Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space, War Commentary

The North Korean Satellite

4 Comments

It exists, and it seems to be tumbling out of control. I have to say I’m more surprised by the former than the latter. Of course, it’s actually easier to orbit a satellite than it is to deliver a warhead on target, as long as you’re not fussy about how precise the orbit insertion is.

And on an unrelated grammar note:

Russia added its voice to the condemnation of the launch and also called on other nations to refrain from further escalating tensions.

“The new rocket launch carried out by North Korea flaunts the opinion of the international community, including calls from the Russian side,” it said.

I don’t know if the Russians released this in English, or the translator screwed up, but the word is “flout,” not “flaunt.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Moongrabber

30 Comments

No, that’s not the next Bond film, but the clueless fantasy of a physics professor in Coloradoalifornia:

Other concerns bubbling over private space travel are that it will increase the amount of space debris and the potential weaponization and militarization of space.

Williams said that “whatever nation controls the moon controls the Earth.”

“If you had a moon base with space weapons, you could control all the launches on Earth,” she said.

Really? Even the ones when the moon is on the other side of the earth? How would one go about that? What kind of “space weapons” is she talking about? How does one prevent anything from happening on earth from a location that is days away? And this is a professor of physics?

It gets worse:

The Outer Space Treaty states that each nation retains jurisdiction over its citizens should they perform activities in space. So the U.S. would not only govern Golden Spikes’ operations, it would be liable in the event of a catastrophic accident.

“Should the common U.S. man and woman, the 99 percent, pay for the costs and risks of the ‘space happy’ dreams of billionaires?” said Williams, who sits on the board of directors of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

A report released this year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office pegs potential federal liability for third-party claims tied to commercial space exploration at $2.7 billion.

“We need to engage in a national dialogue on the risks and costs of commercial space travel before private space corporations and their rich clients can take and make them at U.S. taxpayers’ expense,” Williams said.

What “catastrophic accident” is being fantasized here that isn’t already a risk with other commercial launches? No one would be harmed if there were an accident on the moon, other than members of the expedition. The U.S. is not liable for them — only for uninvolved third parties. The taxpayer isn’t on the hook for this at all, other than the standard launch indemnity. I’m all for a national dialogue, but I don’t expect one, and if there is one, I hope that it’s led by people more informed than Professor Williams.

Business, Space

The Golden Spike Architecture

52 Comments

Here is a technical description. I’m reading through it now, so perhaps comments later.

[Update a while later]

Sorry, link is fixed now.

[Update late morning]

OK, I skimmed it. As one would expect, there’s a trade off between development costs and ops cost with regard to lander reusability. Ultimately, to get to low marginal costs, we have to not throw hardware away. I also wonder how much it would take to make the Centaur reusable over a period of months or years. They’ve got a start on it with the refueling scenario. Eventually, if one is getting propellant from the moon, that would make sense. I would have liked to see a trade between LLO and EML-1 or EML-2, though. It looks to me like they settled on LLO early on.

I’m amused that they have to defend their costs as being “too low.” They look high to me (a hundred million for training?), but I have vastly different expectations about these things.