I got an email from Jon Goff about this yesterday, but didn’t want to post until there was a public announcement.
Ok, now that it's on Facebook, I feel it's ok to mention the horrible news here on Twitter. I found out this morning that my good friend Bernard Kutter of ULA passed away last night from a heart attack.
This is a huge loss to the industry. He had a great deal of vision, that was squandered by the child abuse of ULA’s parent companies. Not sure he’s replaceable. My deepest condolences to all his friends and family.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, that was fast. This post is already number two on a DuckDuckGo search for “Bernard Kutter.” Funny thing is that Google has nothing on the death.
This virus has been like a wildfire, sweeping through education, academia, and blue cities. It took technological and social trends that were already happening, and rapidly accelerated them, and now they’re smoldering ashes. I don’t think any of them will ever be the same again. And that’s not a bad thing.
Here’s an overview of the state of the art of needed technologies to beam power to earth, from almost three decades ago, when I was working at Rockwell. I ran across it in trying to reduce the entropy of my office. It’s funny how little has changed.
Sorry about the rotation; that’s how it scanned into the PDF. Just rotate it with your browser.