No problem. My survey of nonconventional launch technologies is up at Popular Mechanics.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Rare Earth
…on the moon.
It doesn’t make much sense to even speculate on the economic potential until we solve the launch-cost problem, though, and there is little in current space policy that even attempts it.
Unconventional Space Access
I’m doing a piece for Popular Mechanics on alternatives to rockets, and I was going to cover rail guns, gas guns, space elevators, sky hooks, and perhaps the launch loop. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
[Update a while later]
Folks, when I say alternatives to rockets, I am including all vehicles that employ chemical rocket engines, including airbreathers. As I said, unconventional.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I’m thinking of three categories: cannons (whether EM, chemical, whatever), external energy (laser, Orion), and momentum exchange (tethers, space elevators, compression towers). I know the latter isn’t really momentum exchange, but it fits sort of. The former don’t work well for passengers, but are well suited to bulk delivery of low-cost stuff (e.g., propellants), and the latter require very high up-front capital costs, in general. With a lot of tech risk.
Better Living Through Aerodynamics
Congratulations to Barnaby Wainfan (who I’ve known for over three decades, having gone to school with the woman who later became his wife), on the win in the Automotive X-Prize. Also on his becoming an adjunct professor at Michigan. One thing that the article doesn’t note, but I will, is that he also played a significant role in the design of XCOR’s Lynx.
The Ten Best Jobs
…of the future. Three of them are space related. Actually, one of them I sort of do now. But it doesn’t pay very well…
Attitudes And Regulations
…that hold back progress in aging and health breakthroughs.
I Have Been There
Watching someone use a computer. It takes the patience of Job sometimes.
Old Age
…is it a cause of death?
There will be unintended consequences (good ones, in my opinion) of making it one. It implies that aging is itself a disease, and one that should be fought directly, rather than coming up with palliatives for individual symptoms of it (e.g., hypertension, muscle degeneration, senility, etc.), which would mean that the medical establishment would have to take gerontological research a lot more seriously than it currently does, both in terms of interest and resources. It also flies in the face of the deathist belief that we shouldn’t seek longer life, because it’s not “natural” (the naturalistic fallacy).
Why We Should Read Science Fiction
Thoughts from Walter Russell Mead. I disagree with his opinion on Clarke’s writing quality, though.
The Green Shirts
Some thoughts on the new green fascists and mass murderer wannabes, from Glenn Reynolds:
In contemporary America, no respectable person would advocate, say, the involuntary sterilization of blacks or Jews. Why, then, should it be any more respectable to advocate the involuntary sterilization of everyone? Or even of those who cause “social deterioration?”
Likewise, references to particular ethnic or religious groups as “viruses” or “cancers” in need of extirpation are socially unacceptable, triggering immediate thoughts of genocide and mass murder.
Why, then, should it be acceptable to refer to all humanity in this fashion? Does widening the circle of eliminationist rhetoric somehow make it better?
I don’t see why it should, and I don’t see why we should pretend — or allow others to pretend — that hate-filled rhetoric is somehow more acceptable when it’s delivered by those wearing green shirts instead of brown.
It’s a fetish of the left. It’s like the eighties, when they feigned outrage at the way the South Africans treated blacks, and were indifferent to the fact that places like the Soviet Union treated everyone that badly, or worse. If you’re a leftist, it’s perfectly OK to oppress people, as long as you’re an equal-opportunity oppressor.
Also, Jim Bennett emails:
Actually, Tom Clancy wrote a novel about a rich eco-nut who funds the clandestine development of a plague that will wipe out all of humanity, except for a small group who will have the antidote.
Highly improbable, of course. Almost as improbable as the one he wrote about the fanatic who crashes a fully-fueled airliner into a major US government building.
Not just improbable — unthinkable. At least if you’re Condi Rice. But perhaps not if you’re John Holdren.