Category: Geeking Science

Government provided logo for the Artemis Accords

The Artemis Project (returning mankind to the Moon by 2026 to develop a testing station for technology to use when visiting other planets, a research station for learning about our Moon, and port for jumping off to explore Mars) has created the opportunity for the Artemis Accords. Over forty countries have signed the Accords, that is a fifth of Earth’s nations. (Note that the biggest “competitors” to the USA in space, China and Russia, have not joined.) 

This is something to Geek About!!!

“The accords establish a practical set of principles to guide space exploration cooperation among nations. … The Artemis Accords reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. They also strengthen the commitment by the United States and signatory nations to the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices NASA and its partners support, including the public release of scientific data. More countries are expected to sign the accords in the months and years ahead, which are advancing safe, peaceful, and prosperous activities in space.” (Bardan)

That said, the Artemis Accords are very USA centered in the interpretation of how space law should work, including the commercial activities such as mining. Both Russia and China object to that base. (Wikipedia)

The key principals in the Accords is as follows (from Lea):

1. Peaceful Exploration of space
2. Transparency / public release of scientific information
3. Emergency Assistance
4. Registration of Space Objects
5. Preserving Heritage – Preserving robot or human landing sites of historical significance
6. Space Resources – Extracting and using resources from celestial bodies is needed to explore space and permitted.
7. Orbital Debris.

The full Artemis Accords wording can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Artemis-Accords-signed-13Oct2020.pdf

The Orbital Debris (Section 12) is an interesting addition and includes both reduction of the present debris and requiring all new space structures come with a de-orbit plan for safe disposal. I also adore the Transparency section.

Fingers-crossed, the spirit of international cooperation will continue.

Biography

Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Welcomes Greece as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory.” NASA. 2024 Feb 9. (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-welcomes-greece-as-newest-artemis-accords-signatory/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

Lea, Robert. “Artemis Accords: What are they & which countries are involved?” space.com. 2024 May 16. (https://www.space.com/artemis-accords-explained – last viewed 5/22/2024)

NASA. “The Artemis Accords.” (undated) (https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

US Mission Unvie. “An Interview with NASA’s Kevin Conole.” US Mission to International Organizations in Vienna. 2022 February 25. (https://vienna.usmission.gov/nasas-kevin-conole-on-the-artemis-accords/ – last viewed 5/22/2024)

Wikipedia. “Artemis Accords.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords – last viewed 5/22/2024

Photo by Daniele La Rosa Messina on Unsplash

I’m looking forward to a future with Solar Power and unchaining mankind’s future from fossil fuels. But I have always watched it with a careful eye – solar panels needed fossil fuels to create them initially. Then batteries good enough for cars suck up the scare lithium of our planet, using either pit mining techniques or extensive chemicals sprayed underground, with the possibility of entering the water table, to extract the necessary ore. All the while Climate Change and our huge carbon footprint has been ticking a countdown clock.

Will we, as a species, beat the clock we set in motion? Will we run out of coal, (a resource created before microbes started breaking down plantlife (as found in the planet’s present cycle of growth, death and renewal) and so now will never be created again)? We will run out of oil (a resource made on the bones of dinosaurs long extinct)? Will we stop burning our plantlife, releasing carbon into the atmosphere before the greenhouse moves from oven-warming to full-on bake?

Two new things carry a lot of promise of making solar energy cheaper and even more feasible, and they don’t come with a huge chemical price tag further damaging our environment either gathering the material or making it.

The first is a carbon material that is strong, light, and conductive. Resulting from a $20 million investment by the US Air Force, Department of Energy, and NASA, Galvorn is made by splitting hydrocarbons and basically can be made into a variety of fiber-like products: yarn, thread, or mesh cloth. As strong as steel and as light as aluminum, the material can be used instead of rebar to support cement. All the crazy things Frank Lloyd Wright did with the new reinforced concrete may be taken on another level by those who dare to experiment. Imagine walls with areas built in for recharging (because Galvorn is also as conductive as copper)! Beyond sneakers flashing while walking, entire outfits could be designed to carry electric needs. Already used to help de-ice plane wings, this light material applications are only beginning to be defined. (Kazmer)

An added bonus is Galvorn types up carbon. MIT also used carbon to develop a new supercapacitor. While cutting back on carbon footprint has been a struggle when going green, combining green materials with containing carbon is a win-win. Simple readily available cheap renewal materials to make green products. Winning the Geeking Science game all the way around.

And as cool as what Galvorn is, MIT really outdid themselves. They made cement into a supercapacitor. Not just a conductor, moving energy from one place to another, like Galvorn, but a capacitor – a storage device! We can solar power all the houses we want, but without the ability to store the energy to be used at night or on rainy days, power grids (and power grid failures) won’t be going away.

But now imagine if the cement foundation of the house stored about a day’s worth of energy! Fill it up during the day, use it during a long winter’s night. Still not perfect for rainy Seattle, but a huge step in the storage solution. Carbon is carried by water throughout the cement mix and creates a percolated carbon network. So much win all the way around – still strong enough to be a foundation to a house (still need testing on longevity), no new equipment needed to be build in or maintained, no real change in how a house functions for the people living inside it. The perfect answer to a solar house needs; as new buildings are built, solar roofs and cement capacitor foundations will become a way of life. It won’t be as good for urban environments, but wait … there is more. (Chandler)

Road are made from concrete, of which one of the primary ingredients is cement. Imagine road being recharging stations for electric cars. You drive, but you don’t run out of power! Just like the wireless technology to charge your phone, the capacitor-cement will recharge your car. Parking lots could have solar pavilion coverings (a god-send of shade in the south), which immediately dump the energy into the storage that is the parking lot cement itself, and recharging the cars in the lot without anyone plugging in.

Folks this is hard near-future science fiction. We have the technology; we just have to implement it.

Cheap, easy, sustainable. No extra work for the average joe or joan. It isn’t even a lot of new skills for construction workers – a few new tests to make sure the capacitor distributed appropriately during the drying process. The next step is develop the machines and distribute them; some incentives will be needed for companies, because new equipment always is costly.

If you have been putting off getting an electric car because of lack of distance and/or ability to recharge, imagine if every Interstate was basically one long trip without a single plug-in needed. No gas cost at all from New York to LA.

I want this for Christmas.

Bibliography

Chandler, David L. “MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials.” MIT News. 31 July 2023. (https://news.mit.edu/2023/mit-engineers-create-supercapacitor-ancient-materials-0731 – last viewed 11/16/2023)

Kazmer, Rich. “Scientists discover ‘magical’ material that’s stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum – and its potential is dizzying.” The Cool Down. 29 October 2023. (https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/galvorn-material-conductivity-steel-electronics-copper/ – last viewed 11/16/2023)

Come out and hang ten on Titian, flying around Saturn’s rings…

T-shirt design available here: https://balooie.com/surfing-titan-t-shirt/

Ready to surf on Titan? We got pictures of a shoreline thanks to space probes…

PANORAMA OF THE “SHORELINE” ON TITAN Panorama of the “Shoreline” on Titan, stitched from Huygens DISR Side-Looking and Medium-Resolution Imager raw data. Image: ESA / NASA / JPL / UA; image processing and panorama: René Pascal

Excuse me, I need to just stop and Geek a moment.

We got a frigging shoreline picture from a moon of Saturn.

Wow.

Ok, back to why I’m here Geeking Science … can you believe it is not that?

No, really it isn’t the shoreline. It is the Dragonfly.

Not a dragonfly.

Photo by Ashish Khanna on Unsplash

But THE Dragonfly

NASA’s (presently concept-only but working toward reality) drone the size of an SUV to be deployed to Titian around 2034 (if we can keep our Congress looking forward and out).  Titian has a great dense atmosphere. While Ingenuity has been slugging it out in the thin air of Mars during its over fifty flights, the Dragonfly will have plenty to work with.

At the moment, they are still testing out the eight rotor design (video below). As drone technology continues to mature on Earth, the tech will be adjusted to work on other worlds with different atmospheres. Instead of exploring worlds by inches, flights will let us cover yards and maybe even miles. And in an atmosphere like Titian we can drop in something the size of a large car and all the technology we can shove in that space. How much are we going to learn having all the instrumentation available? Considering how many different things normally fit into the small probes, I am completely Geeking about the flying space lab we will be sending to Titian … with initial results coming back before children born this year turn ten are old enough to vote if everything goes right. (see update below about timeline correction)

Interested in this tech? You can follow the Dragonfly development at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory site here: https://dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/

(And let me give kudos to whomever designed the Dragonfly logo … it’s gorgeous.)

UPDATE – TIMELINE CORRECTION: Budget reductions have reduced the mission budget by nearly 20%. This could push the launch date from 2027, and cascading the previously timeline of arrival at Titan in 2034. (The Downlink, Planetary Society, 12 May 2023)

Photo by Matt Duncan on Unsplash

Does anyone else Geek out about roads and road engineering? No? Just me then.

Well, I am going to completely Geek Out about the science of road engineering for a little bit.

Roads are FREAKING COOL!

These are one of the few places where you can see incremental improvements and how much a difference they make in our lives. For example, Rumble Strips invented in 1952 – they can be rolled into newly laid pavement or cut into existing pavement (Wikipedia – Rumble Strip) – are still undergoing improvement about where they need to be put and how. There is one on my postal delivery route down the enter of the lane, on a wide curve where it is easy to drift into oncoming traffic. I have been reminded of drifting at that location more than once; and considering the paint wear, so have others.

How about the raised pavement markers (patented in 1967) and the reflective paint used on roads? The visibility at night really helps. As does edge lanes, especially on two-lane rural roads. Can you imagine not knowing where the edge of the road is?  I remember when guessing the edge was a thing I had to do all the time … I love that white line of reflective paint to my right when driving down dark rural roads since its widespread addition with the turn of the century. And all the road lines – each contain a message – dashed is safe to pass, yellow means bad and white is good (Yellow on the left and white on the right means I’m traveling in the right direction, even if I can’t see any other signs). Brilliant. I’m talking about the raised pavement markers reflecting on highways on dark stormy nights. Age makes even the reflective paint lines hard to see; those plastic markers even work with astigmatism.

Does anyone else think about stormwater and roads and admire all the ways road engineering works to move the water off the impermeable surface to prevent road flooding and hydroplaning? When I started driving back in the early eighties, hydroplaning was common, but between road improvements, tire improvements, and car improvements (especially with the anti-lock brakes being added as a common safety device in the late eighties), I rarely feel loss of control.

Going into curves where the road is tilted, so you don’t have to slow down and you retain control easily is awesome. For a time, I lived on a road where the road was not tilted right. Both ways needed a sign saying “SLOW – 25 mph”; that was a true maximum speed. Drivers who didn’t heed that slow down from the 35 mph before and after the curve, ended up in my yard all the time. Having the engineers tip highways correctly makes me happy.

The slight bow in the road also is cool beans to have the stormwater divert off the road to either side, into the drains which run it to the nearest stream.

Related to water is the berms and center areas and their vegetation. Berms built up on the side of the roads decrease sound pollution when the soil and plants absorb the extra sound waves. The center areas and berms on highways not only mitigate traffic accidents, and control flooding with by providing ground with permeable surfaces, they reduce eyestrain – green and plants being kinder on the eyes than black asphalt and white concrete. The soil areas also, thanks to recent innovations of adding wildflower meadows, provide opportunities to create biodiversity for the planet. In urban settings, trees planted along roads reduce the sun hitting the streets, reducing the road heat sink as well as capturing rain water and decreasing street flooding.

Green reduces stress – scenic parkways increase relaxation. (Green Cities) My city has a parkway – green median, treelined, great berms – which runs through town about a mile south the “main street” with all the shops, malls, and doubles as a highway. Whenever I have the option of the parkway, I grab it even if the travel distance is longer. Strangely, because of the stop and go lights on the main street, the timing ends up being the same no matter which one I take.

More recent engineering designs for roads include:

1. Safety edges – instead of a dropoff of pavement at the side of the road, installing a bevel making it easier to pull off the road if there is no shoulder and to get back on the road surface.
2. Pedestrian Islands – when crossing multiple lanes of traffic, put an island in the median for the walkers to stop paying attention of traffic traveling one way, and start paying attention to traffic coming the other way.
3. Reflective Backplates – instead of traffic signals being lights hanging against the dark, being lost in the tall building lights of an urban environment, yellow squares offset the lights from the back behind them, increasing visibility. (7 Roadway)

Image Source: https://www.pwmag.com/roadways/video-lighthawk-alpolic-350-traffic-signal-back-plate-from-korman-signs_o

All these inventions and innovations for Roads. The constant improvement. Isn’t it freaking Geeking cool?

In case you ever wonder what I think about as I drive to writing conventions.

Do you have any favorite road engineering features? Comment below.

Bibliography

“7 Roadway Engineering Design Strategies to Make Road Safer for Drivers.” Traffic Safety Store. 18 September 2018. (https://www.trafficsafetystore.com/blog/7-roadway-engineering-design-strategies-to-make-roads-safer-for-drivers/ – last viewed 11/10/2023)

Cole, Steve. “The History (Invention) of Road and Pavement Striping.” Performed Thermoplastic. 15 August 2022. (https://preformedthermoplastic.com/the-history-invention-of-road-and-pavement-striping/ – last viewed 11/10/2023)

“Green Cities: Good Health.” University of Washington. (https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_SafeStreets.html – last viewed 11/10/2023)

Greenfield, Patrick. “Wildflower meadows to line England’s new roads in boost for biodiversity.” The Guardian. 1 December 2020. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/01/wildflower-meadows-to-line-all-major-new-uk-roads-in-boost-for-biodiversity-aoe – last viewed 11/10/2023)

“The History of Anti-Lock Brakes.” Did you know cars. (https://didyouknowcars.com/history-of-anti-lock-brakes/ – last viewed 11/10/2023)

Owen, Erika. “Why the Lines on Our Roads Look the Way They Do.” Travel + Leisure. 2 August 2016. (https://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/road-trips/history-of-lines-on-roads – last viewed 11/10/2023)

Wikipedia. “Raised Pavement Marker.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_pavement_marker – last viewed 11/10/2023)

Wikipedia. “Rumble Strip.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_strip – last viewed 11/10/2023)