‘Space’ Archives
Rogue Stars Leaving the Galaxy
Having just re-read Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars for the first time in a couple of decades, I’ve been preoccupied by the idea of ‘deep time,’ and astronomical events that play out over billions of years. The fictional trick, of course, is to pair human observation with events that take aeons to unfold. In Clarke’s novel, the [...]
The Asteroid and the Telescope
One of the topics receiving fairly little coverage in the excitement of the Planetary Resources announcement is asteroid deflection. It seems clear that learning how to reach an asteroid and extract everything from water to platinum-group metals from it will also teach us strategies for changing an asteroid’s trajectory, in the event we find one [...]
Advent of the ‘Belters’
On the Trail of the Space Pirates was a 1953 adventure written by Carey Rockwell, a house pseudonym used by a Grosset & Dunlop writer who may or may not have been one Joseph Greene, an editor for the firm in that era. We don’t know for sure who ‘Carey Rockwell’ was and no one has come forward to claim the title, but see the Tom Corbett [...]
Bringing an Asteroid to Lunar Orbit
Long before Planetary Resources was a gleam in the eye of its founders, John Lewis (University of Arizona) wrote a book that put asteroid mining into the public consciousness. Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets and Planets (Perseus Books, 1996) contains no shortage of wonders, as in the well publicized idea that a single [...]
Our First Galactic Ambassador
by Larry Klaes Larry Klaes is a long-time Centauri Dreams contributor, a practitioner of the Tau Zero Foundation and a serious devotee of space exploration and its history. Here he gives us a look at the Pioneer probes that first took us to the outer Solar System, journeys that foreshadowed the later exploits of the Voyagers and the more recent [...]
Titan’s Atmosphere Under Scrutiny
Of all the probe targets in the outer Solar System, Titan is in many ways the most provocative. Not long ago we looked at two concepts — Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) and AVIATR — that would get instruments back into Titan’s atmosphere and, in the case of TiME, onto one of its northern seas. The allure of this moon is surely what goes [...]
Another Way of Looking at Interstellar Probes
By Michael Michaud The following post is a distinct change of pace for Centauri Dreams, a work of fiction that gets at questions at the heart of SETI. We’ve considered many ideas about interstellar probes that humans may one day launch toward nearby stars. But the reverse could occur: A more advanced technological civilization could send a probe [...]
Coffee with Dr. Fermi
I cannot live without good coffee, and that means fresh beans ground right before brewing, and either manual drip or French press extraction. Every morning after publishing Centauri Dreams I make a couple of cups and go out on the deck to rest my eyes and ponder the state of things before hitting the books for background research in the afternoon. [...]
100 Year Starship Site Launches
You’ll want to bookmark the 100 Year Starship Initiative‘s new site, which just came online. From the mission statement: 100 Year Starship will pursue national and global initiatives, and galvanize public and private leadership and grassroots support, to assure that human travel beyond our solar system and to another star can be a [...]
The Proxima Centauri Planet Hunt
Although we haven’t yet found any planets around Proxima Centauri, it would be a tremendous spur to our dreams of future exploration if one turned up in the habitable zone there. That would give us three potential targets within 4.3 light years, with Centauri A and B conceivably the home to interesting worlds of their own. And the issue we [...]
