If we "don't clean up" on the Earth, the Universe will throw us in dishwasher. Remember that it's possible. /image: yahoo!news/

As you probably already know, I am interested in the application of steam in the propulsion of units moving in our solar system. Contrary to appearances it is not an issue from the Scientific Fantasy. In the third quarter of 2020, the Polish company "SatRevolution" intends to place SteamSat ( 1U size nanosatellite) in orbit around the Earth. SteamSat is a demonstrator of practical application of steam propulsion for satellite built by the English company "SteamJet Space Systems". By the way, I would like to inform about a puzzlingly large number of names with a strangely Slavic sound :-) , people forming the core of the "SteamJet Space Systems" team. For more inquisitive people: https://steamjet.space/ https://pl-pl.facebook.com/satrevolutionSA/ https://satrevolution.com/ https://steamjet.space/ If you want to buy yourself a satelita: https://cubesatworld.com/product/swiatowid-platform/

In Noordwijk, the Netherlands, ESA (European Space Agency) has launched an experimental oxygen production plant. Due to the planned new stage of manned conquest of the Moon (and later Mars), there has been a change of supply concept. It was decided that it would be cheaper and safer to obtain the necessary raw materials on site (for the survival and development of expeditions and established colonies) than at great cost (also environmental) to deliver them from Earth. Hence the intensification of research. For more inquisitive people: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/ESA_opens_oxygen_plant_making_air_out_of_moondust

And this is my place of work (a picture from a few weeks ago, taken by some malignant.) In everyday life a "battery" is rather not necessary, although it can be useful. And the coffee is without a refill :-). And it is nice to know that you are somewhere... Post Sciptum Of course, the desk is much more disorderly in everyday life. Phones, glasses, some notebooks, loose sheets of paper... and of course a cup.

We're... We're... Tired of the gray. Misunderstood. Lonely. We are sore in the crowd of indifference. Huddled together in the darkness of misunderstandings. Full of shadows. We suffer.... And yet it is enough to just lift your head and in the omnipresent smog of gloomy, fearful and overwhelming reality, just next to discover the sky full of promises, joys, worlds of light and not falling stars. So raise your head and smile. Look, with serene understanding, at the children of the same God around you. With time, when you wash the greyness out of your eyes with tears, you will see in other people the work and gift of our Lord. So smile to them... And the serenity and heavenly charm you will receive in return soon. So give the gift of smile to others. Be a wizard and see how many constellations of stars you will create in the eyes of people endowed with the charm (cheerfully) raised corners of their mouths. See that your smile, although sometimes a lot (donor) costs, is like touching the wing of an Angel.... Then give a handful of smiles to the others. And let the enchantment of God be upon you. And let the magic of Christmas embrace you with its heavenly wings and quietly cuddle and soothe you.

This is how Olga Tokarczuk, this year's Nobel Prize winner, writes about her first encounter with the mysteries of space: "...radio later became my great childhood companion; from it I learned of the existence of the cosmos. Turning an ebony knob shifted the delicate feelers of the antennae, and into their purview fell all kinds of different stations—Warsaw, London, Luxembourg and Paris. Sometimes, however, the sound would falter, as though between Prague and New York, or Moscow and Madrid, the antennae’s feelers stumbled onto black holes. Whenever that happened, it sent shivers down my spine. I believed that through this radio different solar systems and galaxies were speaking to me, crackling and warbling and sending me important information, and yet I was unable to decipher it." And this, her observations on the perception of our contemporary world: "The world’s whisper fell silent, to be replaced by the din of the city, the murmur of computers, the thunder of airplanes flying past overhead, and the exhausting white noise of oceans of information.At some point in our lives we start to see the world in pieces, everything separately, in little bits that are galaxies apart from one another, and the reality in which we live keeps affirming it: doctors treat us by specialty, taxes have no connection with snow-plowing the road we drive to work along, our lunch has nothing to do with an enormous stock farm, or my new top with a shabby factory somewhere in Asia. Everything is separate from everything else, everything lives apart, without any connection.To make it easier for us to cope with this we are given numbers, name tags, cards, crude plastic identities that try to reduce us to using one small part of the whole that we have already ceased to perceive.The world is dying, and we are failing to notice. We fail to see that the world is becoming a collection of things and incidents, a lifeless expanse in which we move around lost and lonely, tossed here and there by somebody else’s decisions, constrained by an incomprehensible fate, a sense of being the plaything of the major forces of history or chance. Our spirituality is either vanishing or becoming superficial and ritualistic. Or else we are just becoming the followers of simple forces―physical, social, and economic―that move us around as if we were zombies. And in such a world we really are zombies.This is why I long for that other world..." Interesting? Then think for a moment about her message: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2018/tokarczuk/lecture/

The large copper mines that were most likely founded by light-skinned sailors in the centre of North America were connected by a transatlantic shipping route to Europe, where the Bronze Age reigned at that time. Hundreds of thousands of tons of ore have flowed through this sea route over thousands of years. Finally, the Iron Age began in Europe and American mining and imports ceased. The copper mining district was located on Isle Royale, an island on the Upper Lake, not far from today's US-Canadian border. Some of the open pits measure from 3 to 10 metres deep and are connected by underground tunnels. According to one of the calculations, the construction of a system of this range would require the work of several thousand people for a thousand years. The Isle Royale copper mines started operating around 5000 BC. It is believed that since then more than 250 thousand tons have been mined. Next to the mine there was a port with a half a kilometre long wooden pier, from where, according to researchers, copper was delivered to Europe. For the inquisitive: https://www.facebook.com/189002950786/posts/copper-a-world-trade-in-3000-bceuropes-economy-between-2000-and-1000-bc-stood-an/10153461816885787/

...and see (live) how JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena is building a rover for the mission MARS 2010 (since June, the rover construction is already quite advanced): https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/where-is-the-rover/