Olaf Stampf

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“The Newly Discovered Planet Doesn’t Yet Have A Name”

August 24, 2016 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Much has already been written abut the jaw-dropping discovery of “another Earth” near Proxima Centauri, something that seemed likely to happen sooner or later and has now occurred. My favorite words on the topic were penned by Olaf Stampf of Spiegel. He understands the magnitude of the finding while cautioning that even with the development of fusion propulsion, reaching our sister planet in a reasonable time frame is still a bridge too far. Perhaps it’s a better-than-ever time for the human-less probes to Alpha Centauri suggested by Ken Kalfus and being developed by Yuri Milner, with their destination shortened by just a bit. Presently, pretty much all space exploration should be handled by machines, anyhow.

The opening:

The faraway world exists in constant twilight. Although its nearby blood-red dwarf star only provides one tiny fraction of our sun’s light, its warmth might still be enough to create a life-sustaining climate.

But is there really life on this newly detected planet? Nobody knows — at least not yet. Only one thing is certain: Because of the darkness, animals and plants would look different from the ones we know from Earth. Trees and shrubs would have pitch-black leaves, as if they’d been burned. The alien flora would need to be darkly colored to use the dim starlight for its photosynthesis.

And what about higher forms of life, like animals or intelligent beings? It’s very possible that exotic organisms exist on the planet. Given that it is several million years older than the Earth, it would have had enough time for life to develop.

On the other hand, it would also have to repeatedly withstand hellish conditions. Its sun is a so-called flare star, a cosmic fire-breather that tends to produce apocalyptic eruptions of plasma. All of the planet’s oceans, rivers and lakes may well have long since evaporated.

The newly discovered planet doesn’t yet have a name, but the red dwarf star around which it circles is famous: Proxima Centauri, our nearest fixed star, only 4.24 lightyears away — our sun’s closest neighbor.

That’s what makes this finding so scientifically exciting.•

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“My Dream Would Be To Fly To The Moon And Build Permanent Structures”

June 19, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Olaf Stampf, who always conducts smart interviews for Spiegel, has a Q&A with Johann-Dietrich Wörner, the new general director of the European Space Agency. Two quick excerpts follow, one about a moon colony and the other about the potential of a manned Mars voyage.

______________________________

Spiegel:

Which celestial body would you like to travel to most of all?

Johann-Dietrich Wörner:

My dream would be to fly to the moon and build permanent structures, using the raw materials available there. For instance, regolith, or moon dust, could be used to make a form of concrete. Using 3-D printers, we could build all kinds of things with that moon concrete — houses, streets and observatories, for example.

______________________________

Spiegel:

Wouldn’t it be a much more exciting challenge to hazard a joint, manned flight to Mars?

Johann-Dietrich Wörner:

Man will not give up the dream of walking on Mars, but it won’t happen until at least 2050. The challenges are too great, and we don’t have the technologies yet to complete this vast project. Most of all, a trip to Mars would take much too long today. It would be irresponsible, not just from a scientific standpoint, to send astronauts to the desert planet if they could only return after more than two years.•

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“A Maneuver Like This Has Never Before Been Attempted”

November 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The European Space Agency is attempting tomorrow to go where no human has gone before, landing a probe on a comet, a mission that has been in motion for nearly two decades. From a report on the effort by Olaf Stampf at Spiegel:

“[Achim] Zschaege is one of the veterans in the European Space Agency’s (ESA) control room and he has been accompanying Rosetta on its trip through the solar system for more than a decade. Now, finally, the mission is nearing its climax: On Wednesday, a landing vehicle released by Rosetta is set to actually touch down on a comet.

A maneuver like this has never before been attempted, partly because of the extreme difficulties associated with such a landing. Researchers are essentially trying to land a probe on an object with a surface area roughly equal to Manhattan as it speeds through space 20 times faster than a rifle bullet. If they’re unlucky, the comet’s surface could be as crumbly as a cracker.

Zschaege’s superior, Italian flight director Andrea Accomazzo, has been waiting for Wednesday’s landing for 17 long years. ‘For all of us, it feels like a second moon landing,’ he says.

Even measured against other voyages into space, Rosetta’s rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko took a long time. When Rosetta was first fired into space, Gerhard Schröder was still Germany’s chancellor and America’s invasion of Iraq was just a year old. Since its launch on March 2, 1994, the probe has traveled 6 billion kilometers, roughly 40 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Many of those who worked on the mission in its early years have long since retired.

As part of Rosetta’s marathon flight, it traveled to the outer edges of our solar system, so far away from the sun that its solar cells were unable to power the probe’s systems. Ground controllers plunged the spacecraft’s electronics into a kind of hibernation.

For two-and-a-half years, there wasn’t a peep from Rosetta and it was only reawakened at the beginning of this year. ‘We had to wait almost an hour before we received the signal’ indicating the maneuver had worked, Accomazzo says. ‘It was totally silent in the control room.'”

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“A Person Who Dies Alone In Space Dies A Cheerful Death”

October 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Olaf Stampf of Spiegel has an interview with German astronaut Ulrich Walter about Gravity, which was also reviewed by Buzz Aldrin. An excerpt:

“Spiegel:

In Gravity, Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut who gets separated from her shuttle and ends up floating in space, completely untethered. Would it be possible to save an astronaut in such a situation?

Ulrich Walter:

Yes, in principle. These days, every spacesuit is outfitted with a small jetpack. The pack’s range, though, is only about a kilometer, so it wouldn’t be possible to fly tens of thousands of kilometers to the ISS, as the characters do in the film. In real life, everyone involved in that disaster would have died. 

Spiegel:

It doesn’t sound like a very nice way to go, drifting through nothingness in a spacesuit, waiting to die. 

Ulrich Walter:

On the contrary! When you’re slowly running out of oxygen, the same thing happens as does when you’re in thin air at the top of a mountain: Everything seems funny. And as you’re laughing about it, you slowly nod off. I experienced this phenomenon in an altitude chamber during my training as an astronaut. At some point, someone in the group starts cracking bad jokes. Our brains are gentle with us. A person who dies alone in space dies a cheerful death.” (Thanks Browser.)

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