Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Asteroid Vesta - a mothership?

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/4f2_365906459_detail.jpg
Vesta 6 MORE CURIOUS IMAGES FROM NASAS DAWN MISSION TO ASTEROID VESTA

looking at this photo, what strikes me most, is those impact points
with white splatter. They remind me of rock or bullet impacts on
resistant glass.


Now obviously Vesta is not glass. But I have long considered, that one way of making a
space base, for longterm occupancy, that might even survive after the occupants left or died,
would be to make it, or cover it with a thick hide made out of, material that would not only
stop all radiation, but would absorb impacts without transferring any or most of the force
to the interior. Such a material would of course pick up pock marks and craters and would
probably resemble some natural surface. It might even have some deep dents over time.

Radiation resistance is the main argument used against the lunar landings by the moon
landing hoax theorists, but it has been stated that what was done, was to take note of the
solar cycles and avoid the high activity times, aside from whatever radiation proofing
could be used (lead was out of the question for weight, mostly, but barium is a radiation
grabber and may have been in use in some materials, and the astronauts reported flashes
in the eyeball, the result of some particle hits going through).

Another argument was the flapping flag, ignoring the statement, and photograph, that
a wire was rigged along the top edge to give this false impression, and the motion
shown as it was positioned stopped after it settled down from the jogging of placing it.

In the case of Phobos, there is a photo that shows a light at the center of the big crater,
which Sagan reported shook up him and a friend, it looked like an opening that had
been open when the photo was taken, then they laughed it off as a reflection or a
photo artifact. But maybe it wasn't. The hollowed out asteroid as space base idea has
been around a long time. Maybe we weren't the first to think of it.

Vesta was on my short list of candidates for being a space base.

The purpose of this trip incl. the future of civilization. That might mean only seeing
how deflectable an asteroid might be, and it might mean seeing if this thing is
inhabited.

Meanwhile, on the surface of Mars, there are features that are clearly trees and mangrove
or banyan colony like places. But there are also features that look uncomfortably like
titanic sprawling life forms of some sort.

Justina

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