Hostile Planet

[Karina Edling]

In1962, Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to travel to another planet. As it flew toward Venus, it recorded data showing that interplanetary space is relatively safe for uncrewed spacecraft. However, the regions close to the Sun and around giant Jupiter pose great perils. Missions with much longer exploration lifetimes than Mariner 2 require many more protective features.

Large craters on icy moons of the outer planets have vast rings of cracks around them, but they are shallower than craters on rocky worlds. Valhalla crater on Callisto (a moon of Jupiter) is almost 2,500 (4,000 kilometers) wide. Image courtesy of NASA.

Planets like Mercury have extreme temperatures spacecraft must contend with. The MESSENGER spacecraft made three flybys of Mercury before entering into orbit in 2011. It was the first spacecraft to explore the entire surface of Mercury. MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) carried cameras, a laser altimeter to measure landform heights, and other instruments to determine the chemistry of the rocky surface. Since Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, MESSENGER had to carry a shield-like sunshade to keep the spacecraft and its instruments cool. Talk about hot real estate!

The ingenious sky crane system lowered the large rover Curiosity to the surface of Mars in 2021. It used a combination of parachutes at high altitude and then rockets to slow the craft as it approached the surface. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to view a few scenes from a new show on National Geographic called Hostile Planet (Mondays, 9 PM/8 CT).? Being an avid nature enthusiast, I was thrilled to spend some time with God?s creation since I don?t get outdoors as much I would like.? However, I found myself cringing quite a bit as I watched.? Perhaps it?s because I have an idyllic view of how nature works.? Yes, I?m sure it can get rough from time to time, but do baby birds really have to suffer the consequences of learning to fly in the form of smashing their heads repeatedly against the side of a mountain as gravity takes them hundreds of feet to the ground?? Somehow, I found myself intrigued, in a macabre sort of way.

The first episode aired on April Fools? Day and did not bring the baby birds I remembered.? Instead, it focused on the polar regions of our planet and provided an air of familiarity in the form of penguins, seals, and bears with white fur.? I found myself transported to a winter wonderland where the narrator was describing behavioral patterns of artic wolves.? But the voice of David Attenborough?s was not there, replaced with that of outdoor enthusiast Bear Grylls instead.? Grylls made a few brief appearances in the episode, then got out of the way to let the animals and cinematography do the talking.

We?ve been trained to know that life in the Artic is brutal and that only a few animals can survive the harsh conditions. Those are put on display as male penguins stay alive while keeping an egg warm enough to hatch, then giving it enough food so that the two don?t starve to death.? This has been seen multiple times on nature documentaries.? The hostility is upped a notch when leopard seals decide to have a feeding frenzy and a baby penguin gets to fight for its life on a submerging ice floe.? It?s pretty harrowing to watch.? Artic wolves struggle to survive, but when they need to eat, they can group together and take down a baby musk ox.? When its mother stays behind to watch her offspring die, she suffers the same fate.? Is there blood?? Yup.

Outside of these two examples, Hostile Planet is more like watching a generic nature documentary, albeit with significantly better camera work (thanks to Academy Award-winning cinematographer/director Guillermo Navarro (Pan?s Labyrinth).? This is not a bad thing, but there wasn?t enough hostility for me.? Perhaps that will change in subsequent episodes.

While watching the struggles of these animals?especially a polar bear attempting to navigate a never-ending maze of ice?I began to think about how life is for humans.? We might not live in the Artic, but we face struggles that seem to never go away?slogging in a dead-end job we?re unable to get out of; watching loved ones fight diseases; making ends meet for our family.? It can get to a point where we?re ready to just give up.? Yet we are able, somehow, to make it to the next sunrise.? The apostle Paul noted that for followers of Jesus, there is a hope that can be held on to in those difficult times: ?We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed? (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NIV).? Life can certainly be hostile, but we definitely have the ability to not only rise up, but thrive in the face of adversity.? If there?s a lesson we can learn from the penguins, polar bears, and artic foxes, that is it.? Thanks for the reminder, National Geographic.

Have you seen firsthand how our actions and pollution are impacting the wildlife in remote locations such as the Arctic Circle, the Himalayas, or the Rockies? Are you ready to make this planet a little less hostile?

In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, I wanted to tell you about a National Geographic television series that highlights the changes in our climate and how it is impacting our planet and wildlife, called Hostile Planet. It premiered on April 1, 2019, and airs on Monday nights at 8 pm CT on the National Geographic channel or online.

After watching the premiere and being given the chance to prescreen an upcoming episode, I was blown away by how climate change and global warming is impacting these beautiful species in these remote locations.

One such program that National Geographic has implemented, which also supports my mission for Simply Living Green, is Planet or Plastic, a multiyear initiative to raise awareness of the global plastic trash crisis. This website is a valuable resource to all of us looking to reduce our environmental impact and waste on this planet, especially as we celebrate and honor Earth Day this year.

Whether you watch the Hostile Planet, or you or your child take a pledge to cut back on the use of plastic, I hope you do find a way to honor Earth Day on April 22nd. Also, take advantage of the other resources in my previous post if you are looking for more ideas!

Thank you for downloading my modpack. I am disappointed that the community remains so small despite the rapidly growing download number. Please help the community to grow! Comment and join our Discord to give feedback, report bugs or suggest your ideas. That really helps me a lot.

You were on the way to a colony planet with your space shuttle. You are transporting materials there to ensure the survival of the collonists.

But ...

Something terrible has happened. Your warp drive overheated. The space shuttle materialized on a foreign planet without a breathable atmosphere.

Your luck:

The equipment you transport could ensure survival. And with some effort, you should also succeed in getting back into space.

Some of the shuttle seems to be damaged. It is also not possible to send an emergency signal. You're on your own. The life support system is also damaged. Luckily you always wear a space suit with you. The "Suit Workbench" and the "Gas Charge Pad" should help you to survive too.

his is still a rather small modpack with focus to new mods and mechanics. It uses Advanced Rocketry as its base. In order to get resources, "Sky Resources 2" is used. In a broad sense, the pack is based on the principle of Sky Block Modpacks. But with many new ideas and clearly different implementations. I'm trying to use mods that are not used too often to give the course of the mod pack a completely new direction.

> when you start in a new world you already wear a space suit

> at first place a pice of dirt and a sapling above

> take some buckets, some torches, a shovel and a sword with you

> dig down to a high of 10 to 30 and try find a cave

> you should find wither skeletons with space suits there

> kill some of them and get a Drop Of Evel (could take a while)

> try to find some lava and fill some buckets with it

> make bonemeal out of the collected bones and grow the tree

> place a cauldron and fill it with lava

> make plant matter out of the lightwood saplings

> rightclick with them on the cauldron to get water

> build a wooden shear to get lightwood leaves

> rightclick with them on the cauldron filled with water to get oak leaves

> craft a water extractor, place down the oak leaves

> rightclick with the water extractor to fill the it with water

> You'll need it to get e.g. Clay

> you can also build a cobblegenerator now with the lava and water

> build a combustion heater to get some other necessary resources

This was a short story I read sometime before 2000, most likely sometime between 1981 and 1995. It was collected in a paperback with other stories, which I believe (but am not sure) were by separate authors. I also believe (but am not sure) that the cover of the paperback was pink. I may have checked out the book from the public library, which means the book itself could have been arbitrarily old.

The subtext of the story is that while the youngsters may technically be human (in the sense of DNA), they are no longer human from any meaningful point of view. The reader is left questioning the wisdom of their plan.

Maybe the first generation engineers all the subsequent generations, instead of each engineering the next. That's not how I remember it, but if each generation engineered the next, then the penultimate generation would be not human enough to convey the subtext. Also, the final generation is wild, presumably lacking any kind of education or technical know-how, so presumably the penultimate generation would be close enough to wild that they wouldn't be able to genetically engineer anything. This IMHO would make it hard for the author to pull off each-generation-engineers-the-next, but maybe she or he was able to.

3a8082e126