The Supreme Court will hear several consequential cases in the New Year, including cases on TikTok, age verification for porn websites and taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. In the past term, the…

Matthew Livelsberger was identified as the Tesla truck – Trump Tower bomber on Wednesday. As reported earlier at The Gateway Pundit, the perpetrator behind the shocking Cybertruck bombing at Trump Tower…

Cracking the chicken-and-egg problem of utilizing resources in space has been a difficult challenge for over half a century. Getting enough infrastructure built up is necessary to collect those resources effectively, but doing so is too expensive without using the resources themselves. Trying to crack that problem has been the focus of a variety of space exploration enthusiasts, and one of them, Don Barker, is currently the Gateway HALO Utilization & Visiting Vehicle Integration Lead at ARES Corporation. He published a paper in 2020 that detailed how the space exploration industry could use a modified version of a framework from the oil and gas industry, which he calls the Planetary Resource Management System (PRMS), to calculate where we should focus on settlement efforts. PRMS is set up as a two-step process: finding resources and then developing the technology to utilize them. Ideally, those technologies would advance to a point where those resource processes would be commercially viable. Let’s look at the process of finding the resource first. The most basic level of resource finding is a remote sensing picture around 100m or more per pixel. This can be done with a relatively good camera on board an orbiting spacecraft. Next up would be a remote image between 5m and 100m per pixel, combined with geophysical evidence that a resource is available. Importantly, this would be combined with a resource assessment that includes estimations like economic impact and technological availability. Fraser discusses what ISRU is and why it’s important. A final step of the PRMS’s “prospecting criteria” is a remote sensing image of less than 5m per pixel resolution, geophysical evidence of a resource’s presence, and proof that it is accessible using current technology. This would again be combined with an assessment of the economic viability of recovery to ensure that the effort would be supported in the long term. Technology, such as surface miners or extraterrestrial drilling rigs, enables the accessibility of the resources the prospecting projects would find. Three categories of recoverable resources – possible, probable, and proved – go along with the three categories of prospecting listed above. The framework also uses a metric called Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) to reflect how much of a potential resource deposit could ultimately be mined.  Calculating the various numbers for a deposit of a given material (such as water ice on the Moon), the framework can be combined with overall mission architecture and human exploration goals to determine the importance of that particular deposit to “mission success.” This is where things get tricky, as “mission success” is primarily defined by whoever pays for that mission. ISRU would be a critical technology in any crewed Mars mission. NASA is the largest funder of these types of projects for now, but even they don’t necessarily abide by this framework. Last year, they canceled the one rover project, VIPER, which could have added to our prospecting knowledge of the lunar south pole. Such a lack of foresight frustrated Dr. Barker, who bemoans the lack of structured support for permanently implementing a human presence off the planet rather than scientific outposts similar to McMurdo station in Antarctica.  For now, that is the best we can hope for in terms of a sustained human presence in space – the main driving force behind Artemis, NASA’s project to get humans back to the Moon, is to set up a scientific outpost rather than start utilizing resources to supply a permanent habitat. However, the agency has done some research on that topic. VIPER would have been a great addition to that research, and the agency claims that other missions will cover its scientific objectives. But suppose it continues to cut funding to programs that could help implement the framework. In that case, a different organization will likely have to take on the mantle of utilizing resources in situ.  SpaceX seems to be the leader in that area, but it is currently focused, rightfully, on building bigger, better, and cheaper rockets. If and when it is able to more closely focus on its stated goal of making humanity interplanetary, then at least it will have a framework for utilizing the resources needed to do so. Learn More:DC Barker – Lunar and off Earth resource drivers, estimations and the development conundrumUT – What is ISRU, and How Will it Help Human Space Exploration?UT – NASA Wants to Learn to Live Off the Land on the MoonUT – Researchers Developed a Test Bed For Separating Valuable Material on the Moon Lead Image:ISRU system concept for autonomous construction on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The post Using an Oil Industry Framework to Map Space Resources appeared first on Universe Today.

The year may have marked a new decade, at least on the calendar, but as far as music was concerned, it was still pretty much the '60s. Continue reading…

Motorhead rocker says he was a day away from “playing drums with Lemmy in heaven." Continue reading…

Deep from inside the mines. Oliver Anthony is kicking off the new year by releasing a West Virginia coal mine video session. Anthony and a crew of talented players brought a live performance to the working miners, honoring this hard-working sector of blue-collar workers. "We were recently able to come pay our respects to a great crew of underground coal miners in Laeger, WV. Anthony was accompanied in the mines by Billy Contreras, one of the best fiddle players in the game. Contreras started young and has been a well-respected player for decades. He currently plays with Ricky Skaggs but has been featured on recordings for artists like George Jones, Zach Bryan, and more. "Billy Contreras, one of the world's best fiddle players, was also able to be a part of these recordings of 'Ole Red' and several other new original songs we played for the miners." But instead of performing one of his original hits like "Rich Men North of Richmond" or "Ain't Gotta Dollar," Anthony decided to cover "Ol' Red," which Antony refers to as "Ole Red" in the video's title. Although Anthony mentioned in the video's caption that he also played some new songs, he has only shared a video of "Ole Red" on YouTube at the time of writing. I must admit, when I first saw this video, I was surprised to see him cover a song that is widely known because of Blake Shelton. While "Ol' Red" was initially recorded by George Jones in 1990, it's most well-known as Blake Shelton's 3rd career single, which he released as part of his debut self-titled album. Since Antony has made his feelings widely known that he's anti-establishment, seeing him cover a song that had massive success on country radio threw me off guard. I digress... The lyrics detail a man who is locked up after finding his woman with another man, and his fit of violence landed him in the slammer. While serving his time, he's been thinking about ways to break free, but an old hound dog, Ol' Red, guards the prison gates well, ensuring no one escapes. But after some brainstorming, he figures out how to distract Red with a female dog, and his interest in other dogs makes it so he slips up on his job. The man escapes successfully without Red hunting him down. "Well, I paid off the guard and I slipped out a letter To my cousin up in Tennessee Oh, and he brought down a blue tick hound She was pretty as she could be Well, they penned her up in the swampland 'Bout a mile just south of the gate And I'd take Ol' Red for his evening run I'd just drop him off and wait..." Anthony's take on the track is stellar. Anthony's rugged vocals transport you back in time and perfectly capture the story told through the lyrics. The simplicity of Anthony on acoustic with Contreras supporting him on fiddle lets his vocals shine while still providing a prominent melody. Although Anthony messed up a small portion of the lyrics, noting his bobble by making a sound with his mouth and a smile, he recovered well and drove the final words home, packing a punch with his delivery. It just goes to show you that Oliver is no doubt a phenomenal country music talent... you just kind of wish he would spend his time making music instead of always ranting and raving, often times misguided ranting and raving, about the industry that he doesn't even want to be a part of. Not a big proponent of the "shut up and sing" thing, but for Oliver, probably can't hurt... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMcR0qDvTx4

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