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Private Enterprise- To mars

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Author Topic: Private Enterprise- To mars  (Read 23394 times)
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HereForNow
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« Reply #255 on: October 12, 2007, 08:48:43 pm »

Shirley MacLaine stars as herself in this TV movie, a recreation of a love affair and spiritual adventure that took the actress to exotic locales. Shirley, feeling something lacking in her life, finds herself drawn toward the idea that there is more to living and the world around her than what we generally acknowledge. She delves into the study of metaphysics and religion via books, various kindred spirits and firsthand observations. She travels to Peru, where a man named David Manning shares with her information that leads to her having an out-of-body experience. She ends believing in reincarnation, the possible existence of extraterrestrials, and the immorality of the human soul.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_on_a_Limb"


Great mini-series. Imagine doing that in a hot-tub, or covering your body in nothing more then a pacho or blanet.
I loved the movie though. Very cool story.
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« Reply #256 on: October 13, 2007, 10:39:08 am »

I remember when the book first came out, she was almost laughed out of Hollywood.  Everyone thought she'd gone over the deep end.  But basically, she single handedly heightened people's awareness of their spiritual side.
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An open-minded view of the past allows for an unprejudiced glimpse into the future.

Logic rules.

"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong."
HereForNow
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« Reply #257 on: October 13, 2007, 01:05:50 pm »

She definitely did that for me. That movie aired on ABC for the first time and only made all the more interested in paranormal research/investigation. Then I stumbled on to how every time the truth slips out about anything, it is never seen or heard again. This only made me all the more interested.

Finally I actually got go ghost hunting. I went on a few investigations with others who have interests.
This was a little too intense though. It took one really bad experience for me to understand that some things are better left unknown. Astral projections, is a really good subject and I love discussing it. However, after learning the hard way that the super-natural can hurt you. I prefer to stay embodied, with all my physical senses remaining my own.

Listening to a womens voice change to a mans voice and suddenly being attacked is usually where most people draw the line.  Smiley I heard the recording and saw the video of this experience and it was enough to
keep me on the research side of the fence.



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HereForNow
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« Reply #258 on: October 14, 2007, 11:39:20 am »

We propose a self-assembly and self-repair method for a homogeneous distributed mechanical system. We focus on a category of distributed systems composed of numbers of identical units which can dynamically change connections among themselves. Each unit has an onboard microprocessor, and local communication between neighboring units is possible. We discuss a distributed method for a group of such units to metamorphose from an arbitrary configuration into a desired configuration through cooperation by the units. This process, called self-assembly, is realized by identical software on each unit with local inter-unit communication. An extension of self-assembly, self-repair, is also examined. In this process, an occasional cut-off of an arbitrary part of the system is assumed. When some part of the system detects damage, the whole system degenerates and reconstructs itself. Computer simulations show the feasibility of self-assembly and self-repair. Now this idea as discussed in the prior posts uses nanotechnology to produce this effect, while collecting energy and other materials needed from the enviroment in space.

This is a very important machanism for interplanetary travel.......

Nothing about this is science-fiction because the technology is being developed and even considered in architecture. 
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« Reply #259 on: October 21, 2007, 09:04:11 am »

There are three thrusts to trying to build living machines. First is to build robots with partial characteristics of living machines, looking for the key intellectual ideas that make them possible. The second is to use generalized evolutionary systems to investigate possible mechanisms and designs. Generalized evolutionary systems use analogs of physical processes to organize the world for evolving systems, living in that world. The third thrust is to develop a new mathematics of living systems. This new mathematics interacts with the first two thrusts in two ways. It is inspired by the first two thrusts to formalize the notions developed there. Additionally it is used to provide constraints on the design spaces in the first two thrusts, to guide the research work to the appropriate areas.
The future of robotics lies beyond mimicking humans and in machines that transform themselves into configurations based on changing circumstances. Some of these machines may resemble creatures from the natural world, but others may be original, concocted to repair a sudden failing or find a way around an unexpected obstruction. You can be sure that the robots that eventually colonize the galaxies or explore the uncharted depths of Earth’s oceans won’t look like a jogging butler. In fact, they won’t look like any single thing at all because their primary talent will be shape-shifting.

Self-assembly and self-repair are defining attributes of complex life. Think of the army of cellular agents, including white blood cells and platelets, that jump into action over a mere paper cut—rebuilding the tissue, warding off infection, and alerting the rest of the body to the wound through the A-delta fibers of the nervous system, which are involved in the transmission of acute pain sensations. DNA has an elaborate system for minimizing errors when it makes copies of itself. Otherwise, multicellular life would be filled with an intolerably high number of defects. And thanks to the encodings of DNA, cells are capable of complex forms of self-assembly, depending on the task that the body requires in each stage of development. The same genetic strand can be used to build a neuron or a white blood cell or a sliver of muscle tissue.

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HereForNow
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« Reply #260 on: November 04, 2007, 10:26:41 am »

Cosmic rays and solar radiation is extremely dangerous. Finding ways to sheild astronauts is alot of solving the challenges we face in a trip to Mars. One of the things I'm seeing as a huge advantage down the road is adapting the body to the enviroment of space.

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HereForNow
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« Reply #261 on: November 11, 2007, 04:56:49 pm »

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Australian scientists have found that stem cells taken from adults could have the same life-saving potential as those taken from embryos, a discovery that could potentially end the contentious debate over embryonic research.

The results from the four-year project, at Australia's Griffith University in Queensland, show that adult stem cells harvested from the nose can be grown into virtually any kind of cell in the human body.

Until now it has been thought that adult stem cells could only develop into different cell types of their own tissue, unlike embryonic stem cells which can turn into any body cell type.

Griffith University researcher Professor Alan Mackay-Sim said the study showed that olfactory stem cells could develop into heart cells, liver cells, kidney cells, muscle cells, brain cells and nerve cells. In addition the olfactory stem cells did not have the problems of rejection or forming tumors as is common with embryonic stem cells.

"Our experiments have shown adult stem cells isolated from the olfactory mucosa have the ability to develop into many different cell types if they are given the right chemical or cellular environment, Professor Mackay-Sim said, in research published on the Internet.

"These adult olfactory stem cells appear to have the same ability as embryonic stem cells in giving rise to many different cell types but have the advantage that they can be obtained from all individuals, even older people who might be most in need of stem cell therapies. Stem cells obtained and transplanted into the same person would not be rejected by the immune system," he said.

These technologies can also help rebuild bone loss and tissue damage caused by cosmic rays.
Proper sheilding from these rays should be considered, however with a lack of hospitals in space. Medical break-throughs in cell regrowth and repair is something that humans need to have for traveling long durations in space.

One more reason that a planetary space station is going to have to be more massive then present space ship designs. This increases the length and safety of Mars missions and prolonged space missions to an indefinite amount of time.
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HereForNow
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« Reply #262 on: February 17, 2008, 02:52:30 pm »

Now it's just a hunch.....

How does "0" gravity effect cellular developement? Outside the body.
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« Reply #263 on: March 08, 2008, 03:31:47 pm »

Quote
Now it's just a hunch.....

How does "0" gravity effect cellular developement? Outside the body.

Just a hunch too, but how could it not?   Wink

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HereForNow
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« Reply #264 on: April 02, 2008, 07:06:53 pm »

The timing, molecular basis, and morphophysiological and behavioral consequences of the interaction between external environment and the internal genetic pool that shapes the nervous system over a lifetime remain important questions in basic neuroscientific research. Space station offers the opportunity to study this interaction over several life cycles in a variety of organisms. This short review considers past work in altered gravity, particularly on the vestibular system, as the basis for proposing future research on space station, and discusses the equipment necessary to achieve goals. It is stressed that, in keeping with the international investment being made in this research endeavor, both the questions asked and the technologies to be developed should be bold. Advantage must be taken of this unique research environment to expand the frontiers of neuroscience.

 Wink

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6SYS-3V3X5JP-7&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0b96063b9ce38477bb7a0ba8fe4cec61
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HereForNow
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« Reply #265 on: April 29, 2008, 06:23:02 am »

One of the things that I'm seeing our governments being able to do for the trips to mars is to combined present Mars agendas with resouces that are already in orbit. Reffering to ISS........

With a new space race well under way between Russia and the United States to Mars. I see a very real possibility that with China involved, going to Mars sooner can be accomplished.

Here's a look at what we have to work with now.

ISS Photo taken Oct. 2007

 
Now adding Chinese, American and russian proposals to send humans to Mars reqires a large craft.
I beleive that by taking the recent proposals to send humans to Mars and combinding them to the ISS And launching this interplanetary space station would be the most logical and cost effective plan to date for the manned Mars mission. It would then be a matter of simply launching Components insteads of huge payloads to the ISS, making it more spherical to improve mobility and rotation of station to create the artificial gravity needed for the jorney.
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HereForNow
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« Reply #266 on: May 11, 2008, 12:21:07 pm »

The only question is just when commercial enterprises will begin to pose a serious challenge to government-funded space exploration. The answer: soon. That, at least, is the message of "Rocketeers," Michael Belfiore's enlightening survey of the entrepreneurs bent on conquering space.





In the old days of science fiction, the recipe for conquering space was simple: take some genius rocket scientists, maybe add a rich guy who shared the dream and provided funds, stir in a lot of backyard-style tinkering, and soon you'd have a spacecraft that did the job. From E.E. Smith's "The Skylark of Space" (1928) to Robert Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo" (1947), the assumption was that spaceflight would take off pretty much the way aviation had taken off, thanks to the skilled hands of dedicated amateurs who would blaze a trail soon to be followed by big business and big government.
It didn't work out that way, of course. The earliest days of rocketry, when Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun built rockets in garages in the 1920s and 1930s, did look like the early days of aviation. But by 1957, when the first Sputnik satellite was launched, it was clear that space exploration was going to be mostly a job for federal agencies and tax dollars.

The big-government approach did get us to the moon--the process might have been expensive and complicated, but it had also been fast, and it had worked. Unfortunately, the big-government approach stopped working. The Apollo program was ended early, the promised follow-up missions didn't appear, and talk of going to Mars quickly died down. We spent most of a decade waiting for the Space Shuttle, and when it arrived it was a disappointment: an orbital trucking service, and not a cheap or reliable one either. The International Space Station was likewise slow, overpriced and in some ways even creakier than the Mir and Skylab stations that had preceded it.

As NASA has lost its glow in recent years, space enthusiasts have begun to wonder whether early science-fiction writers might have been right after all. And indeed, private-sector space initiatives are heating up again. So far, as Michael Belfiore shows in "Rocketeers," the results look promising.

Mr. Belfiore opens with a discussion of Peter Diamandis, the communications entrepreneur who, in 1996, announced an open competition for what he called the X Prize. (It was renamed the Ansari X Prize after two venture capitalists, Amir and Anousheh Ansari, put up $10 million for the award.) The challenge to competitors: Develop a spacecraft able to carry three people to an altitude of roughly 62 miles--generally regarded as the point where airspace ends and outer space begins--and safely return them to Earth, then repeat the trip within two weeks.

The X Prize contest was reminiscent of aviation's early days, when privately funded prizes inspired design competitions and trial-and-error efforts with comparatively little governmental help. Charles Lindbergh didn't fly the Atlantic with the assistance of a federal grant; he was chasing the Orteig Prize. And Lindbergh was one of many aviators competing for the $25,000 award--it touched off a frenzy of creative thinking and problem-solving.

The Ansari X Prize was won in 2004 by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. The excitement over the contest prompted others to look afresh at the possibilities of space transportation. Mr. Belfiore offers an inside look at many of these "NewSpace" entrepreneurs, including John Carmack, the creator of the Doom video game. In 2001, he launched the Armadillo Aerospace project, currently competing for the million-dollar NASA Lunar Lander Prize. Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, has started SpaceX, a startup that has launched everything from Naval research payloads to the ashes of "Star Trek" actor James Doohan.

Not every NewSpace venture has its roots in technology and engineering. Budget Suites owner Robert Bigelow has gotten into the game with Bigelow Aerospace. His goal: orbital hotels. The company has already launched two spacecraft. And outdoor advertising mogul George French is behind Rocketplane, which bills itself as "a commercial space transportation company focused on providing safe, reliable and low-cost access to space."

If private-sector space exploration efforts bring to mind aviation's early days, they also evoke the personal-computer world circa 1975: a lot of creative energy and a critical mass of engineers, early-adopter customers, bold financiers, and start-up suppliers and subcontractors. Like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in the pioneering days of the PC, the rocketry folks display a sense of mission as they pursue transformative breakthroughs rather than short-term gains.





On Memorial Day weekend, in Dallas, I attended the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference for the first time in more than a decade, and the change was striking. In the early 1990s, the gathering had the atmosphere of a Star Trek convention; now it's something different, with Brioni-suited venture capitalists and prosperous, big-firm lawyers filling auditorium seats and schmoozing with tech-geeks between panel discussions. Shortly afterward, it was announced that Northrop Grumman was buying Burt Rutan's company outright. The amount paid was undisclosed, but Old Space clearly wants a piece of NewSpace and is willing to pay serious money to get it.
The combination of lavish investment, entrepreneurial zeal and technological inventiveness may well give a big lift to nongovernmental efforts at space exploration. Mr. Belfiore does a terrific job of capturing the dream-chasing that is already under way. If we ever see cities on the moon or Mars--the kind of thing science fiction once promised so enticingly--I'm betting that the lion's share of credit will go not to NASA but to 21st-century rocketeers.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010399


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HereForNow
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« Reply #267 on: May 11, 2008, 12:23:01 pm »

For a fraction of Bill Gates net worth- We could launch manned crews to tour the entire solar system.
Do the Math............
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« Reply #268 on: May 11, 2008, 12:36:29 pm »

Earlier on in this thread, I gave a fairly detailed explanation of "my" idea of using self-assembly.

The design of a machine which is composed of homogeneous mechanical units is described. We show the design of both hardware and control software of the unit. Each unit can connect with other units and change the connection by itself. In spite of its simple mechanism, a set of these units realizes various mechanical functions. We developed the control software of the unit which realizes “self-assembly,” one of the basic functions of this machine. A set of these units can form a given shape of the whole system by themselves. The units exchange information about local geometric relation by communication, and cooperate to form the whole shape through a diffusion-like process. There is no upper level controller to supervise these units, and the software of each unit is completely the same. Three actual units have been built to test the basic movements, and the function of self-assembly has been verified by computer simulation.
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« Reply #269 on: May 11, 2008, 12:38:47 pm »





 


The modules can rearrange themselves into countless different shapes and create different patterns of movement. M-TRAN can configure itself to march on four legs, shape-shift into a long string of modules that slithers across the floor like a snake, or it can pull itself into a wheel and roll or creep along the ground with its legs splayed out like a spider’s. The robot can even evolve a new walking strategy if it looses one module.

The possibilities are so immense that many of M-TRAN’s patterns of motion aren’t designed directly by human programmers. Genetic algorithms allow the robot to discover new ways of moving on its own. The M-TRAN computer cycles through possible patterns of motion, selecting the most promising ones, sampling their effectiveness, making further selections till the software evolves a new pattern that the robot can adopt.

Future uses for M-TRAN's descendants include space rovers or deep-sea probes, as well as explorers in unknown or complicated environments, looking for people under debris or fixing leaky valves in polluted areas, such as nuclear plants.

http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/dsysd/mtran3/FlashMovie/mtran3/movie.htm
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