Archivo etiqueta «Exploración espacial»
By Lawrence M. Krauss, the director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University and the author of The Physics of Star Trek (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 01/09/09):
Now that the hype surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Moon landings has come and gone, we are faced with the grim reality that if we want to send humans back to the Moon the investment is likely to run in excess of $150 billion. The cost to get to Mars could easily be two to four times that, if it is possible at all.
This is the issue being wrestled … Seguir leyendo
Por José Manuel Sánchez Ron, miembro de la Real Academia Española y catedrático de Historia de la Ciencia en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (EL PAÍS, 18/08/09):
Pertenezco a un grupo -creo que bastante numeroso- cada vez más decepcionado con la política nacional. Ofende a la inteligencia, a la capacidad de razonamiento lógico que caracteriza a los humanos, contemplar como una buena parte de los políticos españoles se sumergen en campañas electorales como la que tuvo lugar hace poco para elegir a nuestros representantes en el Parlamento Europeo y no hablan para nada de política europea, empleando la mayor … Seguir leyendo
By Gerald M. Smith, who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology from 1962 to 1997. He received the Distinguished Service Medal from NASA in 1996 (THE WASHINGTON POST, 15/08/09):
The public meetings and media reports about the Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a 10-member advisory panel appointed at the request of President Obama, indicate that NASA’s mission is about to change. It needs to.
For the past five decades, NASA has concentrated on exploration of our solar system. It has done a marvelous job. We have tremendous knowledge about virtually all the nearby … Seguir leyendo
By Martin Rees. Lord Rees of Ludlow is the Astronomer Royal (THE TIMES, 22/07/09):
Until the 1950s space travel was a futuristic concept, familiar from H. G. Wells and Jules Verne — and from comics and cornflake packets. But Sputnik, followed by Yuri Gagarin’s (and John Glenn’s) circling of the Earth made it real. The advent of the space age crystallised into reality human fantasies that dated back centuries.
The Moon landings came less than 70 years after the first powered flight — Orville Wright’s “brief hop” at Kitty Hawk — and only 12 years after the launch of … Seguir leyendo
Quarante ans après Armstrong, l’Europe doit affirmer son ambition spatiale. Par Louis Gallois, président exécutif d’EADS (LE MONDE, 21/07/09):
Il y a quarante ans, le 20 juillet 1969, Neil Armstrong posait le pied sur la Lune. Ce “petit pas” portait les fruits d’une vision grandiose. A peine huit ans plus tôt, le président Kennedy déclarait au Congrès sa conviction : “Ce n’est pas un seul homme qui ira sur la Lune, c’est le pays tout entier. Car chacun d’entre nous doit se mobiliser pour l’y envoyer.”
A l’époque, l’Europe était peu active dans le domaine spatial. La situation … Seguir leyendo
Por Fernando Sánchez Dragó, escritor y columnista de EL MUNDO (EL MUNDO, 20/07/09):
No es lo mismo ir a la Luna que estar en ella. Lo segundo alude a quienes creen en lo primero. ¿Cuarenta años ya? No me toquen las pelotas. Yo tenía treinta y dos y estaba como un queso de mozzarella de búfala. ¿Quién iba a imaginarse que ocho lustros después, podrido por la gusanera de la ancianidad, lo sería de cabrales?
De búfala, decía, porque el paripé del alunizaje me pilló en Italia. Roma era entonces una fiesta. ¿Tanto como el París de Hemingway? ¡Hombre, … Seguir leyendo
Por Charles Krauthammer, politólogo, economista y columnista de The Washington Post (EL MUNDO, 20/07/09):
Michael Crichton escribió en una ocasión que si le hubiera dicho a un médico de 1869 que en cuestión de 100 años el hombre viajaría a la Luna, y después perdería el interés por el satélite, el facultativo le habría declarado de inmediato «demente». En el año 2000, yo cité esta misma anécdota expresando la incredulidad de Crichton ante la dejadez de EEUU con la Luna. Pues bien, ya es 2009 y ésta despierta aún menos interés.
Hoy se cumple el 40º aniversario del primer … Seguir leyendo
By Tom Wolfe, the author of The Right Stuff, an account of the Mercury Seven astronauts (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 19/07/09):
Well, let’s see now … That was a small step for Neil Armstrong, a giant leap for mankind and a real knee in the groin for NASA.
The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the … Seguir leyendo
By Kevin Fong, co-director of the Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme environment medicine (THE GUARDIAN, 17/07/09):
How did we allow “vision” and “inspiration” to become dirty words when discussing science? Why are these regarded as fluffy concepts that have no place in the modern world of scientific research? The science journal Nature has carried out an online, international, cross-disciplinary survey of scientists who have published in their journal in the last three years. Of the 800 or so respondents, more than half cite Project Apollo as having directly influenced them to become a scientist. I was stunned. This … Seguir leyendo
By Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute and the author of Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 14/04/09):
It’s a birthright proffered by science and prophesied by “Star Trek,” “Battlestar Galactica” and a thousand other space operas: We’re destined to go to the stars. Our descendants will spread beyond this nondescript solar system and seek adventure and bumpy-headed pals in the stellar realms.
Well, cool your warp jets, Mr. Scott, because we’re not about to breach the final frontier. Piling into a starship and barreling into deep space … Seguir leyendo
By S. Alan Stern, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist. He was an associate administrator in charge of the NASA Science Mission Directorate from 2007 to 2008 (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 24/11/08):
A cancer is overtaking our space agency: the routine acquiescence to immense cost increases in projects. Unmistakable new indications of this illness surfaced last month with NASA’s decision to spend at least $100 million more on its poorly-managed, now-over-$2 billion Mars Science Laboratory. This decision to go forward with the project, a robotic rover, was made even though it has tripled in cost since its inception, it is … Seguir leyendo
By Tunku Varadarajan, a professor of business at New York University, and a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 29/10/08):
An unmanned spacecraft from India — that most worldly and yet otherworldly of nations — is on its way to the moon. For the first time since man and his rockets began trespassing on outer space, a vessel has gone up from a country whose people actually regard the moon as a god.
The Chandrayaan (or “moon craft”) is the closest India has got to the moon since the epic Hindu sage, Narada, tried to … Seguir leyendo
By John M. Logsdon. The writer, who was featured in the “Nova” documentary “Space Shuttle Disaster,” holds the Lindbergh chair in aerospace history at the National Air and Space Museum and was formerly director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of the Smithsonian Institution. (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/10/08):
Among the many tough decisions facing the next president is the future of our civilian space program. There are conflicts over how long to fly the space shuttle, which are linked to questions about continued American … Seguir leyendo
By O. Glenn Smith, a former manager of science and applications experiments for the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 22/07/08):
As we face $4.50 a gallon gas, we also know that alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment. There is, however, one potential future energy source that is environmentally friendly, has essentially unlimited potential and can be cost competitive with any renewable source: space solar power.
Science fiction? Actually, no … Seguir leyendo
By Colin Pillinger, the principle investigator for the Beagle 2 Mars project, part of the European Space Agency’s 2003 Mars Express mission (THE GUARDIAN, 28/05/08):
The triumphant landing of the Phoenix craft on Mars is a tribute to the team of engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California – one of whom, Peter Smith, was a colleague of mine on the Beagle 2 mission to the planet in 2003. Using the Mars reconnaissance orbiter, they selected an excellent place to land, and were able to use thrusters to hit the spot safely and softly.
But it’s also a … Seguir leyendo