Space, technology, etc.

Some links of some interest:

*  small, modular, nuclear power continues to be developed, but not without some financial issues.

*  Russian cosmonaut says they ought to find a good cave for a moon base.   I agree.  Lunar cave exploring is a topic inadequately covered in science fiction, as far as I know, too.

*  American lunar scientist says you could build a decent sized moon base using tele-operated robotics before you send astronauts there.  First job:  dig up some water at the poles.   Easier said than done, and sounds rather improbable.  But whatever happened to the idea that a private company had, maybe during the 1980’s as I think I read it in Omni magazine:  put a tele-operated lunar rover on the Moon and let people on earth pay for time controlling it.   You would need it to be in a scenic part, though.  An hour of trundling across a flat plain is hardly going to be worth it.

  *  NASA has been thinking about using “fuel depots” in space instead of having to launch a spaceship full of fuel to get where it needs to go.  There are, however, some obvious problems:

Propellant depots carry risks, too. Fuels like liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen must be kept at ultracold temperatures and, unless the depots were heavily insulated, would boil away over time. And transferring fuel in the weightlessness of space is not straightforward, although perhaps simply setting the depot and spacecraft into a slow spin would generate enough force to push the fuel into the spacecraft.

Sounds a bit improbable, again.

*  Somebody’s been studying sea monkeys ™, it would seem, to learn about their fluid dynamics.  Why one would remains a significant mystery of the universe.