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Red Colony Founder Featured in City Paper |
| Alex on Pitt's campus.
Credit: Heather Mull |
Red Colony founder Alex Moore has been featured in the Pittsburgh City Paper. The weekly paper sponsors a Local Vocal section where a local person with an interesting or unusual hobby is spotlighted for his or her contribution to the community. The article can be found online on the website. Nick Keppler, University of Pittsburgh student and staff writer, wrote the article. Here's a snippet:
While most high school freshmen obsessed over girls, football and MTV, Alex Moore found his passion on another planet. At age 14, the Canonsburg native was inspired by the novel Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, to launch redcolony.com, a Web site dedicated to the colonization of Mars. With the help of two friends, Moore the built the site into one of the Internet’s most comprehensive Mars colonization sites, with 82 articles, some written by NASA scientists, on establishing a home for humanity on the Red Planet. Now a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh, Moore still spends an hour each day updating the site.
@ 13:12 EST
(permanent link) |
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Announcing the New MarsDrive Campaign |
| MarsDrive.
Credit: Unknown |
Red Colony is proud to announce MarsDrive,
a brand new campaign directed toward the popularization of Mars
colonization and terraforming in the popular media. Projects will
include writing editorials in newspapers, contacting various magazines,
participating in interviews for television networks, and submitting
Mars screenplays to filmmakers.
The mass media is a powerful driving force behind the general
public opinion. One well-developed campaign will get the
snowball rolling... it's already on the fringe of an avalanche.
Frank Stratford was the envisioning force behind MarsDrive,
and he will serve as one of its leaders. If you are interested in
participating in MarsDrive in any way, visit the How to Help page.
@ 23:43 EST
(permanent link) |
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Optimism for Opportunity |
| Opportunity looking back
Credit: NASA/JPL |
On the 25th of April Opportunity got stuck in a sand dune. NASA decided
to simulate the rover's dilemma here on Earth to see what they could
come up with. They told the terrestrial rover to spin its wheels many
times, in doing so, it cleared the dirt away and was made to pull
itself free. The ground team decided to tell Opportunity to do the
same. Being cautious, they told it to turn its wheels 2.5 times. As it
did, Opportunity moved 2.8cm (much more than expected). Difference in
atmospheric pressure and composition along with imperfection in the
composition in the soil can be blamed for inexactness in the
simulation, but it was close enough to tell us what to do, and that's
what matters. The team is now closer than it was to getting the rover
back onto solid ground. "We really can’t tell the difference between a
safe place to drive and a not-so-safe place to drive," Jim Erickson, a
rover project manager for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. He
also added that the ground team is looking to remedy that.
I apologize for the apparent lack of updates. As many of our readers
know finals are not a nice time, and the members of the RC team are all
working almost full time. Please do not disappear and please continue
to check back. Now that we are settling into our new routine for the
summer, we should be able to make more frequent updates.
(More info: New Scientist)
@ 14:11 EST
(permanent link) |
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Agenda for MarsDrive |
| Terraformed Mars.
Credit: Matthew Johnson, TerraGen |
Tim Volkert has compiled an Agenda for MarsDrive, Red Colony's public relations and marketing campaign for inspiring the public about Mars. The agenda includes a detailed "To-Do" list for MarsDrive, including a plan for the initial phases of our media contact campaign and our Science-Fiction School Books campaign. A special thanks to Tim for his hard work.
We've added two major features to Red Colony in the past days. By popular request, a Site Map can now be found on the site, listing all of the pages on Red Colony. Feel free to browse the many pages and articles of Red Colony from there. We also introduced the Red Colony Leaders feature, which briefly explains the structure of Red Colony, its board of directors, and MarsDrive. These features should help you better understand the workings of Red Colony.
@ 12:45 EST
(permanent link) |
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Cosmos 1 Ready for Launch |
| Cosmos 1.
Credit: The Planetary Society. |
The world's first solar sail is ready for launch. Cosmos 1, a
project of the Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios, represents the
first fully-functional solar sail ever developed. It will launch during
a period starting June 21 atop a converted ICBM from a submerged
Russian submarine.
A solar sail offers some opportunities for interplanetary
travel, accelerating slowly and propelled by photons from the Sun.
Solar sails are a reusable alternative to traditional rocket fuel, weighing much less than rocket engines at just a few pounds. Additionally,
where rockets can only accelerate for a short period of time before
expending their fuel, a solar sail can accelerate constantly. Within a
few short years, a solar sail could exit the solar system.
Another part of the mission involves firing a microwave beam
from the Earth to see if a solar sail can be further accelerated by
means of a laser. Should this method be successful, a short and
inexpensive trip to any part of the solar system would be a reality. In
any case, the mission is already a ringing success for the newly
established private-enterprise space race, spurred onward by
SpaceShipOne in October.
(More info: The Planetary Society)
@ 14:48 EST
(permanent link) |
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