M. Thomas Apple's Blog, page 29

Let’s make rocket fuel with E. Coli!

In short, the algae will use sunlight to transform CO2 into sugars that are then enhanced by bio-engineered E.coli into 2,3-butanediol. Interestingly, 2,3-BDO is not entirely conceptual as it currently exists and is mainly used to produce rubber components. It has just never been thought of as fuel before.

https://www.universal-sci.com/article/producing-rocket-fuel-on-mars-using-microbes?utm_campaign=Universal-Sci%20Weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter

Neat. So all the astronauts have to do is bring, uh, how much algae we talking here?

The article doesn’t say, but it does mention a by-product of the process: Oxygen!

That would seem rather helpful. Mars or bust?

The “new year” blues…

Well, looks like once again I got way behind schedule on my science fiction posts.

And my science posts.

And basically any of my posts.

Sorry.

The school year in Japan ends in March and then starts up again little more than three weeks later in April. And with two elementary school age kids (one soon to be middle school aged!) things were quite hectic.

And during the “break” (more like a breather than a real break) they always had friends over, or wanted to do something that required attention.

Anyway, I should be able to start regular posting in a few days once I figure out how to do more than two things at once. Apologies to you all for the “break” in the action!

Meet the man who was Shatner’s eye

www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/22/star-trek-movie-shatners-eyeball/

The iconic “retina scan” scene in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan was not Shatner’s own eye.

It was an “eye double” software engineer.

(As the man himself says, your iPhone can take a more detailed picture these days, but it was high tech for 1982…)

How do you do it without gravity?

Or, as I’m sure was unintentionally titled, ”Nasa probing people having sex in space.”

Ya know, I’m pretty sure we need to figure out “this whole food-air deal” first (to quote comedian Bill Hicks).

“The US space agency confirmed that there were currently no plans for a field or project office to explore the topic in any detail but that could change as we get closer to putting humans on Mars.“

Uh-huh.

Priorities…

Psyche! It might not be as heavy as we thought

A new study suggests that 16 Psyche, one of the most intriguing and most valuable asteroids we know of, could be covered in iron-spewing volcanoes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2022/02/24/the-iron-giant-asteroid-worth-more-than-our-global-economy-may-have-an-explosive-secret-say-scientists

Psyche is an asteroid that was probably once the heart of a planet in the early system, one that didn’t survive the violent process of planet formation.

Yep — that “worth more than the global economy” rock in space.

But we’ll have to wait a few years to find out if it’s “less metal and more hard rock” — the Psyche Mission rockets off in August 2022 and the probe won’t arrive for four more years.

How do we find ET? Look for pollution…

CFCs in the atmosphere above the North Pole.

“We give off waste heat (from industry and homes and so on) and artificial light at night, but perhaps most significantly, we produce chemicals that fill our atmosphere with compounds that wouldn’t otherwise be present. These artificial atmospheric constituents just might be the thing that gives us away to a distant alien species scanning the galaxy with their own powerful telescope.”

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-webb-telescope-civilizations-air-pollution.html

Or, as Futurism puts it: “SCIENTISTS ALREADY PLOTTING HOW James Webb COULD DETECT ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS WHOA.”

Just. Settle down, wouldja. Sheesh.

Scientists have proposed aiming the James Webb space telescope the Trappist system, specifically Trappist-1e.

Really hope this isn’t what they find…

Bringer of Light, Chapter 34: Lunar Departure

A coup is underway on Luna Base. Time for Sergey to leave…if he can stand up…

Red lights flashed around him. The floor shook once, twice.

Pounding of footsteps.

A face appeared.

Who? A woman.

Her mouth opened, then closed.

Again. And again. She must be talking to him.

His eyes fluttered, closed.

He was being shaken.

The floor? No, the woman.

His ears filled with the sound of rushing water. The Baltic Sea. He was home, he could smell the salt water, feel the mist. He could hear the lament, chanted on the steppe winds…

O what have you heard in Ukraine?

Nothing have I heard

Nothing have I seen

But horsemen on all four sides…

Then tazerfire. Pulses. An acrid smell.

Burning. Something was burning.

Someone.

He was shaken again, then a woman’s voice. “Captain! Captain! Stay with me!”

Opened his eyes again, nodded his head, down, down. His chest hurt. Why? Did she shoot him?

No. He had fallen down. Or something.

He tried to stand. One foot kicking against the other. The left knee refused to bend. His hands. They were. Where were they?

Here. He found them. The right hand clenched, unclenched. He grunted, felt the wall behind his back. It shook again. The wall, not the woman.

Who?

Ah. Elo-something. Elodie. He tried to shake his head, open his mouth. “Ahhh” came out. He blinked his eyes.

There seemed to be something else pounding beneath him. No, inside of him. His heart? He tried to move his left arm. It flopped uselessly on the floor. Hand. Right hand. Under his body. It moved. Someone grabbed it, then under the elbow.

“El,” he managed to say. Scattered red-tinted shadows seemed to rotate throughout the corridor.

“Yes,” he heard next to him. “We must go. Now.”

“Elo.”

He felt himself partially stand, right leg pushing against the floor. Something made an ugly scraping sound, like metal on tile. His left foot. Eyes rolled. Jaw. His jaw wouldn’t listen. Clamped shut.

“Captain! Stay—”

He felt himself falling again. Stopped partway, caught. Picked up and carried. Both legs dangling in the thin air. Like a doll.

Riss’s doll, he thought. 

Ah, little one. The doll is you. You are the doll. Your parents, I could not find. I did my best, little one. But you were always like a doll to me, so pretty, seeming so soft and yet tough, persistent. Precious, delicate, but determined. Nothing could harm you. Nothing will change you, unless you change yourself.

His daughter? No, he didn’t. Couldn’t think that. She was so young. No.

Should have got you a set of wooden dolls, little one. One inside the other. Ever so smaller. Until the solid core is found. But those are Russian, not Ukranian. And I could never make you choose.

He was flying. A sound like a door opening, closing. More footsteps. Smell of burning again. An engine turning on. Another door.

Then nothing.

He tried to open his eyes. One opened halfway. The other slightly more. His throat was raw, head pounding. His hand. Left one, useless. Right one. Lifted it, banged it against some kind of wall. Metal. Smell of pressurized oxygen—ship. He was on a ship.

“El.”

No response.

“Elod.”

That woman. Elodie? Where was she?

Sergey tried to move his left foot. Nothing. Right foot. Knee flexed. He could see it. Hazy, like surrounded by dense fog coming off the Danube on a late summer morning. It hurt.

Good. He focused on the pain.

The right foot fell off whatever he was lying on. Didn’t quite reach a floor. He reached with his good hand, found a vertical metal support pole. Holding up whatever kind of bed type surface he lay on. More effort. He grimaced. The foot touched down.

He pulled hard on the pole. Seven hells. His left side must be entirely paralyzed. It wouldn’t budge a millimeter. He briefly wondered if it would be worth it to fall on the floor, or to try to pull himself to at least a seated position.

“Elo. DEE. EloDEE.”

Motion from outside his vision. That must have got somebody’s attention finally.

A firm hand held his right leg, pushed it back up to its prone position.

“Captain, you need to stay here for now. Rest.”

“What. What.”

What happened, dammit?

Elodie sighed. “You had a stroke. Fortunately not too severe. But your body needs time. Then we’ll see how bad it was. All I had was a small med kit with some pain killers and muscle relaxant tranqs.”

He swallowed and nodded.

“Wh—where.”

“I borrowed a Lunar Base skiff. Agile, but not terribly fast. Our pursuers are bound to catch us sooner or later.”

Sergey closed his eyes. Pursuers. What did that mean again? Somebody chasing them?

He opened his eyes as best he could again and asked, “Who?”

Elodie leaned closer. “Who is chasing us?”

He could see more of her features now through the haze. She looked a little less clean than he last remembered. A little blacker and redder, as well. But otherwise completely unharmed.

“You. Clone?”

She nodded. “Yes. Sent from Ceres to Lunar Base several months ago.”

He tried to get up again. She held him down easily.

“Captain, I am not your enemy. I had orders to watch you. And protect you.”

He tried to grunt, but it came out as a soft cough. He waved his hand.

“Alright,” she conceded. “To prevent the UA from getting you. I didn’t think that the Lunar police would also try something. I should have guessed as much.”

Sergey said nothing. That Lieutenant Sanchez, he thought. Everyone has an agenda. Turn him over to the UA? For what purpose? He had never been a soldier. Not broken any laws.

He looked at Elodie.

“Sorry, I can’t read your mind, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said. “That’s someone else’s specialty. I’ll just say that it was my job to get you back to Ceres as soon as possible in an emergency.”

He tried raising his eyebrows in question. Only the right one moved.

She almost laughed.

“Yes, I was able to fight through a few of them. Not all fled like I thought they would. And at least one ship is on the way from Ceres.”

She paused and stood.

“Friend or foe, however, I do not know. It will be close to us soon. If it’s a hunter ship…”

She trailed off. Sergey tried to imagine which hunter ship captain would want to attack him. Was anyone still holding a grudge?

Yes. Someone obviously was. His memory of that day was still clear.

“Stay here,” Elodie said. “And please don’t move. Rest, and pray.”

She left his field of vision, moving back to what he assumed was the control section of the ship. He couldn’t even tell how high the ceiling was, nor how far the opposite wall was. It couldn’t be a big ship, though. No cargo area. No gun turret ports. Even from his prone position, he could tell they were not going to win any races or shooting battles.

Ceres. The Mining Council. Something must have happened, he decided. Something drastic. Something related to the UA attacking Lunar Base.

He wondered who had won. And which side Riss was on.

Next: Bringer of Light, Chapter 35: United Mars Colonies (Part 1) – Martin is taken by surprise…

Ready to ride the laser to Mars?

“The laser, a 10-meter wide array on Earth, would heat hydrogen plasma in a chamber behind the spacecraft, producing thrust from hydrogen gas and sending it to Mars in only 45 days. There, it would aerobrake in Mars’ atmosphere, shuttling supplies to human colonists or, someday perhaps, even humans themselves.”

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-laser-mars.html

The only problem is that there’s no way to slow the thing down right now…”aerobraking” using current technology would cause gees of 8 or above for several minutes and temperatures hot enough to cook whatever’s in the ship to a nice toasty crisp.

Not even the G-Force would survive! Well, OK, maybe. (But only if they reverted to their original Japanese name – “Gatchman.”)

But what if robots could design a receiving station with lasers to “catch” the ship and slow it down…?

Hmmm. Sounds like a science fiction work in progress…

Purple rocks on Mars

SuperCam showed that the coatings are enriched in hydrogen and sometimes magnesium. In addition, images from Mastcam-Z suggest that they also contain iron oxides. Both the hydrogen and iron oxides point to past water being involved in the formation of the coatings. That shouldn’t be too surprising, perhaps, since this area in Jezero Crater used to be a lake a few billion years ago.

https://earthsky.org/space/purple-rocks-mars-perseverance-rover-desert-varnish/

The rocks resemble so-called desert varnish, which protect microbes from the sun’s radiation. It’d be interesting to find out whether cyanobacteria that once existed on Mars did this…but the four billion year old question is, how did those bacteria get there in the first place?

Bringer of Light, Chapter 33: Ceres

For Weng, the patient waiting is over…perhaps…

The sudden appearance of Riss on his monitor shouldn’t have come as a shock to Weng.

But it did.

He swallowed a nervous greeting, waved a hand over his face. There she was.

“Riss.”

“Sam,” she said, with a little smile. “I always knew you would come to the rescue.”

“Rescue?” he repeated dubiously. It was his turn to smile. “I hardly think you needed rescuing, my princess.”

She laughed. “And you’re no shining knight. But it’s still good to see you. And we do need your help.”

Weng nodded. He had received the message from Gen moments earlier. He still had no idea how the clone had managed it, but he was sure Riss was involved somehow. Gen had also managed to contact Mars in the meantime. How, he wasn’t sure. A cypher? Things looked bad.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Of course.”

“As you know, ditrium can be volatile,” she said.

“Yes. I gather you have quite a lot of it?”

“Enough to speed up the terraforming process. By speed up, I mean, drastically speed up.”

“I…see.” Weng pursed his lips. There was something she was holding back from him. She had found something during her transneptunian trip. But it hadn’t been the ditrium rocks currently in the Artemis’s cargo hold.

What had she sent to Ceres besides water?

“Riss, you’ve heard reports about the situation on Mars,” Weng said.

“Yes.”

“And Luna.”

“Yes.”

Weng nearly bit his lip in frustration.

“So, what do we do?”

Riss sighed. “Only thing we can do. Head to Mars.”

“But Luna?”

“We’ll never get there in time,” she said. “Sergey will have to deal with things on his own. He isn’t the only person on base, you know.”

Now Weng sighed. She had never really struck him as the logical type, but she was correct. As much as Weng felt a certain loyalty to the old captain, Sergey’s fate was now out of his hands.

But how could he help Mars? He had to know.

“Riss,” he said slowly. “I wonder if something happened to you, out there. Something you’re not telling me.”

She was silent. From behind her, he thought he could see one of her crew members move. The pilot, or the navigator. He couldn’t tell.

“Sam, I, I’m not sure exactly what happened,” Riss said. She turned to her right briefly and spoke to one of the crew. Weng couldn’t hear; she must have muted, he guessed. A sudden anger rose. Something she could tell her crew but not him? Her fiancé?

“Riss,” he said. “Riss!”

The sound came back on. “Sam. There’s…something that happened. Something you ought to know.”

He waited. She looked down at her hands, then around her. At her crew, he guessed. Waiting to see what she’d say.

“We, uh, we caught that rock I’d told you about. In the vidmess.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “The last one you sent. What happened between then and now?”

“It’s, um.” She shook her head. “Sam, I’m just not sure what’s happened to us. It’s sometimes…incredible, exhilarating, even. But sometimes. A little disturbing.”

She swallowed and looked directly at him.

“Cooper, our astrogeologist, he thinks it’s a microorganism of some kind. Trapped inside the ice.”

Weng felt himself turning pale. He clasped his hands together awkwardly. Dug fingernails into a palm.

“Astrogeologist,” he said. “Your geologist is an expert on biochemistry.”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Our instruments aren’t picking up much. Mostly guessing, from the chemical compounds and our reactions.”

He caught himself. “What reactions?”

“Feeling, feeling like things are floating. Sometimes like we’re outside our bodies.”

“Just like those infected in the Mars Colonies,” he said. “Hallucinations. Paranoia. Riss, we’ve got to get you to a doctor, to a medical facility. Somewhere where you and your crew can be properly tested and treated.”

“No,” she tried. “No, that’s not it at all.”

“Don’t, don’t say anything else,” he continued rapidly. “I’ll send a message to, ah, to.”

He stopped. To whom? Mars had enough infected settlers already. What would Martin say? Surely the administrator had his hands full as it was, dealing with several hundred sick settlers along with a critical food shortage situation.

And Gen had promised that they would all arrive practically the next day. An impossible scenario.

“Sam,” she said. “I know this may seem a bit strange to you. I mean, it still seems strange to us. But.”

He waited again, calmer. Riss didn’t appear ill to his eyes. She looked the same as always. Maybe even a little bit stronger. More confident. Reserved.

She still said nothing. Her eyes were closed, almost imperceptibly, as if she were meditating.

“Riss,” Weng finally said, breaking the silence. “Tell me what you need me to do. And I’ll do it.”

She smiled and opened her eyes again. “I know I can always trust you, Sam.”

A light on his console. Gen had just sent another message. Weng’s hands danced across the console, confirming. He selected another menu, dragged down, overlaid the pattern and cross-checked the gravitational fields.

“I’m sending the plotted course to the Mars colonies to you,” he said. “Along with a copy of the contact cypher that Gen just sent to me. The Martian Overseer will need to know it’s us before we arrive.”

“Sam,” she said. “I need you to concentrate.”

“Concentrate?”

“Yes. Close your eyes and concentrate on the trajectory you’ve plotted.”

“But how will—”

“Sam. Trust me. Trust us.”

He closed his eyes.

“I can’t wait to see you in person,” he said, not even blinking. “On Mars.”

Their future home.

Her voice came to him as if across a great distance, as if underwater.

“Concentrate. Imagine. Mars.”

The shuttle began to shake.

He calmly rested his arms on the chair, leaning back as his seat harness tightened. Even with his eyes closed, he could sense. Something. Just outside his perceptions. He focused, thinking with all his might. An image appeared in his mind’s eye.

Mars, he thought with satisfaction.

Their future awaited.

Next: Bringer of Light, Chapter 34: Luna Departure. Sergey returns to space on February 19th