Author Archives: billgamesh

https://www.businessinsider.com/missions-experiments-for-space-force-mysterious-x-37b-space-plane-2020-5 “There have been very important changes recently that have made it a lot more compelling and urgent that we investigate this carefully.” “It’s been recognized even as early as the sixties that this is definitely technically feasible, there’s no violation of the laws of physics-” “-at least ten years and all told between R&DContinue reading “Jaffe on Space Solar; 2 years later”

On 17 August 1943, under a full Moon, 560 British bombers attacked the German V-2 rocket facility at Peenemunde. Ten months earlier Nazi SS officers Walter Dornberger (later Vice President of Bell Aircraft Corporation) and Wernher von Braun (later Director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center) had toasted the flight of “the first spaceship”Continue reading “The Forty Year Shuttle”

Five years ago one of my first blog posts concerned the deleterious effects of cosmic rays and how this dictated the conditions of Human Space Flight (HSF). This illustration from the 2006 Scientific American article by Eugene Parker should be on the wall of the office of every spacecraft designer. It is an extremely accurateContinue reading “Cosmic Ray Rats Revisited”

So Joe is pushing “flow batteries” and his main example uses Vanadium which is…toxic. There are some large deserts available and a couple thousand square miles of Solar Thermal Mirror Fields would generate enough electricity to help address climate change. Not toxic. No exotic technology. Molten salt is a pretty good option for storage. C’monContinue reading “Energy and Death”

From https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4404/ch10-5.htm [200] Fig. 51. Cross-section of an injector used in experiments with an 89-kN rocket engine using liquid oxygen and regeneratively cooled by the liquid hydrogen. A lightweight design, the injector was a converging showerhead type. Measured performance was 93 percent of theoretical. From Tomazic, Bartoo, and Rollbuhler, NASA TMX-253, Apr. 1960. The yearContinue reading “Open Letter to Bezos”

Well, I have survived the virus so far, but it is not going well at work and I was so burned out when I got off yesterday I called out today. Of course, I might be infected now and it won’t kill me for a couple weeks. Great. I am laying down trying to getContinue reading “Key Technologies”

I binge-watched a series on Amazon Prime a couple months ago called “Counterpart.” Something about it captured my interest and I am not sure quite what. It was a very “deep” plot with people interacting with better or worse versions of themselves from an alternate universe. Probably why it was canceled. Too much to thinkContinue reading “Careful Counterpart”

In my view, space is either going to go a certain way or we are not going. The first deciding factor is whether getting human beings off-world into independent colonies is going to be made the goal. This is actually how it all must start- by everyone agreeing that these survival colonies are the ultimateContinue reading “The Future of Human Space Flight”

800,000 subscribers and over 15,000 views today. Wow. And Paul Shillito managed to get the single most important piece of information concerning space radiation and Human Space Flight…wrong. In 2006 Eugene Parker wrote an article for Scientific American that remains the best popular science guide to “Shielding Space Travelers” from radiation. Parker explains cosmic radiationContinue reading “Curious Droid Envy”

As of this day in history, 27 March 2020, there are this morning 86,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and over a thousand have died. The Mayor of Boston has stated what is needed is a “Consistent Approach.” When this is over in a couple years, and based on the history of theContinue reading “The Consistent Approach”