Space events in Sydney this August
The Opera House is hosting a presentation about NASA’s Rover mission to Mars in 2020. There’s a cool line-up of local and international space scientists looking at questions such as: “How will people live on Mars? Is there already simple life on the red planet? Should we terraform our neighbouring world, making it more Earth-like and therefore more habitable for people? Will Mars be the first step to humanity spreading out into the galaxy? Do we have galactic neighbours?”
The panel includes Australian geologist Dr Abigail Allwood from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Physicist Professor Paul Davies from Arizona State University, NASA Mars 2020 rover mission program scientist Dr. Mitch Schulte, and Australian UNSW’s Professor Martin Van Kranendonk
The added good thing about this one is it’s not exorbitantly priced.
Astronaut Chris Hadfield is also coming to Sydney in August. He’s always entertaining and worth seeing but it’s not clear how much of what he has to share now is pretty generic stuff. He’s pitched as “Sharing useful and practical lessons in leadership, teamwork, collaboration, science and technology learned during his remarkable career in space and on earth.”
I have to admit, I’m not going to go and find out more because I can’t come twice at the price of the Lateral Events talks. I don’t begrudge them, but go as a family of four and it’s an expensive night out for someone you’ve seen before.
Recently attending Intel ISEF in LA, I have seen some amazing new technologies that might help the way. There is new radiation shielding that is much lighter and smaller for the same amount of protection as current shielding. There was also an analysis of the use of NASA’s Nuclear Thermal Rockets from the 1970’s to get to Mars, and telepresence systems for constructing habitats while the astronauts wait in areosychronous orbit.