I really find Chris Carberry’s op-ed on SLS incomprehensible. Oh, I don’t mean I don’t understand it, it just seems disconnected with reality, and the interests of anyone seriously interested in seeing humans go to Mars. He speaks about SLS as thought it has kind of reality, and actual utility. To me, a sane Mars organization would be screaming bloody murder at the waste of money to the detriment of hardware needed to actually get to Mars.
This idiotic sort of thing is what my current project, to make the international legal environment more friendly to space development and settlement, partially about.
San Mateo County claimed in its complaint to be “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” with a 93 percent the county will experience a “devastating” flood before 2050. Imperial Beach and Marin County also claimed in their separate complaints to be vulnerable to devastating floods because of climate change.
“If sea levels were to raise that high, it most certainly would be catastrophic,” Epstein said.
However, bond offerings in the last few years by those counties and cities weren’t so forthcoming about those predictions, Exxon said in a verified petition filed last month with the District Court in Tarrant County, Texas.
San Mateo’s 2014 and 2016 bond offerings told would-be investors that the county “is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur,” Exxon’s petition said.
Imperial Beach and Marin County never disclosed the same information to perspective bond investors that was detailed in their complaints against the energy companies, Exxon’s petition said.
Making those claims in their lawsuits against energy companies – but not in their bond offerings – smacks of hypocrisy, Exxon is arguing.
Martin Elvis says it’s a game changer. BFR would be even more so. But this (from the story’s author) is a little silly:
Also, I feel like launching all of those rockets and processing the metals can’t be good for the environment.
The metals would be processed in space. The whole point of this is to start to move industry off the planet, which would be great for the environment. He should try thinking, and doing some actually analysis, rather than going on feels.
I agree that we have the tech to do this affordably, but I strenuously disagree with this:
The activities at this moon base would be focusing on science, as is the case in the Antarctic. It could provide an official U.S. government presence on the moon, and its motivation would be rooted in U.S. national policy—again as are the U.S. Antarctic bases.
To the degree that the focus should be on “science,” it should be about better learning how to live on the moon, and Antarctica is a terrible precedent, in that we aren’t allowed to exploit it for its resources. That’s also why the Outer Space Treaty itself, which was modeled on the Antarctic Treaty, is a problem.
It’s always more fun to build new stuff than to maintain it. I discovered when I arrived late at DCA last week that the Metro isn’t running past 11:30 PM, probably so they can finally do long-needed maintenance on it. It’s long been a system run more for its employees than its passengers.