Short hop test very cool video
Blue Origin test hop
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Category Archives: Space
Space Based Power!
Power Sat Concept
IAA says Space Based Grid Pwer Generation is a realistic prospect in 30 years, which actually says today because it would take that long to build the infrastructure to make it real.
Space Junk to Resource
I saw this picture elsewhere and lost it, its cool and a bit worrying, thought of course the scale is so out of kilter it’s almost sublime, but if you figure this only the big stuff and that it’s all in motion all the time and new stuff is going up there, then the worry is not so out-of-place.
- Junk, very expensive Junk, maybe reusable Junk
All sorts of solutions for removing this stuff has been proposed, from robo tugs to catchers mitts, and evaporating them with lasers. That last has been under study since the 1990’s and you don’t have to blow them to ‘microns’ you just have to slow them down enough so they did into the outer atmosphere and come crashing to the ground.
A very high tech broom (click through to Wired article)
And in the end I think the laser broom will be used, to deorbit bolts, dropped tools, smashed up debris etc, not worth recovering.
But a lot, even most of the material up there probably can be reused. If we could cheaply catch the small stuff, maybe my using the Laser Broom to guide it into a catch basket, there is plenty of solar power and vacuüm to smelt the metals and create new things.
Using spare material, sunlight, natural vacuüm and microgravity environment it seems reasonable that we could design and build a large-scale Additive Fabrication Machine in orbit that could build space craft parts from scrap. In the long run we then start getting the materials from asteroids or the moon and off we go into the solar system.
SpaceX costs , and some remote observations…
Elon Musk in this update post is very publicly making the point that while his wealth enabled him to ‘launch’ SpaceX the prices they are charging are ‘real’ and sustainable over the long run not subsidized. Seems that he is proving that when you are talking about certain classes of product America is still the leader, you just can’t carry old infrastructure, including old thinking, along for the ride.
Had a look at Blue Origin’s website and their factory, the thing that strikes me about all of the eSpace companies is that they are quite modest in size, set up for clean, smooth, flexible manufacturing and have a modest work force. I assume that they have developed a significant network of supporting suppliers, small and large and do only key operations in house.
They are using modern tools and techniques, informed by a huge legacy of knowledge and the tools that the legacy has created. This is the sort of thing that America is very good at, it requires motivated people working in trust based teams, with accountability, bull headedness, hard headedness, willingness to fail and a refusal to let the risk of, or even the actuality of failure, to get in the way of progress. Small entrepreneurial companies are infinitely better at this that big ones. Especially big ones with any ties to the gov’t/mil world and its utter aversion to risk or failure.
Minor Planets (all the stuff that isn’t one of the eight (no longer nine since Pluto got dissed)
The Minor Planet Center web site, a Smithsonian Operation, so pretty serious stuff, lots of info, just a scan of the lists could alter your view of the local environs we live in. 1200 plus potential dangerous asteroids….known and in the inner system today, tens of thousands of other bodies out there, ready to play interplanetary billiards if something really hairy this way came. But mainly a very good resource for serious thought, serious business like eSpace objectives for mining, and for not so serious ventures such as SciFi.
A combo shows a sequence of images of the Lutetia asteroid at various distances before the closest approach of the Rosetta spacecraft in 2010. A rare opportunity to observe an asteroid at close quarters has unveiled a remarkable rock that seems to be a precursor of a planet, astronomers reported on Thursday.
So I found the article with the above picture (click through) fascinating, dealing with an asteroid that got a fly by last year by Rosetta (ESA Spacecraft.) “The astronomers calculate Lutetia to be 121 kilometres (75 miles) long, 101 kms (63 miles) tall and 75 kilometres (47 miles) wide.” “Lutetia’s high density, at 3,400 kilos per cubic metre (212 pounds per cubic foot), its large size and its ancient surface make it different from any other asteroid studied so far, the studies said.”
This is Eros the first asteroid to be visited, “34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size 34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size” “Mean density 2.67±0.03 g/cm³ ” or about 2670 kilos per cubic meter.
Eros Montage from Wikipedia...approximatly real color
Below is Temple, a comet visited by two spacecraft. “Mean density 0.62 g/cm³ ” or 620 kilos per meter.
Comparison of From Wikipedia: Deep Impact and Stardust photos of a smooth elevated feature on the surface of the nucleus showing recession of icy cliffs at the margins
With this information it becomes obvious that the make up of the minor worlds is much more diverse than had begun to be thought. Eros is pretty dense but still probably filled with voids, obviously Temple is pretty much a rubble pile, which astronomers think is true of other bodies.
So Lutetia is too dense to be a rock pile or even void filled, it has to be as solid as a planet, they think it’s a left over planetesimal from the early creation of the solar system. The only way it can be as dense as it is, is if it went through a molten phase. Given that a shell even a ‘few’ miles thick of rock provide a good insulator it is apparently possible that Lutetia has a molten core.
Does that mean there could be differentiated materials in that crunchy coating? It seems to be an obvious target for mining, where there is pretty much zero risk of cave ins. What are the odds of a good distribution of useful materials for the space industrial infrastructure? This may or may not be a valid mining target, but it points out some things to think about.
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M.A. Harris’s Smashwords Author Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MAHarris.
Book page to sample or purchase Under Siege: http://smashwords.com/b/99853.Far Future Adventure, Intrigue and Battle
Why 5 Years?
‘Musk has a great point.’ when doing projections, part of my job, I know that I ‘should’ be able to project a couple of years into the future with at least some expectation of being close, but after 18 months you know it’ll be wrong. You can forecast five years out in general terms based on ‘momentum’ but you know that all you are doing is a version of ‘Moores Law’ which is more a market roadmap than anything else. This is more about tech-base support than anything else, and a form of jobs program, one that is needed at some level. But maybe a bit more flexible approach can be found.
Not saying ULA is doing anything wrong, this is just old style mindsets setting policy.
NaNoWriMo Post something or other: Five and the Base
Five opened here eyes and looked at the base spread out across the grays and browns of the asteroidal body it had been planted in. She didn’t know which base it was, she was fairly certain that it was one she hadn’t seen before.
“We are shedding the kids Commander.” Mother said in Five’s head. A glance showed the twenty roughly similar pieces of rubble that had trailed behind the slightly ovoid blob that was Watcher Sixty five thousand, five hundred and sixty-five were diverging and forming up to make their way into the repair and update bay.
Five looked back at the base. she was looking into the side, though at first glance it was like a city of tall skyscrapers seen from directly above, all sharp edges and spires poking out of the asteroidal body. The gravity generator spikes speared ‘down’ from the asteroid. Mother and Five continued towards the ‘sky scrapers.’ as Five wondered where the word skyscraper had come from, it tasted familiar, but it elicited no definition tag from the tac glossary.
Mother’s target was now very obviously the ‘bottom’ of the structure, dark blocks with massive lattice structures between above and around them. That was the BlankBank, like every BlankBank in every other base. There Five would find her sisters and be able to exercise, eat maybe, think, even sleep, “Perchance to Dream?” a voice not her own or Mother’s seemed to whisper.
“Uh, Mother?””
“Yes dear?”
“Uh did you, hear something?”
“No dear.”
They were both silent during final approach. From what Five could see there were at least ten other Watchers docked. That seemed a lot and if each of the Banks had the same number that would be a Hundred at this base alone, and several thousand more out on their long looping patrol orbits. Seven minutes later Mother entered a bay and docking arms reached out to snag the camouflaged fighter. Continue reading
Moon Base Tovarich
“If it turns out that the Moon has a number of caves that can provide some protection from radiation and meteor showers, it could be an even more interesting destination than previously thought,” said veteran cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, quoted in an article by Reuters.”
Damn! I wish I’d known this when I was writing “Moon Dreams!”
Move along, nothing original to see here…. but maybe some interesting links..
As Russel Mead at Via Meadia writes to great effect the Great Loon, the Duck of Death is dead.
And here is Russel Mead’s interesting take on protests etc. A very insightful piece that hit home once more regarding something that puzzled me… ” There was a time long ago when political protest really mattered. The Vietnam protests didn’t end the war (and didn’t keep Nixon from carrying 49 states against George McGovern in 1972), but they helped end the draft. The civil rights movement led to some of the most profound social changes this country has ever seen. Before that, there were labor and suffragette marches…” ” But these days the old style protests remind me of political conventions: empty and pointless (though noisy and publicized) rituals. “ And he draws a comparison to the conventions. Once the conventions were important, before mass media and instant communications, but now they are just rituals the politic druidic class still hold. In the old days a mass rally meant something, life for the working class was twice todays and wages closer to subsistence, and brutality was expected of the police, going to a rally meant something. Today it’s not much more than a smelly holiday. Not to say that there aren’t some grievances and suffering…but OWS is more theater than struggle. And then Amity Shales had this to say about what these folks want, vs what they need.
I am never going to be the blog-media-news miner that Instapundit is. Here is the latest on the SLS fiasco from Rand Simberg, the Space Launch System is a works program, yes well paid and aerospace is effective economic multiplier but the money could be spent to so much better effect!
(edits, still not getting all of this right the first time)
This World and Others 
