What is Happening in Space? Why can’t the two astronauts come back from the International Space Station? From everything I have heard and read about the problem, it seems no one can find the exact cause of the troubles the Boeing rocket module experienced after it was launched. I read something which I don’t know is true or not and it said Boeing wanted to return them on the Starship but NASA overruled them. If that is true, I am happy to hear it. I can never get the memory of the Challenger explosion out of my mind. That happened when engineers from the company which manufactured the rockets attached to it called NASA and asked them not to launch because they said it was too cold for the O Rings, to seal and were overruled. We all known how unfortunate that decision was. Several different things have happened since the launch. First of all, as I said, it seems the cause of the leaks in the Boeing Starship can not be found. Secondly, the Inspector General at NASA is blasting Boeing and their workforce. And lastly, suggestions have been made to let SpaceX rescue and return the astronauts home. Also, the date for their return keeps getting pushed back and now NASA is talking about next year. Having SpaceX return them would be the ultimate disgrace for Boeing and I have to wonder about future contracts with NASA. A suggestion was made which to me makes a lot of sense and I don’t know why no one thought of it before. That suggestion is there is another use for electric cars which was not thought of before and because of the increased power of our rockets has become a viable idea. Instead of investing tons of money in a vehicle to travel on the surface of Mars to gather the samples, it has been suggested to use a Cybertruck which can be pressurized. Think about it, it has the range to be very useful and maybe solar panels could be adapted to it for charging, or even install a much smaller engine to increase range. After all, the truck is electric just as the rovers are. If such a large vehicle is not needed for the job, there are much smaller electric cars which could be adapted to the task. Will this idea catch on and will we find countries using commercial electric vehicles as modified moon rovers and such? I guess we will have to wait and see. When I talk about the universe and use the phrase nearby, the objects I am talk about could be as far as 100 light years away. Two new earth exoplanets have been discovered, and they are a lot further away than 100 light years with one star said to be over 500 light years away. The two planets are estimated to be much bigger than earth with the estimates being 21 and 18 times the mass of the earth. The two planets are TOI-5126b and TOI-5126c. Some are calling them super earths. Some astronomers want SETI, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, to have more Imagination when searching for extraterrestrial life. They are saying there could be more possibilities. I have been saying this for decades. This not only applies to SETI, but to all scientists searching for life. No planet, no matter what the condition it is in should be eliminated from that search. We can’t only search for planets which are similar to earth and ignore the others. Even on earth we have found life can exist in what we call very harsh conditions and for all we know maybe even intelligent life can exist in space. I wish we would put the effort we are using to discover exoplanets into the exploration of our solar system. I have said this in the past, it is nice to know about exoplanets existing, but they are all too far for us to explore. On the other hand, we might find life besides our own existed in our solar system and might still exist. There are plenty of places to look. I am not just talking about the planets, but asteroids, moons and other objects like dwarf planets. We still need faster transportation even to get around the solar system but we should put more effort to the nearer objects and work our way out. Even if there is no life found at least we would know for sure. I have to say however, I am a firm believer there is enough evidence found on Mars, which the government is trying to keep secret, which proves intelligent life once existed there and it could have been human. There are those scientists and engineers who are pushing for artificial intelligence to be used in the search for intelligent life in the universe. While this idea of putting A.I. into some sort of a body, probably a robot, might not be a very good idea. Think of how a human might feel if a robot made contact with him or her? It could scare the person, which would defeat the contact effort. I think before we could even consider this, that is sending robots out to look for alien life, they not only would have to look non-threatening, but the A.I. component would have to be much more advanced. We would essentially would need to create a perfect version of a human, which would be so heavily trained that we would have eliminated all possibilities for offense. Unfortunately, that is probably impossible for either a human explorer or a robotic one since we can’t even imagine all the things aliens might consider offensive. I think however, a human could handle the situation of contact much better and give a more personalized experience. ChatGPT has been said to be a model for the type of A.I. they want to use, but even ChatGPT makes mistakes. There have been many mistakes which were made by every A.I. Some are getting facts wrong, ignoring instructions and many other things. As I have already said it wouldn’t tell me if it passed the Turing Test. A test to see if an A.I. has become sentient. Instead of yes or no, it said it depended on the context. We are actually not funding NASA with a big enough budget. Instead, we are wasting our money on a lot of useless programs. This has forced NASA to go begging to the private community to help fund the Viper moon mission which they had to cancel for lack of funds, while China is proceeding full speed ahead. It is such a shame.
|
