Coaster 15, Making aluminum mirrors on the moon

If you are going to do anything in space, it would have to make money.  Otherwise, what's the point?

That's what this series is all about.  In my peregrinations on the web today, I found one item that could be manufactured on the moon:  aluminum mirrors.  These need not be heavy, since there isn't any weather, nor is there a need to support a lot of weight.  A mirror of significant enough size may be powerful enough to lift itself off the moon and into orbit.  Impossible?

Okay, so lets make this a speculation alert worthy post.

Before coming across that story on the web today, I had some more thoughts about the coaster, and how it may work.  In previous posts, I posited that it may be worth it to spin the tungsten up so as to spread the heat evenly.  In this post, a better idea would be posited--- to just move gases around in order to do that.  It would be like a heating element-  it would wrap around in concentric circles from a focal point where it is the hottest.  The gas would recirculate around and around and heat up the entire tungsten heater so that the reaction mass can obtain its energy from it in a heat exchanger.

You could use the hydrogen reaction mass as a preheater of a sort in order to acquire heat from the recirculated gas and make a type of Stirling Engine that would work in the capacity of a pump.  The pump would have a hot side and a cold side--- meaning the two gases.  The piston would pump the hot gases through the heating element so as to keep it uniformly hot.  The reaction mass would pass around the heating element at its hottest point.  It is hoped that it would get up to 2700 degrees centigrade so as to gain enough energy for thrust and Isp of a nuclear thermal rocket.  The advantage is that you could do this without the mass of a nuclear reactor.

Now, if you had large enough mirrors--- manufactured on the moon--- that you may be able to set up a transportation system that gets you to the asteroids and to mine them profitably.

Extracting Water From the Moon With Basic Home Appliances

universetoday by Nancy Atkinson on October 6, 2008

• In their Marshall lab, the scientists used a microwave oven, a vacuum, water and a simulant to regolith to verify their findings.
• Other uses of microwaves would be to “melt” the lunar surface. The process would help create dust-free landing and launch sites as well as smoother floors for structures and roads for traveling without kicking up dust.
• “Since we’re planning to go to the moon and Mars, the idea is to save weight (on the flight) and to extract the materials the astronauts would need – oxygen and water,” said Kaukler. “There have been studies that showed (getting the water) to be economically viable,” he said. “It could be the first commercial venture.”

Comment:

Obama didn't seem to appreciate the value of going back to the Moon.  It was to learn how to do in-situ resourcing.  This is a way to reduce the amount of mass that needs to be lifted off the surface of the Earth.  Getting that mass off the Earth is very expensive, so getting resources locally from the Moon and from Mars would help out a lot.

Morris: Obama Is Not Credible

Dick Morris TV: Lunch Alert!

Romney on the way to a landslide.

Obama’s Auto Bailout Was Really a Hefty Union Payoff

The Fiscal Times via Free Republic

In the second presidential debate, Mr. Obama attacked early on, saying, “Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt.”

Note to Obama fans: GM did go bankrupt – filing for Chapter 11 protection against its creditors on June 1, 2009. It’s what happened next that the president can take credit for – a handout of $49.5 billion in taxpayer money to GM, some $27 billion of which remains outstanding, and another $17 billion to its financial arm Ally Financial, which still owes $14.7 billion.

The Obama administration strong-armed the auto companies’ creditors into accepting undeniably unfair terms – terms that saw pensions obliterated for non-union workers but saved for those carrying a UAW card. Terms that saw non-UAW shops close but UAW factories stay open. Terms that doled out ownership in GM with political favoritism as a guiding principle.

In a growing scandal, Obama’s former auto czar and two Treasury officials appear implicated in the decision to eliminate the pensions of 20,000 non-union workers at GM’s Delphi unit, while protecting benefits for UAW members. Under oath, they blamed the decision to wipe out the nonunion pensions on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, but emails uncovered earlier this year show that Treasury held meetings on the matter in which the PBGC was not included.

There's a large per car manufacturing cost disadvantage for GM and even this deal didn't fix that.  Therefore, GM isn't completely on the mend as Obama claims.

Ammonia powered cars revisited

What could you do with the elemental graphite produced from fossil fuel processing?  For those who haven't read this, go back to the link above for review.  The ammonia powered car can be found here.

You could send the graphite into space as a sequestration strategy.  WTF!  How crazy is that?!  Not so crazy, as we shall see.  Carbon would be very useful in space.  If not useful on the ground, you could certainly find a use for it in space.

For one thing, you want to make fuels in space.  Starting with the "useless" elemental graphite, you can make methane according to this process.  Combining that with a hydrogen source, methane can be obtained.  Methane can be used as a rocket fuel, or it can be processed further into the more powerful RP-1.

It seems that the enabling technologies required would be a manufacturing capability in space.

In order to get a significant manufacturing capability in space, it would be necessary to make a factory for such a purpose to be fitted on an appropriate rocket.  In an age of nanotechnology, such a prospect does not seem like such a far out possibility.  That's to say, the factory doesn't have to be that big.

Send a biofactory up.  Grow algae in order to process carbon dioxide.  Obtain the carbon dioxide from the elemental graphite.  You can do this by producing the methane as above, reforming it into carbon dioxide.  Then have the algae produce the oil, which is being done on the ground.  It is being done on the ground as a way to mitigate carbon going into the air.  Since this idea is sending carbon into space instead, that problem is being solved in another way.  Hence, a space factory.  Your algae is producing your oil which can be remade into rocket fuel for space travel.  That's killing two birds with one stone.

To sum up, you take petroleum and make ammonia out of it.  Use the ammonia to run automobiles.  This would make autos zero carbon emitters.  That's the goal on the ground.

The carbon would be taken out of the petroleum products and sent into space, where it would be used in making rocket fuel in space.

How's that for an idea?

Don't let em take your guns

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The following story is why this matters.

President Bullcorn

In that last debate, Obama was asked what was the biggest misperception that people have about him.  Generally speaking, Obama was claiming that the biggest misperception about him was that he was a socialist.  Not in so many words, but basically what he said.

What a load of bull.  That is what he is.

When he talks about "fairness", he isn't talking about free markets.  He doesn't believe free markets are fair.  Ask any commie and that is what they believe too.  So why doesn't he just tell it like it is?

Miscellaneous Space Notes

Seafood from Asia Raised on Pig Waste, Says News Report---The feces are added to the water to produce an algae bloom," he says, which in turn produces a form of plankton that the fish then eat.[ comment:  This produced a "yuk" reaction on Instapundit, but I think there may be something here that can be used to process waste in space.  A speculation, but interesting.]

British engineers produce amazing 'petrol from air' technology----Tonight Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) officials admitted that while the described the technology as being “too good to be true but it is true”, it could prove to be a “game-changer” in the battle against climate change.  [comment:  But nothing in the article states the economy of the the device.  How much does it cost to produce how much?  Of course you can produce fuel this way, but that is not the most important question.  The most important question is if it is viable or not.]

Blue Origin Successfully Tests Engine--- Earlier this month, the company successfully fired the thrust chamber assembly for its new 100,000 pound thrust BE-3 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen rocket engine. [ comment:  Hydrogen engines are significant for a potential SSTO rocket.]

Mars Facts from Nasa---Escape Velocity
Metric: 18,108 km/h
English: 11,252 mph
Scientific Notation: 5.030 x 103 m/s
By Comparison: Escape velocity of Earth is 25,030 mph.  [ comment:  Speculation in the form of a question:  Could you land on Mars with a balloon?  JP Aerospace wants to get to orbit with a balloon on Earth, but what about deorbiting Mars with a balloon?  Impossible?]

Wariness about Romney--- point well taken

Thanks again for pointing out what I've already pointed out.  A win by Romney is no guarantee of anything.  It is only a chance for a new start.  There has to be a follow up, and if there isn't, "Katy bar the door".

This fact ought to give one pause. If Mitt Romney wins in November -- and I still expect him to win by a landslide -- I sure hope that he does not revert to the technocratic, apolitical bipartisanship that marked his tenure as governor in Massachusetts. If he does, we may see Barack Obama back in 2016 . . . or someone worse.

Karl Denninger: The Mouth-Breathing On Health Care Continues

market ticker dot org  via Barnhardt

If you have a "pre-existing" condition then you're not buying insurance.

Remember what insurance actually is: A small payment made to someone in order to obtain pooled risk against an unlikely but catastrophic event that one either cannot or chooses not to reserve against on one's own.

Thank you.  I think I said that myself once before.

Breitbart website "Fact checks your ass"

If there's any justice in this country anymore, here it is with this fact check.  This video shows the line of bull that this administration was pushing until recently- and the line of bull that they are pushing now.

But if you have any doubt that "act of terror" does not equal terrorism, take a look at Jay Carney's briefing on 9/14 (video below). Carney blames the YouTube video for the violence 14 times. He is specifically asked three times if he means to include Benghazi in this formulation and says "we don't know otherwise...we have no information to suggest it was a preplanned attack."

Sally Zelikovsky: Romney trapped Obama in the Second Debate

American Thinker

Many in the punditry need to re-visit the section of the debate last night between Romney and Obama addressing the Libya question. Too many are saying Romney flubbed it, his answer was flustered and a lost opportunity to strike back. This was not my first impression watching the debate so I went back and watched it again. After reviewing the footage I think many in the punditry missed what really happened.

Comment:

If you say so.  Yes, it is true that Romney said this stuff, and it is better than nothing.  But this was probably the most miserable part of the debate for me.  Romney could have destroyed Obama over this, but he seemed to me to be holding back a little.

That applause part was just miserable.  Miserable.  Obama trashes the First Amendment after presiding over a terror attack on 9-11 of all days and these people applauded that.  Miserable.

Who won the debate?

It all depends upon how you listen to it.  If you listen to it the way Obama presented it to that first question, then you'd probably say that Obama won it.  If you listen to it literally, the way it actually unfolded in that first question, you'd probably say that Romney won it.

Here's the poll results courtesy of Ace

CBS Poll: Romney Wins 65-34 on Economy;
CNN Poll: Romney Wins 54-40 on Economy,
49-46 on Health Care,
51-44 on Taxes,
59-36 on Deficit,
49-46 on Leadership,
All in Favor of Romney

I'll break down the rest of the debate when I get some time.  Probably on the weekend.

Update:

There was enough time last night to watch the re-run of the debate.  The only thing there worth mentioning is that Romney let Obama get away with something on that Benghazi question.  I didn't like that.  It took a lot of time for Obama to stop blaming a YouTube video for the attack--- and just call it a terrorist act.  Romney lets Obama get away with saying that Romney politicized it before getting the facts.  Bullshit.  All Obama did for a couple weeks there was to trash the First Amendment.  Romney defended it.  He should have said something in his own defense on that, but he kept quiet.

The rest of the whole thing was a snooze fest as far I'm concerned.

Debate ( updated)

As before, I didn't watch it live.  As before, I don't have time to watch replays, but will probably watch the replays later.   But I did read the transcripts of maybe half the "debate".  I'm not particularly thrilled with what I read.

It was a town hall format and people in the audience got to ask the questions.  The first question was not an easy question to answer, if the answer was to be directed at the kid who asked it.  Romney did try, but sort of flubbed it, as Obama responded with a campaign speech directed at the larger audience.  Good start for Obama, but Romney was put into a bad position.  That's my take.

The rest of what I read seemed to follow that pattern.  Not that Obama won it or Romney won it.  It's just that the debate seemed to me to get lost in irrelevant minutia at times.  Other times, it gets lost in accusations and counter accusations.  I lost interest about half way through.

From what I read, it appeared to be disappointing.  But that's nothing new.  I'm not particularly impressed with our leadership and this was no exception.

It is not going to change my vote.  Obama does not deserve a second term based upon his performance on the job.  If his performance was so good, the outcome of this election would be a foregone conclusion.

Update:

Let us take a closer look at that first question and break it down:

QUESTION: Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old
college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is
that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment.
What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that
I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?

Comment:  The government can't get Jeremy a job unless they hire him directly.  Other than that, the answer would appear to be that the government may pursue policies that can create more opportunity.  I think Romney made a stab at an answer, while Obama gave a campaign speech.

ROMNEY: Thank you, Jeremy. I appreciate your - your question,
and thank you for being here this evening and to all of those from
Nassau County that have come, thank you for your time. Thank you to
Hofstra University and to Candy Crowley for organizing and leading
this - this event.

Thank you, Mr. President, also for being part of this - this
debate.

college kids all over this country. I was in Pennsylvania with
someone who had just graduated - this was in Philadelphia - and she
said, "I've got my degree. I can't find a job. I've got three part-
time jobs. They're just barely enough to pay for my food and pay for
an apartment. I can't begin to pay back my student loans."

So what we have to do is two things. We have to make sure that
we make it easier for kids to afford college.

Comment:  What does that have to do with the actual question?  Upon further review, the kid asked about how he could support himself, so it does address that part of the question.

Note:  I was too hard on Romney.  He did better on this than I thought.

ROMNEY: And also make sure that when they get out of college,
there's a job. When I was governor of Massachusetts, to get a high
school degree, you had to pass an exam. If you graduated in the top
quarter of your airlines, we gave you a John and Abigail Adams
scholarship, four years tuition free in the college of your choice in
Massachusetts, it's a public institution.

Comment:  Still not answering the question.  ( See note above for the correction and thus the strike out)

I want to make sure we keep our Pell grant program growing. We're
also going to have our loan program, so that people are able to afford
school. But the key thing is to make sure you can get a job when you
get out of school. And what's happened over the last four years has
been very, very hard for America's young people. I want you to be
able to get a job.

I know what it takes to get this economy going. With half of
college kids graduating this year without a college - excuse me,
without a job. And without a college level job, that's just
unacceptable.

And likewise you've got more and more debt on your back. So more
debt and less jobs. I'm going to change that. I know what it takes to
create good jobs again. I know what it takes to make sure that you
have the kind of opportunity you deserve. And kids across this
country are going to recognize, we're bringing back an economy.

Comment:  An overall stab at an answer.   Nothing specific, just a promise.

It's not going to be like the last four years. The middle-class
has been crushed over the last four years, and jobs have been too
scarce. I know what it takes to bring them back, and I'm going to do
that, and make sure that when you graduate - when do you graduate?

QUESTION: 2014.

ROMNEY: 2014. When you come out in 2014, I presume I'm going to
be president. I'm going to make sure you get a job. Thanks Jeremy.
Yeah, you bet.

Comment:  Whoa!  That one got by me.  He seems to be promising Jeremy a job.  Personally.  That is definitely answering the question directly.  If elected, let us see if he has kept that promise.

I'll have to revise my opinion a bit.  Romney answered the freaking question--- but not with specifics, but a personal promise.  I think he wins on empathy and on interpersonal skills.

CROWLEY: Mr. President?

OBAMA: Jeremy, first of all, your future is bright. And the fact
that you're making an investment in higher education is critical. Not
just to you, but to the entire nation. Now, the most important thing
we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country.
But not just jobs, good paying jobs. Ones that can support a family.

OBAMA: And what I want to do, is build on the five million jobs
that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector
alone. And there are a bunch of things we can do to make sure your
future is bright.

Number one, I want to build manufacturing jobs in this country
again. Now when Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go
bankrupt. I said we're going to bet on American workers and the
American auto industry and it's come surging back.

Comment:  Actually, this is an answer of sorts with specifics.  But it is a claim that doesn't square with what the kid was asking.  Note: His answer is pretty general--- not personal as Romney's.

I want to do that in industries, not just in Detroit, but all
across the country and that means we change our tax code so we're
giving incentives to companies that are investing here in the United
States and creating jobs here.

It also means we're helping them and small businesses to export
all around the world to new markets.

Comment:  But where are the jobs if you've been doing all these things?

Number two, we've got to make sure that we have the best
education system in the world. And the fact that you're going to
college is great, but I want everybody to get a great education and
we've worked hard to make sure that student loans are available for
folks like you, but I also want to make sure that community colleges
are offering slots for workers to get retrained for the jobs that are
out there right now and the jobs of the future.

Number three, we've got to control our own energy. Now, not only
oil and natural gas, which we've been investing in; but also, we've
got to make sure we're building the energy source of the future, not
just thinking about next year, but ten years from now, 20 years from
now. That's why we've invested in solar and wind and biofuels, energy
efficient cars.

Comment:  He stumbles badly on this.  Green jobs aren't there.  It is a conspicuous failure.

We've got to reduce our deficit, but we've got to do it in a
balanced way. Asking the wealthy to pay a little bit more along with
cuts so that we can invest in education like yours.

And let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the
last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges schools. We do those
things, not only is your future going to be bright but America's
future is going to bright as well.

Comment:  He doesn't answer the kid directly, but provides generalities.  It also has some campaign rhetoric and claims that don't hold up to scrutiny.

Overall, Romney actually wins this question on empathy.  Obama wins it on campaign rhetoric.  It all depends upon how persuasive it all is as to who really won.  Romney is promising a lot and will have to deliver if he is elected.

Update:

There was a story yesterday about Obama not liking people.  This answer to this debate question, in which  both candidates had the opportunity to interact personally with a voter, reinforces that impression.

Alice In Chains Rooster (Lyrics)

Something about this song.  Don't know what it is, but there's something there.  A feeling, perhaps.

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

Events have taken a Alice-in-Wonderland-ish turn. I can picture Joe Biden grinning like a Cheshire Cat with this music in the background.

Lyrics:

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all.
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall,
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.
Call Alice
When she was just small.

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low.
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know.
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead,
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said:
"Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head"

But conditions are such in this culture now that the point is always lost.  Which may be the whole point after all.

Deliverance with Better Teeth, Clothes, and Haircuts

americanthinker

Comment:

A history lesson of the recent events in Libya and the Middle East that may go overlooked and under commented upon.  The issue at hand has morphed from a cartoonish video to terrorism.  Has anyone noticed the change?

Campaign Bumper Sticker Snark

What was that campaign slogan about bin Laden being dead and GM alive?

Well this bumper sticker idea gave me an inspiration of sorts, and I came up with this variation (or hack job) in order to spell out my impression of what the true state of affairs is in Libya.   Seems to me that somebody is missing the point.

It's all Bush's fault

Hillary Clinton took responsibility for something or other.  Did she take responsibility for this state of affairs?

WEAPONS HUNTING: The Reason for the 9-11 Murders in Libya

Incidentally, there's a share button that's not working this morning.  I wonder if somebody is "jamming" any reportage on this.  That may sound paranoid, but once you start digging into this, you begin to see the massive deceit coming from this administration.

Anyway, this is a must read for anybody who is interested in getting to the bottom of the attack.  It seems pretty clear to me that this administration does not want to get to the bottom of this, at least until after this election.

He and Ambassador Stevens, as well as the two other special operators from Wind Zero, were executing a CIA and State Department mission to track not only Qaddafi’s weapons, but to trace any and all weapons trafficking in the regions. Smith was the information officer at the Benghazi mission and likely was too close to having uncovered intelligence that pinpointed key players both in and outside of Libya. Intelligence was shared with the CIA, which does enforce the drone program, whether inside Libya, stemming from the mission to remove Qaddafi, or in other hot-spots in the Middle East.

 READ IT ALL.

Comment:

The loss of 20,000 Manpads ( think Stinger anti-aircraft) would be of very high interest in this administration.  After all, it was this administration that participated in the ouster of Khaddafy, without Congressional approval as required by law, in which said ouster led directly to the loss of the Manpads.  They are desperate, or should be desperate, about getting these back before planes start getting targeted.  If that happens, it is an unholy political mess.

State Department Official Refuses to Classify Libya Attackers as ‘Terrorists’

That official is none other than Charlene Lamb, who happened to be monitoring the attack in real time. According to law, attacks like this are definitely monitored in real time, so any attempt- by Biden et. al- to say that they don't know what is going on is pure "malarkey".

We don't have a War on Terror anymore, either, in case you haven't noticed.   It isn't convenient to use that word for political reasons.

The stench grows

Details start to emerge that make the response to the Benghazi attack seem, well, political.

During the hearing, the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, Eric Nordstrom, and Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team in Libya until August, placed the blame squarely on Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, whom they said was the official who denied those requests.[emphasis added.  comment: Lamb was monitoring the attack in real time, as she reports here]

also

"In those conversations, I was specifically told [by Lamb] ‘You cannot request an SST extension.' I determined I was told that because there would be too much political cost. We went ahead and requested it anyway," Nordstrom said. 

and

Kennedy and Lamb were also pressed several times to explain why senior officials including U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made statements in the days after the attack describing it as a reaction to an anti-Islam video, considering that the State Department was monitoring the events that night in real time.

So, is Lamb a political appointee or a permanent civil service employee?  For if her position was political, this stinks to high heaven.  In other words, a political decision was made by Lamb, which was a mistake that directly led to the attack and death of the ambassador.  Plus, the decision to use the protests in Egypt as political cover for the attack was made by Rice despite the fact that information was available to showed the truth to be otherwise.

But something bigger may be hidden.  This occurred right in the middle of a presidential election and the administration appears to be trying awfully hard to run out the clock on it.  Could it be because the political damage could be severe?

h/t Free Republic

Biden was lying about Libya

According to this audio interview of Col. Hunt on WRKO Boston,  Biden was flat out lying about what happened in Benghazi. It wasn't even challenged. Not by Ryan and not by the RNC. Sure, Biden was rude. But this is even worse.

Even the part about an investigation is meant to obfuscate the facts about the incident.  There's no way they don't know what was going on.

Listen to this at WRKO

Update:

This one stinks to high heaven.   Listen to Bob Woodward--- here:


and here:



Update:

I'm attempting to chase down the story behind the story. ( check the comments section at the link) There's this talk about missing anti-aircraft missiles ( aka manpads) that went missing after the Libya overthrow of Khaddafy.

Anyway, the efforts in Libya at the consulate may have been attempting to track down these missing missiles. The story here is that the unprecedented size of the attack may have been due to the importance of getting these missing missiles and taking them out of the hands of terrorists. That Al Qaeda could have set up this attack for the purpose of thwarting that effort makes this attack look all the more ominous.

Propulsive Fluid Accumulator revisited ( LOXLEO)

That post, back in December of last year, kicked off the LOXLEO series.   The main idea is to obviate or lessen the need for fuel to be transported from the ground into space.  This would save a lot of money, obviously, so it may be worth looking for a way to implement this concept.

One problem is that you still need a fuel.  You can collect nitrogen and oxygen from the upper reaches of the atmosphere, but hydrogen doesn't exist there in sufficient quantity.  Assuming a LOXLEO or PROFAC device, what can be done to close this loop?  That is, aside from actually going outside of orbit for materials?  Like the moon or to the asteroids.

A potential solution- or more modestly- a mitigation of the limitation thus described may be achieved through manufacture of fuels in space.  A particular fuel that may be possible, though apparently not easy, would be a monopropellant known as "nitrous oxide fuel blend (NOFB) monopropellant."  NOFB would be made of a mixture of nitrous oxide plus a hydrocarbon fuel.

All, or most, of the components of the mixture would have to be collected and manufactured into the fuel in space.

How would the hydrocarbon fuel be manufactured?  It can't without carbon.  But people exhale carbon dioxide all the time.  With enough people there, you could collect the carbon dioxide and make a hydrocarbon fuel out of it.  It is already done on the ISS, or so I understand.  But the fuel is methane, and it is not used, but vented into space.  Why not put this resource to work?

You would still need to transport hydrogen and food to space.  Note that hydrogen is the lightest of the elements.  Therefore, to lift it would be the cheapest option amongst an expensive lot.  In addition, lifting food would still be expensive.  But none of the waste products would need to be disposed of.  We could put those waste products to work to make fuel for our monopropellant rockets.  This would not eliminate all costs, but could mitigate the costs.  Every little thing can help.

Once you've got your hydrogen, you need an oxidizer.  You could use the oxygen from the LOXLEO (PROFAC), or you could manufacture a powerful oxidizer also used on rockets.  This would be nitrous oxide.  Why throw away the nitrogen if you can use it for something?

Now, to manufacture this in space could be a challenge.  A couple processes ( at least ) need to be carried up and implemented in space.  One would be the Haber Process.  This would produce ammonia.  You would need ammonia for the second part of the manufacture, which would produce the nitrous oxide.

The nitrous oxide and the hydrocarbon fuel would then be combined for the monopropellant NOFB.  The ISP ( 300) of this propellant is comparable to proven rocket fuels.  With this type of fuel, it may be possible to execute a landing on the moon or on Mars.

Update:

It should warrant repeating- at the risk of being too repetitive- that this concept can be implemented in LEO, so it wouldn't be necessary to construct anything on the moon just yet.  It can be used in order to get to the moon and then implement an even more economical system using lunar resources.

Obama's Jedi Mind Trick

This is amusing. Bill Whittle compares the media to the Imperial Storm Troopers who were weak-minded enough to fall for Obi-Wan Kenobi's suggestive words and to pass him and his companions through their checkpoint.

I can almost hear Joe Biden laughing.  "Nothing to see here.  Move along."

Biden Ryan debate: How to win the battles and lose the war

This purpose of this post is to tie up a few loose ends from the previous posts about the Veep debate this past week.  The most important point is that this is an attempt to get at the Moosehead Truth (MHT) about the debate.

Some of the points may seem minor and off the mark a bit.  Like the post about the Ace Rothstein character in the movie Casino.  As much as that may seem to be irrelevant, I will try to weave this into this post so that it may at least fit in some way with what the MHT really is.  

Ace Rothstein is really like me, in a way, as I am pretty doggone serious about what I do.  That character was really serious about gambling.  The movie character was based upon a real person, I might add.  So, when it comes to the truth about things, I can get pretty doggone serious.  I may not be an Ace in this kind of thing, but I am serious about getting at the MHT.  As I wrote before, the truth is a slippery thing.  But I like to get into pig pen and fight that hog until I pin him down.

Rothstein's world was about games and how to win them.  I've written that politics is a game.  So you could say that the discussion of politics here is how the "game" is won or lost.  Furthermore, as a point in comparison, I got the title of this post from a recollection of how a certain NFL team in one season managed to win nearly all of its games and still did not win the championship.  As an analogy, it seems that this election is like the Super Bowl of politics.  The outcome of it will affect the course of events of this country for decades to come.  With that in mind, I think the MHT of this debate is that Biden may have won more of the battles in the debate, yet he could have lost the war.  It may be too early to tell just yet on the election, so I'll back off of it just a bit.

How might he have lost it?  First of all, you have consider what Biden was trying to accomplish.  In my opinion, he was trying to eliminate Ryan as a viable alternative.  That was what he was doing with all the silly grinning, laughter, and  general disrespect he was showing towards Ryan.  In the meantime, he argued aggressively for the liberal point of view.  There's no doubt about that, his passion was real.  On that point, he may have furthered his cause in winning the debate.  But his attempt to discredit Ryan fell far short of the mark of the greater objective.  So, while winning most of his battles, he lost the main objective of the "war"-- which was to discredit Ryan..  If he had succeeded in discrediting Ryan, he may have won the war.

Furthermore, while failing to discredit Ryan, he may have gone too far.  As a consequence, questions about his own viability may now be asked.  After all, he put the issue on the table.  If he conducted himself less aggressively, this may not have come to the fore.  But now, thanks to his over the top behavior, questions can and should be raised about not only this performance, but his overall performance over the years.  It should be noted that he plagiarized Neal Kinnock's speech and this once forced him to drop out of a previous race for the Presidency in the eighties.  His frequent gaffes are all too obvious.  He may well have done it again in the debate itself.  When the issue came up, he countered that he always said what he meant.  If that is true, did he really mean to say that the last 4 years have been especially hard on the middle class?  What does that say about his own qualifications when he can't stay with the script?

Did Biden really win the debate then?  If he did, it was a Pyrrhic Victory.  In trying so hard to discredit Ryan, Biden may have done far more to discredit himself.  The victory as such, didn't do much to help win the war.  It may well have paved the war to an eventual defeat.  For credibility matters in politics.  The incumbents must demonstrate capability above all, for that is their greatest selling point.  If, by demonstrating otherwise in a debate, he may well have opened up a question that may not have arisen in the first place.  Incumbents are supposed to know what they are doing.  After all, that's how they get to be incumbents in the first place.  Yet, but going so far over the top as Biden did, he may have given that advantage away.

Yes, that could be the MHT of this debate.  In trying so hard to dispatch Ryan, he may well have dispatched himself.  He went for a Hail Mary and fumbled the ball.