprising (although personally I have a tendency to snap off the ring pull, leaving the can sealed). However, there is a price to pay for this convenience when one considers the enormous amount of energy and environmental destruction that goes into the production of a pop-top alumimium can.

Womak and Jones in their book Lean Thinking tracked down the manufacture of a can of English cola (presumably fairly typical of most canned drinks. The data is from the 1993 book but the overall picture is still essentially the same.)

1. Bauxite ore is mined in Australia and trucked to a chemical reduction mill.
2. At the mill each ton of bauxite is purified to half a ton of aluminium oxide in half an hour.
3. The Al oxide is loaded onto an ore carrier bound for roller mills in Scandinavia.
4. In Sweden or Norway the Al oxide is taken to a smelting plant. Each half ton is smelted down to one quarter ton of aluminium, which is converted into 10 metre ingots.
5. Each ingot is heated to 480 deg C and rolled down to a sheet 30 mm thick. The sheets are wrapped in 10 ton coils and transported to a warehouse.
6. The coils are transported to another country for rolling down to 3 mm sheets.
7. The Al sheets are sent to England for punching and forming into cans.
8. The cans are washed, dried, and base painted. Product information is then painted on.
9. The cans are lacquered, flanged, sprayed inside with protective coating, loaded onto pallets, forklifted and warehoused.
10. They are then shipped to a bottler where they are washed and cleaned again.
11. After filling with cola pop-top lids are added at the rate of 1500 cans per minute.
12. The cans are inserted into cardboard cartons made of forest pulp originating in some other part of the world (e.g. Siberia or British Columbia).
13. The cartons are shipped to a distribution warehouse and finally to the supermarket.

This leaves out the production and transport of the drink itself. In the case of the English cola drink this involves mining phosphates from deep open pit mines in Idaho, USA; refining this to food grade; and shipping caffeine from chemical plants abroad to a syrup manufacturer in England.

All these production and transportation steps use up energy, sometimes huge amounts – e.g. the conversion of the mined phosphate to food grade uses electricity at the same rate as a town of 100,000 people. The metal used also defies belief. Even after allowing for recycling the USA ‘throws away enough aluminium to replace its entire commercial aircraft fleet every three months.’ Natural capitalism by Hawken et al, 1999.

Other examples from Hawken et al :

• Semiconductor chips generate 100,000 x their weight in waste.
• A laptop computer produces nearly 4000 x its weight in waste.
• 1 quart of Florida orange juice requires 2 quarts of gasoline and 1000 quarts of water to produce it.

Should we feel guilty when our lifestyle is so dependent on these things?  Partly, but we are trapped in a greed-driven multinational system which is kept afloat by crazy accounting which ignores the real world. To change that system, one which ultimately must lead to war, is our only option. Either from top down or bottom up, or both at the same time, it has to change; and that means people themselves have to change both individually and collectively, and at all levels of society.

As one who believes in our Creator I think this can only only happen by getting closer to the one who created us.  Reason is of paramount importance; but reason alone is not enough, as was learned at the cost of millions of lives and decades of misery by the disciples of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Zedong.

See also Waste of the western world

Feedback welcome.

John

Author, 2077

cosmik.jo@gmail.com