It depends. Some good advice for aspiring physicists.
I was thinking about this yesterday, because I got into a Twitter discussion about vector analysis and energy methods.
Category Archives: Space
The B612 Foundation
Their annual report is out on progress toward private asteroid watching.
Intruder Alert
It’s nice to see that NASA is taking the asteroid threat more seriously, but we’re still not doing enough to actually prevent them from hitting us. In fact, we’re doing almost nothing.
O’Neill Space Colonies
It’s seemed clear for a while, but Jeff Bezos has now said explicitly that that’s his vision for humanity’s future in space. While Elon remains a planetary chauvinist. Fortunately, there’s room for both visions.
SLS
Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts on potential upcoming (and unsurprising, since it doesn’t really matter whether or not it actually flies) schedule slips:
…it means that it will have literally taken NASA two decades to build and fly a single manned Orion capsule, beginning when George Bush ordered the construction of the Crew Exploration Vehicle in January 2004.
Plenty of time to take it behind the barn and put it out of its misery.
Molten-Salt Reactors
Yes, we could use them both here and on Mars.
Steven DenBeste
He was one of the greats of early blogging, and a brilliant man in many fields. I have to confess that I feel partially responsible (though I’m sure I was far from alone) in chasing him away from blogging with an ill-thought email. I think I later apologized, but if I didn’t, Steven, if you can read this, please accept my deepest apologies.
[Tuesday-morning update]
More thoughts from Jim Geraghty.
Elon’s Mars Plans
He had an AMA yesterday. I’d be more interested in this, if I gave a rat’s patoot about Mars.
I found this bit more interesting:
Musk was asked about the reusability of the Falcon 9 rockets currently flying. He stated “I think the F9 boosters could be used almost indefinitely, so long as there is scheduled maintenance and careful inspections.” He emphasized that the current Falcon 9 rockets in production would be retired soon and that their next version would be designed for easy reuse. The new Falcon 9, which he calls “Falcon 9 Block 5” – the fifth and final version in the Falcon series, is scheduled to have its first flight in six to eight months.
I assume the cores for the heavy will be of similar design. I wonder how often “careful inspections” need to occur? Every flight?
Colonizing Mars
Speaking of space in The New Atlantis, thoughts from Bob Zubrin about Elon’s plans.
Schiaparelli, RIP
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has seen the impact site. Burn was ten times too short, fell from 2-4 kilometers, almost-full tanks probably exploded on “landing.”
But they think it was a software error, which is good news.