Here’s one from Nadia Drake, over at NatGeo, Lisa Grossman at New Scientist, Jeff Foust at Space News, and a follow up from Eric Berger, who’s been writing quite a bit this week.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Expert Judgment And Uncertainty Qualification
An interesting post from Judith Curry on the gross deficiencies of the IPCC approach.
The Latest From The Lexington Institute
“Why is the USAF trying to destroy the launch industry?”
I may fisk this later, if I get time, but what a load of bull.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
Daniel Gouré’s op-ed “Why Does The Air Force Want To Destroy The Struggling U.S. Space Launch Business?” is inaccurate and misleading.
You don’t say.
[Bumped]
Mars 2018?
SpaceX dropped a news bombshell today, via tweets from Elon and other sources. Here’s the story from Eric Berger, Alan Boyle, Sarah Fecht, Loren Grush, and Jay Bennett. It’s a sample return from Mars using a “Red Dragon” (Dragon 2).
My thoughts: 2018 is ambitious, but not undoable. It depends on getting FH going this year or next, and what else they’ve been working on behind the scenes. I assume that 2018 is the next window that they think it’s possible to be ready for.
I’d like to see details. For instance, will Raptor be involved, or will it be an all-kerosene mission? The CONOPs chart at Popular Mechanics shows it as dual FH launch. I’d bet that they could do it with a single one if they bought a Centaur from ULA, but SpaceX doesn’t like to depend on others for space transportation. I assume this is part of the larger announcement they’ll be making in Guadalajara in September.
In other Mars news, NASA has just released what looks to be an interesting document on advanced technologies for Mars settlement. None of which are seriously funding (including the Senate cutting funds for Mars landing technology this week so it could shovel more good money after bad at SLS).
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the relevant Space Act Agreement between SpaceX and NASA, including how to deal with planetary protection protocols.
[Update a few minutes later]
Eric Berger notes the irony of the Senate cutting the tech budget for Mars landing in the same week as a private Mars-landing announcement. So it can fund a giant rocket that isn’t needed to go to Mars.
[Another update]
Importantly, it appears that this first Red Dragon mission will be funded by @SpaceX, rather than NASA, if I'm understanding things right
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) April 27, 2016
But wait! I thought private companies couldn’t afford space exploration!
[Update in the afternoon]
Here’s the story from Christian Davenport at the WaPo.
[Update a while later]
The Latest In The Reusable Trend
I always take news stories about space (or anything, really) in China with more than one grain of salt, but if this turns out to be true, I’ll start to take them more seriously. No serious space power is going to do much in space as long as they continue to throw all the hardware away.
Atmospheric Plant Food
Shockingly, when you increase the levels, the plants like it.
Who could have predicted such a thing?
[Update a few minutes later]
Mark Steyn versus the Big Climate enforcers.
Reusing Falcons
SpaceX has just announced that they’re going to attempt to add another vehicle to their reusable fleet, with another landing attempt at sea early next Wednesday morning from the Cape.
Meanwhile, here’s the most comprehensive analysis I’ve seen so far of how much they can reduce cost and prices, but it’s based on a lot of assumptions.I found this curious:
Musk said the fuel used on a Falcon 9 is between $200,000 and $300,000. Reserving fuel in the first stage for landing adds mass to the vehicle and deprives it of performance, effectively carrying fuel instead of extra payload — a penalty that expendable rockets do not need to pay. Musk was addressing not the performance penalty, but the issue of fuel cost, which is a non-issue in the overall economics of reusability.
Actually, much of the point of reusability is to get to the point at which one cares about propellant costs. It’s expendables in which they are a non-issue.
“A Dark Future”
In which we may not be able to predict natural variability.
Gee, just like now. This is profoundly ignorant of history. Does he imagine anyone predicted the Medieval Warm Period? Or the Little Ice Age? Has he ever heard of the Dust Bowl?
The Vegetarian Myth
Dr. Eades reviews what appears to be a very interesting book.
My thoughts: No, we can’t sustain the current human population without agriculture. But then, we’re not sure how we’re going to sustain a human population in space, either. We need advances in technology to solve either problem. I suspect that we’ll be manufacturing meat in the not-too-distant future that will have the taste, texture and nutrition of the real thing, and that will be good for all, including wildlife. But even absent that, I’d amend the old bumper sticker. Grains aren’t food. Grains are what food eats.
Silencing Dissent On Science
George Will describes the latest attempts at censorship of those who deign to disagree with our intellectual and moral superiors (just ask them!) on the Left:
“The debate is settled,” says Obama. “Climate change is a fact.” Indeed. The epithet “climate change deniers,” obviously coined to stigmatize skeptics as akin to Holocaust deniers, is designed to obscure something obvious: Of course the climate is changing; it never is not changing — neither before nor after the Medieval Warm Period (end of the 9th century to the 13th century) and the Little Ice Age (1640s to 1690s), neither of which was caused by fossil fuels.
Today, debatable questions include: To what extent is human activity contributing to climate change? Are climate change models, many of which have generated projections refuted by events, suddenly reliable enough to predict the trajectory of change? Is change necessarily ominous because today’s climate is necessarily optimum? Are the costs, in money expended and freedom curtailed, of combating climate change less than the cost of adapting to it?
But these questions may not forever be debatable. The initial target of Democratic “scientific” silencers is ExxonMobil, which they hope to demonstrate misled investors and the public about climate change. There is, however, no limiting principle to restrain unprincipled people from punishing research entities, advocacy groups and individuals.
That’s the problem with leftist opponents to limited government; there are never any limiting principles on anything.