A depressing Twitter discussion.
I wasn’t on Twitter yesterday, or I would have weighed in. I like the comment about re-engineering the solar system to make it SLS/Orion friendly.
Category Archives: Space
That Orbital 3-D Printer
Ben Reytblat has some useful (and I assume accurate, though I can’t vouch) info in comments at this previous post today: Continue reading That Orbital 3-D Printer
Gardening The Universe
A few weeks ago, I was invited to a gathering to hear the latest from Howard Bloom in downtown LA, but I had a conflict. But David Swindle attended, and has a report. (I did talk to Howard briefly a few days later, in San Diego.)
This –>
It became apparent again that I was the odd man out in the room. Most of the questions were phrased in explicitly secular terms.
Afterwards as Howard and a group of us sat around discussing, I raised my objection to the soulless, materialist focus. I drew a parallel between the groups who had sought to explore and settle the North American continent in the 1600s and those who should now seek to place their mark on the Moon, Mars, and the earth’s orbit.
I reminded Howard and the others that people came to the New World for varying reasons — capitalists eager to make money, the Crown eager to maintain power (primordial corporatists), science-minded explorers eager to discover what was out there, and one group unrepresented at the talk tonight, save for yours truly: the fanatical religious radicals wanting to live free of persecution as they built a godly, happy, counterculture community. It was this mix together that enabled the American experiment to begin and succeed.
People of faith — whether they interpret the Bible through Jewish, Christian, or mystic lenses — are called by God to transcend nature and rise upwards. The earth is not holy; it’s not our mother. As I’ve blogged about before, inspired by Glenn Reynolds’s An Army of Davids, the earth is just a rocky death trap. We can grow a better one ourselves.
To the degree that I have a religion, that’s pretty much it.
A 3-D Printer
…that has been demonstrated to work in weightlessness.
This could significantly reduce O&M costs at the ISS (and later, at private orbital facilities). It could also revolutionize the pace of research, if someone on the ground could send up the specs for new experiment hardware without having to wait weeks or months for a launch.
Private Space Is Winning
Bob Zimmerman reports that AIAA seems to have been won over:
Historically, AIAA has not been considered a New Space organization. Its members mostly come from the older aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Since these companies have generally been hostile to the new commercial space companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic — seeing them as a dangerous and competitive threat — I would have expected an effort by AIAA to influence Congress would mean they are trying to encourage funding for Big Space projects like the Space Launch System (SLS). In the past it has been these Big Space projects that has filled the coffers of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The contracts for these project have been cost-plus, meaning that they have been able to rake in a lot of cash, whether or not they even build anything.
To my joy Mr. Shweyk’s presentation described something completely different. Instead, the AIAA is gung-ho for commercial space, and is doing everything it can to encourage Congress to come up with the money to fund the efforts of new companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing to build new cheap cargo and manned ferrying spacecraft to low Earth orbit. The Space Launch System was not on their agenda. They had no interest in promoting it. Instead, they wanted money to go to the new efforts, so that more rockets and spaceships could be built by more companies, for less money.
For this organization, dominated as it is by the big and older aerospace companies, to push this agenda suggests to me that the culture truly has shifted, and that private space is definitely winning the political and cultural battle.
You can only defend the indefensible for so long. Remaining with the old approaches will result in a moribund industry, and people are starting to realize it.
Molecular Manufacturing And Space
There’s a review of Eric Drexler’s new book
I don’t agree with this (I assume that it’s his own opinion, not Eric’s):
APM will also make space colonization imperative, but for different reasons than for Eric Drexler’s original quest to find a solution to the impending global crisis posed by The Limits to Growth. What will the millions of people now involved in mining, manufacturing, distribution, retailing, transportation, and other services do if much less of these services will be required and most of them could be performed by robots? How will people earn a living if they can buy a desktop factory—something like a super 3D printer—and can produce most of what they need at home and no longer need to shop at Wal-Mart or Amazon? If people aren’t working and earning a good income they will no longer be able to buy stuff. Henry Ford recognized the problem and chose to pay his people well so that they could afford to buy his cars. By choosing to industrialize the Moon and colonize space, thousands and ultimately millions can be put to work earning a good income.
I think that this technology will enable space settlement, but I don’t see how in itself space settlement creates jobs, particularly for those who are becoming unemployable because they’re on the wrong side of the bell curve. That’s a big problem coming down the pike, and space isn’t a solution to it.
China In Space
I agree with John Kelly — they’re nothing to worry about, for a long time. As Clark Lindsey said a few days ago, all they’re doing is proving that they too can keep spaceflight expensive and rare.
I have to say, though, that most of the comments over there are (as is unfortunately typical) pretty ignorant.
Space Operas
What classic SF novel would you like to see on the big screen?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would be timely.
Space Safety Regulation
Too much or too little? Clark Lindsey has a post linking to the two extremes. I’d say that Carolynne Campbell-Knight’s piece isn’t just overwraught, but hysterical:
Make no mistake, if a few very wealthy people get killed, the waivers they signed won’t mean a thing if they didn’t know the risks. It may make no difference whether they knew the risks or not. There will be a massive outcry, huge negative publicity and a demand for regulation and accountability. That would be the end of passenger space travel for decades and the damage to the industry would be immense. A wise industry would regulate itself, set published standards, and be open about the risks involved. It would do this before the disaster happens.
When the West was wild, it was a different era. A Wild West in space won’t be acceptable in the day of 24 hour news and the litigious society.
Right now, the risks are not being properly declared. The impression is being given that riding rockets can be as safe as a ride in a light aircraft. That simply isn’t true. Rockets are dangerous and even the most careful engineering can only make them ‘as safe as possible’. They can’t make them ‘safe’.
I’m unaware of anyone “giving the impression” that these vehicles will be as safe as light aircraft. I think that she’s just unjustifiably inferring that. Here’s what I wrote in the book:
Some will argue that part of promoting the industry is to ensure that it doesn’t kill its customers, but the industry already has ample incentive to not do that, and the FAA isn’t any smarter on that subject than the individual companies within it — everyone is still learning.
There is a popular view in the space community that the first time someone dies in private spaceflight it will somehow doom the industry. Bluntly, I believe that is nonsense, because it is based on absolutely no evidence. In fact, there is an abundance of counterevidence with examples being the early aviation industry, various extreme sports including free diving and mountaineering, and even the recent cruise-ship disaster of the Costa Concordia, in which at least thirty passengers died.
In fact, it may take just such a death, a sanguineous christening, to normalize this business, and end the mystical thinking about it.
She herself isn’t consistent on the issue:
While there are some treaties covering satellites and debris, there are no laws. There is no regulator. It’s the wild west in space. Who is going to license and oversee the new commercial ventures? Those involved in this commerce think regulation is a bad thing and that it will preclude innovation. That’s what the early railroads thought. But then the bodies started piling up. When is an aircraft a spaceship? What’s the difference? Regulators such as the FAA have no experience in spacecraft. Once you’re above the atmosphere there are no rules, certainly no laws. If the history of transportation teaches us anything, it teaches us that there will be a dangerous mess until a regulatory regime is established.
If FAA has no experience in spacecraft (actually, they do have some), then how can they, or anyone else, be expected to establish a regulatory regime, until we get some experience actually flying? Not to mention that we do in fact have definitions for aircraft and spaceships, in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.
And as Clark notes:
The same regulations that help keep a vehicle from crashing onto third parties also help protect the second parties in the vehicle. The companies are highly motivated to provide safe space travel. While the industry will go on from an accident, it will be very difficult for the company involved to do so. There will be a long grounding and many customers will no doubt demand refunds. Some states have now limited liability exposure for space tourism operators and manufacturers, but there is no limit when gross negligence is found. An accident will also mean the end of the “learning period” in which the FAA is restricted from applying new regulations on personal spaceflight.
I’ve really got to get the book out.
Astronaut Wives
It wasn’t necessarily what they signed up for.