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Talk about space

From Wired, Nathan Hurst on how to find an alien civilization. Twelve men have left their footprints on the Moon — how long will they last? Marcus Chown explains. Dan Duray on David Morrison, the NASA scientist who answers your 2012 apocalypse emails. Somewhere, maybe Tim Mutch and Carl Sagan and many others behind the Viking Internship Program who did not live to see Curiosity’s landing are smiling. A planet “just right” for life? Perhaps, if it exists. Will we ever find life elsewhere in the universe? Put whitey back on the Moon: Capitalism isn’t just killing the planet — it’s keeping us on it. To clear space junk without creating more in the process, Boeing wants to slow pieces of orbiting degree by intercepting them with a cloud of dense gas. What would a starship actually look like? Science fiction likes to imagine interstellar vehicles as sleek, aerodynamic ships — but there’s no air in space, and voyaging to the stars will require something that looks much different than an oversized jet. Why won’t the political parties talk about space? The Rockwell International Integrated Space Plan is a supremely detailed graph from the 1980s explains how we'll become an interplanetary species (and how the Soviet Union will, too). What the fuck has NASA done to make your life awesome?