Space "Taxis" Make for Cheaper, Less Complicated Flights

Image: Boeing

The future of spaceflight is streamlined, cheap flights with no need for bells and whistles--like say, airlocks. MSNBC analyst James Oberg has a great piece on how private space corporations are aiming for inexpensive vehicles that get astronauts from point a to point b without having to spend a lot of time in orbit or performing other tasks. Since the main mission would be immediately dock with a space station or ship already in orbit, NASA and other agencies are looking at vehicles akin to the Soyuz class capsules or something similar to the Gemini/Mercury programs that the US sent up in the 60s. Oberg puts up a few design suggestions of his own:

• Electrical power? Batteries are fine — recharge when you reach the station, or if you can’t, land immediately. No solar panels, no fuel cells, nothing complex or exotic.
• Navigation? Big radar dishes, even complex transponders, are unnecessary, with differential GPS navigation now the baseline for most flying all over the planet.
• Spacewalking? No need, so no airlock, either. At most, the crew would wear in-cabin pressure suits such as those used on Soyuz missions.
• Passenger accommodations? Room for each passenger in a foldaway seat, and space to turn around if desired would be more than adequate for the short flight. No exercise equipment would be needed. No DVD library.
• Hygiene? A maximum of 24 hours of independent flight suggests a minimum toilet (or just Apollo-era plastic bags with sticky openings). Or low-residue pre-launch diets, and diapers.
• Passenger comforts? None. Forget hot food and a complex galley. Box lunches will do. Forget even windows, except for the pilot’s view forward at docking. There need only be minimal carry-on luggage — a take-aboard allowance that would make today’s commercial airlines seem generous.
• Bulky docking hardware? These mechanically robust components are often a significant fraction of a spaceship’s weight, but the space station can also now grapple a nearby vehicle and emplace it gently on the desired berthing interface.

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Boeing has it's own design for future capsules (as pictured above)

4,000-Year-Old Euro Mummies Found in... China?!

Image: Liu Yu Sheng via New York Times

A cemetery of 200 mummy's from four millennia ago has been discovered in the Xinjiang of China (north of Tibet)--extremely well preserved thanks to the arid air of the Gobi Desert. The rest of the story is so weird that the NYT does better than I ever could at recounting. From the New York Times:

Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

Of course! How else can you find a cemetery of mummies under a pile of boats? There's more...

The 200 or so mummies have a distinctively Western appearance, and the Uighurs, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, have cited them to claim that the autonomous region was always theirs. Some of the mummies, including a well-preserved woman known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by Li Jin, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University, who said in 2007 that their DNA contained markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.

The mummies in the Small River Cemetery are, so far, the oldest discovered in the Tarim Basin. Carbon tests done at Beijing University show that the oldest part dates to 3,980 years ago. A team of Chinese geneticists has analyzed the mummies’ DNA.

Full story.....

What we all feared: jellyfish are immortal

A species of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, may be the world's only known immortal species, according to scientists. Apparently the hydrozoan can vacillate between youth (polyp) and adult stages of growth--prolonging it's unusual, eldritch existence. From  WorldHealth.net:

Through this process - called transdifferentiation - the jellyfish is able to return to its polyp state, the first stage of the life of a jellyfish. During transdifferentiation, its cells can become completely transformed. For example, a muscle cell could become a nerve cell - even an egg. The jellyfish then reproduces asexually and breed hundreds of jellyfish that are identical to the original adult. This process can be repeated - again and again, but only as an emergency measure. As Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute says, "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion."

Upside: they're the size of a human pinky fingernail
Downside: THEY'RE IMMORTAL!!

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Also at TimesOnline

Two-Story Tall Fungus Fossils Found

Image: Mary Parrish via MSNBC

Researchers say that waaaay back in the Silurian and Devonian periods (350-420 million years ago....you remember those from science class, right?) the world's largest fungus grew to around 26 feet tall--about the size of modern telephone poles. The fungus, called Prototaxites, was about the width of a tree trunk. From MSNBC:

"The above-ground structure -- what actually gets preserved as a fossil -- would have been involved in spore dispersal, like a mushroom," he added. "For that purpose, the higher off the ground you can get, the farther spores will travel on the wind."

He and his colleagues first began to suspect Prototaxites was a fungus and not a plant after they analyzed carbon isotopes in its fossils. These remaining carbon atoms can suggest what existing, and once-living, organisms ate. Boyce explained that since plants derive their energy from the sun and its carbon from carbon dioxide in the air, the carbon isotope signatures for plants tend to look the same.

Kinda cool, let's face it, also kinda creepy!
Full article....