I have been commenting on a couple different sites for the last couple months and it was not a good experience…as if it ever was. The far right has such a stranglehold on these public forums it is scary. The moderators refuse to shut down the harassment when someone (like me) offers alternative opinions. So when people visit these sites they find fanboys that send them away shaking their heads and with no further involvement in space and this is sad. I have tried over the years to be an alternative view on a half a dozen such forums and have always ended up banned for replying to the dogpile of insults and intolerance that inevitably occurs. The sad truth is anything that hints at any “liberal” policy or not found on the SpaceX website is trivialized, mocked, and denigrated. This has become such a pervasive theme on internet forums associated with space that the damage is irreparable. So enough of that. I have reposted this from an earlier entry; before Biden was elected it was “Bernie and the Green New Space Deal”, when I was hoping for a progressive nominee, and now have re-branded. Here we go again:
Converting the United States Military Industrial Complex into something that will create a sustainable future for humankind will be the great feat of history. Nothing impossible about it or even extremely challenging in terms of technology. It is what we should do as a species if we want our children and grandchildren to have any kind of a future. The problem, of course, is that minority of psychopathic neoliberals who happen to control most of the worlds wealth and want nothing to do with anything that does not give them even more god-like power. So we have something we should do and we have a stumbling block. And then what we have is a dire need for people like Bernie Sanders.
The present Army Navy Air Force Marines establishment is about fighting wars here on Earth against other superpowers whose people collectively have no desire to watch the world economy crash and possibly billions die in a global conflict. It is mostly a façade and militaries exist largely as a safeguard against an individual like Hitler coming to power in one of three or four superpower nations. As recent events show, this is not so unlikely. The nations thus retain their militaries as a safeguard against any other power seeking to subjugate them. The United States maintains armed forces so far beyond what other nations have it is absurd and why we do that is fairly obvious- it is an industry that makes a lot of people rich. Those people and companies want to keep making money and anything threatening their gold mine is acted against swiftly.
The best strategy is thus to not threaten Military Industrial Complex (MIC) “wealth creators” but instead offer those players an alternative. That alternative is Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) using the Moon as the new industrial base to power planet Earth. Solar thermal towers with their mirror fields and molten salt storage are about the only practical technology for generating energy in a sustainable manner on Earth but unfortunately all the great deserts of the world combined are not going to enable a western standard of living for 10 billion people. And make no mistake, the only way out of this is to provide a decent standard of living for everyone on Earth. All of us.
While NewSpace ideology has caused inestimable damage to space exploration and colonization, the flagship company has at least popularized Vertical Take-off Vertical Landing (VTVL) as being the most efficient method of reusing rockets. It will likely be decades before reusing really large Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLVs) breaks even economically but at least the Ayn-Rand-in-space-train-wreck has done something “not harmful.” Whether VTVL would have happened anyway if the shuttle boosters had been the originally specified pressure-fed ocean recovered type instead of solid fuel remains to be seen. I suspect with pressure-feds a variant of the shuttle would still be flying.
The way forward is a first stage at least half again as large as the Saturn V, landing on a ship at sea, as the first piece of hardware. Four large engines and a smaller central landing engine, will become the standard. Much like airliners have become a giant version of the original German ME-262 fighter, the standard rocket will become a larger version of the Saturn V. The second stage will likely fly around the planet and land back at the launch site using ceramic tile technology with one central engine and four smaller landing engines- or a low thrust setting might be utilized to form a plume shielding the vehicle during reentry (as proposed in the 60’s by Philip Bono)- or a combination. And the third stage will be a wet workshop with the engine section possibly doing a lunar free-return back to re-enter and land for reuse.
SHLVs from the U.S., from Russia, from China, with versions built under license by European and Asian companies, will largely replace the cold war toys and nuclear triad hardware still being developed or modernized. Warships and warplanes will no longer be the money-makers. The new Military Industrial Complex wealth creation strategy will be based on giant rockets. Lunar-water-shielded wet workshops will first go into Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) and then to a Lunar Cycler fleet and finally as spaceship crew compartments. Eventually immense power stations will lift from the surface of the Moon and find their way to GEO where they will begin to beam carbon-free power down to planet Earth.
That is the Green New Space Deal.
Beyond changing over the Military Industrial Complex from Earth-based to space-based and powering planet Earth carbon-free there is the original colonization plan of Gerard K. O’Neill. In any plan similar to O’Neill’s, a hundred years from now the population of Earth may begin to decrease as beam-propelled space-liners leave daily for space habitats. Within a few centuries Earth will be a place to visit like a national park. Not only will Earth be a garden but miles in diameter Bernal spheres will be sent on centuries long voyages to other star systems. There are very few technical challenges to this bright future. In contrast, the road humankind is on now has a good chance of ending in extinction.
My comment from The Space Review: Unfortunately the legion of NewSpace fans that have hijacked almost all public discourse on space do not tolerate creative & crazy ideas like Space Solar Power satellite factories on the Moon as the solution to climate change. They are mostly libertarian far-right Ayn Rand types who worship Elon Musk as the embodiment of John Galt, Howard Roark, and Tony Stark, all rolled into one Cult figure.
Only a state sponsored program is going to enable any space mega-projects and Musk is not a Space Solar advocate. He instead wants to strip-mine Earth orbit with tens of thousands of his very own small satellites beaming internet to a world that does not need this contrived convenience…and his followers are not open-minded about anything not found on the SpaceX website.
Comment by Vladislaw·
“that have hijacked almost all public discourse on space do not tolerate creative & crazy ideas “
“You mean how you hijack all public discourse and do not tolerate creative and crazy ideas put forth by SpaceX? You are your own worse enemy. You do not tolerate ANY idea outside of your own.“
Projection and lies, the very foundation of Trumpism. And Vlad hates Trump. So it is also The Cult of Musk, like The Cult of Trump, that needs to end.
Ice on the Moon 