…is hosting the latest Carnival of Space.
Market Advice
From Barack Obama. Frankly, he’s about the last person that I’d take market advice from. I wonder if he owns any stocks himself?
Mind Boggling
How can any sane person support Ares/Orion with development costs like this?
I can’t tell if the “life cycle” ends with the first launch in 2015 or includes some X number of additional launches beyond that. Regardless, the numbers are impressive, even in these days of trillions:
/– Ares I only : $17B to $20B
/– Orion capsule only: $20B to $29B
And no, that doesn’t include ops costs. As “Red” notes in comments:
Something like this was already done at Cosmic Log, but it would be interested to translate that $20B + $29B (~$50B) in more understandable terms:
25,000 Lunar Lander Challenges
100 COTS programs
> 500 Lunar Prospectors
500,000 XCOR Lynx tickets
250,000 SS2 tickets
500 BA 330 modules, or 1000 years of half-year BA 330 module leases
1000 Falcon 9 launches (mix of regular and heavy)
>5000 Falcon 1 launches
2000 Google Lunar X PRIZEs
1000 smallsats averaging $50M… etc … That’s assuming no discounts for bulk purchases … and if you want variety in your space program, take off a zero from each of the above and have them all …
On the other hand, an administration that just increased the deficit by a factor of four, to trillions, probably thinks fifty billion is just couch-cushion change.
They’re Sorry
But is there a head tilt of compassion, along with the regret? When will we see the pictures of Chris Buckley and David Brooks? Brooks must be really shocked. That’s not the Barack Obama he knew. Why, that Barack Obama read Reinhold Niebuhr!
Cut-Rate Fuel Cells?
They may have come up with a way to replace platinum catalysts with doped carbon nanotubes.
Of course, this is bad news for potential space industrialists, because it will depress the market for platinum-group metals (PGM) long thought to be a potential source of extraterrestrial wealth in asteroids.
No Shockwave
No, this isn’t about the supersonic technology that I discuss from time to time. I’m referring to the fact that it doesn’t seem to be available for Linux. I’ve been using a Fedora workstation in lieu of my broken Windows box, and that seems to be the biggest deficiency. Many, many sites, including PJTV, are unviewable from Linux due to the fact that Adobe doesn’t seem to support it. There are claims that it can be ported via Crossover, or by using Wine, but I haven’t had time to try. This would seem to be a pretty big hole in the Linux desktop. How are the netbooks handling it?
Close Call
We were just missed by an asteroid this morning, with only three days warning, and well inside the orbit of the moon:
The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time — or 8:44 EST.
Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers.
“…no more than 200 feet wide…”?
That’s plenty big enough to pack a hell of a wallop if it had hit off shore, likely wiping out much of the coastline of the surrounding continents. If it hit a populated area, it could have been easily mistaken for a nuke initially, perhaps setting off an international crisis, and even retaliation.
There is no excuse for how little prepared we are for these things.
Racial Cowards
I guess, as Jim Geraghty points out, that Dick Durbin was one of the people who Eric Holder was talking about, because he let Bobby Rush mau mau him into seating Roland Burris.
Server Problems
Yes, I know. I hope we have them sorted out now.
Financing Space Entrepreneurs
Eva-Jane Lark has an interview with the interestingly named (what is he, Swiss?) Guillermo Söhnlein, on the progress with the Space Angel’s Network. I hope that he and some of his fellow angels will be at Space Access.
[Via Parabolic Arc]