NASA and DARPA are starting to get serious about it. I’ll probably try to join the consortium, for some business plans I have.
Category Archives: Space
Thiel Versus Sessions
They’re battling over the future of NASA.
Thiel is pushing for a 21st-century space policy. Sessions represents the past, Apolloism, space socialism, and pork. He should stick to being AG.
[Update a few minutes later]
@Rand_Simberg Yes. THE "A" in #MAGA does not stand for Alabama.
— Michael Hendrickson (@theendofself) December 21, 2016
[Update a few more minutes later]
Not sure what “commercial space trade association” Tim Fernholz thinks that Alan Stern leads.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Tim pointed out to me that he’s chairman of the board of CSF, which I hadn’t known, or had forgotten. But I pointed out to him that Eric Stallmer is really the person who “leads” it, which he agreed was fair.
More on this topic from Eric Berger.
[Update a while later]
Not exactly space related, but sort of, in the sense that indefinite lifespan will help with opening the universe, an interesting description of what else Thiel is up to.
Rings, Geysers, and Plumes
Some thoughts on Enceladus, from Carolyn Porco.
Lava Tubes On The Moon
…could be up to five kilometers wide.
Mycroft Holmes, call your office.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of the moon, Paul Spudis has some ideas about how to make space great again. I actually agree with most of it, except for this:
The Orion spacecraft and its SLS launch vehicle are currently in final stages of development, with initial test flights planned for 2018. We can use these existing systems to return to the Moon; indeed, as the remnants of the cancelled Constellation program, they are already optimized for cislunar missions. The only missing piece is a lander to put people on to the lunar surface. NASA’s Altair lander program was cancelled in 2011, but fortunately, a lander may be ready very soon. The United Launch Alliance has outlined a plan for a human-rated lander based around the venerable Centaur stage, using modified RL-10 engines. This vehicle is almost perfectly configured to return people to the Moon, as it is intended to be reusable and utilizes the LOX-hydrogen propellant that we will produce on the lunar surface.
The surest way to ensure that this doesn’t happen is to plan it around SLS/Orion, which will fly so rarely that we will make very little progress. He’s postulating the existence of a ULA lander, while ignoring the firmer plans for Vulcan ACES, which would be the natural way to carry out these mission (Orion might be usable in that scenario, but not SLS, and Dragon would probably be more cost effective). And as usual over there, the comments, particularly from “Bilgamesh,” are idiotic. And even more particularly the fantasy about flying SLS a dozen times a year.
Anti-Matter
Unlocking its secrets with lasers. Sure would be nice if we could figure out how to a) manufacture in quantity and b) use it for propulsion.
Swiss Space Systems
They’ve gone belly up, but this is bizarre:
The news comes at the end of a difficult year for S3.
In August its founder and CEO, Pascal Jaussi, was left seriously injured after being beaten up and set on fire by two attackers in a forest.
The media reported at the time that Jaussi was forced to drive his car into a forest, where he was doused in petrol and set on fire. He managed to get himself out of the vehicle and call a friend, who alerted emergency services.
The investigation is ongoing.
The space business can be dangerous, but I’d sure like to know the back story here.
Densifying Hydrogen
The irony I find here is that this technology will be more useful in space than for a first stage, which wants higher-density fuel. And with low-boiloff propellant depots in orbit, the case for SLS looks even weaker.
Rogue One
…makes white guys the enemy of the future. Of course, it’s coming from people who think they’re the enemy of the past and present. But Christian Toto liked it.
I haven’t seen it yet.
[Sunday-morning update]
I’ve never been a huge Star Wars fan. It’s not really SF, or at least not hard SF. The effects were great for their time, but for my generation, 2001 is the touchstone.
Make NASA Great Again
My thoughts on the passing of John Glenn, over at National Review.
[Update a while later]
Buzz Aldrin remembers his former colleague.
[Update a while later]
Dear President Trump, here’s how to make space great:
This list of goals sounds audacious, perhaps outrageous, but it is entirely within the capability and character of the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad, the Hoover Dam, and conquered a continent. Americans are leaders in every one of these fields. It is only necessary for the new President to unleash America’s potential—once unleashed, American innovators will move these dreams toward reality faster than anyone can imagine.
Asteroid mining, moon mining, propellant depots, solar-power satellites, asteroid deflection? Crazy talk, when instead we could be building a giant rocket.
I had dinner with Coyote in Seattle last June.
[Update early afternoon]
Bill Gates’s and America’s false memory of Apollo:
So whether you agree with Bill Gates and his assessment of Trump or not, it’s important to remember that funding for the Apollo program was opposed by the majority of Americans. Why then does America have this bizarre memory of the program? You can blame the baby boomers like Gates.
The baby boomers were kids during the Apollo space program. And when you’re a kid you don’t have much to worry about in the way of paying the bills or public policy. You certainly don’t have fully formed political ideas about, say, ways that government funds can be better used than blasting people into space.
But that was precisely what happened. Baby boomers, as children of the 1960s, just remember the speeches on TV and watching the moon landing. They don’t remember that the majority of Americans (American adults, as those are the people who get polled) thought that the Apollo space program was a waste of money.
Roger Launius, chief historian at NASA, put it best in a 2005 paper: “While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth.”
This is why, as I wrote a few months ago:
Because they view Apollo as the model for how large space programs should operate, and because they believe that Apollo represented a moment of national unity, they seem to think that we ought to recreate it.
In a sense, however, a critical reason that we cannot do what they want is because we never really did it the first time.
Stop trying to make Apollo happen again.
The New Attorney General
This is bad news:
Mr. Sessions has heavily influenced the makeup of the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, these people said, with many of those appointed favoring greater emphasis on manned exploration missions to the moon and deeper into the solar system.
Candidates for NASA administrator also are being vetted, in part, by Mr. Sessions or his associates, while officials at Boeing Co. and other legacy aerospace giants increasingly believe Mr. Sessions will help temper possible changes inside NASA that would hurt existing, big-ticket projects to ultimately send astronauts to Mars.
Not coincidentally, such exploration would rely heavily on scientists, workers and rocket technology based in Alabama, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Mr. Sessions over the years has been a champion of the agency’s proposed heavy-lift rocket, dubbed Space Launch System, or SLS, and helped protect its roughly $2 billion-a-year price tag from cutbacks proposed by the Obama White House.
I like how Pasztor unironically talks about SLS/Orion as part of sending “astronauts to Mars,” when they’re almost completely irrelevant to it. This pork-mongering is part of the tragedy of Apollo.
This is the first time I’ve seen Doug Cooke’s name as a potential NASA administrator. He’d be as bad as, or worse than, a second stint by Mike Griffin.
[Update a while later]
Yes, Trump should focus on the government, not Boeing or Lockmart. They’re just doing what they’re incented to do.
And he should take a look at SLS.