XCOR has now tested them for both fuel and oxidizer.
All posts by Rand Simberg
The Books
Where are they? We’ve got (perhaps literally) a ton of them, which are a pain to move, but we haven’t been acquiring many lately.
Mining Asteroids
This isn’t really satisfactory, though, without quantifying it:
So are asteroids celestial bodies like the moon? Or something different? A number of space-law scholars have weighed in recently. The bottom-line argument is, as Andrew Tingkang noted in a Seattle University Law Review article, that if you can move it, it isn’t a celestial body.
We see a similar distinction on Earth between “real” and “personal” property. Real estate is land. One of its chief characteristics is that it stays put. Personal property can be huge—a supertanker or a 747—but it’s movable. The rules relating to real property are different, and usually more stringent, than the rules relating to personal property. Land is accounted for by deeds and registries; for personal property, possession is enough to establish a presumption of ownership.
The biggest asteroids, like Ceres or Vesta, are probably too big to move, so even though they’re smaller than the moon, they might count as celestial bodies. But a 100-meter class-M asteroid is readily movable. It’s not real estate; it’s just a rock.
Anything, including the moon, can be moved. It’s just a matter of degree. When we slammed LCROSS into it a while back, we moved it, though probably not measurably. One clear-cut definition could be if you change the body around which it’s orbiting.
Progress On The Senate Launch System
Competition
Is it always good?
We Need A Waiting Period
…not for guns. For laws.
Just Tell Men That Rape Is Wrong
A dispatch from a sane planet.
[Update a few minutes later]
Not directly related, but it’s pretty nutty as well:
The question, in a nutshell, is simple: Does it violate the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit race-conscious admissions? Ironic, isn’t it?
The frightening thing is that there are no doubt some “justices” who will think it does.
The Future That Never Was
Ed Driscoll has what looks like an interesting post on the space colonization movement, but unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to link to it. The URL looks fine, but it redirects back to http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/. Is it just me? Can anyone else see it?
[Update a while later]
OK, just got a new URL from Ed, that works. I haven’t actually read the whole thing yet, because I couldn’t see the second page, but I may have more commentary after I do.
The Eighteenth Brumaire
…Obama is not a communist, even in the twentieth century meaning of the term. Communism is about state ownership of the means of production. The Obama administration does not seek ownership. In fact, where it acquired ownership through the bailout, the administration now works to divest itself. What Obama is building is a large government bureaucracy whose expanding limbs find their way into every facet of human existence, a government that does not own the means of production but controls them by increased and oppressive regulation and taxation. Obama’s political inspiration is more likely to be Mussolini or Peron, even Hugo Chavez, than Lenin or Stalin.
As I’ve long noted, the difference is pretty much transparent to the serfuser.
ObamaCare
Go ahead, Democrats — embrace it:
Actually, the GOP does have a plan about Obamacare and its replacement. We’re going to rip this Democratic party-spawned monstrosity out by the roots, burn it, urinate on the ashes, and then try a series of market-based reforms that will increase competition (health savings accounts, inter-state insurance markets) and foster innovation (meaningful tort reform). Just because the Democrats keep lying by saying that there’s no alternative to their political equivalent to a midlife crisis** doesn’t mean that there actually isn’t one.
…The problem with Obamacare is not that it is being badly presented; the problem is that there is a limit to how well you can present a law that is this bad. It’s like trying to put a positive spin on having your leg bitten off by a shark: sure, yes, in the long run you’re going to see a 50% saving on socks, but that’s not exactly comforting news while you’re watching the water around you go pink…
And Dr. K. explains that the train wreck cometh. I’d love to see everyone responsible for this on the unemployment line. Well, actually, garbed in hot black hydrocarbons and and bird adornments.