I got up early this morning, flew to El Paso, and then drove up to Alamagordo to the space history museum. In Las Cruces now. I’ll check in from the event tomorrow.
Category Archives: Space
Hollywood And Mars
[Monday-afternoon update]
Even the film-makers had doubts:
“If you had told me two years ago when we were walking into Fox to pitch the approach and what this movie would be, if you told me I’d be on the phone talking about how this is a big spectacle movie, I would have been delighted,” he tells Esquire. “At the time, we knew it was going to be expensive, but we thought it would be more niche than Ridley made it.” Nope.
What made The Martian unique also made it a difficult sell. It was not an action movie. The film’s star would spend his time farming potatoes harvested from his co-astronaut’s feces. The Rock would not show up to blow away aliens halfway through the second act. Mind would prevail over muscle. And that’s not easy to write for the masses.
I hope it will break some of the stereotypes, and make it easier to make these kinds of films.
[Bumped]
Space Pirates
Michael Listner explains in excruciating space-law detail why Mark Watney isn’t one.
Train Wrecks In Space
Thoughts from Wayne Hale (who I hope I’ll see tomorrow in Las Cruces) on how to avoid them:
I have a cheap seat view of the Orion/SLS development. My basic observation: those efforts are drowning in ‘process’. The biggest threat to their success is not technical; it is schedule and cost. If the design and development processes drag the projects out too far, Congress or a new Administration will throw up their hands and call a halt to the whole thing. They did once before; my intuition is that they will again unless something significant happens.
The secret of a good program – as a very senior spacecraft designer once told me – is knowing how much is enough and then not doing anything more.
Right now, inside NASA, we have trained our workforce to do it perfectly. And perfection is very costly and takes a long time. Over in the Commercial Crew Program, the senior leadership is making some progress in toning down the drive for perfection. It is a slow effort and uphill at all times. Over in the Exploration systems area, it all seems to be going the other way. Whatever anybody calls necessary for safety or improvement – without evaluating the real cost or schedule or other impact – seems to be adopted.
So I am guardedly optimistic about the commercial teams actually succeeding in flying humans in space in the next couple of years.
Not so much optimism for the exploration systems, drowning in ‘process’.
The sooner it’s canceled, the better, but I’m sure we’ll waste more billions on it before it happens.
A Newly Discovered Space Pioneer
Decades before Tsiolkowski, a Canadian physicist described rocketry.
A New Steel Alloy
…with the strength-to-weight of titanium.
This will be huge, if they can work out the manufacturing issue.
Curiosity
Andy Weir says to send it to check out the water.
I’m pretty sure that would violate current planetary-protection protocols.
[Late-afternoon update]
Keith Cowing has a review of the movie up now.
The Dangers Of Mars
The movie understates them. I vehemently disagree with this, though:
Martian gravity is roughly one-third the gravity on Earth. Experiments on the International Space Station show that plants, animals and humans all suffer in weightlessness, but no one knows how living creatures will fare in reduced gravity.
“Maybe plants will be happy, maybe animals will be happy, maybe humans will be happy,” McKay says. “Or maybe not.” The effect of reduced gravity isn’t easily tested ahead of time and though probably not a huge problem, it could be a “showstopper,” McKay says.
It is easily tested ahead of time. Stop wasting money on a giant rocket and build a gravity lab. The fact that we’re not is one of the strongest indicators that neither NASA or Congress are serious about Mars.
[Update a few minutes later]
Barriers to colonizing Mars. I don’t buy this number for a minute, though:
NASA’s current Mars mission concept would set us back about $50 billion over the course of a decade, or about twice as much as the moon program cost between 1962 and 1972.
First, in current-year dollars, we spent more like a hundred billion on Apollo (the $25B is in sixties dollars). But they’re probably going to spend that much just on SLS/Orion, without any actual Mars hardware.
[Late-morning update]
Don’t worry, Matt Damon won’t get stranded on Mars, because NASA can’t get him there.
NASA And Safety
A long piece at Aerospace America by Debra Werner and Anatoly Zak. I haven’t had time to read the whole thing yet, but this is absurd:
“The actual loss of crew value will vary depending on the mission,” William C. Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, says by email. “This makes the loss-of-crew number one example where it is difficult to compare shuttle with Orion/SLS.” To evaluate safety, NASA analyzes risk for specific elements of a mission and aggregates those numbers. Launch and ascent gets a rating. In-space activity gets another. Atmospheric entry, descent and landing gets a third. For launch and ascent, NASA will require Lockheed Martin to show that Orion poses no more than a 1-in-1,400 risk of loss of crew. Boeing must show that SLS poses no more than a 1-in-550 risk. For Orion’s entry, descent and landing, the risk must be no more than 1 fatal accident in 650 missions.
Neither company will be capable of “showing” that for vehicles used so rarely. One in fourteen hundred for a vehicle that is not planned (and can’t be afforded) to fly more than a couple dozen times effectively means that NASA is demanding zero risk of LOC.
Someone should write a book about this sort of thing.
Oh, wait.
Science Fiction
Which SF movie stars actually like it? With a guest appearance by Ronald Reagan.