Freedom: What Trump's election will mean for America's space policy

Behind the Black Blog

Probably will change the Artemis Program, and there will be deregulation. Plus there will be more freedom, he says. I say that Elon Musk will make it or break it. Let's hope it's the former and not the latter.

The 2024 election provides us proof that 2020 was a fraud

Flopping Ace dot net

Millions of votes just disappeared. Is that believable?

More nerdy calculations

I wanted to see what kind of mass you can get off the Martian surface and the lunar surface with a full tank on the surface to low orbit.

This chart may be hard to read. There's three columns of the rocket equation with parameters, reading down top to bottom. The last row are the delta-vees. Destinations/arrivals are on top two rows.

The middle column is Mars low orbit to Lunar Lagrange point two. Maxxed out Starship version 3 ships are 2300 tons. That means we aren't maxxed out here except for the first column. If it was maxxed out, the wet mass minus the dry mass would be 2300 tons, but obviously isn't for the middle column and right column. I've already forgotten why that is, so it isn't necessarily a mistake. But could be. Too white and nerdy, eh?

You might notice that this is one helluva lot of mass to lift off these places. Or land on these places for that matter. That's the point. On Earth, the numbers are much smaller. This is an opportunity, I would think.

______________Mars____MLOrbit_________Lunar Launch/landing

_____________ MLO_____OPT-Eml2_________Luna-EML2

wet mass ton 3600_________3650_________4600

dry mass ton 1300_________1650_________2300

isp _________ 380_________ 380_________ 380

grav const___9.81_________9.81 ________9.81

delta v m/s__3797_________2959 _______ 2521

Trump Wins, Musk win is bigger

Is there really any doubt that if Harris had won, Elon Musk would've been in big trouble?

Musk's entire operational scope may well have been at stake. Therefore, he is clearly the big winner today.

Now he has to make good on the victory.

There's big opportunities in them thar "hills" of outer space. His rockets can make that accessible. The opportunities beckon, and the question is, are we big enough for them? Or are they big enough for US?

I see great possibilities opening up. I wish my health was better. I'd have liked to have seen it all. This is a great boon to the young, if they are wise enough to take advantage of it.

Bring stuff back from Mars, starting with carbon

11/5/24:

Looks like there's at least one error in my spreadsheet. Well, I didn't think it was 100% down the line perfect. It's not my profession after all.

The main idea stands, though. It really would pay to take stuff off Mars since you have to return the Starships anyway. Just ditching them on Mars seems like a big waste, and ultimately you will increase the number of launches needed to get your cargo and crew in place on Mars.

11/4/24:

Some calculations from a spreadsheet. Not very convenient these days on Google platforms because they are so nosy.

The point will become clear from this excerpt ( hopefully if it's readable enough).

Starship/Heavy Version 3 (originally assumed 110 tons, increased here to 200 tons)

Left side-----------------------------------right side

comparsion to LEO and from refilled Starship in space

90 ton payload or 200 ton empty weight Assume dry mass for calculating delta v for right side

wet mass ton______2300__________________wet mass ton_______________2300

dry mass ton______200 __________________dry mass ton_______________800

isp_______________380 __________________isp secs__________________380

grav const m/s^2__9.81__________________grav const m/s^2___________9.81

delta v m/s____9104__________________delta v m/s________________3936

Note that the Starship Version 3 can nearly get to orbit by itself! However, it would be an empty vessel. Not very useful, eh?

However, if you refill it, it can propel itself to another destination. Let's say you are on Mars, and you want to come back to Earth. It takes about 3.8 km/sec to get to Mars orbit from its surface. As is seen above, you can lift 800 tons to Mars orbit from the surface. A lot more than from Earth.

What this shows is that you can put more mass onboard on the surface of Mars, and get it to orbit as compared to doing it on Earth.

Plus you don't need the booster.

It therefore makes sense to send something back from Mars, which means cargo deliveries from Mars is desirable.

What could that cargo be? One thing could be pure carbon for delivery to the Moon. The Moon may not have much carbon, and you can make useful things out of carbon. One useful thing would be methane for rocket propulsion.

If you can make methane on the Moon, you can use the weight savings for more cargo delivered to the Moon. You can also deliver methane to lunar orbit, and beyond.

That's because you can lift even more cargo from the surface of the Moon. Even more still from a LaGrange point. What use would it be at the LaGrange point? You could refill there and store the methane for flights to other destinations.

Is Texas ok?

The election is tomorrow, and so there is little time left. There's a lot of big talk about a big win tomorrow, but is that just a lot of talk? Could there be a big surprise in store for all? Perhaps this is a bit far-fetched, but I have a suspicion that at the very least, the left is trying for an upset here, and it might be feasible.

I've been at a loss for material lately to write about. So I've sort of dropped out of the mix for awhile. In so doing, I've been seeing a few things that I might not have seen otherwise. For example, I am watching more TeeVee. It so happens that the Senate Great White Hope for the Dems, Colin Allred, is running a lot of ads on TeeVee. The polls are supposed to be closer than what you'd expect. I don't believe polls, and I don't follow them that much. But what if this is correct?

That's not the worst of it. There's more. It's what in the ads. Allred is trying to position himself as STRONG on the border. What a joke, but the joke could be on us if this works. Of course, he's also trying on the abortion issue. His campaign wouldn't be doing this if they thought it couldn't work.

Let's get a few things straight. There's no way he's going to buck the radical plans of the Democrats if he gets in, and they hold the Senate. So I think all the talk about being tough on the border is a big lie, and the abortion thing is ridiculous. But if Cruz lets that one cost the election, it's at least partly on him.

If Cruz loses, so could Trump. Put that one over, and this one could get really ugly for the good guys.

Another thing. I figured Texas had a strong election security scheme, but I was wrong. It seems that paper ballots are not going to be saved. I figured that they were, but I was wrong on that one. That means if it is close enough, they may try a steal.

This amounts a RED ALERT for Texans. If you don't want to be the fault for this big loss, you'd better show up tomorrow and vote your asses off.

Elon Musk not telling us something about Starship?

There may be a surprise. However, if the surprise is the use of the Moon as a staging point for his colonization of Mars, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Actually, it would make a lot of sense because you can source the Moon for a lot of the mass needed for the trip to Mars. In fact, it may be possible to wean the Starship of needing propellant from the Earth for the trip to Mars.