Alan Boyle has a report from this weekend’s conference on them. It’s unfortunate that it conflicted with NewSpace 2008, in the other Washington. But there are only so many weekends in a year.
[Update a few minutes later]
Alan’s report is great, but there sure is an appalling level of ignorance in the comments.
Some thoughts from a German on Obama’s grandiosity:
…apart from questions of sensitivity and protocol, the proposal was also politically short-sighted. A German government cannot and will not intervene in foreign power struggles. It is simply a matter of political common sense for democratic countries to refrain from getting involved in the elections of other countries. This is a matter of respect, but also of calculated self-interest. Since you never know who will win, it is more advisable to stay neutral. As consequence, the German government cannot show preference to Obama: whatever Obama is permitted, McCain must also be permitted. Even before becoming American President, Obama has thus managed to embarrass one of his most important allies. Hardly an intelligent move. But he evidently does not think in terms of the long-term categories of real politics, but rather in terms of the short-term effects of political spectacle.
Yup. It’s very hard to take him seriously.
He’s not a “lighworker.” He’s a lightweight.
…why can’t we kick the fossil fuel habit? Well, we can, but not the way we put a man on the moon, and certainly not within a decade. On the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first landing, I explain.
[Afternoon update]
It’s interesting to note that the original landing was on a Sunday as well. I don’t know how many of the anniversaries have fallen on a Sunday, but I would guess five or so. It’s not too late to plan to commemorate the event with a ceremony at dinner tonight, with friends and family. Also, a collection of remembrances here. If you’re old enough to remember it yourself, you might want to add one.
Maybe. These were clearly unsustainable prices–the only question was how long it would take them to drop. And what do you know? The market works:
Gas may be getting just a bit cheaper, but major changes in how Americans live and drive are already in motion.
Car buyers have been fleeing to more fuel-efficient models. U.S. sales of pickups and sport utility vehicles are down nearly 18 percent this year through June, while sales of small cars are up more than 10 percent.
While slashing production of more-profitable trucks and SUVs, automakers have been scurrying to build their most fuel-efficient models faster.
Toyota Motor Corp., which hasn’t been able to keep up with demand for its 46-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, said last week it will start producing the Prius in the U.S. and suspend truck and SUV production to meet changing consumer demands.
Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. also have announced plans to increase small car production, and GM has said 18 of the 19 vehicles it is launching between now and 2010 are cars or crossovers.
And what do you know, they didn’t do it because their intellectual superiors in Congress passed a law making them. They did it because gas was four bucks a gallon. Maybe people aren’t the stupid sheep that technocrats think they are.
Ron Bailey has more from the end-of-the-world conference, on the risks of asteroids, comets, and gamma-ray bursters. As he notes, comets are the biggest problem, because we might not see them until it’s too late. That’s why we have to have an infrastructure in space that can rapidly respond.
Clark Lindsey is leaving the conference before the end, but he has a lot more summaries of the sessions, many of which looked quite interesting. As before, just keep scrolling. I assume that some time next week, he’ll pull together the individual posts on a single page with permalinks.
Chris Bowers: on why “progressives” should support space programs. There’s a lot of typical mythology in the comments section about NASA and the military, and spin-off. We would have had PCs without Apollo, honest. We needed microchips for the missiles, which was at least as big a driver.
The heretic Lord Monckton has a request today of the president of the American Physical Society:
The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website
of Physics and Society:“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?
It will be interesting to see the response.
…on the high seas. Though he doesn’t discuss it explicitly, Chris Borgen makes another case for why we need to get off the planet.
One of the more annoying things that I find in commentary on space policy is the assumption that there is One True Way to get off the planet, and that working on anything else (particularly chemical rockets) is a waste of time and money. Often it’s space elevators, but here’s another case in point: an Orion fan (the original Orion, not the current Apollo crew module on steroids):
Nuclear power is still the only thing that’s going to allow us to get large amounts of mass into Earth orbit and beyond. Nothing else has enough specific impulse to do the job.
While nuclear-pulse propulsion may be an interesting technology for in-space transportation, where the radiation level is pretty high to start with, it was never going to be used for earth-to-orbit transportation. One does not have to be a luddite to believe this. I’m all in favor of getting access to orbit as low cost as possible, as soon as possible, but I think that the notion of using Orion for this is nuts (and not just for the radiation and atmospheric contamination issues–consider the EMP…). I highly respect Professor Dyson and Jerry Pournelle as well, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some major technical issues in getting such a system practical and operational. If such a system is ever built and tested, it will be built and tested in space, after we’ve come up with other ways of getting large amounts of mass into orbit, affordably. And I’m quite confident that if and when we do this, it will (at least initially) be with chemical rockets.
Part of the misunderstanding is revealed in the second sentence. The assumption is made that the reason costs of getting into space are high is due to performance, and particularly a specific performance parameter–specific impulse. For those unaware, this is basically a measure of a rocket’s fuel economy. The higher the Isp, the less propellant is required to provide a given amount of thrust over a given time period.
But there is no equation in vehicle design or operations that correlates cost with Isp. If Isp were the problem, one would expect propellant costs to be a high percentage of launch costs. But they’re not. Typically, propellant costs are on the order of a percent of the total launch costs. Yes, requiring fewer pounds of propellant means that the vehicle can be smaller, which reduces manufacturing and operations costs, but it still doesn’t account for the high costs.
Chemical rockets are perfectly adequate for affordable launch–their specific impulse is not a problem. As an example of why there’s a lot more to rocket science than Isp, consider that some of the more promising concepts (LOX/hydrocarbon) actually have lower specific impulse than so-called “high performance” propellants (LOX/LH2). Why? Because liquid hydrogen is so fluffy (the opposite of “dense”) that the tank sizes get large, increasing vehicle dry mass and atmospheric drag. For instance, the Shuttle external tank carries six pounds of LOX for each pound of hydrogen, but the LOX is all carried in a little tank at the top, and most of the ET that you see contains liquid hydrogen.
As I’ve noted many times before, there are two key elements to affordable launch using chemical rockets. Fly a lot, and don’t throw the vehicle away. Despite the mythology about the Shuttle, we’ve never actually done this in a program. It seems unlikely that NASA ever will, but fortunately, private enterprise is finally stepping up to the plate.