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, 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?
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.
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.
Yes, I know. I hope we have them sorted out now.
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]
I’m not really thrilled with the prospect of giving Microsoft any money (and I’ve been living without my Windows machine for over a month now), but XP is still available at Amazon, in both home and Pro editions. It may be the solution to getting my broken W2K machine back up.
I’ve never had any urge whatsoever to do it. But apparently, it improves memory.
But even if it does, it doesn’t seem to be a strong enough effect to motivate me to doodle.
I see that Brian Wang is continuing to post on the potential benefits of nuclear-explosion propulsion, here and here (where he takes on Charlie Stross), and here, where he talks about it in the context of unmanned Mars missions and a high-speed asteroid interceptor.
I do think that there’s potential for this vehicle off planet, but I remain highly skeptical that it will ever launch payloads from earth, regardless of how theoretically cheap it might be. Particularly in the Age of Obama.
And frankly, when I read things like:
Nuclear Orion can achieve launch costs of less than $1/kg and perhaps a tiny fraction of that.
…it reminds me of the old claims from the early days of nuclear power that it would be “too cheap to meter.”
Actually, he understates Shuttle costs as being “$5000 to $6000 per pound,” even if it is an “accepted figure.” At current flight rates, I would guess that (at least to ISS), the current costs are about a billion per flight for about 40,000 (or less) lbs, or more like $25,000/lb (or more, depending on the payload). Which makes Orion look even better, of course. But it also displays my long-standing claim that the single most sensitive variable with regard to launch costs is flight rate, and any vehicle design consideration is a secondary matter.
I think that Brian’s mistake is demonstrated in the false choice of the title of this post which was a response to this one of mine:
Small and Expensive Versus Big and Possibly Infrequent Space Launch
The implication is that small is intrinsically expensive. But it’s not.
Small is only expensive when a) you throw the vehicle away and b) you don’t fly it very much. I would suggest that Brian read this piece on the subject of the reasons for high launch costs, which I wrote over four years ago to allay exactly this kind of misunderstanding, and (if he can afford the time and money — it’s really a bargain at the cost if one can get to Phoenix) attend the Space Access conference a month from now, where he can get up to speed on the current state of chemical-rocket launch technology (and its economics and business prospects).
Paul Hsieh thinks that it should be. I have to agree with the commenter, though, who thinks that Hayek is a better bet.