Is it possible? Even if it’s very unlikely, it’s such a high payoff that it’s worth devoting some resources to. In the mean time, I’m much more focused on making it affordable to just get into orbit.
Category Archives: Space
A Flyback First Stage
As soon as next year?
That would be quite an achievement.
A Mars Cometary Impact
But what about the Martian dinosaurs? Won’t anyone think of them?
Sequestration And Commercial Space
A source who (for obvious reasons) wants to remain anonymous informs me that 45th Space Wing at Patrick is starting to cut back on maintenance and operations of range safety at the Cape through the end of the (fiscal) year.
I’ll bet I could find other places to cut that wouldn’t impact commercial launches, but the administration’s goal remains to inflict the maximum amount of pain. I should note that apparently the layoffs will start in the next couple weeks. Whether or not they’ll be able to get those people back in October is an interesting question.
Paul F. Dietz
Has anyone heard from him recently (i.e., in the last couple years)?
[Evening update]
OK, look, folks. I’m not stupid. I’ve done searches. I’m asking people who actually know him, and might know what’s up.
Piston Pumps
XCOR has now tested them for both fuel and oxidizer.
Mining Asteroids
This isn’t really satisfactory, though, without quantifying it:
So are asteroids celestial bodies like the moon? Or something different? A number of space-law scholars have weighed in recently. The bottom-line argument is, as Andrew Tingkang noted in a Seattle University Law Review article, that if you can move it, it isn’t a celestial body.
We see a similar distinction on Earth between “real” and “personal” property. Real estate is land. One of its chief characteristics is that it stays put. Personal property can be huge—a supertanker or a 747—but it’s movable. The rules relating to real property are different, and usually more stringent, than the rules relating to personal property. Land is accounted for by deeds and registries; for personal property, possession is enough to establish a presumption of ownership.
The biggest asteroids, like Ceres or Vesta, are probably too big to move, so even though they’re smaller than the moon, they might count as celestial bodies. But a 100-meter class-M asteroid is readily movable. It’s not real estate; it’s just a rock.
Anything, including the moon, can be moved. It’s just a matter of degree. When we slammed LCROSS into it a while back, we moved it, though probably not measurably. One clear-cut definition could be if you change the body around which it’s orbiting.
Progress On The Senate Launch System
The Future That Never Was
Ed Driscoll has what looks like an interesting post on the space colonization movement, but unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to link to it. The URL looks fine, but it redirects back to http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/. Is it just me? Can anyone else see it?
[Update a while later]
OK, just got a new URL from Ed, that works. I haven’t actually read the whole thing yet, because I couldn’t see the second page, but I may have more commentary after I do.
Jagged Ice
Europa could be a challenging place to land.
It seems to me that you just have to budget some extra propellant for a hover to melt it, then drop in with a floating ship. Too bad there’s no ice in the rings, or you could mine some propellant from them. But you could fuel up in the Belt before heading on to Jupiter.