Bruce Dorminey

Bruce Dorminey is a science journalist and author who primarily covers aerospace, astronomy and astrophysics. He is a regular contributor to Astronomy magazine and since 2012, he has written a regular tech column for Forbes magazine. He is also a correspondent for Renewable Energy World. Writer of “Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System”, he was a 1998 winner in the Royal Aeronautical Society's Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards (AJOYA) as well as a founding team member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Science Communication Focus Group.

Episode links

• Bruce web Visit
• Distant Wanderers Book Visit
• Renewable Energy World Visit
• Bruce's Twitter Visit

Info

• Podcast website Visit
• Spotify Visit
• Full episodes playlist Visit

Episode outline

• 01:21 — Magellan's journey to the indies; first circumnavigation of the earth - Risk: today vs previous centuries.
• 02:15 — On route to the Spice Islands - Moluccas - Treaty of Tordesillas.
• 03:07 — Spain and Portugal on top of the world.
• 03:41 — Reaching philippines and the wrong side of things.
• 05:20 — Killed in the Philippines.
• 06:08 — The reasons behind the expedition: trade and religion.
• 07:23 — Casualties - Magellan's expedition vs today.
• 07:58 — Early astronauts, challenging missions - minimal computing power.
• 08:40 — Mission to Mars and tolerance to risk today.
• 10:03 — First Mars mission attempt - the odds.
• 10:37 — Watching the Apollo launches live.
• 11:23 — The uniqueness of the moment - Apollo 8.
• 12:12 — Putting risk in perspective: astronauts of the Apollo program vs today.
• 13:05 — Psychological risks of space missions - Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt (last person that walked on the moon) - the impact of being on the moon.
• 15:54 — Psychological factors on a trip to Mars - can we predict them? - Experiences on the International Space Station.
• 17:03 — Shortening the trip to Mars.
• 19:02 — The drive to do these missions today vs the Apollo times.
• 20:00 — The lost time in the moon - natural resources, astronomy, practicing for future missions to mars.
• 20:37 — Terraforming Mars.
• 22:33 — Second homes, platforms in space (example: at Lagrange points).
• 23:43 — Exoplanets - detecting signs of life.
• 26:18 — Methods of detection & verification vs going there (detecting microbial life through analysis of color, surface reflectivity and other means).
• 27:50 — Enceladus: plumes of gas and liquid - potential insitu analysis by probes.
• 28:43 — microfossils on Mars.
• 29:00 — Impact of finding life in another planet of our solar system, even if microbial.
• 29:54 — Intelligent life - David Kipping, Columbia University - 3:2 odds that intelligence is rare.
• 30:31 — Probability of finding life - 400 billion stars in our galaxy.
• 33:24 — Facing the discovery of new forms of intelligent life.
• 35:50 — People's resilience and attention spans / Inter-species communication.
• 38:26 — Could we miss new kinds of lifeforms due to them having different structures, chemical arrangements, etc?.
• 40:30 — What is life - lack of agreement.
• 41:48 — Scratching the surface on any topic - a neverending search for an ultimate truth.
• 43:50 — ALH 84001 Allan Hills meteorite - the microfossils issue.
• 47:26 — Asteroid mining - natural resources - Planetary Resources startup (acquired by ConsenSys).
• 48:52 — Commercializing space travel - trips to go around the moon - translunar flights.
• 51:22 — Progress since the Apollo era and next steps.
• 52:55 — Spending a weekend on the moon.
• 54:00 — Next decade in Space - putting a crew on mars, robotic sample return missions, permanent or semi-permanet settlements on the lunar surface, optical and radio-based astronomy on the far side of the moon, space tourism, space based interferometers, etc
• 56:22 — will other intelligent life forms want to communicate? gregarious vs non-gregarious civilizations.
• 57:35 — Consequences of the pandemic.
• 59:06 — conclusion - "Distant Wanderers - search for planets beyond the solar system" book by Bruce.