Christopher Wanjek’s journey to publishing his book, entitled Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, began when Harvard University offered him the opportunity to write on any topic for a book series.
As a senior writer at NASA for ten years, Christopher Wanjek looked forward to writing on topics that he was already familiar with: the big bang, black holes, and gravitational waves. However, he quickly found that all his topics of expertise were already taken and decided to turn his eyes on a slightly different topic: space colonization.
Most astrophysicists believe that space colonization is so complicated, tedious, and difficult, it isn’t worth discussing yet. We just aren’t at that point where we can think of going to space.
However, Christopher Wanjek’s book doesn’t explore the nitty-gritty mechanics or quantum physics behind humans conquering the moon and stars. Instead, he gives us the opportunity to view the space race and the growing space industry in a different light. The main question he works to answer in his book is: why would we go to space, and then stay up there?
Christopher Wanjek likened our current perspective of living in space to living on Mount Everest. While the most seasoned mountain climbers dream of eventually reaching the summit, nobody lives on the summit itself because it’s not practical. So are there any economic and emotional motivations for people on the ground, like you and I, to reach and settle on the moon?
Alexander McCaig explained that according to Christopher Wanjek’s book, there are three main reasons humans support space exploration. We either want to go to space because we have religious reasons, economic reasons, or for war—like in the space race.
Of the three, war is the easiest reason humans can resonate with. It has already happened before, between the US and Russia. And Alexander McCaig notes that getting there isn’t the big thing—it’s the process of developing the technology that we need to get to the end goal that counts.
Christopher Wanjek gave a comprehensive logical process for making space settlements a reality. First, the involvement of tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is a great first step because it generates interest, and eventually a market, for people to go into space. While this journey is only accessible to the super wealthy, continued hype for this venture could see more people go into space as prices are lowered and it becomes more accessible. Here, the space tourism industry takes its first steps.
The next step is to have people in lower earth orbit, like the International Space Station. Their participation in the market can be valuable because their presence generates competition. This competition serves as an incentive for players in the market to innovate and make resources more affordable, which would in turn stimulate the space industry overall.
Now that we have clear and tangible steps that we can take to make space colonization a reality, the next question is: how can we incentivize humanity to support it?
Christopher Wanjek shared that in his experience, many people doubted the urgency of exploring space. After all, humanity already has tons of problems on earth, so why shouldn’t we just focus on our own planet first?
He pointed out that this is a common misunderstanding because everything developed for the space industry has helped earth. For example, communication satellites help broadcast television signals around the world. Weather satellites allow us to predict future weather patterns.
In the future, space holds even more in store for us earthlings. Since there’s uranium on the moon, we could develop the technology and infrastructure to build nuclear power plants. The moon also doesn’t have any dust clouds, so we could find a way to harness solar energy and then transport it to earth.
Of course, the timeline for this venture will probably span decades. If the ice race to Antarctica took a ton of manpower, imagine how much more it would take for us to be comfortable in space.
Despite our technologies developing at an unprecedented pace, space colonization may still be decades or even centuries away. This is an intergenerational effort that will take plenty of collaboration from humanity as a collective.
Most of us have never really thought about the implications of settling down away from earth. Like climbing Mount Everest, it just sounded like a cool activity to check off the bucket list. Christopher Wanjek’s research has given us so much meaningful insight into the tangible effects of expanding outside our little blue and green globe.
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Genentech and Priorities
It came to our attention that we tend to point out all the bad stuff going on. Whether it be talking about how social media companies are selling your data, other companies skimming it off your activity, tracking your location, or governments trying to force their way into the blockchain economy we tend to focus too much on the negatives. While that is a natural tendency of human nature (the news has a saying – if it bleeds, it leads), there is plenty of good stuff going on as well. We at TARTLE think it’s our responsibility to make sure you know at least as much about the good stuff as you do the bad.
Some of those good things are coming from a company called Genentech. This 40-year-old healthcare company exists to help better treat people suffering from some of the worst diseases around. Of course, it’s worth noting that this goal isn’t unique in itself. What is unique is that Genentech starts with helping people as the goal. They don’t spend a lot of time talking about profit. Not that they don’t make one, it’s just a natural result of them pursuing their primary goal of improving the health of people everywhere.
Another aspect of the way Genentech operates is that they don’t just work on improving health on the back end, treating people when they are sick. They also work on getting out in front of the problem by taking care of the environment around them.
How are they doing that? Genentech is actually doing quite a bit. They are being transparent about their goals in reducing their water use and greenhouse gas emissions and taking active steps to make those goals a reality. In transportation, they are working on building a complete electric vehicle fleet for their campus as well as providing service for that last leg from public transport not just for Genentech employees but for those of nearby businesses that aren’t big enough to have their own fleet. They are even helping to build out the rest of the infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area. In water use, they’ve managed to save 78 million gallons of water in just three years. I don’t care who you are, that’s impressive. In energy, they are working towards having all the electricity needs of its campuses supplied by clean sources. They are already well along the way and plan on getting to 100% clean electricity by 2025.
Now, all of that isn’t to say that Genentech is perfect. What are they missing? What they are missing is the right approach to data. They recently signed a multimillion-dollar deal with 23andMe to gain access to all of the genomic data on file. So, if you have done a DNA test with 23andME, Genentech is able to access and use that information without your knowledge.
Naturally, being able to access large amounts of data like that is a big asset for a healthcare company on the cutting edge of developing new treatments. Yet, they should still be getting their data ethically, not buying it from someone who shouldn’t be selling it in the first place.
This is why TARTLE is working so hard to get our name out. Many companies like Genentech would love to get the information they need from people who give their fully informed consent, yet they haven’t realized that there is a way to do exactly that. All it takes is for them to sign up in our digital marketplace as a buyer and search for exactly the kind of data they need. Not only would they be getting it from people who are willingly sharing their information, they are able to then go back to the same people for follow-ups with responses to treatments, lifestyle questions that might be relevant and much more. What’s more, they are not only getting their data ethically, they are likely to do it at less cost. When people understand what their data is going to be used for, that it will help others, they are more likely to actually donate that information. In that way, sharing data becomes ethical and charitable, and that clearly is good for everyone.
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Virtual reality has come a long way from its inception. If you can think back far enough, back to when virtual reality (VR) was first breaking into the mainstream in the mid-1990s, it was solely the realm of video games. You put your head into some sort of gigantic helmet and grabbed a couple of glorified joy sticks and essentially stumbled around in an environment that looked something like Tron. Of course, as with many new technologies, a rough start was only the beginning of the story. There were those who saw the potential of where VR could go and they kept working at it. By the early two thousands, that gigantic helmet became a gigantic visor that still had a bunch of cables coming out of it but at least got you into a much better virtual environment. Now, in the popular mainstream there are the very small and light Oculus VR goggles that connect to your phone via Bluetooth. You still look like you’re in a video game but that isn’t really a pejorative anymore given what the modern video game is capable of.
Of course, that is the mainstream affordable VR technology available today. What kind of a capabilities are available to entities like universities, corporations, and governments with massive budgets? Basically, they make the Oculus look like a Mr. Professor from the 1980s.
One of the most interesting and undeniably cool uses of VR being explored right now is in training fighter pilots. Using VR to train pilots has a lot of advantages since flying a fighter is inherently dangerous, even outside of combat. The modern fighter jet easily costs tens of millions, with the most recent F-35 running around $80 million. That, plus the life of the pilot are big things to risk every time a new pilot takes it out for his first few solo runs. Being able to get tens or hundreds of hours of virtual time flying such a complex machine under a pilot’s belt before actually sitting in the real cockpit can minimize those dangers.
How do they go about it? Project Avenger (under the auspices of the US Navy) uses state of the art equipment like traditional simulators but also lower cost virtual reality simulators that are much more available, giving pilots more virtual hours than ever before. They can also be outfitted with suits than have more sensors than the latest Mars rover, allowing analysts to track the pilots’ physical responses like temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and more – in addition to the specific data on how they are flying. All of that data can help make pilots better, analyzing when they are banking, how hard they are climbing, and relate all of that to the stresses that both the aircraft and the body are able to take.
So, does it work? Absolutely! Pilots are getting to their solo flights up to 50% faster thanks to the integration of virtual reality and analysis of source data into the training program. That means as Project Avenger develops and becomes part of the standard pilot training for all branches of the military (let’s face it, Space Force is going to jump on this), trainees will get to their squadrons not just faster, but better pilots than they would have otherwise.
Of course, there are plenty of other potential uses for VR-based training. Surgeries, underwater welding, and crane operating can all be practiced risk free in a VR environment, allowing people to make their mistakes and ‘work out the kinks’ before they put on the gear and go do it for real.
All of this shows the importance of source data in developing new programs and products. The Navy is building better pilots by working closely with them and directly acquiring and analyzing their data, in turn making the Navy better. You can also better your business when you work with TARTLE to get source data from your clients. You will understand them better and be able to tailor your business to serve their needs and so improve the lives of both customer and business.
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Once upon a time, everything in aerospace was designed with nothing more complicated than the slide rule. How many people even know what a slide rule is anymore? Those tools and a bunch of people crunching numbers with a calculator and pen and paper put men on the moon. To this day we haven’t built a rocket more powerful than the legendary Saturn V. We still have not made an aircraft that flies higher and faster than the equally impressive SR-71 Blackbird, a plane that first flew in 1964 and was retired back in 1999. The base designs for aircraft and rockets haven’t really changed much since then.
So what is left for our massive improvements in computing power as well as data gathering and analysis to accomplish? There are certain obvious things like making improvements to those base designs. There have been massive gains in engine efficiency, tweaking the aerodynamics of aircraft and the incorporation of stealth technology. Rockets of course haven’t seen many improvements in those fields but recent advancements from companies like Blue Origin and Space X have greatly improved the reusability of rockets, especially the recent successes by Elon Musk’s Space X in landing first and second stage boosters to be refurbished for reuse. Thanks to extensive use of data to build and refine their designs, those stages can land on something a little bigger than a helicopter pad. This is much more efficient than the space shuttle’s reusable boosters that would just fall into the ocean and have to be picked up by a large ship with a crane before they sank.
Even here though, in some ways, things have been pushed to their limits. In the realm of fighter craft, the human body is the limit now, as demonstrated by the existence of ‘Raptor cough’. It was discovered years ago that pilots of the F-22 Raptor had developed respiratory issues due to the stresses that flying the craft and the oxygen system used to help keep pilots alert while doing so put on the human body. Data will help design better support systems but it’s clear that physical limits are now the barrier, not our imaginations.
So again, what is left for data in aerospace and defense? Much of the best and most exciting uses of data is happening in low earth orbit, thanks to improvements in satellite technology. One of the reasons we haven’t make anything bigger than the Saturn V is because our satellites can be made smaller and still accomplish a lot more. One of the recent things that data analysis and satellites did was uncover and break up a human trafficking operation. Thanks to analysis of patterns and satellite imagery they were able to find where the traffickers’ boats were operating in the middle of the ocean.
Of course there is also the various intelligence uses of data. The ability to rapidly collect and analyze data has grown exponentially ever since 9/11 and has been used effectively to track any number of terrorist operations, including the Boston Marathon bombers. Of course, there is a whole other side to that, but that’s a different article.
Cyberwarfare has also increased dramatically since then and being able to track the spread of viruses and other malware across the internet will only become more important in the years ahead.
Finally, there is the issue of space junk. There are millions of satellites and pieces of satellites in low earth orbit right now and tracking them is a full time job. NASA has to be aware of every bit of stuff floating around up there to prevent collisions. Data analysis is essential to that operation as they don’t just have to predict where an old satellite will be tomorrow, they have to predict where it will be in ten years. Not to mention the various bits of bolts, frozen fuel, and even paint chips that can’t be so easily tracked and yet can still cause considerable damage.
While most of the major physical designs have already been nearly perfected, there are still plenty of uses for data in the world of aerospace and defense. From learning how to push the human body to its limits, to stopping human traffickers, to figuring out how to best handle our space garbage, data and the analysis of it will be a big part of the future.
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