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More on the coming KSC apocalypse

 AARRRGH, Gah., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  21 Responses »
Oct 062016
 

Hmmm.

Matthew Blows, Part 2

The writer believes that the VAB will be stripped to the skeleton. SpaceX has three landed Falcon 9 boosters in a horizontal integration hangar at launch complex 39A; if the building is damaged, it’s a safe bet that these boosters will be trashed. The United Launch Alliance towers at pads 37 and 40 are at risk. The Rocket Garden is exceedingly vulnerable. The Visitor Center could be damaged.

This could see the effective end of much of the US space program, at least for several years. Worst comes to pass, the only good access the US will have to the ISS will be the Orbital Sciences launch facility at Wallops.  Unless permission is granted for overland flights from Vandenberg – very unlikely, but with the Falcon 9’s ability to boost back, just maybe – getting to a low inclination orbit will be *real* challenging. If the VAB is trashed, especially if it’s truly destroyed, the SLS will look even sillier than it does now.

This all depends on the track and power of the storm. It could divert away from the Cape. But then, it’s thought it’ll turn into a Category 5 by the time it gets there.

Sure would be nice if, 24 hours from now, NASA is still a functional organization.

UPDATE:

A rare bit of good news. Instead of climbing from Cat 4 to Cat 5, it decreased to Cat 3, and the eyewall missed the Cape. Damage to KSC is reportedly quite minimal.

Now that KSC has dodged that bullet, it’s time to make sure that this sort of apocalyptic disaster *doesn’t* befall the US space program. Suggestions:

Beef up the KSC infrastructure. Rebuild and reinforce the structures that are already there; build up the barrier islands and seawalls to minimize the damage from storm surges.

Build all-new launch facilities elsewhere. Expand Wallops to make it capable of launching Delta IV/Atlas V/Falcon 9 Heavy. Build launch sites in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Guantanamo Bay (use that one for Orion launches).

 Posted by at 11:11 pm

And so it begins…

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, science  1 Response »
Oct 062016
 

So, all manner of disasters are approaching. Super-mega-AlGore hurricanes are gonna wash NASA into the Gulf of Mexico. The San Andreas is going to flip western California on a parabolic arc with an apogee of 600 nautical miles, landing it somewhere near Kwajalein. Either a lying horrible New York liberal scumbag or a horrifying scumbag liberal liar from New York is going to be President soon. And now…

Fireball streaks over East Coast, with sightings from Canada to D.C. region

Sightings included a sonic boom, so it was a reasonably substantial bit of something.

 Posted by at 10:35 pm

The Cape and the ‘Cane

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  5 Responses »
Oct 062016
 

Now this is interesting…

Hurricane Matthew Is a Nightmare Scenario for Kennedy Space Center

With such highlights as:

When Category 2 Hurricane Frances made landfall roughly 100 miles south of Kennedy in 2004, tropical storm-force winds lashed Space Coast, ripping more than a thousand panels off the Vehicle Assembly Building and resulting in 100 million worth of damage.

And…

The storm is projected to pass perilously close to Florida’s entire eastern seaboard beginning later today, with a Category 3 or 4 eye passing directly over Kennedy Space Center on Friday…

And…

Kennedy’s Orbiter Processing Facilities are rated to withstand sustained winds of 105 mph. The Vehicle Assembly Building and launchpads hold together up until about 115 mph, while newer buildings constructed after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 are designed to weather 130 mph winds.

And…

If the storm does hit at high tide, the NHC warns of surges as high as 9 feet from central Florida all the way up into southern Georgia. Most of Kennedy’s infrastructure sits between five and ten feet above sea level.

Ruh-roh…

So, let’s say Canaveral gets well and truly trashed. Winds rip the buildings apart, a storm surge sloshes over the facilities and washes ’em out to sea. What to do?

This would argue for some diversity in not only launch vehicles, but launch sites and launch *modes.* I’m not a terribly big fan of air-launched systems like Pegasus or Stratolaunch, but the availability of such systems would allow for the important bits to be locate much further inland. You could in principle base such a system in, say, Utah and fly down to the Gulf for an easterly launch. Systems that launch from the decks of ships would be less sensitive to this, as they could steam out ahead of the storms. Systems that launch from the surface of the ocean itself would also be insensitive to storms.

One of the potential problems with systems like these is that they tend to be smaller. An aircraft could maybe carry a Falcon 9, but good luck horsing a Falcon 9 Heavy into the sky. Or launching one from a ship smaller than a supertanker. Launching directly from the ocean made sense for vehicles as vast as the Sea Dragon, but it gets less sensible as the vehicle gets smaller. And I’m uncertain how well this would work out for a thin-walled eggshell design like the SpaceX Mars booster.

There is another solution: launch from inland. Works well for the Russians; having booster stages crash down into Kazakhstan apparently doesn’t cause trouble for anyone who matters. This would be trickier in he CONUS, though. However, there is already a solution to this problem, detailed on this very blog nearly 8 years ago: buy a strip of northern Mexico. The original idea was to turn that strip into a new nation, Neuvo Israel. But turning it into a Federal reserve would work too. Make it a wildlife refuge, off limits to settlements and urban developments; but a dandy place to locate the launch and impact sites, along with a few dozen terawatt-class breeder and thorium salt reactors.

 Posted by at 4:47 pm

Judge Morty

 art, awesomeness, Crazy, humor, youtube  1 Response »
Oct 062016
 

In July, the team from Rick & Morty released a black-and-white animatic of a court scene. The thing was, the court scene, voiced by the guy who actually does the voices of Rick & Morty, was based on the transcripts of an actual event on an Georgia court. And it’s pretty nuts. The animatic was freakin’ hilarious, just as it was, but in the months since a YouTuber took the animatic and did an *excellent* job of animating it in full cartoon color.

Not only was it colorized and animated, additional animations were added, including background characters. Props for the Futurama characters!

 

Here’s the original B&W animatic:

 Posted by at 4:10 pm

Because it’s funny: TOS edition

 art, blather, humor, My Fiction, science fiction  8 Responses »
Oct 062016
 

I randomly stumbled across this today.

Some time back I had a brief flash of an idea for a sci-fi story I’ll never write, partially because it seems entirely too derivative of “Sliders.” In short, some people are hopping either timelines or alternate realities, trying to find their way home. Finally they get home. They check the local history books, newspapers, CNN, internet… everything confirms they’ve made it back to the right timeline. Finally, after they’ve settled back in, one of them is at a comic book shop or a coffee shop or something and overhears some Trekkies discussing what their favorite episode is… and someone mentions the episode from season six when Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Rand finally get married. The character realizes that this is a different timeline, one where the original Star Trek series didn’t get cancelled at three seasons, but lasted at least twice as long. Character shrugs, goes back to drinking his coffee, surfs over to Amazon and buys the complete eleven-season Blu Ray set of Star Trek.

 Posted by at 2:15 pm

Florida seems to be doooooooooomed

 AARRRGH, news  3 Responses »
Oct 062016
 

CNN is currently going bugnuts about hurricane Mathew bearing down on the eastern coast of Florida. West Palm Beach and Cape Canaveral are targeted for wind speeds of 145+ miles per hour.

I’m always amazed that the VAB at the Cape has survived all these years. It’s exactly the sort of structure that you’d look at and would assume would blow away in a hurricane.

 Posted by at 5:20 am

And now, the other side of the story

 AARRRGH, art, blather, politics, spacecraft  12 Responses »
Oct 052016
 

After two posts in two days about horrible, horrible people who want to talk down space exploration, progress, the future and, essentially, hope itself, there’s this:

Hope, Courage and Unity: The story behind the young cancer patients who painted space suits

The four elephants march in a row down the right arm of the space suit, one behind the other. They are linked trunk to tail, except for the last elephant. It is a baby elephant, and it sits alone, with its trunk pointing towards the sky. Stars and planets surround them.
The first three elephants represent Kat’s father, mother and older brother. The baby elephant is Kat. …

Kat didn’t live to see the launch. She passed away on June 4.

“I think space is where I’m going to end up,” Kat told her mom when asked about the planets and stars surrounding her elephants.

Space exploration inspires hope, even in the worst situations. What does opposition to space exploration inspire? “Stop looking at the stars, kid. Get used to the gutter.”

Grrrr.

Is there a one-word descriptor specifically for the sort of evil person who wants to shut down manned space exploration for reasons of cowardice or “social justice?” The kind of person who actually celebrate and embody the line from Interstellar, “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”

If not, I believe such a word is in order. I’m open to suggestions. “Gutterists,” maybe. But with a bit more bite, I should think.

 Posted by at 11:56 am

Now that’s what I call *classy*

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., youtube  2 Responses »
Oct 052016
 

Poopouri continues to impress with the delicate subtleness of their ads.

And yes, I hurt myself laughing. Sure, part of that is because my lungs still haven’t recovered from the recent bout of whatever it was, but mostly it’s because this is friggen’ hilarious.

 

 

And from way, way back

 Posted by at 2:31 am

The worst thing I read today

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, religion, science, ಠ_ಠ  28 Responses »
Oct 042016
 

I was directed to this opinion piece:

Humans to Mars: a deeply disturbing idea

Which had the usual screamingly leftist anti-human reasoning we’ve all come to know and expect:

One of many cultural phenomena that worry me as much as the U.S. presidential campaign (I voted for Bernie in the primary, and I am voting for Hillary on election day) is the persistent public cheerleading for the human colonization of Mars. The media repeat every bit of the libertarian narrative of progress and freedom that they’re feed with virtually no critical analysis.

And it only goes downhill from there. Colonizing Mars is “elitist.” “Humanity is too immature to leave home.” Musks’ idea of charging $200,000 for a trip to Mars is fundamentally unfair because Syrian refugees won’t be able to afford it.

The following day, this intellectual giant posted a followup, dealing with the comments she received in light of her screed. Lo and behold, it turns out she’s among the worst form of Social Justice Warrior: she whines that those darn awful men are dismissing her apparently just because she’s a woman. And not because her notions are hare-brained and culturally, nationally, and species-suicidal.

So, nothing you’d find particularly surprising coming out of the anti-science pits of despair called modern Liberal Arts. Another nobody best left ignored, consigned to the dustbin of history. But here’s where it gets depressing… take a look at her C.V.:

EMPLOYMENT
• Manager of Communications , NASA Astrobiology  Program, Jan. 2007 – present.
• Communication  research, planning,  and  analysis, NASA Planetary Protection Office, Sept. 2002 – 2006.
•  Director of Communications , SPACEHAB, Inc., Washington,  D.C., Sept. 1999 – Aug. 2002 .
• Chancellor’s Fellow  (1996 – 97, Knight  Fellow  (1997 – 99) , Indiana U. School  of Journalism.
• Director of Science Communication,  Life Sciences Division,  NASA HQ, Oct. 1994 – Aug.  1996.
• Manager of education  and  out reach, exploration office, NASA HQ, Dec. 1993 – Oct. 1994 .
• Senior editor/analyst, BDM International, April 1990 – December 1993.
• Editor, Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co., July 1988 – April 1990.
• Senior editor for space, Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine, December 1985 – July 1988.
• Public affairs officer, National Commission on  Space, Sept. – Dec. 1985.
• Consultant, National Science Foundation, August – September 1985 .
• Editor, Space Business News, June  1983 – August 1985.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Sigh.

After reading that much anti-progress SJW nonsense, I need some brain cleaner to flush the bullcrap from my memory. I have the feeling that these little ditties represent pretty much the direct opposite worldview…

 

 Posted by at 9:36 pm
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