Category Archives: Technology and Society

Venus

Jon Goff has some thoughts on utilizing its resources.

[Update a while later]

For the record, I think that Venus is a much more interesting destination than Mars, but that’s because I don’t suffer from a desire to redescend into a gravity well. It has much more light for solar power, and as Jon points out, easy-to-harvest resources in the upper atmosphere. I think that habitats floating high in it could be nice places to live.

Inspiration Mars

Joel Achenbach reports on Tito’s plans.

He wants to use Cygnus, but how does he propose to enter? Guess I have to read the paper. I think he’s crazy to stake the mission on an SLS flight.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Foust has a more detailed description. I think it’s crazy to rely on unbuilt NASA hardware.

[Update a while later]

This makes so little sense that I am compelled to think that it is driven by politics. I smell Boeing/LM behind this.

If I were Tito, I’d be working with SpaceX to do the mission with a dual-heavy concept, and use Dragon, not Orion. I’d order a stretch Centaur from ULA, or use two of them. I’d also bypass OSC and go directly to Thales Alenia for a PCM. The changes needed are so extensive that it doesn’t make sense to start with a Cygnus.

[Early-afternoon update]

So Tito and Taber MacCallum had a phone call with the press afterwards, and said that they couldn’t make the case close commercially, that the solutions didn’t have the margins they wanted. Question: Did they ask ULA if they could demo orbital fueling within three years? Of course, Boeing/Lockmart would never let ULA do that, which is why it would be good for the space industry to force a divestiture. You have a commercial space company that’s hamstrung by its cost-plus-contractor parents.

The Real Barriers To Exploration

“Ray” over at the Vision Restoration blog writes about the ridiculous discussion last week on SLS/Orion:

This past week rewarded us with a panel discussion Removing the Barriers to Deep Space Exploration. The subject of the panel turned out to be the SLS heavy lift rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Surprisingly, in spite of the title of the panel, the discussion was not about cancelling SLS and Orion to allow funding to go to the robotic precursor missions, exploration technology development, and affordable space infrastructure needed for actual deep space exploration that have largely been squashed by the SLS/Orion pair. In fact, the discussion really didn’t seem to be about barriers to deep space exploration at all. Instead, it seemed like a snugglefest of love for the expensive capsule and even more wildly expensive rocket.

I weary of even writing about it any more, it’s so unutterably absurd.