Mars's tiny moons – one small step for mankind?

Forget Mars – the Red Planet's moons Phobos and Deimos could be the next stop in the solar system for humanity, according to planetary scientists. During a recent conference at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, in California, Scientists speculated that astronauts could make their first footprints on one of them within 10 years. As a counterpoint to a return mission to Earth's moon, some scientists believe that a manned mission returning to the moon is counter productive. Plus a robotic mission to either of Mars' moons is easier than one to Luna.

Granted, the Moon is only a short three-day spaceflight from Earth, whereas Phobos and Deimos are several months away using current propulsion methods.

But the Moon's gravity is one-sixth Earth's, strong enough that a landing craft has to fire retrorockets to slow its descent to the surface, and again to leave. This wastes tonnes of heavy, expensive fuel and adds millions of dollars to the cost of a mission.

Mars' two potato-shaped worlds, on the other hand, are tiny – Phobos is the size of Manhattan and Deimos is about a third as large, just 6.3 kilometres wide. So their gravitational pull is only one-thousandth that of Earth, making landing on them more like docking with another spaceship.

Estimates put a robotic or manned mission to Mars' moons at a tenth of the cost of a moon or Mars mission. Plus there are many unknowns about the makeup and origins of both of Mars' moons that such missions could help answer. Scientists have theorised that the moons may be asteroids captured by Mars's gravity, or that they may be remnants of a single moon that was blasted apart by a massive impact. But until we have missions that target these bodies, we will always have questions.

This image of Phobos, taken by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft from a distance of less than 200 km, shows the Mars-facing side of the moon (Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G Neukum)

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

10 sf/f Books that should be Movies!

From Geekend and the very fertile imagination of Jay Garmon we read his list of books he would like to see movies made of. He does qualify the list with this comment (I’d rage against the omission of Ender’s Game except that Wolfgang Petersen is working on it. Of course, the same could be said of Rendezvous with Rama, but that daunting project is in a deeper circle of development hell than Ender. Also, HBO is doing A Song of Ice and Fire as an epic miniseries, but I guess the small screen doesn’t count. After what we got with the Sci Fi Channel’s Earthsea miniseries–which infuriated Le Guin–I can maybe understand that. )


1 The Dark Tower by Stephen King
2 Foundation by Isaac Asimov
3 The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson
4 A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
5 Hyperion by Dan Simmons
6 The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
7 Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
8 The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
9 Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock
10 A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Now, just for argument's sake......

Dark Tower.....uhhhhh DUH! have you read the books?!! do you question the inclusion? My concern is that they do a DUNE on it. The Dark Tower is no more complicated than Herbert's Dune which means that there is every chance that they will completely trash it.

Foundation again DUH! Foundation on the other hand is VERY COMPLICATED which means that you will have to have someone explain the voice over that explains the movie! I was at the showing of Bladerunner and saw everyone who had read the short story leaning over and explaining Harrison's voice over. Which is the same thing that happened to DUNE.... kind of see a pattern developing here? Don't get me wrong, I would love to see these big screen....... Just that it sound be a rule that the producers, directors and screen writers understand the damn book first!

Hyperion....OMG! Yes this should be a movie.....and no it probably won't be....look at what they did with I Robot and run screaming away from this project.

Rendezvous with Rama, is already having a screenplay written for it...right? I will hold my breath and cross my fingers......any of the Kubricks still willing to ruin their careers? Oh I know, that's harsh....but that's only from the people who didn't see 2001.

And as much as I love Zelazny I can not foresee how this could be made without everyone going insane.

Earthsea....ditto on the author's comments and to be quite frank, the rest are fantasy novels....and I know, the title says fantasy and Science fiction...but I don't drool over the thought of a fantasy novel being made...Now that doesn't mean I won't watch them...I would, and will...hell I am looking forward to Tin Man on the Sci-fi channel. Glutton for punishment I guess....(scarecrow with a zipper in his head? groan.....)

Kelly Completes Reading of Podcast Novel

James Patrick Kelly announces that he has just finished a podcast of his 1989 novel LOOK INTO THE SUN. The unabridged reading, over eleven hours long in thirty-four parts, is available for free downloading under a Creative Commons 3.0 license at Kelly's Free Reads Podcast site and on iTunes.

Kelly began the weekly readings back in March. This is Kelly's second novel recorded for Free Reads.The first was BURN, which won the Nebula award for best novella in May,2007. Also available on Free Reads area number of previously published stories and a selection of his "On The Net" columns from Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Kelly also produces a for-pay podcast on Audible.com called James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod. "After a brief vacation," said Kelly, "I look forward to posting more of my work on Free Reads. I am an audio book aficionado, and it is my ambition to have one of the most extensive libraries of Creative Commons podcasts of any professional science fiction writer."

James Patrick Kelly has written novels,short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. He has won the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo award twice and his fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. He serves on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation. His web site is www.jimkelly.net.

LOOK INTO THE SUN was extensively reviewed when it was first published:

"An earthling architect hired by aliens to build a tomb for a dying goddess must overcome a difficult case of culture shock. His struggle to maintain his identity while shifting his point of view is treated with admirable seriousness." New York Times, New and Note worthy Books

"A complex and richly constructed novel of a man faced with the destruction of everything with which he is familiar." Science Fiction Chronicle

A rich, slow, allusive, glinting pastoral edifice." Washington Post Book World

"Kelly explores the literal and figurative boundaries of alienation in this evocative novel of a man's search for his own humanity." Library Journal

Largest extrasolar planetary system discovered

A fifth planet has been discovered around a nearby star, making it the largest planetary system known outside our own. The planet appears to be a gas giant like Saturn. The planet was discovered around a star called 55 Cancri that is about 41 light years away from Earth and is slightly cooler and dimmer than our own Sun. The 55 Cancri system was already known to include four other planets, including three giant planets that orbit the star closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. The fourth is four times as massive as Jupiter and orbits at about Jupiter's distance from the Sun.

For more on this new planet, speculation about life in this system and a video simulation of the system, click here to go to the complete article.

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

(Illustration: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Key Found to Making Robots Human-Friendly

On average, robots today can hold human interest for only about 10 hours, but in a new study, a humanoid robot dubbed QRIO (pronounced "curio") was accepted by human toddlers as "one of them" for 5 months before it was taken away. Why? Well it is no mystery that humans revel in the sense of touch. The premise that if a robot responded when touched - would improve the chances that the robot would be much more acceptable was proven out when QRIO was programmed to have a crude sense of touch. In the study, QRIO was introduced into a classroom of toddlers aged 18 months to 24 months. Children of this age group were chosen because they have no preconceived notions of robots and they communicate using touch as much as speech. In phase I of the experiment, which lasted 27 sessions, QRIO was instructed to interact with the children using its full behavioral repertoire, which included head-turning, dancing and giggling. At first, the children would touch the robot on its face, but as they warmed to him, the majority of their touches were to its hands and arms—a pattern the children also displayed toward each other. During phase II, which lasted 15 sessions, QRIO ignored the children's touches and danced throughout the session. At that point, the [children] quickly lost interest. When QRIO's ability to respond to touch and giggle were returned for three sessions in phase III, the children became friendly with the robot again. What proved even more interesting is that the response to touch is more important than being humaniform. QRIO only basically mimics the human form, this however seemed no impediment to it being accepted as long as it responded when touched.

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

pic credit Credit: J. Movellan et al., UCSD