NASA’s orbiting Kepler telescope has found an exoplanet, called Kepler-10b, located over 500 light years from Earth. The exoplanet is a groundbreaker in two ways: it’s the first exoplanet that is definitely solid (no possibility it could be a gas giant) and it is the smallest exoplanet yet found. It has 1.4 times the diameter of 
Earth as seen in the completely accurate picture above. And as I’ve said many times: it may be small, but it’s really hard. Its mass is 4.6 times that of Earth; you’d weigh nearly 2.5 times as much on the surface of this planet. Then you’d burn to death nearly instantly because Kepler-10b is so close to its star that it takes fewer than twenty-four hours to complete an orbit.
Although the exoplanet isn’t in the habitable zone, finding a solid exoplanet and one of such small size only two years after the Kepler telescope began collecting data is a cause for optimism. We just may find another habitable planet to ruin in the near future. This discovery is also a momentous occasion for another reason: it gives me the opportunity to make no fewer than two yo’ mamma jokes. And in the interests of science, isn’t that what’s really important?
[Sources: BadAstronomy, NASA, and outgayedmyself]
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These sorts of things are indeed truly awesome. But you know what would be more awesome? If NASA would make solid, consistent, productive efforts toward making the idea of getting us off-world a reality, instead of just looking.
Moreover, NASA should NOT be looking for yet more ways to abdicate their authority and ability to profit-driven, defense contractor corporations. To do so will only ensure that when space travel is undertaken by the masses, it will be to unregulated, corporate-owned facilities that will merely be an updated version of the old slave-labor, concentration/work camp/towns found in the American West during the 1800′s to early 1900′s.
I’m not saying that nobody should turn a buck. I AM saying though, that it should be THE most heavily and tightly regulated endeavor in human history.
To those who would argue that, I will simply say this:
It may be that the most important of the things humanity has ever done, or will ever do, will be in laying the foundations and infrastructure necessary to establish ourselves elsewhere, thereby making our species effectively immortal via such diaspora. I, for one will not have us engage in such a monolithically important undertaking in the spirit of greed, corruption, and corner-cutting it would be subject to under corporatist control. Not to mention such a system’s proclivity toward disruption and collapse.
Back to my original point though: If NASA wants “Public Interest”, then they’re going to have to do better than show us pretty pictures, and mumble about how we’ll never get there, because they’re not really doing much to make it happen. They seem loathe to do it, but they have to give us better access to what has so far been exclusively the realm of carefully selected Jar-Heads, and the Uber-Rich if they want us to do more than look at their proclamations, and say “That’s nice. So what?”
These sorts of things are indeed truly awesome. But you know what would be more awesome? If NASA would make solid, consistent, productive efforts toward making the idea of getting us off-world a reality, instead of just looking.
Moreover, NASA should NOT be looking for yet more ways to abdicate their authority and ability to profit-driven, defense contractor corporations. To do so will only ensure that when space travel is undertaken by the masses, it will be to unregulated, corporate-owned facilities that will merely be an updated version of the old slave-labor, concentration/work camp/towns found in the American West during the 1800′s to early 1900′s.
I’m not saying that nobody should turn a buck. I AM saying though, that it should be THE most heavily and tightly regulated endeavor in human history.
To those who would argue that, I will simply say this:
It may be that the most important of the things humanity has ever done, or will ever do, will be in laying the foundations and infrastructure necessary to establish ourselves elsewhere, thereby making our species effectively immortal via such diaspora. I, for one will not have us engage in such a monolithically important undertaking in the spirit of greed, corruption, and corner-cutting it would be subject to under corporatist control. Not to mention such a system’s proclivity toward disruption and collapse.
Back to my original point though: If NASA wants “Public Interest”, then they’re going to have to do better than show us pretty pictures, and mumble about how we’ll never get there, because they’re not really doing much to make it happen. They seem loathe to do it, but they have to give us better access to what has so far been exclusively the realm of carefully selected Jar-Heads, and the Uber-Rich if they want us to do more than look at their proclamations, and say “That’s nice. So what?”
Oh mean, I hate when I post without reading the other comments first.
Oh man, I hate when I fuck up a joke with a typo.
Umm. . . NASA has ALWAYS relied on civilian contractors to build and maintain its hardware (the Space Shuttle is a Boeing project). What is happening now in manned space flight is not really that much different and only represents a small shift in authority.
Well for one, NASA doesn’t do much in the way of space travel because there’s no funds for it. It’s too fucking expensive, and no one wants to fund it. Taxpayers aren’t as interested as going into space as they were in the 60′s, largely because we enjoy throwing money at pointless wars, and because we don’t have a president that backs space exploration like Kennedy did. If the people aren’t interested in space travel, because we’re too focused on what some fat Italian-American twat is doing on MTV or what new threat to America some douchenozzle political pundit says there is, NASA has to focus their funds on things that are important to the government- largely shit for war.
Secondly, the physics aren’t there. We still don’t know how to bend the space time continuum so it doesn’t take 20,000 years to get to the next star. So, for right now all NASA can do with these distant objects is look at them and figure out what the fuck to expect if physicist ever figure out how to travel at some respectable percentage of the speed of light. Hell, even if we could travel at the speed of light, it’d take 500-fuck years to get to this charred planet, and furthermore we wouldn’t even know if the shits still there cause it takes 500 years for the light reflected off of that planet to reach us.
Thirdly, what are you yammering about with the slavery and needing more access like NASA is the fucking Empire or something. Who’s gonna build space ships? How about the same places that build air planes. Who should NASA contract for space ships then? Your fucking uncle Jimmy? No, it’s going to be the big ass companies that can actually afford some trial and error with something as massively expensive as fucking space ships.
tl;dr
Space is fucking big. Current physics says it’s gonna take for fuck ever to get anywhere away from Earth. NASA in the mean time is just making the map, so if we ever find a way to travel really really fast, we know where the fuck we’re heading. And you’re a tool.