Go home, Thor, you’re drunk

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
May 272019
 

The god of thunder tried – and failed – to take out a Soyuz rocket on May 27, 2019.

Interesting note: the lightning strikes the nose of the vehicles, as you might expect, and disappears as it travels through the conductive metal body. it then continues as a recognizable lightningbolt on its way down to the ground. However… the lightingbolt does not appear from the tail of the Soyuz, but from well aft, seeming to appear out of nowhere. This is because the superheated and chemically “tainted” exhaust is substantially more conductive than plain air; through the hot gas the electricity can travel more freely and thus does not heat up that gas as it does regular air. Once the exhaust gases have cooled and the chemical dispersed so that they are no longer so conductive, the lightning resumes its normal appearance.

 Posted by at 3:20 pm

Booklet of General Plans: Space Station V

 art, drawings, history, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
May 262019
 

A while back I created twenty copies of a preliminary draft of a “Booklet of General Plans” of the Space Station V from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Eight were sent out, leaving twelve that I am making available. These twelve are the last of the only print run of this edition there will ever be. If these all sell out, and if the feedback is promising, it is my hope to eventually, someday, refine these and add considerably more data. Additionally I hope to produce a regular print run not only of the SSV BoGP, but also other sci-fi vehicles (“Deep Impacts” Messiah being near the top of the list; SPECTRE Bird One; perhaps branching out to the likes of Clavius Base) as well as unbuilt non-sci-fi but speculative concepts such as the Bernal Sphere, O’Neill colonies, Dandridge Cole concepts (Aldebaran, Macrolife, etc.), Orion battleship and SDI space weaponry. A few sci-fi designs of my own *may* be included (The Falcon-Class Starfleet runabout USS Millenium is a notion that appeals to me for some reason).

The Space Station V Booklet includes eight 11X17 inch sheets, printed directly rather than photocopied, in a specially printed envelope (which goes in another, larger shipping envelope). These are going for $12 each, plus postage. If you are interested, send me an email letting me know how many you want and what your address is; these will be made available first-come, first-served.    I’ll work out postage and send you a Paypal invoice. (NOTE: On  Tuesday. I’d intended to go to the post office on Monday and take  couple booklets along to get them weighed… but it turns out that that’s a federal holiday…)

Remaining: 12  11 10 9  8  7  6  5 4  3 2 1  All gone.

 Posted by at 6:41 pm

More evidence for the need for cheap spaceflight

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., Hmm..., spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
May 262019
 

There are lots of good reasons to go to space. But one less discussed reason is the urge to individual adventure. Earth, it seems, is pretty much all out of things to do that other people not only haven’t done, but that aren’t already booked solid. Take, for example, climbing Mt. Everest. Within living human memory, climbing that mountain was something no human had done. And now… this:

Posted by Nirmal Purja MBE: "Project Possible – 14/7" on Wednesday, May 22, 2019

This is confirmed to be the “conga line” of tourists trying to reach the peak of Everest. When they get back, what can they really say? They will have been surrounded by a mass of humanity; hundreds before, hundreds after, not allowed to spend a moment in silence and solitude at the roof of the world because you’ve got to get out of the way of the next crowd. Sure, they will have climbed the tallest mountain on Earth, but really… is it much more of an experience than, say, climbing to the top of a skyscraper, or running a marathon that ten thousand other also ran?

It’s getting to be about as unique an experience as all that hollow Instagram “influencer” nonsense.

What the adventurers of the world need isn’t a chairlift to the top of Everest, but a direct flight to the base of Olympus Mons, or the rim of Valles Marinaris. A lodge at the base of Verona Rupes on Miranda, for the ten kilometer climb to the top and the twelve-minute freefall for the basejumpers. A base camp in the rings of Saturn for a whole new kind of marathon, one where people bounce from chunk to chunk. Skiers on the sulfur snows of Io. Hang gliding across Titan.

Earth is *done.* It’s all been done. Pretty much nothing left that not only hasn’t been done, but that you won’t have to wait in line for.

 

 

 Posted by at 4:37 pm

Nuclear powered space station

 art, history, nukes, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
May 252019
 

A small magazine article from 1963 describing and depicting a MOL-like “space lab” equipped with a SNAP 2 nuclear reactor. This would have provided something along the lines of 3 kilowatts, plus an added bonus radiation environment. As show in the art, the reactor would be separated from the lab by a fairly long extendable rod, provided a reduction in radiation flux. The reactor would be the small object at far left; immediately next to it would be the “shadow shield,” typically made of tungsten (to stop gamma rays) and lithium hydride (to stop neutrons). This conical frustum is typically the most massive part of space reactors like this, and was used to shield a relatively small conical region, in this case centered on the space laboratory. If someone were to do a space walk from the lab and drift too far away to the side, entertaining things could well be done to their DNA. Extending beyond the shadow shield is a black cone, the thermal radiator for the system. Contained within the radiator would be tanks of mercury, pumps and turbogenerators; liquid sodium metal would flow through the reactor then through a heat exchanger, boiling the mercury. The mercury vapor would then either directly flow through the radiator, being cooled back to liquid, or through a heat exchanger, some other fluid being passed through the radiator.

Numerous ideas were floated through the mid 1960’s for attaching reactors such as this to MOL-like space labs. The main problem with this was that these labs were typically planned for only a single use; in that case, hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells or solar panels would almost always make more economic and mass budget sense.

 Posted by at 9:36 pm

NASA’s Artemis Moon Plan

 Hmm..., news, politics, projects, rockets, science, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
May 212019
 

Color me meh:

NASA’s full Artemis plan revealed: 37 launches and a lunar outpost

Pros:

Manned lunar landing in 2024

Annual manned lunar landings to follow

Manned lunar base beginning 2028

No dependence upon “international co-operation”

Cons:

Requires the SLS

Requires the SLS on time

Requires the SLS on some sort of budget

Requires six SLSs in 2024-2028

Requires Congress to go along with Trump

Requires Trump to win in 2020

So… I’ll believe it when I see it happen, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 9:53 pm

“The Orville” renewed for Season 3

 art, awesomeness, news, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
May 112019
 

Well, it’s about time:

‘The Orville’ Renewed For Season 3 By Fox

My first thought was that “at least it will last as long as the original Star Trek.” but then I remembered that Star Trek was shot in the days when a season had more than 20 episodes, rather than the dozen or so that seem to be the standard today. The Orville has had 26 episodes total in the first two seasons, while Star Trek had 80. To get to 80 episodes, The Orville will need to be around for more than six seasons… or Fox will have to start bumping up the number of episodes per season. Preferably, both.

 Posted by at 9:53 pm

Jeff Bezos has some plans

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
May 102019
 

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Blue Origin and Drax Industries describes the Blue Moon lunar lander his company has been working on for three years (at a sufficient state of development that he thinks they can return humans to the moon by 2024), as well as showing  somewhat longer-term goal for space development: O’Neill colonies.

 

Dreaming of space colonies measured in kilometers when you haven’t even orbited a golf ball yet? Perhaps rather a whole lot of hubris there. And yet…

 

 Posted by at 8:01 am
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