'Suitcase' Nuclear Reactors to Power Mars Colonies : Discovery News

Nuclear power is an emotive subject -- particularly in the wake of the Fukushima power plant disaster after Japan's March earthquake and tsunami -- but in space, it may be an essential component of spreading mankind beyond terrestrial shores.Small nuclear reactors about the size ( Read more... )

Something just occurred to me:

Our modern, high-tech civilization requires helium for numerous applications. It is a superfluid that will remain liquid all the way down to absolute zero (0K), something that is true of no other element, not even hydrogen. For that reason it is used for refrigeration in our MRI scanners and other vitally needed ( Read more... )

How about videos that show Mars like this


( Read more... )

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/17/first-habitable-planet-2030_n_862785.html

Scientists may be just steps from discovering the first habitable planet beyond our own. Gliese 581d, a planet orbiting the red-dwarf star Gliese, may ( Read more... )

http://xkcd.com/893/

"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space -- each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."

% Banner Notes - Sad. ( Read more... )