Articles

Long-form articles from The Galactic Center, newest first. Each cites its sources; speculative ideas are labeled Hypothesis.

  1. By MarsFirst · · 7 min read

    What It Costs to Reach Mars

    The cost of reaching Mars, line by line: launch prices, whole-mission estimates, and what still has to get cheaper or be invented.

  2. By MarsFirst · · 4 min read

    The Psychology of Leaving Home

    Why the hardest part of going to Mars may be the people: what ground-based isolation studies show, and what distance and delay do to a small, confined crew.

  3. By MarsFirst · · 6 min read

    The light-speed hypothesis

    MarsFirst's working hypothesis, labeled as a hypothesis: why studying the galactic center might speed up human progress, what we are not claiming, and why we think the question is worth asking.

  4. By MarsFirst · · 7 min read

    Open mysteries at the core

    Five open problems at the Milky Way's core: the paradox of youth, the G objects, the Fermi bubbles, the 511 keV positron line and the GeV excess. What is established and what is not.

  5. By MarsFirst · · 5 min read

    Sagittarius A*: what we actually know

    What astronomers have measured about Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the Milky Way's center: how it was weighed, how its shadow was imaged, and how it tests Einstein.