Blog – Page 5 – Space Renaissance

May

2022

The SRI webinar with former ESA Director General Jan Wörner

Dr. Johann Dietrich “Jan” Wörner gave a beautiful lecture a few days ago – in the frame of the Space Renaissance Academy Webinar Series, coordinated by Sabine Heinz –, illustrating his favorite concept “Not going back, but going forward to the Moon”. Btw, that was also the subject of a brief speech he gave, as one of the keynote speakers, at the SRI 3^rd World Congress, end of June 2021.Dr. Wörner was the Director General of the European Space Agency since 2015 to 2021.His mandate was somehow revolutionary: while the ESA’s strategy was still focused on Telecommunication, Science and Earth Observation, he dared to put on the table the concept of a Moon Village, a permanent human outpost on the Moon, dedicated to experiment life, to explore and conduct scientific research on the Moon.

The Moon Village is one of the main topics illustrated during the lecture: the Moon is the next interesting part of the Solar System. The Moon Village is proposed as a multi-partner open project, to develop many operations on the Moon surface, human and robotic, public and private, exploration, outreach, cosmology/astronomy, transportation, communication, logistics, resources management.

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Apr

2022

A dialogue with Pope Francis on Peace and Sustainable Development

Pope Francis re-proposed a few days ago what He already had proposed in His Encyclical Letter “All Brothers”[1] of 2020:“With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to hunger and favour development in the most impoverished countries, so that their citizens will not resort to violent or illusory solutions, or have to leave their countries in order to seek a more dignified life.”How could we disagree on such a proposition of the Holy Father?

In the quoted Encyclical Letter, He also talks about the dramatic lack of big projects, widely shared world-wide, to inspire and motivate people to work for the development of the whole humankind. He also talks about the philosophy of expendability, according to which certain parts of humanity are seen as expendable, when they are not productive, such as the elderly, and the lack of children, which causes an aging population, and a culturally decaying society.

Considering all of these negative conditions together, the current age, characterized by a multiple global crisis, could appear hopeless. Namely, the complain about lack of children sounds as a desperate call, when the widely shared sentiment is that there are “too many humans on planet Earth”.

Yet, we think that Francis’s calls are right and fully worth of support, though they are not properly sustained by concrete programs and strategies. The real question should be: how to assure proper sustainability to human growth, in the 21^st Century?

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Mar

2022

Why civilian space development is key today, for us humans, to overcome the global crisis

The crisis of Cuba in 1962 – mentioned in the Lord Rees’s book “Our Final Hour” (2003) — was the event that brought us closest to a nuclear war. According to the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., one of Kennedy’s counselors, at that time: “This was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to blow up the world. Fortunately, Kennedy and Khrushchev were leaders of restraint and sobriety; otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be here today.”

I believe this is the main argument to respond to the nowadays under-estimators of the current war in Ukraine, and its effects on global economy, space policy and destiny of civilization at large. In addition to the Schlesinger Jr.’s statement, nowadays we have several leaders which are all but restraint and sober. First of all the new Zar, grown up in the paranoid environment of KGB. Yet we have other recent cases, in the western world too. Moving beyond the obvious condemn of the absurd invasion of Ukraine, suffocating any possibility for people to decide whether they want to be Ukrainian or Russian, the danger for civilization is extremely high, indeed. The availability of thousands of nuclear warheads in the hand of psychopathic leaders makes a WWIII extremely much more dangerous than the previous world wars, the very likely trigger of a global civilization implosion.

Relying on wars to solve conflicts and to relaunch economy through destruction was always a wrong way, yet nowadays is a total nonsense. It is not superfluous to restate this, since we perfectly know that, among Earthers, many secretely plauded to Covid19 pandemic as a “natural” agent to reduce population – the thought runs back to Nicolò Machiavelli, who plauded the pest, as a “purge” of society. The absurdity of such concept should be clear: a pandemic kills both bad and good people, useless and useful, including many which could offer solutions to thousands of shared small and big problems. And now such fellows of Armageddon, publicly sad for thousands deaths and million refugees, secretely plaud to the war, as another knight of Apocalypse, to “moderate” human growth.

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Jan

2022

JWST LAUNCH: EuroMoonMars & Space Renaissance Virtual Event

The Webb Telescope gave humanity a great Christmas present on last 25th December, when it successfully completed its launch and the first steps of the mission. It was an epoch-making event that marked the beginning of a new era in the observation of our Universe. With all eyes on it, this cutting-edge technology — whose value is approximately $10 billion — was launched aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana and it is currently undergoing the Deployment Process. Among the eyes that watched the event with particular expectations and excitement, were also those of the EuroMoonMars community, an ILEWG initiative that brings together researchers, experts and students with a strong passion for Space.It was with this spirit and enthusiasm that EuroMoonMars decided to organise a virtual event in preparation for the launch. The initiative took place on 24th December at 1pm CET and it was organised in collaboration with Space Renaissance International, a global non-profit organisation dedicated to bringing humanity closer to interdisciplinary space-related topics. The event — which was broadcast live on Space Renaissance International official youtube channel — was a fruitful moment of explanation, debate and questioning on different aspects of the Webb Telescope. The initial idea behind the organisation of the virtual session was to meet in the presence of some guests and experts to follow the launch in real time. The launch had in fact been scheduled by the Space Agencies for 24th December. After the announcement of its postponement, the programme of the event was revisited. The guests’ contributions covered different topics and highlighted the complexity of this innovative instrument.

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Dec

2021

Webb, and Psyche

We just attended the launch of the James Webb Telescope, headed to the Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2 (L2), at 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. A very ambitious project, aimed to place a human eye in a location where it will be easier to investigate the origin and the meaningful life events of the universe, of our solar system and our mother planet.What raised some thoughts in my mind is one of the characteristics of this beautiful sample of human ingenuity and hunger for knowledge: the JWST mirror has been plated with gold, due to elements properties like a high reflection of infrared light and extreme un-reactivity. My aim is not to discuss this choice from the scientific point of view. It makes me rather think about the value of precious metals, that’s not only their beauty, nor the use we make of them to realize precious jewels.

While I was in space just with my mind, it was easy to go some more million kilometers further away, reaching to the 16 Psyche Asteroid. Psyche – an M-type asteroid, fragment of a proto-planet broken up during the birth of the solar system — dwells somewhere in the middle of the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The distance from Earth ranges from 252 million to 645 million kilometers.

Why Psyche owns such a great reputation, among the space expansionist community, and the space miners subassembly, in a more specific way? Its diameter is estimated not less than 227 km. Due to the gravitational perturbations it causes among other asteroids in its surroundings, Psyche is kind of under special surveillance, since long time. Such perturbations are due to high mass and density, and such properties raised further analysis, by means of ultraviolet light observation. To make short a long research story, Psyche is likely mainly composed by iron and nichel, and its global value is estimated around $10 quintillion, a figure even hard to imagine.

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Nov

2021

Space Renaissance 2021: Highlights and Perspectives, and a Special Invitation

As we are progressing towards the end 2021, let’s summarize what we did and where we are for Space Renaissance International. It was a quite intense and fruitful year.

A first Key Performance Indicator is membership: we have grown more than 110% in membership since November 2020, but we need more registrations, and partnerships!

Since November 2020 to June 2021 we held 6 webinars in preparation of SRIC3, the 3^rd SRI World Congress, with many panelists, top experts of space themes, e.g., among others: Patrick Collins, Sam Coniglio, Andreas Bergweiler, Al Globus, Rino Russo, Tommaso Sgobba, Jonathan Tate, Luigina Feretti, Stefano Antonetti, Joe Pelton, Michelle Hanlon, Rick Tumlinson, Bernard Foing, Thomas Matula, Shaun Moss, Jerry Stone, Susan Jewell, Dan Cottita, Bruce MacKenzie, Isaac Arthur, Howard Bloom, Bart Womack, Giorgia Pontetti, Enrico Feoli, Alessandro Sciaraffa, Emanuele Pensavalle, The Cometan, Giulio Prisco, Alberto Cavallo, Tsvi Bisk, Steven Wolfe, Paul Ziolo.

On 18-19 March 2021, SRI was main partner in organizing GALIX Inaugural congress to EuroMoonMars Earth Space Innovation EMMESI Leiden/Hybrid workshop. SRI will be partner in GALIX 2022/EMMESI workshop planned on 14-17 March 2022.

End of June we held the 3^rd SRI World Congress “The Civilian Space Development”, 5 days of intense discussion, 70 papers presented, a final resolution and two theses documents discussed and voted. The Congress elected the new President, Prof. Bernard Foing, and the new Board of Directors, that will lead our association during next five years, towards 2025.

The Congress was a great success, with 10 keynote speakers and more than 1000 attendees over the 5 days. Among the keynote speakers we had: Jan Wörner, Rick Tumlinson, Michelle Hanlon, Bob Zubrin, Gary Barnhard, Susan Ip-Jewell.

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Nov

2021

A SRI report from IAC2021, 72nd International Astronautical Congress at Dubai

More than 6500 space enthusiasts and participants from over 110 countries attended the 72nd International Astronautical Congress in Dubai, from 25 to 29 October, under the theme “Inspire, Innovate & Discover for the Benefit of Mankind”. It was the first time ever of an IAC to be celebrated in a Middle East Country. The IAC Exhibition guested over 90 exhibitors from around the world, with 46 entities participating for the very first time.Some exciting announcements came up during the Congress: Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Space and other partners announced the plan to build a commercial space station called Orbital Reef, to be located at LEO, scheduled to be up and running by the late 2020s. Lockheed Martin and Nanoracks had also announced their intent to build a space station called “Starlab”.The Congress programme included 183 technical sessions with 1,442 registered speakers (included your truly 😊 and SRI members), 18 special sessions, 12 symposium keynotes and over 150 interactive presentations. Our SRI Board Member, Julio Rezende, was active in several sessions, dealing with food production in space, habitats for Mars, psychology and human life safety in space. Our SRI president was organizing the A3 Space Exploration Symposium, chaired several sessions and participated to various panels.

My general impression of this Congress, in a random list. The IAC Congress organized by IAF, taking place each year, reflects well the space community activities, projects, and also climate, mood and feelings. New Space is now a consolidated industrial and social process, well routed on its way. Nobody can anymore deny the relevance of reusable rockets, and the large majority of the speakers I have listened to are basing their hypothesis and projects on the meaningful downsizing of cost to orbit, brought by reusability: many space designers are now allowed to aim higher. Maybe not yet higher as they could and should, but work is finally in progress.

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