Category Archives: Space

Business, History, Political Commentary, Space, Space History, Space Science, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Ukraine And Space

32 Comments

Thoughts on the implications of the invasion, from Bob Zimmerman.

[Friday-morning update]

The repercussions of this for the space industry could be broad and unforeseeable.

It was always a mistake to make ourselves so reliable on Russian/Ukrainian hardware.

[Afternoon update]

Ukrainian invasions have affected our own space policies in the past.

As Jeff notes, if the Russians pull out of ISS, their human spaceflight program wouldn’t have much to do.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Yet.

[Saturday-morning update]

Eric Berger runs through the potential implications for space.

General, Humor, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, War Commentary

P.J. O’Rourke

9 Comments

RIP. He will be missed.

Little-known fact: He was a big fan of space. He was on the board of The Space Foundation. He never used email, but I sent some stuff to him once via his wife, and he wrote a nice letter thanking me.

[Update late afternoon]

John Podhoretz remembers him.

[Update Wednesday morning]

This kind of thing is why he was a national treasure.

[Monday update]

Matt Labash remembers him, as does Jonathan Last.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Recovering Rare Earths

15 Comments

…from recycling electronics and coal fly ash.

Whenever I see a breakthrough in processing like this, I always wonder how applicable it will be to space resources.

When I was at Rockwell thirty years ago, one of the projects I managed, with Ed McCullough (who died a couple years ago–NSS needs to update the page) and the late Bob Waldron was in adapting processes they’d been working on for beneficiation of lunar regolith to recover high-quality silicon and other things from fly ash. I guess it ended up not going anywhere after I left in 1993.

Business, Law, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Elon’s Thursday Starship Presentation

72 Comments

What Eric Berger is hoping to learn.

[Thursday update]

It’s at 2100 EST, on Youtube.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Bob Zimmerman will be live streaming it as well.

[Friday-morning update]

Here is Eric Berger’s report.

What I heard last night that was new to me (maybe he’s said this before) was that it was less than a million per flight on the margin, and it could deliver 150 tons to LEO (I had thought the number was a hundred tons). That’s a fifty percent increase, and a one-third reduction in cost per pound.

[Late-afternoon update]

A report from NASA Spaceflight.

[Bumped]

[Saturday-morning update]

More on Musk at Politico, in which Yours Truly is quoted and cited.