One of the problems with proposals for space applications is that it turns out that many of them can be done without leaving the planet. But I suspect that the far side of the moon will still always be better for radio astronomy than earth-based telescopes.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Darwin Nominee
Here’s what happens when you make a spud gun with black powder as a propellant. Don’t try this at home, or anywhere else, kids.
The End Of The Silicon Age
Is drawing near:
Researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in California developed a technique for measuring magnetic anisotropy, a property of the magnetic field that gives it the ability to maintain a particular direction. Being able to measure magnetic anisotropy at the atomic level is a crucial step toward the magnet representing the ones or the zeroes used to store data in binary computer language.
In a second report, researchers at IBM’s lab in Zurich, Switzerland, said they had used an individual molecule as an electric switch that could potentially replace the transistors used in modern chips. The company published both research reports in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.
Wonder what the implications of this technology are for Moore’s Law?
[Update a few minutes later]
Howard Lovy (who is back to blogging on nanotech again) has some thoughts on the paucity of imagination in reporting these things.
Debris
This article on testing satellite shielding against space debris is a good reminder that even if NASA solves the foam problem, or someone comes up with a new reusable vehicle concept that isn’t subject to debris during ascent, that space vehicles will always be vulnerable to orbital debris:
An object less than 0.05 inch across blew a hole through a section near the payload door of the shuttle Atlantis during its mission last September, according to the July edition of NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News journal.
The damaged section was replaced.
Had the object, which investigators think was a piece of a circuit board, hit the thinnest part of the wing edge, “There is a question whether the vehicle would have survived re-entry,” said Eric Christiansen, a NASA engineer specializing in debris shielding.
A spacefaring nation will have the capability to do repairs on orbit to mitigate the hazard of such events, but to do that requires the development of a orbital infrastructure, something that NASA’s current plans strenuously avoid.
A New Space Policy Agenda
Space logistics consultant Mike Snead has an interesting article at The Space Review on how to become a space-faring nation. I’ve glanced over it, but haven’t had time to absorb the whole thing. I don’t know how politically realistic it is, but what is most interesting to me is that the word “NASA” does not appear in it, anywhere.
I think that this was fundamental policy failure of the Vision for Space Exploration. While the vision was seen as important for the administration, just as was the case with Shuttle after Apollo, and space station after Shuttle, it was primarily treated as something for NASA to do after Shuttle and station, not an intrinsically important goal in itself. If it had truly been important, an entirely new entity would have been created to carry it out, without the baggage of the past, in much the same way that missile defense was viewed as too important to leave to the Air Force in the eighties, resulting in the formation of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO).
Life In The Twenty-First Century
A body-repair robot powered by heart muscle tissue. Pretty cool, and a hint of things to come.
Watch Out For The Polar Bears
If the global warming evangelists had the slightest sense of irony, they’d never even attempt things like this. They have no concept of what laughing stocks they make of themselves.
If I Believed In The Lord
I would ask him to forgive me for taking great pleasure in this. Guess that’s what schadenfreude is all about.
Rough Riders
The hurricane hunters earned their pay with Felix:
NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft N42RF experienced a truly awesome and terrifying mission into the heart of Hurricane Felix last night. Flying at 10,000 feet through Felix at 7pm EDT last night, N42RF dropped a sonde into the southeast eyewall. The swirling winds of the storm were so powerful that the sonde spun a full 3/4 circle around the eye before splashing into the northwest eyewall. It is VERY rare for a sonde to make nearly a complete circle around the eye like this. As the plane entered the eye of the now Category 5 hurricane, they found a 17-mile wide stadium lit up by intense lightning on all sides. The pressure at the bottom of the eye had hit 934 mb, and the temperature outside, a balmy 77 degrees at 10,000 feet. This is about 24 degrees warmer than the atmosphere normally is at that altitude, and a phenomenally warm eye for a hurricane. N42RF then punched into the northwest eyewall. Flight level winds hit 175 mph, and small hail lashed the airplane as lighting continued to flash. Then, the crew hit what Hurricane Hunters fear most–a powerful updraft followed a few seconds later by an equally powerful downdraft. The resulting extreme turbulence and wind shear likely made the aircraft impossible to control. Four G’s of acceleration battered the airplane, pushing the aircraft close to its design limit of 6 G’s. Although no one was injured and no obvious damage to the airplane occurred, the aircraft commander wisely aborted the mission and N42RF returned safely to St. Croix. N42RF is the same aircraft that survived a pounding of 5.6 g’s in the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
And that low developing off of Florida’s east coast is starting to make me a little nervous, and eyeing the shutters.
You’ll Be As Shocked As I Was
…to hear that Venezuela’s currency is collapsing. Such are the wages of socialism. No doubt he’ll blame it on George Bush.
Let’s hope that it leads to the collapse of Hugo’s government. I would think, at a minimum, that it bodes well for lower oil prices, because he’s going to have to start selling it off faster to prop up his national shell game.