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unknownskywalker:

Cyborgs Needed for Escape from Earth

As the growing global population continues to increase the burden on the Earth’s natural resources, some historians and scientists think humans should prepare to colonize space. The problem is, we may have to alter human biology significantly to achieve that goal.

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Scientists have warned for decades that humans are straining the Earth. The global population is increasing, economies are expanding and consumption doesn’t appear to be slowing.

While save-the-planet campaigns are asking people to save energy, conserve water, recycle and even go vegetarian, some scientists are thinking literally out of this world by suggesting that humans may eventually have to consider leaving Earth if they are to survive as a species.

If humans are to colonize other planets, it could well require the “next state of human evolution” to create a separate human presence where families will live and die on that planet. In other words, it wouldn’t really be Homo sapiens that would be living in the colonies, it could be cyborgs—a living organism with a mixture of organic and electromechanical parts—or in simpler terms, part human, part machine.

Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space. Even though it may be both logically and technologically possible, the ethical question is whether it should be done.

Image: Artist’s rendition of a future base on Mars. A manned-Mars mission would take require astronauts being in space for more than a year. Currently, there isn’t enough research to know what long-term deep space travel would do to astronaut health.

Read the full article at astrobio.net

skysignal:

Qualifications of an Astronaut Candidate (according to NASA):

• Must be a U.S. citizen.
• Must have a bachelor’s degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematics from an accredited institution.
• Must be able to pass the NASA long-duration space flight physical, which has minimum requirements for visual acuity, blood pressure and standing height.
• Mission specialist (non-pilot) candidates must have at least three years of related, progressively responsible, professional experience. An advanced degree is desirable and may be substituted for experience (a master’s degree equals one year of experience, a doctoral degree equals three years of experience). Teaching experience, including experience at the K-12 levels, is considered to be qualifying experience for the astronaut candidate position.
• Pilot astronaut candidates must have at least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. Flight test experience is highly desirable.

There are 20 openings for astronauts in NASA every two years. Salaries for civilian Astronaut Candidates are based on the Federal Government’s General Schedule pay scale for grades GS-12 through GS-13. Each person’s grade is determined according to his/her academic achievements and experience. Currently, a GS-12 starts at $65,140 per year and a GS-13 can earn up to $100,701 per year.

(via & via.)

unknownskywalker:

NASA Needs You: 6 Ways to Help an Astronomer

Space is a big place, and even with their giant telescopes, astronomers just can’t cover it all. This is where you come in.

Astronomy is one of the few scientific fields where amateur scientists can, and frequently do, make significant contributions. But now space scientists are increasingly also looking to people with little or no training for help with their research.

Sometimes they are looking for free labor for tasks that humans can still do better than computers, like identifying different types of galaxies. Other times it’s numbers of eyes on the sky or feet on the ground they’re after. But more and more, they are finding ways to get regular citizens involved.

Amateur astronomers and regular folks have already had an impact on the science by making observations of fleeting cosmic phenomena that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Citizen scientists have also become crucial for helping astronomers with one of their most intractable problems: too much data, too little time.

Here are some astronomy projects you can take part in right now, while you wait for your iPhone to capture a meteor:

• Hunt for Meteorites
• Mars Student Imaging Project
• HiWish
• Be a Martian
• Stardust@Home
• Galaxy Zoo and Moon Zoo

Read the full story at Wired →

unknownskywalker:

Japanese Asteroid Probe Makes Historic Return to Earth

A Japanese space capsule returned to Earth and plunged through the atmosphere over the Australian outback Sunday, capping a seven-year space journey that took it to a nearby asteroid in a historic attempt to collect pieces of a billion-year-old space rock.

The capsule, released by Japan’s Hayabusa asteroid probe, returned around 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) in the Woomera Prohibited Area of South Australia. The re-entry capsule, which may contain a precious space rock sample, separated from the rest of the spacecraft about three hours before it plummeted down to Earth.

The small 16-inch wide canister planned to land with the help of a parachute and a heat shield to protect it from the fiery temperatures of reentry at an incredible speed. The rest of the Hayabusa spacecraft was expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The probe will be recovered and transported back to Japan, where scientists will open it and find out whether it succeeded in returning a piece of the asteroid.

Image: A view of Hayabusa burning up over Australia Credit: © Ozaki Takashi, Yomiuri Shimbun. Visit The Planetary Society for footage of the capsule’s re-entry.

Source: Read the full story at SPACE.com | Other: PhysOrg.com

unknownskywalker:

Heavyweight Runaway Star Speeding from 30 Doradus

This image of the 30 Doradus nebula, a rambunctious stellar nursery, and the enlarged inset photo show a heavyweight blue-hot star called 30 Dor #016. It is 90 times more massive than our Sun, and it’s traveling across space at more than 250,000 mph. Fast enough to make a round trip from Earth to the Moon in merely two hours. In the inset image at right, an arrow points to the stellar runaway and a dashed arrow to its presumed direction of motion.

Though the speed is not a record-breaker, it is unique to find a homeless star that has traveled so far from its nest.

The only way the star could have been ejected from the star cluster where it was born is through a tussle with a rogue star that entered the binary system where the star lived, which ejected the star through a dynamical game of stellar pinball. Only a very massive star (150 times our Sun’s mass) would have the gravitational energy to eject something weighing 90 solar masses.

The young star, only 1-2 million years old, may have traveled about 375 light-years from its suspected home in R136, the bright star cluster marked by a circle.

Nestled in the core of 30 Doradus, R136 is one of the most massive young star clusters in nearby galaxies, containing several stars topping 100 solar masses each. 30 Doradus, also called the Tarantula Nebula, resides roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Source: HubbleSite

This is so wild.

rocketjumper:

NASA’s Next Space Suit

j-p-g:

one small man (via Is This Graham Too?)