Still more ambitious is Musk’s goal to reach Mars within 20 years – ten if he can. He firmly believes that it will be as natural a step for life to become multi-planetary as it was for it to evolve from single-celled creatures, move out of the sea and develop consciousness.
Musk says he wants to put 10,000 people on Mars, perhaps many more, and believes that will become a business proposition if the cost of a ticket can be brought down to the price of a decent house in California. Musk believes he will need $2 billion to $5 billion to reach the Red Planet which he sees as readily achievable.
Unlike Congress, Elon is serious about human spaceflight. And settlement.
I want to comment on the commotion over Rush Limbaugh’s use of the word “slut” to describe law student Sandra Fluke. Fluke, as you know, argued before a house congressional committee that women need taking care of. That is, if they should take it into their fluffy little heads to have sex with someone, they can’t be expected to manage the consequences all by their little selves. Someone else has got to pay for their contraception – preferably a big strong man like Barack Obama. Barack Obama has lots and lots of money. Chicks dig that. In fact, he’s so powerful, he just took the money from other people. What a turn on for girly girls like Sandra!
Anyway, Rush called her a slut, probably hoping that that sort of ungentlemanly behavior toward women would land him a show on HBO like that super cool Bill Maher, who called Governor Sarah Palin the c-word (whatever that is) and entertained guests who fantasized about raping Michele Bachmann. If only Rush could get a show like Bill Maher then he could be bitter and irrelevant too – probably the only things missing from Rush’s life.
So now the left is calling for Rush’s head and the right is arguing hotly that the left says equally misogynist things and even sometimes dumps their women into the water and then leaves them there locked in a car to drown while they go back to their hotel to chat with their friends and call their lawyer. And yet a leftist killer of women can go on to become the Lion of the Senate, and even a piece of work like James Carville who implied one of his boss’s sexual harassment victims was trailer trash gets a network gig. Hey, maybe Rush was trying to get a network gig like James Carville!
I do have to say, though, that this is interesting:
China is also researching how to use the boosters and the first two stages of a launch vehicle repeatedly, which could help reduce the launch cost, he said.
It could indeed. Too bad NASA (and Congress) aren’t smart enough to see the value in reusability.
Oh, and this is amusing:
The Long March 5 rocket will more than triple Chinese rockets’ carrying capacity in outer space. Using non-toxic and pollution-free propellant, the 60-meter-long rocket will be equipped with four propellers, with each measuring 3.35 meters in diameter, he said.
A fully-operational communications satellite is available for purchase for only a short time (days). If you know an organization that might be interested, please have them contact Richard Van Allen of Microcosm at 310-219-2700 ASAP.
The F2 satellite has been in orbit for about 11 years, during which time it used about 6 kg of propellant. It cost in the multi-hundreds of millions of dollars, and the launch cost was $105M in 1994 dollars. All systems on board the spacecraft are functioning normally, and it has both S-Band and C-Band communications capabilities. Also important, there is a current RF license in place to use the frequencies allocated to it. The current owner has decided it does not want to continue paying about $133K/month to keep it functioning and has been intentionally burning propellant over the last several weeks to deplete the remaining propellant. Currently there is about 30 kg remaining, more than enough for the satellite to last for many years. However, by the end of this week, the remaining propellant will have been used up, and the satellite will be dead.
Obama’s speech was notable for a number of reasons. First, this was the first speech on an Israel related theme that Obama has given since the 2008 campaign in which he did not pick a fight with Israel. And it is due to the absence of open hostility in his address that Obama’s supporters are touting it as a pro-Israel speech.
While he didn’t pick a fight with Israel on Sunday, his speech did mark a clear attempt to undermine Israel’s strategic position in a fundamental – indeed existential – way. As many commentators have noted in recent weeks, Israel and the US have different red lines for the Iranian nuclear program. These divergent red lines owe to the fact that the US has more options for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations than Israel.
From Israel’s perspective, Iran’s nuclear program will reportedly become unstoppable as soon as the Iranians move a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium and/or centrifuges to the Fordow nuclear installation by Qom. Since Israel reportedly lacks the ability to destroy the facility, Israel’s timeline for attacking Iran will likely end within weeks. The US reportedly has the capacity to successfully bomb Fordow and so its timeline for attacking Iran is longer than Israel’s.
The reason this is important is because it tells us the true nature of Obama’s demand that Israel give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to work. When one recognizes Israel’s short timeline for attacking, one realizes that when Obama demands that Israel give several more months for sanctions to work, what he is actually demanding is for Israel to place its survival in his hands. Again, once Iran’s nuclear project is immune from an Israeli strike Obama will effectively hold the key to Israel’s survival. Israel will be completely at his mercy.
I suspect that this is the real story behind the mandate. It’s not (just) about women’s access to contraceptives — it’s about Big Pharma’s access to taxpayer wallets.