Category Archives: Space

Space

Decoupling

59 Comments

In my talk at Space Access in April on the “Impedance Matching” panel, I raised the issue of how to completely decouple atmospheric vehicles from pure in-space ones. That is, right now, all paths to LEO seem to go through a launch pad, even coming back from some place else (e.g., the moon or deep space). This is because it’s difficult and expensive to circularize there from places less deep in the well. It’s difficult to do aerobraking safely and reliably in a single pass, and multiple passes means that the maneuver can take a long time, which can be a problem for crewed vehicles. And of course, this doesn’t even address the issue of getting into the right orbital plane. But until we can fix this, we’ll always have the ugly and inelegant situation of having to come all the way back the the earth’s surface from any beyond-LEO destination, and have to spend resources relifting crew for each trip, and make a true transportation node in LEO (i.e., one that can be reached from any destination, either from the surface or in space) impractical.

Anyway, I’d like to see what kinds of ideas get kicked around in comments here, perhaps with the hope of doing a presentation at the SSI conference in October.

[Afternoon update]

Circularizing propulsively is of course an option, but it’s hard to see how it’s a cost-effective one, until propellant in space is really cheap. Assuming that one doesn’t aerobrake at all, it takes just as much delta-V to get into LEO as it does to leave it, and it would require an improbably large vehicle if the departing vehicle has to carry enough propellant to recircularize on the way back. Which, of course, again demonstrates the value of depots. With one at L-1, perhaps supplied from either the lunar surface or an asteroid, it might make sense to fuel up there for the circularization in LEO. It all comes back of course, to the point that I made in my essay last year — that reusability implies gas stations, and that it’s impractical without them. As Jon Goff demonstrated with his amusing “We don’t need no stinkin’ depots” slide at Space Access, which was a picture of his car with extra gas tanks for driving cross country, the more often you can fuel on a trip, the smaller your vehicle can be and, due to the exponential nature of the rocket equation, that goes in spades for space vehicles.

[Bumped]

Business, Space

Advice To A Recent Grad

15 Comments

I got this email a few days ago, and haven’t had the time to respond to it, but I thought I’d at least let my readers pick up the slack:

My name is XXXX and I have read your blog for a while now after being introduced to it through Instapundit. I’m sure you get plenty of e-mails like this where people ask for your advice or opinions on something so if you don’t have time to respond it’s more than understandable.

Some background on me; I recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a B.A. in Political Science and just finished my first semester in the University of North Dakota’s M.S. in Space Studies program. Also, I am in the Army National Guard and just transitioned into the public affairs career field, completing a basic course at the Defense Information School.

I had originally planned to go to law school and hope for a career in space law, but after moving to public affairs I’ve fallen in love with the PR-field and now hope to find a PR-related career-path in the aerospace industry. My biggest question to you is, where do I start? I’ve tried researching which PR firms have major aerospace companies as their clients but have found nothing. Also, I don’t see aerospace-PR jobs advertised a whole lot. I’m not sure where exactly to begin looking or who to attempt to contact.

Also, do you have any advice on how I could present my qualifications once I do find someone/place to contact? My issue is that I have a liberals arts bachelors that doesn’t directly apply to the career I want (anymore) and my actual PR-training might not be understood/taken seriously since it comes from the military.

One last question, am I foolish in pursuing the North Dakota program? I talked to a few alumni before I applied and they all had great things to say, however I sometimes wonder if I’m making the wrong decision pursuing an interdisciplinary degree that an employer might not “get” when they review my resume.

Sorry if this e-mail was a bit rambling. I greatly appreciate any help or advice you could give me.

As I said, I hope that some of my readers, who understand the PR world better than I, can help.

[Update later afternoon]

Some advice from a (smart, who knows this stuff) reader who prefers to remain anonymous, but may be useful to more than the emailer:

[He should] save up enough money in his bank account to work as an unpaid intern someplace when he’s done w/ classes in North Dakota. That will give him real-world experience, and could actually turn into a job at the firm he’s interning for. Also, it’ll help him confirm that P.R., which can be a field that chews up young people and spits them out, is what he really wants to do. And if he chooses a city that has lots of outfits working in industries he likes, he can make other useful contacts.

Sounds good to me.