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Not only is the entire wellness industry BS, it exists because of people who are especially gullible.

An artificial sports pitch that stores water below the surface cools itself down on hot days by letting water evaporate, just like natural grass

Through the Artemis Program, NASA will return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 landed in 1972. Beyond this historic mission, scheduled for September 2026, NASA plans to establish the infrastructure that will enable annual missions to the Moon, eventually leading to a permanent human presence there. As we addressed in a previous article, this will lead to a huge demand for cargo delivery systems that meet the logistical, scientific, and technical requirements of crews engaged in exploration.

Beyond this capacity for delivering crews and cargo, there is also the need for transportation systems that will address logistical needs and assist in exploration efforts. These requirements were outlined in a 2024 Moon to Mars Architecture white paper titled “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs.” Picking up from the concurrently-released “Lunar Surface Cargo,” this whitepaper addresses the need for lunar infrastructure that will enable the movement of astronauts and payloads from landing sites to where they are needed the most. As usual, they identified a critical gap between the current capabilities and what is to be expected.

Once again, the authors cite the need for mobility systems in keeping with NASA’s objectives, as detailed in the Moon to Mars Architecture Definition Document (ADD). As they indicate, recent analyses of integrated surface operations have highlighted the importance of transportation systems that can move cargo from points of delivery to points of use across the lunar surface. This could range from “crew logistics and consumables to science and technology demonstrations, to large-scale infrastructure that requires precision relocation.”

Artist’s illustration of the new spacesuit NASA is designing for Artemis astronauts. It’s called the xEMU,, or Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit. Credit: NASA

In short, in addition to landers capable of delivering crews, supplies, experiments, and habitats, NASA’s Moon to Mars program also requires vehicles and support networks that can deliver them from point A to point B. As they state, the currently defined mobility elements are either primarily for crew use or are limited in mobility. This includes elements like the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) and the Pressurized Rover (PR) – which are elements of the Artemis Base Camp – and robotic missions contracted through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

In addition, the needs and challenges that will emerge as the Artemis Program unfolds are broken down into three segments: Human Lunar Return (HLR), Foundational Exploration (FE), and Sustained Lunar Evolution (SLR). The HLR segment includes the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for September 2026, where a crew of two will land on the lunar surface using a Starship HLS. The FE segment will coincide with Artemis IV and Artemis V (2028 and 2030), where crew sizes will expand from two to four, and the necessary infrastructure will expand.

After that, during the SLR segment, NASA plans to mount a mission a year and establish a permanent lunar habitat. Throughout this period, the demands for payloads and transportation systems will exceed current capabilities, limited to 15,000 kg (33,070 lbs) of cargo. Similar to what NASA related in their Lunar Surface Cargo whitepaper, accomplishing key mission objectives will require cargo of sizes and masses beyond these capabilities, creating the need for additional solutions.

Separation and Transportation

As the authors state, a major issue on the lunar surface affecting mobility is the need for separation between landing sites and points of use. This separation is motivated by several factors, including science objectives, lighting conditions, and safety considerations. In short, crew vehicles, habitats, and key infrastructure will be positioned at a distance from landing sites so as not to be affected by darkness caused by the landers’ shadow, contamination by the landers, and regolith or blast ejecta created by engine plumes. Based on the level of concern, separation distances are broken down into three tiers:

• Separation from lander shadowing (tens of meters; tens of yards)
• Lander blast ejecta constraints due either to separation between the lander and existing infrastructure or lander ascent (>1,000 m; ~1090 yards)
• Support for aggregation of elements in ideal habitation zones from available regional landing areas
  (up to 5,000 m; ~5470 yards)

In addition, NASA’s Moon to Mars mission architecture emphasizes the need for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), such as water ice, regolith, and minerals. NASA also recognizes the need to select habitation and hibernation sites that minimize the exposure to darkness from shadows caused by the local topography and the inclination of the Sun during lunar nights (which last two weeks at a time). This is easiest at higher elevations and on top of crater ridges. This necessitates two things:

• Exploration, habitation, and power sites will need to be located far from landing and ISRU sites
• Traverses from landing to habitation zones could encounter slopes of up to 20 degrees

As the authors state, these overlapping challenges can be met by ensuring systems are in place so mission elements can move away from landers once they are deployed on the surface:

“This could be done using independent or integrated mobility systems. The frequency of traverses between downslope and upslope locations would be driven by the cadence with which landers deliver cargo to the lunar surface and the mass that a given mobility system can carry on each traversal. Integrated architecture operations will necessitate non-trivial relocation and aggregation ranges for cargo and assets.”

Transport Capabilities

During the FE segment of the Artemis Program, NASA plans to expand surface crews from two to four, which will need to operate on the surface for about 30 days. This will require a wide range of mobility needs that can accommodate payloads of varying size and mass and over a range of distances. These include:

• Smaller technology demonstrations: 500 to 2000 kg (~1100 to 4410 lbs)
• Logistic Elements per crewed surface mission: 2,000 to 6,000 kg (~4410 to 13,230 lbs)
• Habitation Systems: 12,000 to 15,000 kg (~26455 to 33,070 lbs)

The authors acknowledge that current mobility elements could provide some cargo relocation capabilities – the LTV, for example, can accommodate 800 kg (~1764 lbs) of cargo when uncrewed. However, according to the NASA team’s analysis, the mobility capacity falls short of demand by 1,000 to 15,000 kg (2,200 to 33,070 lbs) per asset for ranges of 50 to 5,000 m (~55 to 5470 yards). Moreover, the “frequency of relocation needs” (i.e., how often payloads need to be moved) will vary considerably, ranging from single operations for large elements to multiple trips a year for containers and smaller cargo.

Mobility demand forecast ranges compared to LTV and LRV transport capabilities. Credit: NASA Conditions

The authors also address how lunar conditions are important when developing mobility systems. One of the greatest hazards on the Moon is regolith (aka. “moondust”), the fine silicate powder that covers much of the surface and sticks to everything it comes into contact with. There are lighting conditions where parts of the South Pole region will be shadowed due to the inclination of the Sun and permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) that experience perpetual darkness. Last is the matter of the terrain, which can be rocky or covered by 1 to 10 m (3.3 to 33 ft) of regolith and where slopes of more than 10 degrees are common.

This combination of factors, they argue, “creates a significant technological gap between existing systems and mobility demands for future exploration.” For starters, energy systems must provide enough power so vehicles can maintain sufficient speeds and carrying capacity and can operate during lunar nights. The authors also recommend conducting more studies on regolith mitigation strategies to prevent wear and tear and the effects regolith could have on electro-mechanical systems. They also stress the need for sufficient autonomy and/or teleoperation, allowing greater flexibility and range.

These autonomous systems must contend with the challenging lunar terrain, map the local topography, recognize obstacles and unpassable regions, and identify optimal pathways to reach their destinations. As the authors note, these systems could offer increased flexibility for mission planning and increase the speed of mobile assets, especially in areas where the terrain interferes with communications and makes remote operations impossible.

In summary, the “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs” whitepaper identifies some robust requirements for creating a permanent human presence on the Moon. This will entail moving cargo and assets across the lunar surface from landing sites to destinations 5 to 5,000 meters (~5.5 to 5470 yards) away. It must also be able to accommodate payloads of up to 12,000 kg or more, which is significantly higher than the current capabilities of the proposed LTV – 800 kg (~1765 lbs).

Artist rendering of an Artemis astronaut exploring the Moon’s surface during a future mission. Credit: NASA

In addition, the paper indicates that energy and environmental considerations are crucial to the design process. It is not simply a matter of scaling up small-scale mobility systems to create large-scale ones. Lastly, the computer systems and software running future mobility systems will need to be interoperable, exchanging information between vehicles and base sites, and have the ability to function autonomously or semi-autonomously.

Like the “Lunar Surface Cargo,” these findings will be explored in more detail with the 2024 Architecture Concept Review (2024 ACR), which will be released later this year, along with white papers describing NASA’s cargo return needs and lunar surface strategy.

Further Reading: NASA

The post A Moon Base Will Need a Transport System appeared first on Universe Today.

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New Zealand’s attempt to integrate indigenous ways of knowing with modern science takes place not only on the secondary-school level, but also at universities, including the most prestigious one in the country: The University of Auckland. The course below (“Aotearoa” is the Māori word for New Zealand, and is now inseparable from “New Zealand”) is required for all first-year science students at the University under the University’s “Curriculum Framework Transformation” (CFT) plan. There will be a version of this course for all other faculties as well, so it’s a general requirement.

Click below to read it (and download a pdf), and I’ll put the gist of the course below (bolding is mine):

 

Course Prescription What does it mean to do science here and now? This course considers how knowledge of place enhances your learning, the significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how knowledge systems frame understanding. Students will think critically about the relationships between science and our environment, along with the ethics of science in practice. Course Overview

Contemporary science is deeply entwined with place, knowledge systems and ethics. This course examines these concepts through the lens of sustainability to demonstrate how they shape research agendas, methodologies, and applications of contemporary science. To address the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability, science must recognise and navigate the complexities of these interrelated concepts.

Explore the role of place-based knowledge, the importance of embracing diverse knowledge systems for science and the ethical responsibilities inherent in contemporary science in Aotearoa New Zealand. This interdisciplinary course will challenge you to think critically, fostering an awareness of the intricate relationships between science and its broader context, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Capabilities Developed in this Course Capability 1: People and Place Capability 2: Sustainability Capability 3: Knowledge and Practice Capability 4: Critical Thinking Capability 6: Communication Capability 7: Collaboration Capability 8: Ethics and Professionalism Graduate Profile: Bachelor of Science Learning Outcomes By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate how place, and an understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, are significant to your field of study (Capability 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
2. Critically and constructively engage with knowledge systems, practices and positionality (Capability 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7)
3. Employ a reciprocal, values-based approach to collaborating (Capability 4, 6, 7 and 8)
4. Communicate ideas clearly, effectively and respectfully (Capability 6, 7 and 8)
5. Reflexively engage with the question of ethics in academic practice (Capability 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
6. Demonstrate a critical understanding of sustainability (Capability 2, 3 and 4)

Seriously, is this going to be useful to the students, or will it just confuse them and waste their time?

Note that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the Treaty of Waitangi, signed by some (but not all) Māori tribes in 1840. It established the rights of Māori and the English colonists, giving the Crown full sovereignty over the country but also giving Māori the right to keep their lands while making them full British subjects.  It has been interpreted, with respect to education, as mandating that Māori “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori)  must be given equal treatment in schools to modern “ways of knowing”.  I’ve discussed that requirement ad nauseam, and won’t go over it here, except to say that mandating this coequality is a foolish and counterproductive thing to do, at least if New Zealand wants to enter the era of modern science.

 

This educational coequality of modern science with a mixture of trial-and-error empirical knowledge indigenous practices, which include spirituality, religion, ideology, eommunality, tradition, and ethics—this coequality is a dubious and contested interpretation of the Treaty. But the Māori are regarded as sacred victims, and an ethos has arisen in New Zealand that this coequality cannot be questioned. People have been fired or demonized for questioning it. Nevertheless, if the country wants its students given a proper science education, infusing it with local lore is not the way to go.  As one local said when he saw this course, “Its primary purposes seem to be pushing an activist view of the Treaty of Waitangi and pushing the validity of Mātauranga Māori as an alternative knowledge system.”

 

Indeed, and that’s from someone familiar with science education in New Zealand. Now there’s no issue with teaching local “ways of knowing” in anthropology or sociology courses, but “indigenous science” often proves to be infused with nonscientific stuff like oral tradition, myth, and religion/spirituality.  To pretend that the Treaty is essential for first-year students, and that alternative “ways of knowing” are just as good as modern ones, is to begin propagandizing science students in their first year at University.

At least New Zealand can’t say it hasn’t been warned of the consequences of this form of wokeness. As the country continues to drop in science rankings compared to countries like the U.S. and Canada, it may reach a point where people think, “Wait a minute; what are we doing?”

They haven’t gotten close to that point yet.

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This is one small example, but an important one, of how science in New Zealand is being corrupted by trying to comport it with the indigenous “way of knowing”, Mātauranga Māori (MM).

The article below, from the July 4 New Zealand Herald (the biggest newspaper in the country) describes a science fair in the town of Rotorua, highlighting one student project that “tests” whether they could “prove” that a legend might be true.  (There are other projects highlighting MM and indigenous knowledge.)

This was sent to me anonymously, for of course criticizing stuff like this in New Zealand could cost you your job and/or your reputation.  The indigenous people, their myths, and their “ways of knowing” are regarded as sacred and untouchable.

The story is that of the love story of Tūtānekai and Hinemoa, recounted in Grey’s ‘Polynesian Mythology’, first published in 1855. The legend involves a Māori man who wanted to run away with a woman, and lured her to an island in a lake by playing his flute:

Every night Tūtānekai sat on a high hill and played his flute, the wind carrying his music across the lake to Hinemoa’s home. But Hinemoa did not come. Her people had suspected her intention, and they had pulled all the canoes high up on the shore.

Every night Hinemoa heard the sound of her lover’s flute and wept because she could not go to him. Eventually she wondered if it be possible to swim across to Tūtānekai.

Hinemoa took six hollow gourds and fastened them to her body to buoy her up. The night was dark and the great lake cold. Her heart was beating with terror, but the flute played on. She stood on a rock by the shore and there she left her garments, entered the water and began to swim.

In the darkness she could see no land, having only Tūtānekai’s flute to guide her, and led by that sweet sound she arrived at last to the island.

At the place where she landed, she found a hot pool and went in to warm herself, for she was trembling with cold.

And all went well after that. I find it bizarre that a group of students wanted to test whether this was true, when what they were really testing whether it was possible. 

Click below to read:

Bolding is mine, and the excerpts from the article are indented:

A group of Rotorua children have used science to prove whether the basis of the legendary love story of Hinemoa and Tūtānekai is true.

They concluded it very well could be.

Te Arawa Lakes Trust’s Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā Mātauranga Māori Science and Design Fair is in its third year.

It aimed to celebrate the intersection of Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and science, and give students a platform to showcase innovative projects and designs.

There were 35 exhibits in its first year. Last year grew to about 40, and this year more than 100.

Topics covered five categories and ranged from projects focusing on water quality and rongoā (traditional Māori medicines) to investigating a legendary love story.

The latter involved a group from Te Rangihakahaka Centre for Science and Technology looking at the legend of star-crossed lovers Hinemoa and Tūtānekai.

[Rongoā involves not only herbal medicines, but prayer and massage.]

Note that the intent was to prove whether a legend was true, though this language could have been from the reporter and not the students. But the aim of the project was surely to find whether a Māori legend might actually be based on fact:

 

The story, told in the song Pokarekare Ana, is about how beautiful chief’s daughter, Hinemoa, fell in love with lower-ranked suitor, Tūtānekai, and swam across Lake Rotorua to be with him on Mokoia Island when she heard his flute calling to her.

The students decided to test whether she would have been able to hear the sound of his flute from across the water.

The group looked at how various conditions impacted on how loud the flute would have been and how it would have gotten louder as Hinemoa swam across Lake Rotorua.

With transmission loss expected between 30-40 decibels, it would have been soft at first: “a sound like wind in the trees”.

Conditions needed to be calm. No wind; glassy water; cold; overcast and no ripples.

Conclusion: “it would be audible”.

This, of course, depends on how loudly Tūtānekai was playing and whether conditions were right (which of course we cannot know), but I suppose if he was playing to attract his lady love, it would have been loud. (I saw the famous island when I was in Rotorua.)

But the problem with this is that it melds legend with science and, by so doing, mistakes the question “is the story not ruled out by analysis of sound?” with the question that science would ask: “what is the evidence that the story is true?”  And since the story is based solely on a legend transmitted orally and then written down by a European in a book on Polynesian mythology, it has low credibility from the outset.  There are of course dozens of such stories that could be analyzed to see if  bits of them are ruled out by what we know of physical reality, but saying that “they’re not” is not the same as “proving” them. In other words, the Bayesian priors for the truth of this myth were low at the outset, and the probability that this really happened is not substantially increased by analysis of flute sounds.

Further, there are dozens of Māori legends that could not have been true, like the claim that their Polynesian ancestors discovered Antarctica in the seventh century, and in a canoe made of human bones. (This claim is still being advanced by a group of Māori academics.) Maybe there should be a science-fair project seeing if a canoe made of human bones could even float!

There’s a bit more:

Te Arawa Lakes Trust environment officer Keeley Grantham said categories were broad, which meant there was an “amazing array” of projects.

. . .“We’re not just looking at Western science, we’re looking at mitigating environmental issues through a whole heap of different lenses, especially through our te ao Māori lens.

“And enabling kids to broaden their scope of knowledge and just really build upon what they already know and just continue networking and sharing their kaupapa with other tamariki and other people that work in this field.”

About 16 kura (schools) were involved and “at least” 250 children. Groups and individuals could take part.

We have the usual mischaracterization of science as “Western” (science is now worldwide), as opposed to another way of knowing:  “looking at things through our “te ao Māori lens.”  A translation of “te ao Māori“:

Te Ao Māori encompasses the holistic worldview of the Māori people, reflecting an interconnected relationship between the natural world, people, and spirituality. The values embedded within Te Ao Māori offer a framework that aligns seamlessly with collectivist ideals, fostering a sense of unity and shared purpose.

 Whoops, there’s some spirituality in there, as well as values. That is one problem with regarding MM as a “way of knowing”, as the empirical knowledge in it is inextricably bound up with legend, religion, ideology, ethics, and superstition. And this mixture of legend and empirical observation is precisely why the student project is misguided. For surely it was designed to give credibility to Māori legends and to MM.  Were I the teacher, I would have guided students away from projects like this, which simply misleads them about the nature of scientific investigation.

With this kind of stuff encouraged by teachers, is it any wonder that science in New Zealand is circling the drain? Trying to comport it with indigenous legend is simply going to confuse people and, perhaps, drive them out of going into what the article calls “Western” science.

**********

Translation of the other terms above, taken from the Māori dictionary (note that they’re presented in an English-language newspaper without explanation, and I’m guessing very few readers understand them):

kaupapa:  topic, policy, matter for discussion, plan, purpose, scheme, proposal, agenda, subject, programme, theme, issue, initiative.

tamariki:  children – normally used only in the plural.