USAF Col. Michael Hopkins will command NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission, scheduled for launch November 14. He will transfer to the U.S. Space Force while on the ISS.
That should prove to be an entirely popular and uncontrovercial event.
Ha!
Given some recent posts on this blog, this opinion piece is timely:
https://www.space.com/elysium-effect-billionaire-space-revolution
It’s fairly long (as such things go), but the summary is this: billionaires are working to open the space frontier… and Certain Groups are demonizing them for it. They believe that the Evil 1% will develop spaceships and take off and live in luxury in space while plunging the rest of us schmoes back on Earth into permanent dystopian grinding poverty. Th best evidence that these sort of people can come up with is that space flight will be expensive, that it’ll cost a couple hundred grand just to pop up above the atmosphere, millions to go to orbit, hundreds of millions to circle the moon. And this, for the first generation of truly commercial space tourists, will be true. But this is *always* the way of things. The first home computers? Blisteringly expensive. Now you have a 1970’s supercomputer in your pocket. Jet travel? it was originally so expensive that it gave us the term “jet set,” because it was so expensive that it was *necessarily* fancy. Space travel will start of expensive and, if allowed to progress through the normal course of evolution that the free market provides, will eventually become cheap enough that at least a sizable fraction of the public could at least reasonably consider a trip to Space Station V.
Given the current dismal state of public discourse, I can easily imagine a future where SpaceX gets Starship up and running… and the US government, perhaps under pressure from special interest groups, perhaps due to it’s own grasping nature, will throw up regulations and laws that demand that commercial spaceflight be cheap enough for everyone right then and there (likely impossible thus killing off commercial passenger spaceflight), or that passengers – especially colonists to Mars – demographically match the population (or perhaps some particular politically-chosen ratio), or that spaceflight be proven so safe that it’s impossible to actually be allowed. If this happens, it doesn’t mean that space won’t get colonized… I’m sure the Chinese and Indians will be happy to do it without us. From the standpoint of those who are protesting in the US, that’ll be just as well given how much they hate western civilization.
And given the trajectory that 2020 has been on, I *really* hope that SpaceX has a fantastic security system in place. It would suuuuuuuuuck if the CCP managed to convince their running dog lackeys in Antifa to swarm the place and burn down the Starship facilities.
What I find especially amusing is the title “The Elysium Effect,” taken from the now largely forgotten sci-fi flick “Elysium.” In that, the richest of the rich toddle off to a vast and physics-defying space station while Earth turns to garbage. The general understanding is that this is some sort of critique of capitalism and wealth inequality… but if you pay attention to the movie, it’s anything but. The rich left and live in luxury, yes. But Earth didn’t turn to crap because the rich made it so… but because the *poor* made it so. Los Angeles is depicted as essentially Mexico City North… vast slums, a population probably measured around a hundred million, the English language being a rarity on the ground. Enlightenment values have evaporated. Western civilization, engineering rigor, all the things that Certain People decry but that make a society rich and successful were wiped away in a flood of refugees and unassimilated immigrants. “Elysium” is not a cautionary tale of wealth inequality, but a cautionary tale of a society that doesn’t control its borders. *Of* *course* those who can will flee in the face of collapse. And we are all better off if the means of escape is available.
An artists impression of the “DC-3” Space Shuttle concept. This was a two-stage system using two manned flyback vehicles with straight wings and turbofan engines. It was intended to be a low-cost approach, disdaining high performance for simple design and – theoretically – easy maintenance. The orbiter here had two jet engines in the nose for landing and flyback range extension; aerodynamic fairing would cover the inlets until after re-entry, jettisoned once the vehicles had decelerated to below Mach 1. The straight wings would be easy to build and low in weight compared to large delta wings, but of course they wouldn’t provide the same amount of lift. Consequently, the orbiter would less “glide” during the initial re-entry than “belly flop.”
I’ve uploaded the full-rez version of that to the APR Dropbox, into the 2020-10 APR Extras folder. This is available to any APR Patron or Subscriber at the $4 level and above.
The dawn of the space age is upon us🚀 pic.twitter.com/BfAVRzbwdL
— Austin Barnard🚀 (@austinbarnard45) October 23, 2020
A post yesterday linked to a paper on space warfare. Relevant to that discussion is the concept of hiding spacecraft from detection. Space is obviously dark and the background radiation is cold, about 3 Kelvin. Compared to that, any spacecraft in the inner solar system, even one with no active power sources, is going to be something of a lighthouse in infra-red. Put a nuclear reactor or any kind of meaningful active propulsion system on it, and any spacecraft would stick out like a sore thumb. Stealth should be impossible.
But it is, in fact, possible. it’s hard, it’s limited and its often temporary, but hiding a spacecraft, even one with a functional reactor and running engines, should be possible. There are simply some limits to keep in mind.
In order to hide from radar or lidar, all your spacecraft needs to be is dark and preferably angled int he way we’ve come to understand from stealthy aircraft. This is relatively easy. But the real problem is infra red. Being dark makes your spacecraft both absorb and emit electromagnetic radiation; sunlight falling on a dark spacecraft gets absorbed, stepped down, and emitted back out as infra red. In order to hide your spacecraft, you need to either look like a space rock (probably easy to do, but a space rock that suddenly appears on the charts on a suspicious orbit will likely merit further attention), or you need to be roughly as cold as the background. Actually making your spacecraft 3 Kelvin is insanely unreasonable… but you *can* make a balloon filled with helium that cold. And if you put that dark, cold balloon between your ship and the enemies sensors, you shouldn’t show up
Teledyne got a patent in 1994 for sort of that sort of thing:
The invention here is an inflatable fabric cone that a satellite could hide behind. Coated with something reflective like aluminum or gold, you might think that it would be visible; but for the most part all that shiny reflective surface has to reflect is the black of space. Point the cone at the enemy, and all they’ll see is a dark reflection and if they point lasers or radar at it, the beams will reflect off into space and not back at the receiver. The surface will, however, emit IR, so it’ll be visible that way. But if you fill the balloon with helium *and* if you have an active refrigeration system on the far side, cooling the helium to below 3 Kelvin and directing the waste heat out into space the other way… the cone will be dark *and* cold. So from a narrow cone, your spacecraft will be effectively invisible. From every other angle, though, your spacecraft will be a bright hot target. So… pick your targets. A system like this would probably work well for missiles… only need to operate for a short period, and all they really care about is hiding from the target.
I have not read this paper through yet, but it looks interesting:
A writeup about it:
In short: less Star Wars, more The Expanse.
A late-70’s NASA rendering of the solar power satellite. Not exactly shown to scale… the satellite, approximately the size of Manhattan, would actually reside in geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles up. But the size of the receiving station, located outside of a probably fictitious city (gotta love the H-shaped skyscraper), seems about right. Such stations, which would approximate fields of chickenwire suspended atop telephone poles, could be located over farms, fields, lakes and ponds. The wire would intercept the incoming microwaves beamed down from the SPS with the same efficiency as the wire mesh in the door of your microwave oven keeps your face from getting fried while you watch your popcorn or soup getting nuked.
I saw this photo in a book, article or paper *years* ago, but for the life of me I can’t find it. Familiar to anyone?
Blue Origin lobbed their vehicle to above 351,000 feet altitude and successfully recovered both the booster and capsule. It’s an impressive bit of video… but, man, it’s strange how mundane it seems compared to a Falcon 9 flight and landing. If SpaceX gets starship up and flying soon, Blue Origin is going to start seeming *really* far behind.
As an update to THIS POST, I have added a 200 dpi scan of the Apollo CSM cutaway artwork I scored off eBay to the 2020-10 APR Extras Dropbox folder, available to all $4 and up APR Patrons and Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers.
If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. If you know of someone who might be interested, be sure to nudge them this way… I could do with an infusion of new patrons/subscribers and as is blisteringly obvious I stink at marketing.
