At least for a Space Access conference. There’s no broadband in the rooms. There is a wireless connection in the lobby, from which I’m posting this. Michael Mealing is attempting to set up a wireless connection in the room in which the proceedings are occuring, so we can blog from there, but there’s a problem with the network connection to the router, and there will be no resolution before tomorrow morning. The restaurant took half an hour to take out orders, and an hour to deliver them, then screwed up the check. Not to mention that my linguini was spaghetti., and overcooked.
Other than that, everything is great. Hopefully better news on the morrow.
I was hearing rumors of this last night through the grapevine, but some news outlets are now reporting the Scott Crossfield‘s private aircraft is missing, possibly (and even likely) with him aboard.
Jeff Foust has started up (yet another) new blog on personal spaceflight. He’s come up with a very creative and descriptive name for it–Personal Spaceflight.
Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:
Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:
Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:
In “The challenges of Mars Exploration,” Donald Rapp assesses the not-too-bright prospects of various technologies on the necessary timelines for Mars exploration.
There’s one I disagree with him on: in-situ lunar oxygen. In-situ oxygen extraction on the Moon need not be a major industrial process. The basic needs are a heat source and vapor recovery. Suppose you have an Earth imported high efficiency pump. Add a lunar glass bell jar and an Earth imported parabolic mirror (later, lunar made). If you make the bell jar big enough, the mirror can sit inside the bell jar. Set the whole thing on a flat piece of lunar glass to make a low efficiency seal.
Operation would be as follows:
Dump some ore on a flat piece of lunar glass.
Point your parabolic mirror at the ore.
Put the bell jar on top.
Turn on the pump.
Dump it out before the slag sticks to the glass bottom.
Repeat.
Some kind of airlock conveyor belt thing where the top layer of the ore is fried might be a more advanced version. It’s ore efficiency would be quite low, but there’s plenty of ore up there.
This weekend Jews celebrate Passover and Christians celebrate Easter. The latter holiday has its roots in the former as the Last Supper was a Passover feast. Christians celebrate Jesus being seen alive following his crucifiction and subsequently ascending to heaven, the Jews celebrate Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land.
The ultimate Earthly oppressor is not Pharoah or Rome, but gravity. This month, my web site, Space-Shot.com took steps to throw off the yoke of gravity. For $3.50 the myriads can compete in a tournament to win a trip to space. If they don’t win, they help someone else do so.
It does not take divine intervention, a miracle or ten plagues to get people into space, just a creative web site. (Albeit praying for a change in the weather can’t hurt.) Now people of all means can ascend to space and soon can reach the planets and the stars.
Clearly recent experience teaches us that simply telling the current NASA to go forth and build a lunar base is the last thing anyone would want to do. For NASA the construction of a lunar base would be the work of decades and at least tens of billions of dollars. If you like how NASA has managed the International Space Station, you