Yuri's Planet

"On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. His remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth. Commenting on the first view from space he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly". Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut, would not be launched until almost a month later and then on a comparatively short suborbital flight."

See a much better version of the picture at the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) page, which shows much more subtle detail.

Credit: Astronaut Photography of Earth "ISS007-E-10807 (21 July 2003) --- This view of Earth’s horizon as the sunsets over the Pacific Ocean was taken by an Expedition 7 crewmember onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Anvil tops of thunderclouds are also visible." Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov


Thanks to Making Light blog

Meet the First Realistic Martian Woman

What would we have to do to our bodies if we wanted to live on Mars? io9 consulted scientists, our imaginations, and a designer, and came up with the most realistic-possible portrait of a Martian colonist who might truly exist on the Red Planet in 100 years. She's really tall, doesn't have to wear a bra, and has some pretty awesome photosynthesis and water-reclaiming implants in her exosuit. It's time to meet the first Martian woman. Click through for full frontal.

Link

Somebody had better check the air composition in the io9 comments section -- they're getting awfully giddy over the notion of braless Martians. Let's hope these lads have the waist drawstrings of their exosuits nice and tight so their errant emissions don't end up fogging the faceplates of their suits.

Listen. The same lower gravity which would not pull so much on breasts would allow them to bounce upward more. Breasts move in three planes of motion. It's that motion that causes discomfort, and stretching of the ligaments. That's why a good sports bra will suppress the motion in all directions.

If Martian tits go wibble wibble wibble all the time unsupported in the weak Mars gravity, there's a chance that centrifugal force will eventually lead to them being stretched out so much that buxom Martian lasses will be able to do the classic "tie them in a knot" and "tie them in a bow."

Lower gravity would "require" her to be tall? Why?

So you figure 100 years of living on Mars (4 or 5 generations) will make Lamarckism suddenly kick in? Or that a Mars colony has so many potential parents that they can afford to be choosy about which colonists the eugenicists will allow to breed? Or that screwing around with genes or our endocrine systems will be routine on a frontier colony that needs to focus on basic survival?

In her boots and strapped to her thighs, she has water drilling/processing packs. A cannulated drill can extend out of it, go deep under martian crust, suck up water, run it through a filter to get the salt and acid out, and then store it close to her body to keep it liquid so she can sip from it.

If she's outside long enough to need enough water that she's got to drill for it and process it, rather than carrying her own supply of potable water with her, what will she be doing with the piss, shit and menstrual blood she'll be producing during that time? Does that mean she needs a separate, parallel processing unit for those wastes? Maybe a menstrual cup? Will the solids and liquids somehow be collected and jettisoned? Or saved for their precious composting value back at the colony?

There are elaborate waste collection devices for shuttles and space capsules, designed to keep both liquids and solids from floating free in zero gravity. Current space suit designs seem to employ a version of an adult diaper to simply trap any wastes generated in the few hours the suit will be worn, until the suit can be removed.

Special thanks are due to the team whose very informative draft paper on"Waste Management in Space" for Space Science Outreach and Research (SSOAR) is available online. Their work seems to confirm that you really aren't going to be wearing a space suit for any longer than you can handle pooping in your diapers and not wiping your butt. Given that the weight of any drinking water you'd need in that time would far lighter than the water you'd carry for a few hours hiking on Earth, the notion that you'd need to drill and process water using your martian Uggs is just plain goofy. Perhaps that is why the scientists and designer allegedly consulted for this are un-named.

Other than the titillation of bra-less women, there is nothing in io9's piece that seems to be gender-specific. Perhaps someone has been doing too much drooling over pictures of Dejah Thoris.

Let me repeat the realization that came out of writing my response to the io9 article. While there are occasional articles on how astronauts go to the bathroom in space, what this means has not been taken further.

We are a clever and ambitious species, who may eventually walk the surface of many of the planetary bodies in our solar system if we don't kill ourselves first. But without nano-bots who can carry away those particles which would create diaper rash, our direct space-suited exploring and experience of the surface of Mars, the moon, or any other bodies will be limited to the number of hours we can handle wearing poopy diapers.

Life on Other Worlds: Mars

David S. Zondy presents some great images of life on other worlds, as well as futuristic depictions in his "tales of Future Past" series:

In the 1920s and '30s the most influential of science fiction illustrators was Frank R. Paul. He supplied many of the covers for Hugo Gernsback's magazines such as Amazing Stories and though the people he drew looked like suet poured into clothes, his buildings, machines, and aliens had a complexity, detail, and drama about them that provided artists with the visual vocabulary of science fiction to this day.

In the late '30s, Paul had a chance to let his imagination run for a bit with a series of back-cover pieces depicting cities on other planets and the creatures that inhabit them. His ideas of what our neighbours in the Solar System and beyond look like were often strikingly beautiful and showed a creativity that put the standard Star Trek man-with-a-lumpy-forehead school to shame. They were meant as flights of fancy rather than educated theories, but it says a lot about the times that his Martians, Venusians, and Whateverians were taken seriously and not as the product of using paint thinner in an unventilated space.

The image is courtesy of Fabio Feminò, who has an excellent online collection of SF art. His site is in Italian, but if you go in through the home page you can click on the Babelfish link, which will translate all the text on the site.

Femino has a collection of covers of Robert Heinlein novels published in Italy, Chesley Bonestell, the Colliers series of space explorations depictions from the Fifties, and other futuristic art.