Some of you may recall numerous comments on statistics and physics here by commenter “bbbeard.” Sadly, I just received notification that he died over the weekend:
Where: Memphis Botanical Gardens (in the Japanese Garden)
750 Cherry Road
Memphis, TN 38117
Phone: 901.636.4106
Date: Saturday, April 21, 2012
Time: Gathering at 10:00am with Service to begin at 10:30am. Lunch to follow, ending at 1:30pm
Donations can be made to either of the following:
Keystone School
119 E. Craig Place
San Antonio, TX 78212
Phone: 210.735.4022
He was a former colleague of mine at the ARES Corporation (though I never worked with him). The comments section here (as well, of course, as his friends and family) will miss him.
Because we’re wasting it on party balloons. It really is a critical strategic resource; it’s nuts to be selling off the reserve. It’s vital for a lot of rocketry.
But here’s my question, that a quick search doesn’t answer. With the increase in natural gas production from fracking, are they capturing the helium along with it? Does this solve the problem? Or is the artificially low prices making it not worthwhile to do so? The other question is, are there places where it’s easy to mine in the solar system? For instance, how practical would it be to skim Saturn’s atmosphere for it?
The administration has been played (again) by North Korea. I doubt that it is a satellite launch, but it’s actually a lot easier to launch a satellite than to deliver a warhead (which is what they really want to learn how to do).
This is probably inevitable. If it doesn’t happen by then, or sooner, it will be due to regulatory inertia at the FAA. It will probably take longer for pilotless passenger flights. Regardless of the actual safety level, I think that a lot of people are going to still feel more comfortable if there’s someone in the cockpit whose ass is on the line along with theirs.
Of course, we’ll be doing some market experiments in suborbital in the next few years. Virgin Galactic has redundant pilots, XCOR has a single-string one, and Armadillo is automated.