And now for something completely different: moon mining

 awesomeness, history, Hmm..., news, politics, rockets, science, spacecraft, THIS is why Trump won, wisdom  No Responses »
Apr 062020
 

Trump signs executive order to support moon mining, tap asteroid resources

Good.

I have difficulty imagining President Biden supporting something like this; I imagine a President Sanders would actively oppose it. From the White House:

Executive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources

Space Policy Directive-1 of December 11, 2017 (Reinvigorating America’s Human Space Exploration Program), provides that commercial partners will participate in an “innovative and sustainable program” headed by the United States to “lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.” Successful long-term exploration and scientific discovery of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies will require partnership with commercial entities to recover and use resources, including water and certain minerals, in outer space. …

Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. …

The United States is not a party to the Moon Agreement. Further, the United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies. Accordingly, the Secretary of State shall object to any attempt by any other state or international organization to treat the Moon Agreement as reflecting or otherwise expressing customary international law.

Overall it seems pretty good. It calls for the international recognition of economic exploitation of space resources and the repudiation of the execrable “Moon Agreement,” which the US somehow, astonishingly, failed to get sucked into. Some examples of just how bad the “agreement” is:

 

    • Provides a framework of laws to establish an international cooperation regime, including appropriate procedures, to govern the responsible exploitation of natural resources of the Moon. (Article 11.5)
    • Bans altering the environmental balance of celestial bodies and requires that states take measures to prevent accidental contamination of the environments of celestial bodies, including Earth. (Article 7.1)
    • The orderly and safe use of the natural lunar resources with an equitable sharing by all state parties in the benefits derived from those resources. (Article 11.7)
    • The placement of personnel or equipment on or below the surface shall not create a right of ownership. (Article 11)
    • There shall be freedom of scientific research and exploration and use on the Moon by any party without discrimination of any kind. (Article 6) Samples obtained during research activities, are hoped to be made available to all countries and scientific communities for research. (Article 6.2)
    • Any areas or regions reported to have a special scientific interest, shall be designated as international scientific preserves. (Article 7.3)
    • State parties shall ensure that non-governmental entities under their jurisdiction shall engage in activities on the Moon only under the authority and continuing supervision of the appropriate state party. (Article 14)
    • All parties shall inform the United Nations as well as the public, of their activities concerned with the exploration and use of the Moon. (Article 5)

The Moon Agreement would, if the US signed it, mean that if SpaceX started mining asteroids for unobtainium, Venezuela gets a share… not only in the riches produced, but in the running of the operation. Nopenopenopenope.

 Posted by at 5:07 pm

APR Monthly Historical Documents Program

 aircraft, APR, art, drawings, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 052020
 

Once again Patreon seems to be becoming unstable. So I’ve got an alternate: The APR Monthly Historical Documents Program

For some years I have been operating the “Aerospace Projects Review Patreon” which provides monthly rewards in the form of high resolution scans of vintage aerospace diagrams, art and documents. This has worked pretty well, but it seems that perhaps some people might prefer to sign on more directly. Fortunately, PayPal provides the option not only for one-time purchases but also monthly subscriptions. By subscribing using the drop-down menu below, you will receive the same benefits as APR Patrons, but without going through Patreon itself.



Details below.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 9:11 am

Picard: a review

 AARRRGH, art, Crazy, Gah., Meh., science fiction, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 282020
 

So, CBS All Access finished up their run of “Star Trek: Picard,” and it was apparently such a rousing success that in a desperate bid to get *anyone* to watch it they’ve made it free to watch until April 23.  Well, what with lockdowns and working on the computer and such, what they hell, I binge watched the series.

Summary: five “mehs” out of ten.

There are  a number of reviewers out there who can give you chapter and verse about how STP craps all over Trek… and they’re not wrong. Taken as a followup to TNG, it just lands with a baffling thud. Pretty much everything is just “off” enough to grate, like someone dragging their nails on the chalkboard two rooms down. And since these reviewers are better at that sort of thing than I am, I’ll let their reviews speak for themselves at the end. I will instead focus on two things… one bad, one good.

The bad: starship design. The ships that appear in STP are video game generic ships for the most part. The Hero Ship looks like it could have come out of damn near any video game from the last 20 years, and were you to see it outside of the Trek context there’s almost no chance you’d think that it belonged in Trek. Worse: not only do the shuttlecraft from Star Trek: Discovery make several appearances, the mutant STD All Wrong Enterprise NCC-1701 *also* shows up in the form of a prominent holographic display. Thus “Picard” takes place in the STD timeline, not the TOS/TNG timeline.  This can be used to explain why everything seems wrong: because everything *is* wrong.

The Romulan ships that show up, everything from small fighter-like designs on up to capitol ships, do not look remotely like Romulan ships. With the exception of a TOS-era Bird of Prey  that shows up briefly under the control of some sort of space pirate, once again you’d likely never guess that these were meant to be Romulan ships unless you were tipped off by the green coloration.

Starfleet almost never appears. Near the end of the last episode, though, an entire fleet of Starfleet vessels shows up. Huzzah! The ships actually look like something more or less Starfleety. But… there are hundreds of ships, and they are THE SAME EXACT DESIGN. Feh.

OK, the good.

As the ten-episode series drags ponderously onward, it becomes clear that STP is as much Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror as Star Trek. Attend:

1: There is an ancient secret left behind by a vanished race.

2: The secret is held by a secret society

3: Most of the people who learn the secret promptly lose their fricken’ minds… one caps herself with a pistol, another rips her face up with her fingernails, another bashes her noggin in with a convenient rock.

4: And the nature of the secret? There are vast elder beings out there in the dark beyond the stars just waiting for the time to be right to come back here and lay waste.

5: There are cultist-like folks  (a small number of folks almost completely lacking visible character traits) yearning for just that to happen.

6: How does the great evil come back? By way of a portal that the cultists open up.

7: And when the great evil starts to come through the portal, what do we get?

Now, I’m all in favor of blending Star Trek with Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror. Hell, that’s a little project I’ve been pecking away at for probably well over a year now, complete with dozens of pages of text, 3D CAD models and gravity maps of things that distort spacetime (it involves something that makes Vulcans go buggo when they come to understand The Secret). But to have a proper blending of Cthulhu and Trek, ya *gotta* have proper Trek. And Picard just ain’t. Never mind the design issues I raised, it’s just wrong. And here’s a hint as to why:

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Michael Chabon Admits He Wanted To “Piss Off Or Provoke People”

See, now, *no.* If you start off Trek with the intention of annoying the fans… what the hell is wrong with you. So they could have had something really interesting, but ended up with the sound of something large, squishy and uninteresting going “splat.” So, in summary… a wasted opportunity. Pretty much like all Trek since 2009.

 

 Posted by at 10:04 pm

The end of Bigelow Aerospace?

 AARRRGH, news, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 242020
 

Uh-oh…

Bigelow Aerospace lays off all employees: Report

The manufacturer of expandable/inflatable space station habitats has laid off the entire workforce, in part due to the Kung Flu. They claim they’ll rehire everyone once the current crisis is over, but people involved seem unconvinced.

A damned shame if this is the end. While their progress has been creakingly slow (I flew to Vegas for an interview with Robert Bigelow his own self well over twenty years ago), they have nonetheless orbited three inflatable habs that have seemed to be pretty successful.

 Posted by at 9:06 pm

United Technologies Dyna Soar booster concept

 history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 192020
 

United Tech was mostly interested in solid propellant boosters for the Dyna Soar program… specifically, boosters to strap to the side of the Titan II. Initially conical in shape, those early concept boosters would turn into the UA-1205 boosters fitted to the Titan IIIC booster. But UTC also studied liquid propellant boosters for the Dyna Soar, including the Saturn derived design shown below which featured a Saturn S-II stage for the first stage, an S-IV (*not* an S-IVb) for the second stage and an S-V stage (a modified Centaur) for the third. The design of the Dyan Soar is purely notional; United Tech seemingly did no design work on that and simply sketched in a spaceplane roughly along the lines of the design Boeing had.

 Posted by at 5:55 am

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Space Command Post

 history, nukes, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 182020
 

In 1985, Rockwell International considered the possibility that there might be profit in a space station with a singular purpose… to serve as a command post in the event of a nuclear war. Its position would let it confirm Soviet ICBM launches and direct space based weapons in their response. Presumably this means that there would need to be several such orbital command posts. The brief description suggests that the command post would be in “high orbit,” perhaps geosynchronous; to have global coverage, at least two and preferably three or more such posts would be needed. The lower the orbit, the more would be needed to see the whole planet.

 

 Posted by at 5:10 pm

A month of aerospace

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 182020
 

Given the craziness going on, I decided that what the world clearly needs is something consistent. Like, say, me posting one piece of aerospace diagram or art every day for a month or so. So I’m going to do that. But in order to keep people from getting too complacent, I’m posting some of them on this blog, some on the other blog. Why? Because why not, that’s why. I’m slapping the posts together now and scheduling them to show up one at a time, one a day. Given the pandemic… who knows, this little project might well outlive *me.*

So, check back in (on this blog or the other) on a daily basis. Might be something interesting.

 Posted by at 1:46 pm

An alternate history Star Trek III

 art, awesomeness, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 172020
 

“The Search for Spock” is hands down my favorite of the Trek movies. Sure, it might not be the *best* Trek movie, but for various reasons (it was the first one I saw in the theater, it introduced the BoP, the Grissom, the Excelsior, the Spacedock and the Clydsdale) I just like it the most. So this CG-ified fan re-edit gave me the chuckles.

 Posted by at 11:52 pm
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