Epigram
22.10.2012
Science
Editor: Mary Melville
@epigramscienceandtech
scienceandtech@epigram.org.uk
Asteroid mining: fiction or reality? Callum Muir Technology Reporter Planetary Resources is a new company founded by Eric Anderson, an experienced
aerospace engineer, and Peter Diamandis, of X PRIZE, a nonprofit organisation that aims to bring about innovation in order to benefit humanity. The company intends to put space to more tangible use. Their audacious plan: mining
asteroids. The obvious questions are how and why. Let’s start with why. Asteroids have two very precious resources in great abundance. The first are platinum group metals, which are used in a number of medical devices. A single 500m
asteroid could hold up to one and a half times the amount of the world’s reserve. This is because the majority of heavy metals on Earth have sunk to the core, out of reach, while they are spread much more evenly in an asteroid. The second, and most important resource is water. It costs about $4500 to
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A single 500m asteroid could hold up to one and a half times the amount of the world’s reserve
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NASA
get a single kilogram of matter into Earth’s orbit, and a single human needs about one and a half litres of water a day to stay hydrated, which is $6000 a day per person. Water obtained from asteroids could cut costs if used elsewhere in space, for example on the International Space Station. Water can also be split into its component elements: hydrogen and oxygen, which are used in rocket fuel. In order to take advantage of these valuable supplies, the team at Planetary Resources
first need to find an asteroid. The largest concentration of asteroids in the solar system is in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is far away by anyone’s standards. However, there is a crop of asteroids a lot closer to home: near-Earth asteroids. These stay in an orbit close to that of the Moon’s for up to six months. As mentioned before, getting matter into orbit is an extremely expensive, not to mention risky, endeavour. In fact, moving around in space is significantly easier than actually getting there. Therefore accessing a near-Earth asteroid would be much easier than getting to the Moon, even if the latter is an easier target. Finding an asteroid that is worthwhile to visit is the first part of the plan. To facilitate this, the company is developing a number of satellites, the Arkyd series, planned to locate, intercept and survey potential asteroids. So far, only the first phase of this plan is anywhere near completion, with contracts signed with Virgin Galactic to ferry lots of the Arkyd-100 series satellites into orbit. Interestingly, the company is looking at raising some extra money through Kickstarter, a popular crowdfunding website. Whether this is a marketing gimmick or
if it is a legitimate way to raise funds has yet to be seen. While exploiting the resources found in space might be an expensive task, the company already has a number of wealthy investors, including Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google and the film director James Cameron. It won’t be evident for a number of years yet whether this venture will pay off, but there has recently been a lot of buzz around the space industry. With great technical feats such as the landing of Curiosity, it’s not beyond the realms of
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It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that an asteroid could be mined costeffectively
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possibility that an asteroid could be mined cost-effectively, and with the end of the space shuttle and rise of companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, it’s becoming more likely to be achieved in the private sector.
Appsolutely vital : Five student must-haves Cass Horowitz Technology Reporter With almost everyone having an iPhone, iPad or some other app-friendly device, this article is designed to make your phone more then just a distraction. However, with so many apps now available from the various stores it can be difficult to cipher out the good from the bad. With that in mind, here is a list of what we think are the five apps every student should download in order to organise and improve their lives.
1. Good Reader
2. Epicurious
3. iStudiez Pro
4. Penultimate
This app is perfect for anyone who is fed up with printing out pages and pages of lecture slides. With this app you can download the lectures directly on to your device and it supports all sorts of file type. What’s more you can even highlight and annotate the slides on your iPad or iPhone. Although, yes, it means you have to be that guy who brings the iPad to class, in the long term it will save you time and money. It is well worth the £2.99 it will cost you - especially considering all that print credit it will save you.
Students are notoriously lazy when it comes to cooking, but for those of you who want to eat more then just pizza and chicken kievs this is the app for you. Epicurious is an online recipe book with over 30,000 recipes from various websites. It has a great search feature which allows you to choose a main ingredient - i.e beef, bacon, duck etc. - and a region in the world, it will then find recipes that match your selection and display them alongside ratings and pictures. There are lots of recipe apps out there but this one is not only really easy to use but also free. Free
I usually hate any app or product that puts an ‘i’ in front of a badly spelt word in order to be trendy, but this might be an exception. iStudiez is a calendar app that is tailored for students. It allows you to input the term dates and then store all your lectures and seminars for each term. Although the app is designed to facilitate entering in all of
As the name might suggest this is a really useful handwriting app that is currently only available for iPads. You can use it to take down random thoughts, share ideas or even just to draw pictures of people in your lecture. It prides itself on the realism of the ink effect and supports images, which can then be annotated or drawn over. Once you’ve completed your various scribbling, the app allows you to create folders to store them or you can even share them using all the usual methods. For some this may seem pointless but for others I’m sure it will be priceless. 0.69p
£2.99
Google maps:
Waze app:
Bizarrely this app was recommended by Apple themselves as a good alternative to thier own faulty app.
Go to the google maps mobile site on your phone and click the handy box that pops up prompting you to add the mobile app to your home page.
This app works really well in big cities like Bristol. It is also excellent at warning about traffic jams. Even better then this, it’s free so worth a look.
flikr: William Hook
Nokia Map app:
this information - it allows you to choose how regular a class is and where it is etc. - it still takes a long time to set up. That said, once you’ve done it once it can be your organiser for the rest of the year, ensuring you will never miss a deadline again. 0.69p
It would feel strange to write this list and not have a game included. For me nothing beats Tiger Woods golf. Firstly, I don’t even like golf but this game is highly addictive and looks great on the ipad. It’s got lots of different game modes and so will keep you going on those quiet nights - or days - in. Look out for the fairly regular EA games sales, as when I got this app it was free. That said iPad users should consider splashing out, after all it’s still cheaper then a cinema ticket and I guarantee you’ll be ferociously swiping at your iPad for weeks. £069
Flickr: timdifford
Three free alterternatives to the new Apple maps...
5. Tiger Woods PGA Tour