“No bucks, no Buck Rogers,” Impey observes. Today, NASA appropriations make up less than 0.5 per cent of federal spending. Then, like a piece of space debris hurtling toward Earth, it plummeted. From the late nineteen-fifties through the late sixties, it shot up, until, a year or two before the first moon landing, in 1969, it represented almost five per cent of all federal spending. Prominently featured in “Beyond” is a graph showing how the agency’s budget has changed over time. Impey acknowledges NASA’s current difficulties. In 2115, he writes, a cohort will come of age “who were born off-Earth and who have never been home.” And within a century these colonies will have produced a generation of space-bred babies. Within twenty years, he predicts, there will be a vibrant space-tourism industry, complete with “zero-gravity sex motels.” In thirty years, he expects “small but viable colonies” on both Mars and the moon. In “Beyond: Our Future in Space” (Norton), he foresees a bright “off-Earth” future. Chris Impey is an astronomer at the University of Arizona who studies the structure and the evolution of the universe. Several recent books take up these questions, some head on, others more elliptically. Still, a reasonable person might ask: Where are we headed? Is it really to Mars? Or is it just to Kazakhstan? It’s true that even a journey of thirty-five million miles has to start somewhere. (The International Space Station, which circles the globe in LEO, maintains an average altitude of two hundred and twenty miles.) And nowadays even this is farther than NASA can manage. In fact, since the Nixon Administration, no American has got past what’s known as low Earth orbit, or LEO. The last time an American made it as far as the moon was in 1972. What NASA learns about Kelly-at least, so the theory goes-will help it anticipate and overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel.īut even as NASA rehearses for “Mars and beyond” its actual reach has been shrinking. Owing to the relative motion of the planets, any astronauts who make it to Mars will have to cool their heels on the red planet for three more months before rocketing back home. In NASA’s Buzz Lightyear-esque formulation, it’s “a stepping stone” to “Mars and beyond.” At its closest, Mars is thirty-five million miles from Earth, and, under the most plausible scenario, getting there takes nine months. Kelly’s One-Year Mission represents a kind of dress rehearsal for a longer, straighter, and even more punishing voyage. This will provide a glimpse into the effects of space travel down to the molecular level. (Mark Kelly is perhaps best known as the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman.) In the course of the year, Mark will submit to many of the same cognitive and physiological tests as Scott, though without leaving Earth. Kelly has an identical twin, Mark, who was also an astronaut. As he spins around the Earth, scientists at the agency are tracking his physical and emotional deterioration, monitoring, among other things, his sleep patterns, his heart rate, his immune response, his fine motor skills, his metabolism, and his gut bacteria. NASA has dubbed Kelly’s circular odyssey the One-Year Mission. It is expected that by the time Kelly finally descends he will have stretched to five feet nine. Astronauts’ internal organs drift upward and their spines extend. Changes in intracranial pressure can lead to eye problems. At that point, he will have set an endurance record for an American in space.Įven in brief bursts, space is tough on the human body. If all goes well, he will not return to sea level until March, 2016. Kelly, who is fifty-one, is short-five feet seven-and stocky, with a round face and a thin smile. orbits the planet fifteen and a half times, which means that after a month Kelly had completed more than four hundred and fifty circuits. On March 27th, an American astronaut named Scott Kelly blasted off from Earth and, six hours later, clambered onto the International Space Station. tests MRIS Iberian peninsula territory GIBRALTAR It borders both the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers IOWA It merged with Chevron in 2005 UNOCAL It might be uncured BACON It’s often skipped ROPE Little demon IMP Lurk PROWL Milk sources SOYAS Name on collectible cards TOPPS Nonsense TOMFOOLERY Nonstick kitchen product TFAL Normandy river ORNE Novelist Rita _ Brown MAE Nut with a cap ACORN Old film dog ASTA Old French coin ECU Org.Earthlings are fragile, demanding, and germy, not obviously suited to life elsewhere.
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