Last week I watched a TV series Brave New World on C4 presented by Steven Hawkins. It was good to hear him making perfect sense without finding myself getting too lost in curved space or multi-dimensional universes. In this episode he was talking about a brave new world of technology. What caught my attention was the creation of the zero-carbon Mazda city near to Abu Dhabi where people will be travelling by electric car under ground with no drivers! The pedestrians will get to enjoy strolling safely at ground level through the car-free, low-rise and beautifully designed city streets. It looked amazing.
Another brave new world technology talked on the program was about a space rocket company called SpaceX happening and expanding right now. Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, has created the first private company to successfully make reusable space rockets Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and the Dragon space capsule. Musk’s goal is to considerably reduce the costs of space flight and there are planned private and funded launches over the nest 7 years. NASA is proposing to fund a Mars mission utilizing Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle and the Dragon capsule to enter the Martian atmosphere. The concept called ‘Red Dragon’ is planned to launch in 2018 and arrive at Mars a few months later. The science objectives of this NASA Discovery mission would be to find evidence of life such as DNA or bio molecules that might be lurking in pools of water ice known to exist 1m below the surface of Mars.
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| Dragon Spacecraft with Solar Panels deployed |
It’s very exciting to read about such missions to Mars. As well as looking for evidence of life what if we had a mission to start creating life on Mars?! If we can build amazing zero-carbon cities like Mazda in the desert I wonder what it would take to build a city on Mars or on the Moon.
Take a look at www.spacex.com for info about SpaceX including past and future missions.
