This blurb for BA was also in their print mag from December, which came as a total — but very nice — surprise.
Hey Corey, are you listening? I write for print mags sometimes, too!
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About Bad Astronomy
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. Science Getaways
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Death from the Skies!
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"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot UprisingSocial/Networking/Cool Stuff
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space- DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
- A Planet of Viruses: Autographed Book Sale
- Animal Friendships: My cover story for Time magazine
- The Future of E-books–podcast of my interview on Wisconsin Public Radio
- Thursday, February 16: Science and social media panel in New York
- A Scientific Jonah: My profile of Joy Reidenberg in tomorrow’s New York Times
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December 16th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Phil, you’re a star!
A large, incandescent ball of gas?
um
J/P=?
December 16th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I’m not sure that I’m willing to crow about this site. They have a story about methane-fueled rocket engines. That’s great, but they go on to say that Titan and other interesting places are rich in methane.
Yes, that’s true, but there is no mention of the equally important part of the chemical reaction, the oxidizer. Actually, it’s much more than equally important. Oxygen has an atomic weight of 16. Carbon has an atomic weight of 12. The principle exhaust of a carbon/oxygen rocket is CO2 (There will also be H2O, if you manage to obtain hydrogen from somewhere, but H2O is much lighter, and therefore much less important for propulsion than the equally hot and energetic CO2). The oxygen part of the equation is much more than twice as important as the carbon part of the equation.
There’s little or no free oxygen on Titan or Mars. Methane in the absence of oxygen is inert and useless as a fuel. There is a mention of converting the abundant CO2 of Mars into methane (with the possible importation of hydrogen from Earth – folly!) but no mention of the oxidizer. If you have abundant power from solar cells or nuclear batteries, getting oxygen isn’t an insurmountable problem. I’m just disappointed that this site completely ignores the issue of obtaining an oxidizer and concentrates only on obtaining methane, the much less important part of the equation.
I get the impression that the authors assume that astronauts will carry all of the oxygen they need from Earth. The cost and energy required to hoist massive amounts of oxygen makes the waving-of-the-hands dismissal of the problem of obtaining sufficient oxidizer a very, very big problem.
December 16th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Curse you, John Paradox, curse you! I just finally got this song out of my brain and now it’s back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyz7e8iQ6Uo
December 16th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Curse you, John Paradox, curse you!
Tee Hee…. and I didn’t even remember TMBG did that song (though I AM a fan from their appearances on TechTV/TSS)
Besides, don’t you need to believe in a deity for curses to work?
J/P=?
December 17th, 2007 at 7:50 am
She could always be trying to weight blind chance against you via some as of yet undetermined scientific phenomena.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I was speaking metaphorically. Yep, that’s it. :^)