Space + Exploration + Art | Week 5 Notes

Space -- The Final Frontier
Power of Tens -- From nanometers and microscopic scale to 10^25 massive scale of the universe, the scope and size of space is almost incomprehensible.

Lecture 1 - History:
- Copernicus (1512) - Heliocentric concept of the solar system, with sun in the relative center. Postulated Earth's revolution around the sun, required epicycles, which conflicted with the ideas of the church.
- Galileo's Telescope - triggered a new area of space discovery
- Sudbury Buckyballs - born in space, survived meteor impact to arrive on Earth's surfaces
- Spitzer's Space Telescope - discovery of buckyballs in solid form in space
- Science Fiction - huge role in space idealization and concepts (Arthur Clarke's space elevator, Jules Verne's concept of weightlessness in 1865, space stations that were livable in 1920).
- "Celestial Castle", The Fountains of Paradise -- 22nd century

Lecture 2 - Exploration:
- Contemporary space exploration began approx. during WWII
- Arms race became focus of the cold war, led to competition in space exploration
- Soviet Union's Sputnick (actually no larger than a beach ball, no functionality).  However, it created paranoia and competition among countries
- Sputnick launch followed by U.S. "Flopnick" --> NASA created in response to develop competing military space program.
- Residual effects on education as there was an increased focus on math, science, and technology

Lecture 3:
- Leica the dog sent into space to understand any physiological changes that might occur in space
- She didn't live beyond 6 days into her trip as the batteries died and all support systems failed
- Russians stereotyped as a crude people, but government warned that Russians now had a technology that allowed for the transport of bombs for thousands of miles
- U.S. sent chimpanzee into space with the capability of receiving intelligent responses back (as opposed to the dog Russia sent up)
- Alan Shepard (1961) - first American in space
- John Glenn (1962) - first man to orbit the earth

Lecture 4:
- Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, Apollo 1 (exploded), Apollo 13 (launched from Kennedy space center but lunar landing was aborted after oxygen tank exploded)
- Space Challenger disaster (1986) - broke apart 73 seconds into flight
- Columbia completed many missions before re-entry in its 28th mission
- 2003 till present - many government programs ending, now focus in space travel is on private organizations (Virgin Galactic)

Lecture 5:
- X-Prize: $10m prize for non-governmental organization to launch reusable craft into space twice in two weeks
- Spaceship 1 won the prize -- led to a partnership with Virgin Galactic, planning to commercialize craft ($200k per ride)
- Space X's Dragon -- successful attachment to ISS -- private company
- Space Exploration --> Space Exploitation?
- Robotic asteroid mining industry - trillions up for grabs
- Who will mine the moon? Asks a compelling question if the moon will become the Persian Gulf of modern society (Helium 3 could control future global economies)

Lecture 6:
- The Jetsons meet The Flinstones
- CBS' Lost In Space
- Star Trek