We’re driving up to Walnut Creek tonight, and then I’m going to be at the Space Manufacturing Conference at Ames in Mountain View on Saturday and Sunday. Probably not much posting until tomorrow.
Category Archives: Space
Space Colonies
A gallery.
Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?
Whoever wrote this post doesn’t understand why we got to the moon thirty years ahead of schedule. The key to understanding that is the fact that we haven’t been back in almost forty years. If it was on a similar curve to the other examples, we’d have colonies on Mars by now.
“Witches’ Brew”
Paul Spudis discusses the recent LCROSS findings:
The LCROSS team’s published data from the mission reveals a cold witches’ brew deep inside Cabeus crater. The finding of significant lunar water has confirmed data from earlier missions, while the ejecta plume from the LCROSS impact reveals more modest amounts of a variety of other substances. The Near-IR spectrometers on the LCROSS shepherding satellite detected abundant water (H2O) but also hydrogen sulfide (H2S), ammonia (NH3), methanol (CH3OH), methane (CH4), ethylene (C2H4) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The uv-vis spectrometer found carbon dioxide (CO2), sodium, silver, and cyanide (CN). Aboard the distant LRO spacecraft, the ultraviolet LAMP imager detected hydrogen (H2), nitrogen, carbon monoxide (CO), sodium, mercury, zinc, gold (!), and calcium. But water, present in quantities between 5 and 10 weight percent, is the most abundant volatile substance present.
One of the many travesties of Constellation is that, in attempting to redo Apollo, it ate up all the funding for serious preparatory exploration of the moon that would have provided a lot better guidance to requirements for human lunar activities. Compared to what we previously thought, the moon seems to be a veritable rain forest in terms of water quantities and densities, with other useful volatiles as well.
Back To LA
I didn’t go to the runway dedication today — I just couldn’t see sitting on a bus for six hours or so (two or three each way from Las Cruces to Spaceport America) for a photo op. There will be plenty of other people thee with pictures that will shortly be on the web. It didn’t get back until five or so, and I have a 4 PM flight out of El Paso. I’ll check in tonight.
[Late evening update in CA]
Sorry, arrived safely several hours ago. More anon.
Virgin Propulsion Update
Talking to George Whitesides briefly last night, he said that they’ve done full-thrust tests of the engine, but not yet full duration. I may have a piece on this next week.
Soviet Lander Commentary
Well, this is a little annoying. Scott Ott seems to get it, though.
Symposium Over
More thoughts later.
Color Me Skeptical
The Lockheed guy just claimed that they have invested a significant amount of corporate money in Orion.
Tell me more.
ISPCS Update
Jeff Foust has some highlights from yesterday, and Clark Lindsey is finding lots of links to Twitter feeds and other reports.
[Update a few minutes later]
Doug Messier has some symposium reports, here (in which I make a guest appearance), here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.