Spaceship earth

Fuller, R. B. (1963). Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. New York E. P. Dutton. 

Gabel, M. (1975). Energy Eanh and Everyone A Global Energy Strategy for Spaceship Earth. San Francisco Straight Arrow Books. 

There are two major, seemingly insoluble, problems in the world today. The first is the millennia old problem of population growth leading to organisations of people creating dominating social systems. The second is the spaceship earth problem, which is a major consequence of the first. Millennia ago, small consequences did not matter. 

That same year - 1968 - the first humans circled the moon in a spacecraft and brought back dramatic photographs of spaceship earth - a small blue ball suspended in the vast blackness of space. These photos would forever change the way humans view their home. 

Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Carbon-dale Southern Illinois University Press (1969). Fuller, best-known for inventing the geodesic dome, was an early thinker and writer on the exhaustion of resources and the importance of building sustainability into human society and systems. 

A fullerene is any molecule made up of only carbon atoms that has a shape of a sphere, ellipsoid (a distorted sphere), or a tube. The name fullerene comes from Richard Buckminster Fuller, an architect who designed the geodesic dome (Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center is a geodesic dome). The U.S. Post Office recently commemorated Fuller and and his geodesic dome on a stamp. 

Barbara Ward, We Are All Developing Nations, New York Times Magazine (February 25, 1962) 4, 38, 40, 43. Barbara Ward, Spaceship Earth (New York Columbia University Press, 1966). 

Boulding, Kenneth E. (1966) The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth in H. Jarrett (ed.) Environment Quality in a Growing Economy, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 3-14. 

Earth to space (sateUite) to earth communication links are relatively insensitive to ionospheric disturbances. Communications between earth and manned space vehicles are barely affected by plasmas when the spaceships are well away from the atmosphere, eg, in orbit or in a translunar trajectory. However, during reentry of a spaceship, a low temperature plasma forms around the vehicle and intermpts the communication links to it (183). Plasmas are incidental to the performance of modem rockets used to explore the solar system. 

Figure 8.12 (a) Photograph of Wild 2 comet taken by the Stardust spaceship and (b) a close-up view of a cometary particle captured into aerogel and brought back to Earth in the Stardust Sample Return Canister. (Pictures by courtesy of NASA)... 

Let us imagine that an extraterrestrial civilization wanted to study our planet s life and decided to send a spaceship on Earth once every million years. For at least 2000 times, the answer would have always been the same The dry lands are completely sterile, and in the seas there are only colonies of bacteria. After that, the dispatches would have been slightly different "Now there are small amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the seas are also inhabited by bigger cells which... 

Further in the background a great garden stretches back to an enchanted castle on the outskirts of the dense city of Ankord. Ankord is a mysterious city that lies in some unknown part of the earth. Over the city circles a strange spaceship. 

Below him, glowing with green, red, and yellow lights, is a spaceship of the elves who live on terraces of the planet Mars, and who from time to time visit the Earth. 

Helium was identified by its characteristic emission spectrum as a component of the sun before it was found on earth. The major sources of helium on earth are natural gas deposits, where helium was formed from the a-particle decay of radioactive elements. The a particle is a helium nucleus that can easily pick up electrons from the environment to form a helium atom. Although helium forms no compounds, it is an important substance that is used as a coolant, as a pressurizing gas for rocket fuels, as a diluent in the gases used for deep-sea diving and spaceship atmospheres, and as the gas in lighter-than-air airships (blimps). 

The earth is like a spaceship with very limited room and resources... 

The first silicon solar battery was developed in 1954 at the American company Bell. Due to its high production costs, which could not compete with production costs for electric energy produced in conventional thermal power plants, this new device at first drew little attention from the scientific community. In 1954 began the era of artificial earth satelites. The first satelites were equipped with electrochemical batteries, which allowed only for a limited operational time. Soon it was realized that semiconductor solar batteries are the only alternative for the power supply of satelites (and later spaceships) with an extended operational lifetime, and extended research and development (R D) work was started in this field. In 1958 the first sattelite with a silicon solar battery Vanguard 1 was launched. The conversion efficiency of its solar battery was 10%. The battery remained operable for about 8 years. 

In the near future, NASA is planning to send a spaceship with humans to Mars. Discuss important concerns and issues that must be planned for on this trip. Investigate and discuss issues such as how long it would take to go to Mars and vdien the spaceship should be launched, considering that the distance between the earth and Mars changes based on where thqr are in their respective orbits around the sun. What t3q>e and how much food reserves are needed for this trip What type of exercise equipment should be on board so muscles won t atrophy on this long trip What should be done with die waste What is the en-ei requirement for such a trip What do you think... 

Well, Hollywood movies seldom care about scientific accitracy, although there are respectable exceptions. The misfortune of Apollo 1, however weird this might be, was not in space, but during training on the sttrface of Earth. In fact, the spacecraft was not even named Apollo 1 at the time of the accident because only spaceships actually making it to space are numbered. Apollo 1 is an exception to commemorate the three astronauts who perished on board. 

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