Big Steve on space

Posted on January 23, 2008 | Comments Off on Big Steve on space

Physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg–or Big Steve as his graduate students at the University of Texas call him–is down on human spaceflight, particularly NASA’s latest goals of sending humanity to the moon and Mars. Down as in against it. Weinberg, who is quite the Austin party animal, makes some sense on it, at least on not sending anyone to Mars until robots like Spirit and Opportunity have thoroughly explored the place and found all the potentially-interesting sites. He does think it’s worth considering Mars as a Lifeboat for humanity. But he doesn’t consider the moon in this lengthy but worthwhile interview with The Space Review. Possibly because better arguments can be made for sending people there, such as trying to mine oxygen, doing hydroponics for future Mars flights, building a deep space telescope, etc.–and, frankly, just for the hell of it. Be lots cheaper than Mars, too. Anyway, read what Big Steve has to say. Afterall, his field, particle physics, invented the Web you’re enjoying. Just too bad he doesn’t discuss a moon colony.

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0 responses to “Big Steve on space”

  1. jdallen's avatar jdallen | January 24, 2008 at 9:22 am |

    Mars as a lifeboat for humanity? Or the moon, for that matter. I guess that is some sort of wishful thinking. If the earth were destroyed, crushed by a large asteroid into debris, I bet Mars and most especially the moon, would be made untenable by all the pieces flying around in the inner solar system.
    Now, if it were a smaller impact, just enough to kill off life back to the basics of microorganisms, the moon and Mars would then be – still unable to support life of a class more complex than, say, Mollusca or Crustacea.
    I don’t think there is a lifeboat available unless there is a (many times) faster than light transport system available. Unlikely, I think, but who knows? And it wouldn’t save those remaining on Earth, the vast majority of humanity for the imaginable future.

  2. Dick Stanley's avatar Dick Stanley | January 24, 2008 at 12:07 pm |

    The way I read it, he’s projecting far in the future, after Mars already has become a colony of Earth. I never heard of an asteroid the size of Earth. One could wipe out part of a continent, maybe, with a lingering dust cloud blocking the sun for years, but not the whole planet.

  3. jdallen's avatar jdallen | January 24, 2008 at 6:20 pm |

    I don’t think it would need to be as big as the Earth to destroy the Earth. Define “destroy”. The mass of the planet would mostly still be there. Just it wouldn’t be a pleasant location -anywhere on the ball – for a long, long time.
    The moon, for instance, is more than large enough, and is thought by some to have been acquired through collision rather than accretion from the original (dust or whatever) particulates.