Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.
Yeah, That’ll Work
Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.
Yeah, That’ll Work
Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.
Hug An Engineer
It’s that week (that few pay attention to) to celebrate the people who do much more to improve our lives than most people realize.
Step Right Up
Thomas James has another Carnival of the Space Moonbats.
[Update in the afternoon]
Oh, this is too weird. One of the people that Thomas links to is Elaine Supkis, but in a posting at his blog she calls herself Elaine Meinel (her maiden name, apparently). As an old L-5er, this made my antenna go up.
A little googling reveals something that I didn’t know (assuming it’s true). She’s Carolyn Meinel‘s sister. I didn’t know Carolyn had a sister. I also didn’t know that Aden worked with the CIA.
Aerospace America and Sintered Bricks
My policy of sponsoring realistic space art to spawn realistic space economics may be bearing some fruit. I sponsored this picture from David Robinson first published in September. In January, Aerospace America had this to say:
“Picture a buggy pulled behind a rover that is outfitted with a set of magnetrons,” [Larry Taylor, distinguished professor of planetary sciences at the University of Tennessee] suggests. (A magnetron is the heating element in a microwave oven.) “With the right power and microwave frequency, an astronaut could drive along, sintering the soil as he goes, making continuous brick…”
X, Y and Z OK
I read more of the FAA EA (still 6MB) for OSIDA’s spaceport at BFV in CSIA.* The most interesting things I found were the fuel and noise calculations for concepts X, Y and Z. I don’t really like those designators. Concept X, let’s change to concept R. Concept R has a maximum number of launches proposed of 12 in 2006, 12 in 2007, 24 in 2008, 48 in 2009, and 48 in 2010 (p. 4-2). Concept R runs on LOX and RP-1 (4-47) and needs an estimated 5761 kg of LOX and 2404 kg of RP-1. Concept R takes off and lands with a jet engine (4-39) reaches Mach 1 at 9144m (4-40), drops back to Mach 1 at 99,670m and speeds back up to Mach 1 at the same altitude and slows back down to Mach 1 at 16,459m. All these values are approximate. Let’s suppose concept R starts charging $200,000 per seat in 2008. If they sell three seats at that price per flight, they could expect $14.4 million in revenue at this airport in the first year of commercial operation and $28.8 million in their second and third. I am not sure how the maxes of 12 flights in each of the first two years square with a 25-flight test program with a maiden launch in July 2007. Perhaps they will fly out of other spaceports, have some non-rocket flights, or up the maximum number out of Burns Flat.
I don’t like the letter for concept Y either. Let’s call it X’. Concept X’ is scheduled to fly two times per year 2006-2010 (4-2). X’ does not exceed Mach 1 (4-38). Concept X’ runs on LOX and kerosene or alcohol (4-47). Concept X’ has rocket takeoff and glide landing with 1800 lbs thrust (4-40).
I don’t like the letter for concept Z as you might have guessed. Let’s call it concept V. Concept V has max 2 flights in 2006 and 2007 with 3, 4 and 4 in 2008-2010. Concept V vehicles (sic) will take off with a jet engine (4-39). They will carry Jet-A fuel for the carrier vehicle and 1295kg N2O and some HTPB for the launch vehicle (4-47) (laughing gas and rubber).
You can see pictures of concept R, X’ and V on pages 2-11, 14 and 17 (although V has an Andrews Space Technology logo in the corner even if there might be a “Virgin” on the side of the carrier–it could be a SpaceDev HL-20 but the two tails and canard on the carrier scale back my expectations of that), and the picture of X’ looks like a Xerus instead of a Velocity and concept R has only one tail instead of two).
In layman’s terms? Expect there to be some kind of attempt at a rocket show in Burns Flat. Rocketplane is getting their spaceport. Hard to say what this means for business as the EA process was started in 2002.
*FAA=Federal Aviation Administration, EA=Environmental Assessment, OSIDA=Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, BFV=the little known designator of the Burns Flat Vortac which I am guessing at to try to be cute, CSIA=Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark
–Update 2006-02-18 09:18
–Update 2006-02-18 09:46
It’s actually a Gryphon Aerospace Plane from Andrews. Probably should be concept G.
Post-National Olympics
In today’s Wall Street Journal, the editors note (subscription required) that we care more about individual athletes than the US team:
Today, without a common political foe to concentrate our patriotism, personalities have come to dominate broadcasts. This is an explanation, not a complaint; no one’s hankering for those Cold War tensions of yore.
I think this direction should be encouraged. Rather than the Greek and modern version of national teams competing in sports instead of war, it should transcend nationalities. “Like the NBA,” an Olympic basketball team should have athletes from many countries. Relays and other team sports should be composed of Star-Trek style international members.
A good way to bleed the power out of nationalism is to attack its very definition as mobile citizenship and superstates like the EU have done.
Virgin Galactic Sales Watch
NY Times has an article on “the Space Tourism Race” which is interesting mostly for the following quote:
Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said that 157 people have put down deposits totaling $12.2 million to fly…
A race gets interesting when folks are funded and bending metal. Paper planes come and go. We can also have an industry without a race.
Not The Headline I Would Have Chosen
“Man Shot By Cheney Leaving Hospital”
Guess he was just finishing the job.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jane Bernstein points out that they’ve already fixed it.
But this time, I kept a screenshot of the original (though it lost a little quality in the conversion to jpeg to put on my server–I still have the full bitmap).