Al Fin: Choking on Affluence: Decline of Western Ambition

Al Fin: Choking on Affluence: Decline of Western Ambition

I don't know if this has anything to do with what Al Fin is saying, but let me relate it nonetheless.  As anyone who has read this blog knows, I've been blogging pretty heavily about space exploration.  The reason is that I got a bit of an inspiration from reading Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets (Helix Book).   From this I concluded that every problem being pointed to as a problem can be solved if we turned our attention to the stars, not to the mud on the ground.  So, in that spirit, I go to Huffington Post and post a comment on what I believe to be true.  What happens?  I get insulted, that's what happened.  I kept researching this since that time, which is about 3 months now, and my hunch is turning into conviction.  Not only are the answers in the sky, but it is very likely to be possible to do this in the near future.   Much nearer than many people seem to think.  So I go back to Huffpo and post again.  What happens?  Nothing!  Not one person bothered to respond.  I would think that this should have been received with enthusiasm, but no.

If people here in the USA don't get it, somebody else in the world will.  Things will not stand still just because it doesn't fit our ideas of being convenient to the way we want to think.  Get with the program or get left behind.

Comments

It has come to my attention that the blog has eaten the comment function for this blog.  My apologies.  I tried to add a moderation feature to the comment function, but having done so appears to be blocking comments.  Now, for some reason, it won't allow me to change it back.  This was not by design.  It was an accident.  I will work at trying to restore this function, but Blogger has to cooperate.  So far, no can do.

Inasmuch as the blog has received few comments, it can easily be seen that this was not my intention.  I would prefer comments.  This must be a Blogger glitch. Just the same, I seemed to have initiated the problem.  So, once again, my apologies to anyone who may want to leave a comment.  I am working to fix the problem.

Update (immediate):

Now it seems to be working again.  Go figure.  This thing needs some serious time on the couch.

Guitar Hero

Larry indulges himself in a Guitar Hero fantasy.

New Year's Eve

It hasn't been one of my customs to pay much attention to these New Year celebrations.  For me, it has always been just another day.  That must seem rather drab, and maybe it is.   So, I will try something a little different this year.  I will pay attention to it.  I'm paying attention to it now by writing about it.

So, what do I write?  I can write about my own year.  What kind of year did I have?  In terms of making money, which is one way of keeping score, this year wasn't good.  That's two bad years in a row.  Now, that's a positive thing right there.  By paying attention to this, I can keep score better.  What do you know about that?  This New Years' stuff may be useful after all.  Let's take it a little further then.  Why did this year not go so well?

I could blame it on the rotten economy, but this area is doing better than a lot of the rest of the country. Somehow, this doesn't seem to reflect well upon my efforts.  I need to understand why this is so.

I have spent most of the last 4 months working on this blog.  I want to make it a money making proposition. So far this isn't even close to being realized.  It is generating a little revenue, but not much.  Certainly not commensurate with the work I'm putting into it.

I guess I can use this as an opportunity to explain my business model for this blog.  I may have done this already, but at the risk of repeating myself, here goes:  The business model is the media model.  The media model depends upon attracting an audience for advertisers.  Once the audience is attracted, this is a selling opportunity for them.  This is what they are paying me for:  my ability to attract an audience.  If I can't do that, I won't get an audience and I can't sell what I don't have.

Well, actually you can sell short in the financial markets, and I have done that and made some money by it. But when you sell short, what you are really selling is your hunch that something will go the way you think it will go. It ain't the thing itself, it is some knowledge that you are putting to the test.  But I digress.  Let's move on.

Some folks may wince at the idea that I am selling my audience.  Some may say, don't do that.  People may not like the idea that they are being used that way.  But I look at it this way.  You use me, I use you.  It is a fair trade.  I give away my product, which is my time, in exchange for your being here.  I entertain and inform you at no cost to you except your time.  In exchange, you will allow me to sell something to you (through the advertisers).  But people don't like commercials.  Yet nothing comes for free.  There is a cost for everything. Economics 101: there's no such thing as a free lunch.  You gotta expect to give something if you want to get something.  Putting together a blog like this takes a lot of time and energy.   Why else would anyone do this if it weren't for some type of reward?

And so, I don't mind telling my small audience these facts.  That's because this blog is about truth.  Or truth as close as I can come to it.  I am not trying to BS anybody here.  Everything that I am trying to do here is on the level.  No tricks, no gimmicks, no BS.  If I can't attract an audience, this blog will fail.  That's the bottom line. Secondly, the blog has to get action.  An audience by itself isn't enough.  People actually have to be sold on something.  Again, there is no free lunch.  My advertisers don't pay me for nothing.  If they don't get something out of this, they'll stop doing it.  And then I am out of business.

I look at my blog now and it ain't bad.  Would I read it if I wasn't me?  In order to answer that, I would have to come up with some possible motivations for me to come to a blog like this.  As you may figure, one reason I may have is to figure out a way to make money.  Well, I do a bit of financial stuff here.  Is my info good enough that people would find it useful to come here?  I'd like to think so, but frankly, there may be better sources of information than this blog.  Another motivation is entertainment.  Maybe I'm not so good at making these videos, but Wishbone-T is getting good at it.  I've got him as a contributor here.  That's two motivations, what else?  That's an X factor because it is unknown.  There's an X factor here.  Who knows what makes something successful v unsuccessful.  It is often an intangible thing.  Something you can't put your finger on exactly, but you know it is there.  I hope I have that in my favor.

But so far, no cigar.  I'm working on it.  But I have worked on many projects before, all ending in failures. Again, maybe that is not so good to talk about here.  But again, there no BS'ing going on here.  I'm laying it out on the level.  There's no guarantee of anything.  Frankly, I like it that way.  I'm not asking for guarantees, just the opportunity.  I can live with the outcome no matter what it is.  After all, this isn't a job.  It is a business.  A businessman takes his chances and has no guarantees.  It's the freedom baby.  ( A little Austin Powers lingo there.)

So far, it looks like another bad year.  But if a successful little ol' blog like this can be born in it, it would be a good year indeed.  And I don't like to lose.  We'll see.

BTW, I have watched the Power of Intention on PBS a few times.  I find it fascinating. But why buy it if you can get it for free by watching PBS's fundraisers?  I've given money to PBS before.  What the heck?  I know it isn't "conservative", but I like the programs.

You can buy it or watch if for nothing.  But if you buy it, you can watch it anytime you want, instead of waiting for it to come on.

I don't have to buy this because I have so many books of this type.  I have already paid my dues.  Yet, I may buy it anyway one of these days.  But I don't have it now.

I'm still on the job

Watching the financial markets, that is.  As I have predicted all along, inflation is coming our way.  If you don't believe that, take a look at the Reuter's Commodity Index:  (CRB)

This shows that the index is where it was in 2008, when the CPI was trending higher, as I recall.  This spike in the commodity index may not have shown up in the official inflation numbers yet, but it is just a matter of time when it does.  After all, it did back in 2008.  This chart is worrisome.  There hasn't even been a recovery yet, and inflation is around the corner.  What will the Fed do if inflation spikes like this?  Things could get hairy.

A 64K dollar question

The Cato Institute asks if NASA can compete with Spacex.  After the last few posts, I think the answer is becoming obvious to me.  Two of the more significant developments (in my opinion), the VASIMR and the Space Cannon, are private initiatives.  Throw in Spacex, and it looks like NASA is out of a job.  Well, maybe that's going a little bit too far, but it gives you the general idea, does it not?  NASA isn't at the forefront anymore.  Neither in cost nor performance.  I'd say again that NASA should go into survival mode  if they want to hang around.  Otherwise, they will go away.  The world will see to that.

Hat tip: Transterrestrial Musings

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The Elements of a Space Exploration Infrastructure

This will be a short post that will summarize what I've found so far.  It is liberally sprinkled with my own speculations, which, if you would like to see it that way, would be like taking it all with a grain of salt.

First of all, the Space Cannon could launch fuel to a depot in LEO.
Space tugs powered by VASIMR propulsion would take payloads to EML-1
Conventional rockets would take payloads from there to the Moon and build a Moonbase
Using the Moonbase, aggregate materials from the Moon in order to facilitate construction of a Moonstalk
The Moonstalk at EML-1 (after its construction) would enable construction of another one at EML-2
From there, go to Mars and repeat by building a Martian space elevator.

All of this may seem too far-fetched, but the VASIMR techonology could be the kickoff for all of this.  And this technology is about to be tested on the ISS.  The Space Cannon is a near term probability, in my opinion.

We already know most of the rest, except the lunar space elevator.  But this wouldn't require any new special techniques nor materials.  If you want, you could also see these ideas or concepts as a type of combustible mixture that just needs a spark to get it moving.  Once VASIMR and the Space Cannon get proven, which I think is high probability (bold statement there, since I don't know what I'm talking about), the rest of this falls into place.  (Another bold statement, but if you're going to go, then go all out.)

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Tennis, anyone?

Let this guy win if you play tennis with him.

The Future of the ISS

I have been subconsciously and loosely following this outline.  I wrote a little further on the topic here.  On that post, I suggested taking the ISS to L4 or L5.  But rather than doing that, why not take it to L1?  The reason for this is so that it can serve as mass for the eventual construction of a lunar space elevator.   Or rather than taking the entire station up there, take only the parts that would be the most useful.  It would be useful to keep portions of the ISS in LEO, I would think.

The idea of deorbiting the ISS and sending it to a fiery doom seems like a terrible waste.  Surely, the basic materials alone are worth something even if their only value is as a counterweight for a lunar space elevator.  It is consistent with in situ resourcing- "living off the land", which Zubrin has been writing about.  It is the principle behind the idea of recycling the shuttle's external tanks, which I have been writing about.  It will save the money that it costs from having to launch from the Earth's deep gravity well.  No matter how much launch costs can be reduced, it would still be good practice to economize where practical.

The ISS is scheduled to last until 2020.  It is never too soon to think about what comes next.


Update: 12/29/10: 9am

If a space cannon can get fuel up to a space station, that would be helpful way of utilizing the cold box idea I wrote about here.  The cannon can launch the fuel, then dock with the cold box and unload its fuel.  After making its drop, the projectile can reenter the atmosphere and be refilled over and over again for launches into space.  Keep launching these projectiles and filling the cold box until it is full.  When the cold box is full and since the rockets are still attached, fire them up which takes it to EML-1 and mate them together until you have the necessary mass for the lunar space elevator.

Update 12/29: 1:00 PM approx.

Found this webpage about a future moon base on the lunar south pole.  Interesting.

Also, I added a new website (see left side bar under news and info) from one of the Google ads running on my page.  Its a space elevator blog.

Update 12/30: 6 am approx.

The space cannon idea above is said to be relatively cheap ( 250 dollars per pound) way of getting payload to orbit.  It is said to be able to do 1000 lb payloads.  The below is a video about using this concept to fuel rockets that can explore the planets.





One of the things it can launch is argon fuel for the VASIMR propulsion system which is close to being tested on the ISS.  This could be a valuable technology in its own right, and its just around the corner.

It's worth repeating

So, I will.  They have these on the Moon too.

No news is good news

Did you ever notice that about news?  It isn't news unless it's bad.  If it's good, well, that's too boring.  When it comes to this blog, I want it to be positive.  I know that doesn't make it news, but if I want to get depressed, I'll read the news or watch it on TV.  Who needs that?  I'd rather be uplifted than beat down.  The bad news bears in the media can have it.  I'll take my approach, even if it doesn't get ratings.

Birtherism

Here's a great column in the American Thinker on the birtherism phenomenon.  This topic comes up from time to time and it is useful to caution conservatives not to get caught up in this stuff.   The article shows that this is just another way to smear conservatives as racists.  In fact, it was the Democrats themselves who brought up this issue in 2008.  The media was quiet as a church mouse when it was raging in the Democrat primaries.  Now all of a sudden, they are interested.  There is only one reason for that. 

For me, Obama is an American citizen, and that makes him eligible for the Presidency.  End of story.  There are plenty of other topics of interest about this guy, but not that one.  Let this one drop.

Out and about today

I like to take walks in order to get some exercise each day.  Normally, I just walk in the neighborhood, but this time I decide to go somewhere.  Where did I go?  To the mall.  It's a nice big mall, but not a new one.  This mall has been around for as long as I can remember, and I have lived in this town almost my whole life.  It's called Memorial City, which is on the west side of  Houston.

This mall has evolved a bit since earlier times.  Perhaps not everybody knows it, even those who have lived here a long time that there is a skating rink here.  The rink is relatively new.  There's a large medical center being built across the street.  An elevated and covered walkway is being built across the busy street that runs between the mall and the medical center.

In another part of the mall, there was this hover toy that was getting some attention.  I took a picture of that too, but it is really hard to see.  The little gadget went for 300 bucks, so I decided to take a pass on that.


It's interesting that such toys exist.  I didn't know about that.  Now I have seen toy jets (real jets) that were remote controlled.  I wish I had a video of it.  This plane that I saw looked just like a fighter jet.  Once it landed, you could see that it was a toy.  While it was in the air, it looked like a real fighter jet.  Anyway, I circled the hover toy at the mall (not the jet) so that you can see it.

  While I was there, I met an interesting man who was selling perfumes.  I gave him my business card.  I hope to hear from him again.  Perhaps he will come by here and say hello.  If not, I know where he is now.  That almost sounds like a threat.

Thunder Horse

This idea of Mining The Sky for its mineral wealth has its counterpart here on the ground, or at sea.  Just to show that big projects funded by private funding is definitely possible, witness the Thunder Horse PDQ drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico.  Construction costs came in at 5 billion dollars.

I think it is worth noting that "tethers" are used in construction all the time.  Most folks just don't see them that way, but the principle is the same.  For example, the cables in a suspension bridge perform the same function as they would in outer space.  They join pieces of the bridge together in order for it to function as a single unit.    As for the Thunder Horse Platform, it is likely that it uses cables to secure it to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.  It is a lot simpler and cheaper than building a huge structure that would tower above the floor of the ocean.

The trick would be in how to employ these techniques in outer space.

By the way, while reading Zubrin's novel, First Landing, I noted that in the story, there was this part about precious minerals on Mars.  I can't confirm this, but it would be a commercial incentive to go to Mars, provided that they exist there.  It is probably too expensive for private enterprise to launch rockets and such, but if some infrastructure could be put up there, it may become a reality some day.

Methanol synthesized from solar power from space powers hydrogen fuel cells

I came across this pdf file in 2005 or so, when I was looking for information about energy production. This concept uses carbon dioxide from a fossil fuel plant and a nuclear power plant to synthesize methanol. It hydrolyzes sea water and then combines the carbon dioxide with hydrogen to produce the methanol.





The two types of energy production, fossil and nuclear work together in order to produce energy and recycle the by products of combustion, carbon dioxide.





Looks like a simple reaction, as explained below:

What does this have to do with space?  Well, rather than use nuke plants, set up a space station that generates solar energy and beam it down to Earth.  The energy supplied from the solar plant can hydrolyze the water and create steam just as the nuke plant does.


 Then recycle the carbon dioxide from the hydrolyzing of methanol at the distribution point for hydrogen.  The hydrogen can be used in fuel cells.  The hydrolyzing of methanol allows methanol to become a convenient way of transporting hydrogen for use in fuel cells.  The process can be used to collect carbon dixode as well as hydrogen.  The hydrogen gets used in the fuel cell, the carbon dioxide goes back to be recycled back into methanol, as indicated above.  This will close the loop and make the process carbon neutral.

Talking football with the professor

Sometimes it is hard to tell what someone with a thick accent is saying.

Lunar Space Elevator

I will be studying this concept today.  There's a pdf file that I managed to download from this source.  I got the idea from van Pelt's book, which I wrote about previously.  Van Pelt mentioned Jerome Pearson, who is the one who collaborated in the study that I will be reading today.

The thing that got me interested is the Deep Space Station that I've been writing about- which could be used to deploy the cable that would extend from the station down to the lunar surface.  Once the elevator is operational, matter can be gathered from the lunar surface and aggregated to the anchor point in space (through EML-1) where the station can disengage the newly completed elevator, and install another one elsewhere- perhaps on Mars.

I'll check back in when I finish reading the file.

Update:

Mon., Dec. 27th, 10:00 am approx.

Well, I've finished reading the pdf.  Here's a key extract I obtained from the doc.

The DIRECT concept currently in the works would eliminate the need for ion rockets, I would think.  The tanks could fire themselves up to L1 and be joined together to form the counterweight for the lunar space elevator.  So, my idea concurs with this report, if I am not mistaken.

Update 2: Tue., Dec.28, 2010:

Here's a good idea from that pdf:  collect space junk and use it for mass for the lunar space elevator.  The lunar space elevator needs mass and it would be cheaper to get it from space than launching it from Earth or the Moon.  It can serve the dual purpose of cleaning up all the space junk which is a hazard in itself and converting that hazard into a resource.

Another idea for mass is mine.  By surrounding the ET with aluminum covered with shuttle tiles, the ET can become a fuel depot as well as a mass anchor for a lunar space elevator.  A fully loaded ET can weigh over a million pounds.

If you were to keep all six ET's I proposed together at EML-1, that would be plenty of mass.

Another idea occurred to me: after putting the shuttle tiles down, you could put thin film photovoltaic cells on top of it.  That stuff comes in sheets.  Since it is lightweight and comes in sheets, it should be easy to do this.  You could think of the box surrounding the ET as cold box that keeps stuff very cold inside, but also as a scaffold for solar power that can power the entire station and then some.  These ideas combined together can be said to be synergistic.

Update 3: Tue., Dec. 28, 2010, 7 am. approx.

Looks like there needs to be a lot of mass lifted into space for the counterweight.  Here's the key passage for this from the pdf.  Launch costs of 24 billion.  I wonder: could this be merged with the Moonbase expenditures in order to consolidate costs?  There's overlap in the two propositions, that's why I pose the question.

Chris Laird's newsletter

Here's what Chris writes about in his last newsletter.  Go to my product pages and click on his link if you want to subscribe.

Newsletter - Edition 247 - 26 December 2010

By Christopher Laird

China Raises
Time wise on market crash
Savings, investments or what?
Markets for the next two months
Japan and the US Central banks – world CB


Comments:

There may be higher interest rates ahead everywhere.  I agree.  Bonds can't rally much further without going into negative interest rates.  Won't happen.

As for a market crash, I don't know what's holding it up.  You could say QE but several months went by without a major selloff and no QE.

He talks about some people he knows who may ride the market down.  They are depending on investment advisers.  In my opinion, any advice you get depends is subject to the knowledge and ability of the advisor. You may want to double check track records.

He's pretty concerned about a market crash.  He appears to be in the deflation camp.  I'm not.

The reason I am not is, if that happened, the government can't pay its bills and will default.  They would rather inflate than to see that happen.  Just my opinion.   I think a 70's stagflation scenario is more likely.  How long that will go on will depend upon developments.  If a real live wealth creation event occurs, this will save everybody's bacon.  There are many possibilities, but there is also the possibility that nothing may come of anything.  If that happens, I may need to reevaluate.

First Landing

Late yesterday, I downloaded a copy to my Kindle of First Landing by Robert Zubrin.  By the way, one thing about these Kindles, they are instant gratification for books.  If you feel you've got to have a book right now, by golly, you can have it right now with this gizmo.  I bought this one back in 2008 with the tax rebate as stimulus. Those stimulus checks were supposed to prevent a recession, but they failed, didn't they?  But I digress.
I managed to read about a third of this book and may finish it in the next few days.  Initial impressions are positive.  It is the first of his books that I have read and I like his writing.  It is a work of fiction.  Not everything he does is fiction, I understand.  Those familiar with his work don't need to be told that.  I will not try to belabor the obvious.

It got me to thinking a bit about Mars.  The idea occurred to me that with an atmosphere, you may be able to fly from one play to another like we do on Earth.  It would be a bit different, of course.  Flying craft on Mars will need to carry oxygen, which isn't necessary for flying craft on Earth.  But with all the carbon dioxide, there will be plenty of oxygen that can be separated from the carbon, and that can make both the fuel and the oxidizer.

You could move ice from the polar regions to the equatorial regions with aircraft.  You wouldn't have to consume the water, just the carbon dioxide.  The combustion would return it to the Martian atmosphere.  Net zero carbon footprint on Mars.  How 'bout that?

If people went to Mars, wouldn't it be a good idea to set up an airstrip?  That would depend upon the ability to make the aircraft that could fly on Mars.  Something to think about anyway.

For what it is worth, even though I don't believe in man made global warming, I could see something to agree with those who do.  For example, you could do something in space, such as make solar power and beam it back to Earth.  This shouldn't go into the grid, though.  It should go into making methanol.  I will explain this idea in a future post.

You have to have a way to get to Mars, or for that matter, to space.  But what else have I been writing about?


Update:

Sun. 12/26/10

Just finished the book.  Zubrin has a synopsis of Mars Direct, his vision of a manned exploration of Mars.  Evidently a trip to Mars was not as cheap nor easy as was envisioned.

Someone has to get the blame.  I'm no fan of Obama, but I think the Bush administration blew it.  The new Ares launcher system was encountering cost overruns.  This wasn't necessary.  The mission could have been accomplished with essentially the same hardware as the Shuttle program was using.  That approach, which is the one now being pursued, would have had the best chance of staying within budget.

Now Zubrin proposes in this book that "living off the land" and a big new launcher was needed, like the one in the same class as the Saturn rocket that went to the Moon.  Zubrin had it about half right.  Most likely, the new launchers is where it all went wrong, since the Constellation program required two of these.
   
Time has been lost, and yet more time can be lost if the dissatisfaction that exists with the new DIRECT shuttle derived launch system derails the new approach.  Will this indecision and confusion be resolved and a definite course be decided upon that will survive multiple administrations and budget crunches?  The space program seems to suffer with each new change of political control.  If that's where we are headed again, then more trouble may lie ahead.

Everydayadventuring.com

Here's a video from a YouTube friend.  I've posted one of their videos before.  Their videos aren't super popular, but they are interesting.  More popular than this website, though.  But I am working on it.

Merry Christmas

I suppose that greeting isn't politically correct, but as you may guess by now, I don't care about that.

Because of the holiday, there may not be any more posts today after this one.  But, I want to be sure to keep posting every day, because that is my intention.  Someone may have to shoot me in order to get me to stop.

I'll keep posting my ideas about space travel too.  It may not be the official way that our fearless leaders are interested in, but the ideas may actually work.  If they don't, it's fun to speculate about them anyway.

So, far, I have written about a Paul Spudis' Moonbase, a Deep Space Station, and now my plans are to write a bit about Mars.  I read some free samples of Zubrin's books on my Kindle.  I will be writing more about that in coming posts.

By the way, my ideas for the Deep Space Station are based upon a NASA study done in the early eighties on what to do with the big external tanks being used at that time in order to launch the shuttle into orbit.  I'm just tossing in a few of my ideas.  In effect, I'm proposing turning this into a flyable space station for deep space missions, hence the name Deep Space Station.

Summing up, in order to get to Mars, you need a plan.  Once you get to Mars, you need another plan for when you are there. Finally, you need an exit plan in order to get back.

I think that a Moonbase and the Deep Space Station are good first steps.  I don't think that it's an either/or proposition.   You do the Moon and Mars both.  But the idea of launching a mission directly- from the Earth's surface to Mars- is much too ambitious.  We should set up a system which will allow many missions over a long period of time.  An Apollo type mission to Mars will generate about as much as the lunar version.  A few trips and a very long lag of nothing afterward.

So, this plan here is to go to the Moon first.  Establish a Moonbase, and a Deep Space Station, then set our sights upon Mars, the asteroids and beyond.

Some further thoughts on the Deep Space Station.  Since the shuttle derived system can be partially loaded and still deliver a payload, here is an idea.  Fully load the rocket with fuel and send the ET tank to EML1.  The ET's become the payload.

Perform six of these launches and assemble the station at L1.  Configure it so that it can use the rocket engines already there to power it to missions beyond Earth.  The configuration will allow for lunar water from the lunar base to be accumulated and converted to rocket fuel for interplanetary missions.  It may take several years to fill the tanks.  But on the other hand, you may not need to fill the tanks to get to and from Mars, nor any other location.

I got an idea about how the external tank holding the fuel can be permanently shaded.  This will make it very cold in the shade and allow for cryogenic storage for long periods of time.  The idea was to use shuttle tiles as a heat shield against heat build up which will cause boil off.  These tiles can keep the underside cool, while the outside gets hot.  Assemble these panels inside the station, and then deploy these around the tank so as to make a permanent shading facility that will also serve as an insulator.  You can make it into a big square box for ease of assembly.  Put the big panels around the big tank.  The panels don't have to weigh much.  They just need to be attached to something that can be assembled in space.  On second thought, you may not even need a box.  Just a big flat panel that creates a big enough shade to shield the ET holding the fuel.

With such an apparatus for storing fuel, we can then collect it over a long period of time.

With our rocket engines, we have a means of propulsion.

With our big empty tanks remaining, we have a habitation system for long term space voyages.  They can be spun up to provide artificial Martian gravity at 2 rpm.  They can be supplied with lunar water and other life support supplies (from the Moonbase) for the long voyages, such as a Mars mission.

There's a lot of room inside the Deep Space Station.  You can store a lot of machinery and whatnot for your deep space missions.

You have everything you need to do whatever you want.

That's my Christmas present.  Do you like it?

Robert Zubrin

My education of matters of space exploration continues.  Now I will be looking into this proposition:  A manned mission to Mars.  Zubrin has been a big proponent of this.   However, I am a bit skeptical going in.  The book, "The Case for Mars"  is not available yet on Kindle, so I may wait for it to become available.  Or if I get in a hurry, maybe I'll just order up an older version of the book.  This new one will be an updated version of the original which went to the presses in 1997, I believe.

I did check some customer reviews on Amazon.  It is mostly positive, but that doesn't necessarily tell you anything.   There was one negative review by a Ms. Tutt which I would tend to agree with at the moment.

She is also critical of another one of his books.  Unfortunately, I think Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit tends to agree with Zubrin.  It should be noted here though, that I don't regard anything that anybody writes as gospel.  If I don't agree with Zubrin, I will not be hesitant to say so.  It won't make any difference who says otherwise.

NASA needs to go into survivor mode

Are you a survivalist?  Can't say that I am, but having read enough of Chris Laird's stuff, I am of the opinion that it is a good idea to be prepared.  By being prepared, I mean the ability to meet survival situations on your own without expecting nor receiving outside aid.  That's because outside aid may not be available, or if it is, it may come too late to be of use.  I mention the topic in connection with the space program as a way of suggesting that this concept must be adapted to space travel.

It isn't new, and it isn't my idea.  Yet, it is not being used now, nor does it seem likely to be unless something happens.  You can't be a survivalist in terms of space travel if you are always demanding that new rockets be built every time you think of a new mission.  A survivalist meets the situations with what he has available; he cannot expect to wait around for something to be sent to him.  It may never get there.

That is not to say that something could get there.  Just don't predicate everything upon its arrival.  You make do with what you've got.  An implementation of this idea is in situ resourcing in space.

The mastery of the technique of in situ resourcing is going to be mandatory if the space program is ever to get out of low Earth orbit.  The reason is the high cost of launch.  The less that has to come off the Earth, the better.  Ultimately, this is the justification for a Moonbase, or Space Station.  It is the reason for recycling the ET's, which I have been writing about.  Such facilities will reduce the need for launches from Earth.  By doing so, it makes space travel less needful for government assistance and closer to actual commercialization.

A way to dress rehearse in situ resourcing is to recycle the ET's.  If you can't find a way to do that, why bother going up in space at all?  In the end, if this isn't going to be done, the space program is going nowhere, really.  In the end, the space program is needful of a survivalist mentality.  If it is to survive, it had better find a way to use what it has instead of expecting funding as if the funds were inexhaustible.  Here is a way for NASA to show that it can come up with a way to do what hasn't been done before.  What rocket has been converted from one use to another while in space?  The external tank has that potential, but will it ever be used?  Or will NASA or Washington expect a new rocket for every new mission?  But if that is the thinking, circumstances may mean the end of the space program.  Funds are limited, and time is running out.

In a reflective mood

As I am writing this.  After a little over 3 months and a bit over 200 posts, what have I accomplished?  I think you could say that it is a modest beginning.  Secondly, you can say that it is a hobby, not a business.  Third, I have received something of an education.  All in all, it has been fun.  I've enjoyed it.  But it is a serious world out there, and hobbies have to give way to real world stuff.  But no, this is not goodbye.  I like doing this, and I want to continue.  But I will have to throttle down a bit and turn my attention elsewhere.  Most likely, at some point early in the next year, I will be working full time again at a regular job.  Hopefully, I will have enough time and energy to come back here and do some of this stuff.  I think I will, but you never know.

I will try to do at least one post every day.  But I can't guarantee it.  I have managed to get a small audience going here.  The risk is that I will lose you.  What little I've managed to get has been hard won.  I hate losing it, but it is what it is.

I may try to integrate this blog into my "day" job. If my new job is anything like my old one, I will go places.  It might well be interesting to post about the places I will go and the things I will do.  That could be fun too.  So, don't go away.  I am too stubborn to give up that easily.  Stay with me.  Over time, things could change in such a way that it may be possible to do this on a full time basis.  It may take a bit of luck, but sometimes you get lucky.

Xtranormal's potential

Maybe it is too early to say what the potential is for this software.  But as is my custom, let's speculate, shall we?

This software reminds me of a game console that my brother bought a long time again.  I think it was called Odyssey.  It was great fun to play with, but its graphics by today's standards were quite crude.  This Odyssey console allowed you to play a number of games: football, baseball, hockey,  and soccer.  These were the ones that I knew about.  There may have been more.  I suppose today someone would buy a playstation or some such thing.  I'm not into that kind of stuff, but an old high school friend of my has one of these.  When we had a meet up not long ago, we played on that thing.  The animations and such were far superior to the old Odyssey games.  But you would expect that after all these years.

The point I am getting at is that this Xtranormal software is crude right now.  But in the next few years it could get quite sophisticated.   In my mind's eye, I can see realistic videos being made with real, human-looking actors.  It may even be possible to recreate real actors that would perform real scenes.  All of this could be done in a virtual reality type system.  It could even get Trekkie-like, with holograms that would allow you to participate in scenes, like a holodeck.

As for now, the Xtranormal software is rather crude.  These are just stick figures with a limited repertoire of gestures, facial expressions and so forth which enables you to create these cartoon-like videos.  It is fun to use, but on the other hand, it is limited.

Sometimes, it is not easy to make this software do what you want it to do.  My last video may not look like much, but it has taken me a lot of time to get to this point of being able to create stuff with it.  Keep that in mind when you watch them.  They may seem super simple, but it isn't necessarily that simple to make them.

Hopefully, this software will get a lot better.  In fact, I think you can count on it.  In twenty or thirty years, this thing will look like Odyssey would today.  Assuming of course, you could find a working Odyssey machine.

Chris Laird public article

If you recall, earlier this week, I posted the first part of one of his newsletters.  He does write some public articles, and he has one here.  This is pretty representative of what he writes.  As you may observe, his opinions diverge somewhat from mine.  I would say his opinions tend to be much more pessimistic than mine.  Not that my opinions have been wildly optimistic.  Generally, he is of the apocalyptic genre of writers, in my estimation.

This allows me to segue into an observation about how people determine value.  There is a difference between price and value.  For example, the price of gold is 1380 dollars an ounce, roughly.  But depending upon the situation, gold could be worthless.  If you are desperately hungry, can you eat a gold piece?  The only thing you can do in that case is to trade gold for food.  If food is scarce, your gold may not buy much food.  Yet food is relatively cheap in comparison to gold.  My point is that food is more valuable than gold.  You can't live without food, but you can live without gold.  How can you value gold more than food?  The answer is that you can't.  All the price of a thing says about that thing is a statement about its relative scarcity.  These days, gold is relatively scarce and food is relatively abundant.  Yet food is always necessary.  If you value gold more than food, you may be making a fatal mistake.

I think there's a lot of confusion about price and value.  Many people think a thing is worth its price.  But that is not necessarily so.  As a matter of fact, that confusion is how Warren Buffet got so rich.  People will undervalue a property for irrational reasons.  A rational man like Buffet can recognize the true value of a thing even though the crowd cannot.  He will buy when everybody is selling and will sell when everybody is buying.  He will do this on the correct determination of value.

Sometimes when I read something I get the impression that the writer is not making this distinction.  That's two posts today where I got this impression.  Yet these writers are intelligent, no doubt.  But I am not taking their words as gospel.

Randall Parker

Has a post up which struck me as a bit odd when I first read it.  After further thought on it, I can sort of see what the problem is.

There is a conflict between benefactors and those on the receiving end.   There is no incentive to produce if the receivers can take your goods without giving you proper compensation.  Yet, at the same time, it is important to spread the benefits of knowledge as far as possible.

That paragraph above is almost Krugman like in its sentiments.  But one difference.  The left wants to take without any compensation at all.  The grounds for this is for the public good.  Yet, it cannot be good if there exists no incentive to produce the wealth at all.  On the other hand, wealth cannot be allowed to be hoarded.  If it is hoarded, then nobody, not even the wealthy can benefit from it.  What good is to have a Fort Knox full of gold when there is no place to spend it?

This is a big problem, actually.  Greed, selfishness, avarice have negative connotations for good reasons.  Yet on the other side of the coin is benevolence to the point of foolishness.  There's a need for balance:  the need for finding out how to avoid being a Scrooge while at the same time avoiding becoming a soft headed fool.

Shall we dance?

Having a little more fun with the Xtranormal video tool. I don't see any way to make these characters dance, so I invented something.

Short editorial

Some may ask: Why are you are climate skeptic?  I think that it is a silly question, but I'll provide a simple answer anyway. 

My answer is this:  Why should I believe in it? 

It is the liberals who say that the ordinary American voters are too stupid to act in their own self interest.  So, is paying higher prices for fossil fuels in my best interest? 

I will not believe it when they may counter that this cost can be shifted to others.  With that way of thinking, somebody is going to get hit with the bill.  History may show that the people getting hit are going to be those who are least organized politically to oppose it.  Eventually, you will fall into one of those groups because you can't watch these politicians all the time.

The cost shifting suggestion isn't an intellectual argument anyway.

The argument in favor of self interest is.  Why should anyone act against their own self interest?  The only way they can win this argument intellectually is to not to have an argument at all.  Isn't this is what is being attempted?

I am not going to drink that Kool Aid, thank you very much.  Try somebody else.


Update:

I have a few more thoughts to add:

Wouldn't it be better to actually get something for your money, as opposed to someone telling you that you have to pay more in order to feel better about yourself?  Isn't that all there is to what the warmistas are offering?  Their offer is for you to pay more, so you can feel less guilty.  What if it was this instead:  Pay some money and we can bring you "this".  The "this" thing that they would bring would be an actual tangible object that makes sense economically and is usable and desirable in its own right.  Whatever they might claim, this is not what they are offering.

ET tank, #11

Earlier, I said that it will take 4 ET's to spin up to Martian artificial gravity levels.  There was a discussion in the pdf file that I've been referring to that mentions 6 ET's.

Can we find a way to use the 2 others? I think I know one.  Put one on each side of the center of gravity.

One side could be used for propulsion, the other side for docking.  It could be set up so that it doesn't have friction so that it won't slow down the spin of the station.  Use magnetic field to push it away from the station while it rotates.  You could also use this magnetic field to spin it up and to slow it back down again if you don't want to spin all the time.  The propulsion can be provided by the tank, engine assembly as is.

In order to avoid boil off, keep the propulsion part in a permanent shade.  This should simplify keeping it cold enough so that it won't boil off.

There's another idea that I had.  Use magnetic fields to provide shielding from ionizing radiation in space.  Perhaps spacesuits could be fitted with such devices.  The Earth's magnetic fields provide such shielding on the surface.  Use that principle to make a wearable shield for astronauts.

Update:

If the spacesuits mentioned above can split carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen, it could enable longer spacewalks and such.  The oxygen can be recycled continously while collecting and storing the carbon monoxide which can be used later as a fuel.

In the above mention of the permanent shading for the ET, plenty of material can be found inside the tanks which can be used for that purpose.  Thousands of pounds of metals can be recycled for purposes such as this as well as other purposes.  This is "in situ" resource utilization applied to our own spacecraft.  It is the same principle that got Apollo 13 astronauts safely home.  They scavenged materials in order to make a carbon dioxide scrubber.  Without this improvisation, they would have died.

More on Paul Spudis' Moonbase Project

It's a 16 year project, 31 launches, 88 billion dollar project that will establish a permanent presence in space. It will enable routine access to cis-lunar space without having to launch from the deep gravity well of Earth.  This will make future missions much more affordable.  Here's a way of thinking of it:  it is an interstate highway system to the solar system.  It is an infrastructure project in space.

People may recoil at the cost, but remember that it is for a 16 year project.  Money will have to be found of course.  It may well to remember that the ISS takes up about 3 billion a year, if I am not mistaken.  That is about halfway there, but you will have to wait until 2020 to start.  That's the year that the ISS program is scheduled to end.

It came to my attention that the shuttle derived system takes up 2 billion a year even if there are no launches. Not only that, but it will take some redesign work to make it off the launch pad.  This entails further costs.

Now, what if we used the shuttle derived system to launch those ET's and terminate this system from that point on?  You would need only 6 launches ( or less) to put up the tanks.  Subsequent missions can be accomplished without this launcher.  It can then be retired and the 2 billion can be saved.  By the end of the decade, you will have your 5 billion a year and you can start to work on the Moon base.

Well, you don't quite have enough money yet, but if you stretch the program out a few more years, then that will bring it into line.

The ET's can be your deep space platform to go to Mars.  It can be refurbed over a long term period that will give you plenty of time to be ready when the Moonbase is operational.  When the Moonbase is operational, you will begin work on your Mars and deep space capabilities.  This time frame will be around 2040.  This is about the time frame the Augustine commission was setting for a Mars mission.  So, you are still on schedule.

The ET's will provide plenty of shielding and living space for the crew for its 2 year mission to Mars.  It can be spun up in order provide Martian artificial g, so that the crew won't have to recover from weightlessness when they get back from their mission.  The spaciousness of the ET's will give the crew plenty of room to operate in.

I'm sure that that will be a welcome addition as opposed to be cramped up in tight spaces for 2 years.

One other thought occurred to me.  If the ISS is to end in 2020, why not try to recycle those components along with the ET's?  It seems a waste to send the ISS to a fiery death into a reentry in the Earth's atmosphere. With all the room on the ET's, the space station just might fit inside.  It will cost money to deorbit the ISS. Why not use that money to recycle it instead?

Update:

I just now recalled that NASA is spending a lot of money to study global warming.  That needs to stop.  But I am sure that these people will fight that, so here is what I propose in its place.  Set up this Moonbase and Deep Space Station, and then you will have the capability to transition out of fossil fuels into solar power from space.  Instead of wasting money on studies, actually build something of value.  If the money spent on global warming studies is transferred out and spent on this, it will free up the money to accelerate this program and bring a real solution to at least one problem: energy.  We need energy.

There's a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts

There's a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts

How the adult world works

This kid just doesn't get it yet.  But he will.







Perhaps this authority figure can explain what the adults have been doing lately.

Paul Spudis

Asks: Can we afford to return to the Moon?  Hmm.  It all depends.  How much will it cost?  Will the money be available?  If it is at all possible, then I am all for it.  Shoot, I'd be for it even if it wasn't feasible.  I'd try to find a way to make it feasible.

He also has a full write up in a pdf file.  I am reading it now.

Update:
My prose looks like I drank a little too much eggnog.  All fixed now.  Hic.  'Scuse me.

Update:

An idea occurred to me.  Could it be possible to include in this package a way to recycle those ET's and make a space station?  It seems that somewhere I read that there wouldn't be a necessity for a fully fueled ET for the two launch mission to the Moon.  One launch isn't enough to get all the hardware up there, but two was too much.  There was an excess capacity, if I recall.  Is there a way to use that excess capacity to save a few of those tanks?

Update:

3/2/11 approx. 4 am, cst

This was a long pause, but it is necessary to update this a bit since I've gone out on the limb on my Facebook page and said getting back to the moon doesn't have to hard and expensive.  That was me, who may not be believable, but this guy may be. That would be Rand Simberg who writes the blog Transterrestrial Musings.
I'm going to put this post on the sidebar.  Anybody interested in reading the thread through can find a link to Paul Spudis' moonbase concept on Rand's post linked just above.

Robert Ringer

Ringer is the guy who wrote "Winning Through Intimidation".  I mentioned this guy in an earlier post, but I can't remember which one offhand.   Or how to find it in my own blog.  But it is in here somewhere.

But my own disorganization aside, I recall writing that his book made me aware of Ayn Rand.  Eventually, I got around to reading "Atlas Shrugged", and another one of her books, "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal".  I can't say that I became an Objectivist.  But I can say that her works convinced me, even though I did not need all that much convincing.  When Ronald Reagan said that the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire, it could have come out of my own mouth.

I read a book by Nathaniel Branden, who is or was an Objectivist.  And in an earlier version of this blog, back in 2004, I reviewed a book by Leonard Peikoff, who was closely allied with Ayn Rand.  So, I am familiar with that philosophy.  Not necessarily a fully fledged member of it.  This is not to say that I am against it in any way. I tend not to be a joiner, nor a Kool Aid drinker or any flavor.  I tend toward an independence that runs almost to an extreme.

It would be easy to dismiss me as a kook.  Perhaps that is what many people think.  If so, then so be it.  I can't be who I am by pleasing other people, and in the process, sacrificing myself for their approval.

I favor Capitalism, but I am not going to drink that Kool Aid either.  So, when I suggest that we use the external tank from the shuttle derived launcher, I feel it is in the spirit of Capitalism, but not necessary in the letter of it, down to the last dotted "i" and crossed "t".  To me, there is no need for that kind of purity of principle.  For I am a practical man.  Some have said "too practical", but it is what it is.

I mention these names so as to inform people of the direction from which I am coming.  With a few caveats sprinkled in.  For what it's worth, the last thing I would suggest is to keep a boondoggle or create a new one.  If I thought this is in effect of what I was proposing with these external tanks, I would drop the idea in a heartbeat.

Update:

One of the commenters yesterday asked why put up one of these big stations?

Here are 4 reasons:
1) To use it to generate artificial gravity.  Tethers could be used, but a solid structure could be better.
2) To use the huge volume for storage and habitation.  Machines could be installed as well to enhance capabilities.
3) Cheaper to reconfigure what is already in orbit as opposed to building it and launching it from Earth
4) Want to use it for deep space missions.  Take this station to the asteroids and mine platinum for profit.

Here are few more:
Testing techniques for in situ resource extraction using the ET's for that purpose.
Testing techniques for tethers while constructing the station.
Testing skills for managing artificial gravity systems.

Rand Simberg is right

When he says that the heavy lifter without a mission is a solution looking for a problem.  Here is a problem to be solved:  how to establish a permanent presence in space while at the same time enabling economic development of space.

But there are many lifters available and that seems to be one of the problems.  What to do with all these?  I think this problem is big enough for all of these to have something to do in order to solve the problem mentioned above.

What if nobody thinks of this as a problem though?  What if the question is this "Who cares about being in space?"  If all we are talking about is competition for a few satellite launches, then certainly, we don't need all these rocket systems.

It seems to me that the above problem is the one that occupies the minds of most people in this business.  It's a competition for limited demand.  In cases such as that, you need to eliminate the competition so that you can survive.  Anyone else that's around is taking business from you and you just can't have that.

So, the problem could be restated.  Create new missions so that there are enough to go around.  There are plenty of things to do in space.  Plenty for everybody.  It just takes some people to realize that and to start looking for ways to get it done.

I think one mission is to exploit space for profit.  Impossible you say?  Why not look into that as a problem to be solved?  Why not see if it can be done?  If it can't, then why are there in the first place?

Update:

I just went back and checked the comments.  If they can do what they claim, then you don't need the shuttle system after all.   I don't have a dog in this hunt.  It's no skin off my back.  Whatever works best, I say.  If the shuttle system is water under the bridge, then it is what it is.  Whew!  More cliches than you can shake a stick at!

Krugman has a convenient memory

If one is to believe Krugman, the government needs to restore highly "progressive" income tax rates and spend like a drunken sailor.  If only the government did that, all would be well.

Yet the government did do that and there were still recessions and some of them were bad.  Anyone who lived through the 70's can remember that was no cakewalk either.  By the end of the decade, double digit inflation was occurring in a recession.  This was not supposed to have happened but it did.  This was how Reagan got elected.  Reagan's deep tax cuts and deregulation appears to have brought the economy back.  Or did it? What is Krugman's explanation for that?

No, we are to believe that Bush's tax cuts and Clinton's tax increases were the real test cases that should be shown as examples of failed policy v successful policy.  But it is not quite so simple as Krugman is trying to make it.  You have to look deeper.  If a superficial examination is all that is required, then Krugman could appear to be persuasive.  It's a nice try, but I am not drinking the Kool Aid that Krugman has been drinking.

Contest cancelled

The proposed promotional contest has been cancelled.  Nobody entered and nobody showed any interest.

I'm asking for it

And I just might get it.  I went over to Transterrestrial Musings and left a comment there about the heavy lifter rocket being developed for NASA.  Before doing that, I followed the link to article he linked to from Rand Simberg's blog.

I realize that I am not an expert.  So, I just might get creamed.  We'll see.

Update:

I misspelled the name of the blog.  Great.  Corrected now.

Update:

As of this writing, there have been 7 comments in response to that post at Rand Simberg's blog.  I made 3 of them. There were a couple of responses to my comments, but nothing that I would call a disaster, fortunately.


If I am lucky, maybe I got some people to consider my ideas.  But I don't believe in counting on luck.  I'll keep posting on the external tanks as space station concept.  I think the idea may live to fight another day.


Update:

There was one reply to my comment at The Space Review .  "Coastal Ron" wrote the reply.  There doesn't appear to be much love for the shuttle derived system.  Not that I have a "dog in this hunt".  I'm not an employee of NASA, nor is anybody I know nor any relatives.  I have no financial stake in the outcome.

If this program is going to survive, it may well have to come from the Democrats.  It is also fair to point out that all the Democrats really want is a jobs program.  Between the two factions, this system may just die for lack of interest.  Too bad.  

Chris Laird's Prudent Squirrel

As I've mentioned before, I have a subscription to the Prudent Squirrel Newsletter.  This last newsletter is interesting enough that I decided to mention something more about it here on this blog.  By the way, I have a link to his website on my products page.

Chris will allow his subscribers to reproduce up to 10% of his newsletter as long as they give him credit for it and a link to his site.  If you want more, you'll have to get a subscription.  I haven't been posting any of his material here, but I will include a little this time in order to give you a sample of what he writes.  So, here we go.  This is probably far less than 10% and it is only the list of topics discussed, so here goes:

Newsletter - Edition 246 - 19 December 2010
By Christopher Laird
Rising interest rates – what might we expect?
The Plaza Accord
China interest rate hike due
Korea
My positions
Oil
Shanghai and other “emerging markets”

And there it is.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  He does a good job and it is well worth a read.  Now, I want to discuss a little of some of these topics here.

Let's start from the top, with interest rates.  As I wrote earlier, I would not be a buyer of bonds.  I am already on record there.  check

The Plaza Accord wasn't really any different policy than what the US has been doing since Nixon closed the gold window in the early 70's.  Guess what?  Inflation followed that.  We thought we had inflation beat, but it will definitely come back.   Why?  Have you heard of Quantitative Easing?  Same thing. check

I am not well researched on China.  My impression is that China will import US inflation as long as they allow their currency to be linked to the dollar.  The same will hold true for all of our trading partners.  The only way to preserve their markets here is to enter the race to the bottom of competitive devaluation.  If they decide to stop playing along with that game, the musical chairs scenario will leave the US dollar as the last one standing. That's not where you want to be in that game.  Just my opinion folks.  So, China may raise rates, but it won't be effective in stopping inflation there.  They aren't serious, but when they do get serious, look out.  check

Korea doesn't interest me much, except for the stability issue.  If war breaks out, it is not good.  check

I don't disclose my stock or financial positions here.  This isn't a market advisory service.  I give my opinions for free, you can read it for entertainment, amusement, or what have you.  check

As for oil, I have felt for many years that this is a show stopper for the US economy.  If our fearless leaders don't get their rears in gear, we will continue having problems.  This problem has been talked about since I was in school back in the 70's.  For once, our leaders need to step up to the plate, and deal with this problem.  I won't hold my breath.  check

Emerging markets is just not my bag, baby.  A little Austin Powers lingo there.  So, there you are.  My reaction to Chris' newsletter.  If you subscribe, you can read his stuff and mine and compare notes.  I think he is more of a pro at this because he has been doing it a long time.  Not trying to grab his glory, just expressing my own opinions.  check

Recycling the ET, part 10

It looks like 10 posts so far on this subject, identified by this label.  I have to apologize for the lack of organization here.  This blog is a bit more haphazard than what I would like.  It appears that so far that there are 9 posts, but I wrote more on the subject in previous posts.  Yet this seems to be hard to find.

What got me interested in this proposition was the fact that the shuttle derived system is now being adopted as the heavy lifter.  Since I learned that, it is now 10 posts, which are easy to access from the label at the end of each post.  Just click on it to bring them all up.

I learned of the decision to use the shuttle derived launcher late last month.  By then, it was a month old decision since it was mid October when the decision was made to use the DIRECT approach.  The DIRECT approach is the name for shuttle derived system as the heavy lifter.

What does this decision mean?  For one thing, the entire rocket system now can be independent of the orbiter.  Since the orbiter carried the main engines on board, it meant that the entire shuttle had to come with it so as to have access to the engines.  Now that the shuttle will be gone, that extra mass, which was considerable, will no longer be needed.  The significance of this is that the external tanks can go into orbit at a much higher and safer altitude than before.  Without having to carry the extra mass of the shuttle, there will be plenty of thrust to get the external tanks to that orbit.  Even with the shuttle onboard, the tanks could have been put into orbit (not just my opinion here, it is in the documentation that is in the pdf file I reviewed).  The reason they weren't was the fear that the tank could reenter the atmosphere due to orbit decay.  At a higher orbit, this concern can more easily addressed.

As for some of the ideas that I put forward, they are not new, unique, nor mine.  It is in the pdf, just mentioned. Not necessarily in the form that I put it in, because that pdf is material that is nearly 30 years old.  The shuttle was still a relatively new launch platform back then.

Thus the use of the external tanks as a space station is an idea which has already been studied by NASA. What may make the idea more interesting is that some of the limitations of the shuttle have now been removed. It may well be more feasible now than before.

What I am saying is that there may be an opportunity here.  The question is will somebody be able to see this and take advantage of it?  Or will that opportunity be lost?  A window of opportunity can close really fast.  I hope that it will not be lost.

Hot Dog!

Here's George Carlin, the comedian, saying something funny and serious at the same time.  Guess what?  It makes a lot of sense to me!  WARNING!  This video is liberally sprinkled with f-bombs and bad language.  This is a clean blog, or mostly clean.  But this video is PG, or at least an R,  okay?

Times is Tough

Another one of Wishbone's videos that I am stealing here.  yuk, yuk.  Hey, it's Christmas, Wishbone.







That was so good, I think I'll have another:

Organization counts

I like to read Lance Zierlein on chron.com sports. He is an NFL guy and I
think his dad was in the league as a coach. His latest blog post was about
the Houston Texans and how they are managing to go down in history as a
study in futility.

Maybe that is not exactly how he put it, that's my way of putting it. Yet
it doesn't surprise me at all. Before the season, when everybody was picking
the Texans to be playoff contenders, I had them pegged at 8-8. They will
do no better than that, and they just may do worse.

There was something there, maybe it was a comment about what Kubiak has
been saying that struck me.  He said that he believed in his system and that
they were going to stick with their system.  Now, a system is not the same
thing as intelligence.  No system can deal with novel situations.  Only intelligence
can do that.  After all, a system is just a system.  A human mind is smarter
than a system and will beat it every time.  Intelligence wins over systems.

But systems matter too.  All I am saying is that systems don't substitute for
intelligence.  If it does, you are going to get yourself into trouble.  If my hunch
is correct, I may have put my finger on what is  wrong with this team.

I would have made this as a comment, but has been too long since he made
this blog post, so I won't comment there, but post here.  Here is the link to
this blog post, in case you're interested.

A time for new thinking

Well, it's Sunday morning, and I'm back at it here.  Today is the day of rest, but we don't get any around here. That's a joke, son.

Anyway, I figured I would start a new topic last week.  I felt pretty good last week about this blog.  Things were on the upswing, but the enthusiasm was getting a little out of hand.  So, I figured I needed something to keep my feet on the ground.  Well, maybe I shouldn't have worried about that.  The world will kick your butt and make you get your butt back on the ground, and your butt is connected to your feet.  This blog's audience seemed to take a dive this past week, and that was the butt kicker.  So now I am on the opposite end of needing to stay centered.  I need something that will help me keep my chin up.

There are always little things to feel optimistic about, when it comes to this endeavor, but is it a realistic way of proceeding?  Every step forward here is a baby step.  Every step backward is a pratfall, it seems.  But I try to learn from my mistakes so I can keep moving forward.  Too many of these and I will run out of time.

My biggest problem seems to be with myself.  What I am referring to here is my own habits which tend to undermine my best efforts.  Take yesterday, for example.  While at the San Jacinto Battleground, I noticed a man walking in my direction while I was checking out their nature trail at the park.  I have this habit of avoiding social situations.  That seems to be the way I'm built.  It is customary for me to avoid people, and I started to turn around and go in the opposite direction.  But I caught myself.  Because I have become aware of this tendency to do this, and I want to stop doing it.  It just doesn't work for me anymore, I have to change my ways.  So, rather than do the habitual thing, I slowed down and made some social pleasantries with the guy.

He turned out to be someone who went to the same high school that I went to.  He knew the some of the same people I knew, but I didn't know him.  Or I didn't recall knowing him back then.  We got to talking about the old days and I learned a few things I didn't know.  For instance, one guy I used to be buddies with has died from cancer.  That makes you feel old.  Like I didn't feel that way already.

We chatted for a few minutes, but I did something that I also have a tendency of doing.  I got a little rude.  I made an abrupt exit because I wanted to do other things besides chatting with my old classmate.  Shame on me.  I need to do better and I fouled up.  Sorry, Robert, if you are reading this.  You see, I gave him the info so that he could access this blog.  Maybe he came already.  I don't know.  If you do come here, Robert, please feel free to comment and let me know.  I don't try to be a jerk, but sometimes, I can't help myself.

Another alternative to Moon landings

Joseph Friedlander has a guest post up at NextBigFuture which is titled Setting up an Industrial Village on the Moon . It looks like another method of getting matter up there to the Moon in order to make a permanent presense there.  But there can be no permanent presense unless there's an economical reason for being there. What could that be?  He's looking for a way to bootstrap a colony.

The ideas he mentions say nothing about space elevators or tethers.  Rather, it is looked at from another angle entirely.  In order to get matter to or from the Moon, or from one location to another in general, a method is needed in order to protect the cargo.  The way that he mentions, which by the way, I like, is to use explosions as a decelerator. That idea isn't new, as the Russians used it in the sixties for hard landings on the Moon.

The trick is not to avoid crashes, but make the crashes not quite so hard, so that will not cause disintegrations. The remainder of the mass that's not disintegrated can be salvaged.  This makes setting up a Moon base more economical.

As the old saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.  It can indeed be an economical way of getting materials up there that can be used to build that permanent presense.  Is there yet another way to skin the cat?

I suggest this: why not used controlled crashes to ship stuff from one part of the Moon to another?  From the lunar base to a equatorial base?  Use mass drivers on the polar base, and then catapult the cargo to the equator.  Then send up the cargo by way of a space elevator to the space station that I mentioned earlier.

Why send it all the way from the Earth if the goal is to be more economical?  It could be used to send materials not found on the Moon from the Earth, but for matter that is already there on the Moon, try this other way instead.