Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space, Technology and Society

Reusing Falcons

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SpaceX has just announced that they’re going to attempt to add another vehicle to their reusable fleet, with another landing attempt at sea early next Wednesday morning from the Cape.

Meanwhile, here’s the most comprehensive analysis I’ve seen so far of how much they can reduce cost and prices, but it’s based on a lot of assumptions.I found this curious:

Musk said the fuel used on a Falcon 9 is between $200,000 and $300,000. Reserving fuel in the first stage for landing adds mass to the vehicle and deprives it of performance, effectively carrying fuel instead of extra payload — a penalty that expendable rockets do not need to pay. Musk was addressing not the performance penalty, but the issue of fuel cost, which is a non-issue in the overall economics of reusability.

Actually, much of the point of reusability is to get to the point at which one cares about propellant costs. It’s expendables in which they are a non-issue.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Vegetarian Myth

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Dr. Eades reviews what appears to be a very interesting book.

My thoughts: No, we can’t sustain the current human population without agriculture. But then, we’re not sure how we’re going to sustain a human population in space, either. We need advances in technology to solve either problem. I suspect that we’ll be manufacturing meat in the not-too-distant future that will have the taste, texture and nutrition of the real thing, and that will be good for all, including wildlife. But even absent that, I’d amend the old bumper sticker. Grains aren’t food. Grains are what food eats.

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

My “Ending Apolloism” Talk At Space Access

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I’ve uploaded the Powerpoint to the site.

It’s an outgrowth of my “SLS Roadblock” project, which I’m figuring out how to either wrap up or extend.

Stop Trying To Make Apollo Happen

[Update a while later]

Erratum: At the time I originally created these charts, for the FISO telecon at the end of January, Dana had proposed the Space Settlement bill. He has since actually introduced it.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The SLS Disaster

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Eric Berger writes that Congress is forcing NASA to eat its seed corn for the #JourneyToMars.

Yes.

[Update a while later]

This is a key point:

Since Tuesday, I have been asking communications officials in NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate for clarification on what this extra funding will be used for and whether it’s needed. I haven’t received a response.

Because they don’t have a response. It is programmatic insanity to just throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a manager and expect them to spend it sensibly in a single year.

Health, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Those Space Mice

5 Comments

Eric Berger has the story, including the fact that we’ve done absolutely no research in partial gravity, which will be necessary if people want to procreate on Mars.

I’d note that while it’s never officially been confirmed, it seems unlikely, given the nature of astronauts, that no one has ever done it in space.