It's been a while since my last science update. For obvious reasons - as the very notion of a science-propelled Enlightenment civilization is under attack - I've focused on offering the good-guys badly need fresh ideas.
But okay, let's turn away from all that and focus on SPA-A-A-ACE!
== It's noteworthy when reality imitates scifi... especially mine! ==
Gosh, can you believe there are two ways that an older story of mine now seems predictive and may be coming true?
First, I have a lot of respect for Gwynn Shotwell's SpaceX team. So, perhaps they'll solve the problems preventing their 2nd stage 'starship' from achieving its ambitious goals of recovery and re-use (R&R) and then orbital refueling. Still, I've seen no talk of a backup plan, in case those milestones take a long time.
But look. We already know that the massive Ship can reach orbit and deliver payload. So, even without R&R, is there an intermediate plateau of utility from there?
Backtrack to 1984. I was one of the 'space cadet' post-docs working for UCSD's California Space Institute, where we studied proposed techs beyond NASA's then-current purview. (A habit I continued later as advisor to NIAC: NASA Innovative & Advanced Concepts program.) One of the things we explored at CalSpace was how to utilize in-orbit the Space Shuttle's External Tank.
Saving and using the shuttle tanks would have cost nothing - zero added propellant - to take it the final bit into LEO orbit! That's 1500 cubic meters of sealed aluminum tanks plus tons of leftover hydrogen, oxygen and water, all of which could have been of great use in future years! Just two ETs could have provided more useful volume than all of today's current ISS station. Or any of the somewhat feeble proposed replacements.
Might one of the new commercial station projects hanker for one? Heck, maybe the Chinese?
Sure, starship uses methane+oxygen, not hydrogen+oxygen. So add a step or two and you get oxygen + water plus... carbon fiber? Anyway, the volumes of useful tankage are very similar to the old ET. So... so our old CalSpace reports are sitting right here, next to me. And would seem worth at least a look.
Well zowee. At first when folks saw that this New Zealand startup was proposing to use no-fuel propulsion to\hat leverages against Earth’s magnetic field, and thus nudge valuable satellites in orbit, a couple of them wrote to me: “Is this your Tank Farm Dynamo story brought to life?”
Well, the concept does overlap! On closer inspection, it seems they use superconducting coils, rather than the super-long linear tethers that I envisioned in my story, based on early tether work by Robert Forward and Joseph Carroll. And I thought… okay, not that much overlap...
...till I thought again. And yeah. It’s the same idea… maybe done better. Like comparing Oersted's line-wire, whose current twitched a compass needle, to Faraday's later coil that led to electromagnets and... dynamos!
Jeepers why didn't I think of that? Is it possible maybe I helped them think of it?
== Something else I am engaged in ==
But then, is there a place in space for amateurs? Here’s another thing I’m involved in.
Drive a miniature lunar rover on the moon using your smartphone! Up to 24,000 people globally will be able to participate. It's our turn! (I’m an advisor to this startup.) See: www.LimitlessTelepresence.com Get in on the ground floor! (So to speak.)
One of the biggest space-related news items is the endeavor announced by Wendy and Eric Schmidt, to privately fund four new, very ambitious telescope systems, reviving the old-time funding source for instrumental astronomy. One of them would be a deep-orbiting space telescope much bigger than Hubble. Plus array-style optical and radio telescopes in the southwest USA. Amazing and terrific stuff and vastly more important than the silly “Artemis” rush to plant symbolic footprints on a useless plain of poison dust.
But sure, while I have long frowned at the utter-waste of the USA's frippery "Artemis" mission, I do hope that everything goes safely and well and that they will find the 'rich resources' that carnival barkers are now selling. For which there's no evidence at all, except a little ice. (Helium Three? Titanium? Jeepers have I got a bridge to sell you.)
Still...
The region where NASA is planning to land the first astronauts on the Moon in over half a century, supposedly a mere two years from now is the Moon’s largest crater, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, formed roughly 4.3 billion years ago. It could hold clues about the Moon’s evolution and its interior structure.
“Missions will be landing on the down-range rim of the basin — the best place to study the largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon, where most of the ejecta, material from deep within the Moon’s interior, should be piled up,”
It is also where satellites have detected possible signs of water ice. Though to be clear, a couple of asteroids could offer more water – and vastly more of every other resource – than can be accessed from the Moon in any near time frame, with known technology.
Over the years, astronomers have spotted holes and large pits dotting Venus’ surface, suggesting the existence of lava tubes. Venusian lava tubes, may be especially large and arrayed along volcano rims.
And yes, we should robotically explore some and establish some fair-use precedents for the lava tubes on the Moon, since they may be some of the most extensive subsurface cavities in the solar system.
...though nowhere near as valuable as asteroids.
== Space Misc! ===
Our closest exoplanet system gets more interesting with the possible discovery of a gas giant within Alpha Centauri A's habitable zone. Also, it's a fairly stable system, not at all like the scary fictional Trisolaran system.
See NIAC's 2025 Phase I and Phase II selections.
And fight for an enlightenment civilization that respects rights and honesty and decency... and facts and science.
6 comments:
Off topic, but it looks like others are recognizing the similarities today to pre-Civil War conditions.
"ICE mirrors slave patrols, not Nazis."
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/01/15/shes-right-you-know/
Following up on the last post, the parallels between your cultism and that of, e.g., Communists and Islamists, aren’t hard to see:
* claims the whole world; has a universal ideology
* favors the ending of nations and identities that conflict with their universalism
* divides the world in time: pre- and post-Revolution/Prophetic Revelation/Enlightenment
* believes they have the best, most just and effective model for human society ever devised
* judges all political and cultural phenomena according to whether or not they advance their revolution
* lionizes a small subset of humanity (usually including themselves) who act as the vanguard of the Revolution/ Religion/Enlightenment. The rest are NPCs who need to be proselytized and propagandized until they accept the Truth
* see themselves as the world’s saviors; mankind’s only hope for salvation against the forces of evil
* don’t recognize their own fanaticism; others are fanatics, they are upon the Truth
I could go on, but you tick every box.
While some - maybe half - of Treebeard's cited symptoms are valid in isolation, not one of them applies to me or the clades whom he hates. I can only repeat what I said at the end of the previous session: No Treebeard, that's how YOU think. You zero-sum, black-and-white vision microcephs think that way and hence you cannot conceive that others don't.
Above all, you suspect those deficiencies in yourself, that we see things you can't. And it is the source of your rage.
We are not you. We are human and some of those faults lay as minefields in our path, and the left certainly does sometimes fall for some of them. But YOUR perceptions are so demonstrably insane that you are in no position to diagnose.
"ICE mirrors slave patrols, not Nazis."
They can be two things.
I'm getting these from your own words and points, stated repeatedly over many years. I'll let others judge whether they apply to you, since you probably aren't the most objective judge of yourself. The insulting language doesn't make any point that I can see, it's just an assertion of arrogance and supremacism. It's true that I'm not your "we", because I don't want to be part of any cult that sees the world like this. The only cult I'm in is the cult of normal, non-fanatical people who don't tick the above boxes.
YES! I certainly get that you are 'getting these from your own words and points, stated repeatedly over many years',,, and it truly is sad to witness such insanity, so obstinately pursued so frantically.
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