Ice on the Moon

Story by Alex Galbraith

Donald Trump’s calls for “peace” between Iran and Israel lasted for a long weekend.

The president seemingly bought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explanation for his country’s “preemptive” strike on nuclear sites and population centers, crowing on Truth Social on Monday that the attack was a result of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life,” he said. “Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again!”

The president closed his message with a frightening warning.

“Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” he wrote.

The rant seemed to be prompted by criticism from Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host has been loudly pressuring MAGA conservatives to wash their hands of the Israel-Iran conflict. During a stop by the podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Carlson worried that Trump would bring about the “end of the American empire.”

“I’m really afraid that my country’s gonna be further weakened by this,” he said.

Trump made fun of Carlson’s ouster from Fox News in response, saying “let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”

“Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” he added on social media.

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By Gary Church

The fundamental idea of democracy is not that hard to understand. It has been so morphed and convoluted that now most Americans actually do not understand the fundamental idea. Those whose life goal is to become as rich as possible have always been the enemies of democracy since a foundational feature of democracy is to limit individual wealth. And propagandizing out of existence this foundational feature has been a foundational goal of the rich…. which they have largely accomplished.

In order to keep this propaganda coup valid there is a need to maintain a state of constant invented crisis. And this has now reached the point where it is endangering civilization.

One way to understand democracy is to imagine a group of people thriving in a harsh environment. This is the first object lesson: A group will thrive but not an individual. Setting aside the fact an individual cannot reproduce, even in their lifetime they will sooner than later die due to even a minor illness or injury without others to help them. These others-that-help are the collective, the “Demos” in democracy.

The second object lesson: The individual may own property and have authority but never all property and all authority. An individual attempting to, for example, take all the food when there is very little, will be overpowered by the collective. An individual threatening violence if another does not, for example, obey an inappropriate order, will be overpowered by the collective. This is the power to rule, the “Kratos” in democracy.

The third object lesson: The members of a collective are all equal in regard to their freedom to choose and their obligation to obey rules that prevent their choices from harming others. The individual always has this “right choice” or right to, for example, self-defense. The individual is also always required to refrain and decline to harm others who do not pose a threat to their safety or the safety of the collective.

Wealth concentrates upward to fewer and fewer until inevitably a very few own everything and everyone. Though imperfect and difficult, the best way to stay free is a “Limitarian Democracy” that actively regulates the wealth and power of oligarchs. The central fact of democracy is this; the only reason anyone owns anything is because the rest of us let them. The central question is this; how much wealth a democracy can allow the individual to keep without self-destructing.

Felons should not be allowed to serve in public office.

We need to start repeating endlessly, “there will be a reckoning.”

Reagan started the cancer that finally ended America, and his first act was to break the air traffic controller strike and those fired were not allowed to ever hold a civil service position again. Trumpism is anti-democracy…people who have been radicalized and are voting, using democracy, to END democracy. I would suggest if you voted for Trump once, you do not get to vote in the next election. If you voted for Trump twice, you do not get to vote in the next two elections, and if you voted for Trump three times, you never get to vote again. This kind of limitarian process is likely the only hope for a New America that restores democracy. Limiting wealth, limiting autocratic power, limiting harm.

In Trump’s fascist regime immigrants are the stand-in’s for the Jews Hitler othered. We are only a few steps from showers and ovens.

Wow…he is REALLY upset. He almost said, “send shivers up your F-ing spine.”

Definitely take SpaceX and Starlink away from the control of Musk. He is a threat to national security.

Best definition I have ever heard of the Biden Administration.

Musk appears to be backing down at last report, but Trump will take that as the opportunity of what lifespan he has left for fame as the strongman that ruined the richest man on Earth. He will never stop till Musk has fled to another country.

Wow…Musk actually has infinite money to buy an impeachment just like he bought the presidency.

Trump killed half a million people with his botched COVID response while Musk has definitely sentenced at least 30,000 to death by cutting off aid. How many are they going to both do in with the possible civil war all this craziness might cause? Because however this turns out it is likely the Republican party is now doomed and will never hold power again in any part of government. They will not go quietly.

If Trump has anyone with half a brain advising him, he will have Musk arrested and shut down SpaceX, deorbit starlink, and feed everything left on the ground into a metal shredder. Musk is an incredibly dangerous threat to national security because of SpaceX.

Musk is now tweeting about a third party and essentially taking over America before Trump completely wrecks it. The problem is that Musk will not do any better.

4:09 Laughing in the face of the German leader about D-Day. What a fool. Unbelievable.

2:45 The Nazi connection is getting stronger by the day with tell after tell.

“The implication of the government’s position is that not only noncitizens, but also United States citizens can be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress.”

And I would add after that it is just one more step to that final fascist solution.

The Nazi presence in the Trump regime is not going away. I believe they are a underestimated threat. Tremendously underestimated. They scare hell out of me.

I am still commenting on SpaceNews and The Space Review. Could not stop myself. Hopefully some Musk worshiper does not show up at my door with a gun.

Going to have to stop commenting on SpaceNews. I have a bad feeling about the comments I am getting. One sociopathic MAGA-Musk troll is implying someone should kill me by writing:

David to Endymion
If it were to act like this in day to day life, one would have wonder how it lived so long.

At the moment, Trumpism and the Musk cult is melting down and there is a slim chance that one of the half a dozen fanboys that have been cyberstalking me for years just might decide to make their life meaningful and show up on my doorstep. They never stopped me for very long in the over 15 years I have been criticizing the NewSpace Mob…but this does not feel right. It is fitting that it should end commenting about a billionaire promoting space solar power.

Comment reply on SpaceNews:

I did not get anything wrong.

Maintaining a fission nuke in cold shutdown through a launch accident isn’t particularly difficult.

If you think nuclear material contamination after a reactor is blown to pieces is not a big deal then you have a very different worldview than the rest of humankind.

-sometimes you want a lot of delta-v and a lot of acceleration. Giant chemical stages can provide the former, but not the latter.

Again….nuclear thermal, using a reaction, literally, a million times more powerful than chemicals, provides an Isp only about twice that of a chemical rocket and only using the most difficult to store cryogenic propellant. It is an order of magnitude more expensive than chemical propulsion while delivering far less improvement.

-zero boiloff hydrogen. They could obviously fail to deliver, but somebody thinks this is a problem that’s solvable long before an NTP would be ready to go.

What does “solvable” mean? What do you think will be solved?

Nope, still wrong. I agree that it’s impossible to insert fuel. But you’d never do that. That’s what control systems are for.

You can say I am “still wrong” but I am not. You do not want to launch fissionables with fuel loaded in the engine and inserting that fuel in space makes the design much more complex. If you are inferring that humans would manually insert the fuel then what you are doing is actually identifying the problem of how to get the fuel out of the safe transport into space after launch and into the engine. See how that works?

DoD wants systems with a lot of delta-v that are nimble enough to dodge and outrun kinetic attacks in deep space.

You can’t just light off a nuclear reactor like a rocket engine and, again, storing the liquid hydrogen for long periods works against “nimble.” The DOD is not going to get “what they want” with a nuclear reactor super-heating liquid hydrogen.

NTP has the huge advantage that the hot stuff mostly goes out the nozzle.

Actually….that is absurd. The huge disadvantage is that it is hard enough keeping a chemical rocket engine from melting and a bastard combination of a nuclear reactor and a rocket engine is far more difficult to keep from blowing up and why it has such a pathetically low performance using, again, a reaction a million times more powerful than chemicals.

This was the genius of the genius of Stanislaw Ulam, who considered nuclear pulse propulsion his greatest work. Ulam thought outside the box, throwing the box away and envisioning a way to use nuclear energy without having to try and confine it. If a bomb fails to go off in Nuclear Pulse Propulsion then you go to the next bomb. If you melt a hole in your Nuclear Thermal Rocket you will likely die in space.

As Nasa is doomed to be dismantled and sold for parts to Space X it is with sadness I ponder what could have been.

The Shuttle was the penultimate worst wrong turn of the many NASA has made, the worst being Elon Musk of course. I have puzzled for over a decade, since I became interested in space, how the Shuttle Program could have been a success instead of a failure, and a big part of that question is the LEO limitation. The Shuttle was in the class of the Saturn V but wasted most of that lift on a 737-sized glider.

The giant cargo bay of dreams, wings, landing gear, and various systems returned the engines, saved on the previously expended structure around the payload, and also carried a large crew and their life support….and massed over 70 tons, actually about twice as much as a 737. It is interesting to note a single Aerojet M-1 engine could have provided the thrust of the three engines mounted on the Orbiter. The 12 or so tons the triple RS-25 engine section massed was also why the Orbiter was side mounted, which led to the loss of the Columbia.

In hindsight the SRB’s, which caused the loss of the Challenger, should have been liquid fueled and could have used a variant of the same M-1 engine that could have been used on the Orbiter…except putting it on the Orbiter would not have been done in hindsight. Ironically, the configuration of the expendable SLS would have been ideal for the reusable Space Transportation system using liquid fuel boosters and returnable engine module at the bottom of the stack. All hydrogen would also have enabled propellent cross-feed from the boosters to the core engine module.

In regard to reusability and the ISS, the core hydrogen tank could have been the single expendable part and the LOX tank repurposed by leaving it in orbit for use as a wet workshop. Stockpiling these tanks in LEO would have provided crew compartments for approximately 100 space stations similar to the ISS….or an ISS one hundred times larger.

The Orbiter itself, at the top of the stack, without the Air Force cross-range requirement and not carrying the main engines, would have been much lighter. In reality, it would not have been worth it to just bring back a cargo bay and not much of any value was ever brought back. A large “Big Gemini” capsule with a reusable escape tower would have been the best path. And it would have flown far more often and still be flying.

Comments:

Hopefully, whatever I wrote that made this comment repeatedly unacceptable, I have managed to edit out this time:

“Mars-direct advocates correctly emphasize the urgency of becoming multiplanetary.”

Actually…” Multiplanetary”, is in my view a false pretense in that Mars and all natural bodies in the solar system other than Earth are unsuitable for colonization for the simple reason that human bodies require Earth gravity to stay healthy. Artificial habitats as envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill, miles-in-diameter spinning hollow moons, are likely the only practical path to colonization.

“-space-based solar power for lunar use creates a comprehensive economic ecosystem.”

Space Solar Power FROM lunar resources to power civilization on Earth as the solution to Climate Change will certainly create the necessary economic engine. I doubt anything else will.

“Commercial ventures should take the lead in developing revenue-generating lunar operations and driving innovative technology development.”

Space Solar Power from lunar resources seems to be the only large commercial venture that can eventually generate revenue Beyond Earth Orbit and enable colonization. And this economic engine, like Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal, will require the government to sponsor it. Even before Space Solar becomes a public works project the government must legislate a phasing out of the burning of fossil fuels for Space Solar to become economically viable.

“-the Moon offers real partial gravity, actual deep space radiation,-“

Debilitation and dosing is the elephant in the room nobody will address, not even NASA. The “Parker Minimum” of 4 or 5 hundred tons of shielding is the basic requirement for any long duration deep space missions. The Moon will be a factory site, not a colony, and workers will likely be periodically lifted into lunar orbit to 1G space stations for rehabilitation. Or… circular “sleeper trains” providing 1G beneath the lunar surface may eventually become available. While these constructs are not so difficult to build on icy low gravity bodies, they are far more difficult on the Moon.

“The choice isn’t between lunar presence and Mars development: both are essential for America’s space future.”

Personally, I believe Mars is, like LEO, a dead end, and the Moon is the prize. This is more of a choice between the false promise of Mars and the true path to space colonization from the original prophet, Gerard K. O’Neill.

There has to be a driver, an engine, and a destination. The driver is Climate Change, the engine is Space Solar Power, and the destination is the resources on the Moon that can be exploited without generating greenhouse gases on Earth. This is the Green New Space Deal that can transform the world and create the Next America. Because, in case you have not noticed, the old America ended on election night. Oligarchy is only about enriching oligarchs and unless there is a popular uprising as powerful as the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60’s, we are entering an ever more oppressive era of autocracy that will be increasingly harder to escape.

There is ice on the Moon…but it is not an ocean of water and that is what is needed. I would say creating “catch shafts” on the Moon, that ice from the outer solar system can fly down into and be captured, is the best path. Using lunar ores to mass produce miles-in-diameter spinning hollow moons will excavate large spaces under the lunar surface that can be filled with this water from the outer solar system. In a century or so there will be large underground reservoirs. In several centuries the hundreds of millions of tons of lunar material will be replaced with these underground living seas.

I would like to see these robot spacecraft designed to send large chunks of ice at the Moon.

It is amazing how NASA took such a great concept, a Saturn V class launch vehicle that only expended a single tank of propellants and executed it in the worst way possible. And how Musk has done essentially the same thing with a two stage VTVL concept. At least it proves that the miracle of entrepreneurship is a myth. Both the government and private entities can mess up a concept equally badly.

1) Some concepts are pursued before the technologies to make them a reality exist. Pursuing them may foster development, but the failures may hinder future progress. For example, it may be that Starship would work fine with Rotating Detonation Rocket Engines with an Isp of over 500 and made out of super-alloys lighter than aluminum and stronger than steel. Both of these are being developed but do not “exist.” Starship does not look like it is going to succeed in it’s present form because the rocket equation says so.

2) Some technologies exist but are not available, not feasible, due to their inherent risk, cost, or effect on the environment. For example, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion is by far the most powerful and efficient technology available to lift immense masses off the Earth and travel to the outer reaches of the solar system and back at fantastic speeds. But lifting off from the Earth is not acceptable. And presently not even operating in deep space is an available option due to cost and lack of vehicles that can send components like multi-thousand-ton plates Beyond Earth Orbit.

3) Some consequences, predicted as a possibility or unintended, even if technology is available, make many goals not worth pursuing due to their problematic nature and near certainty of negative, and in some cases, catastrophic results. For example….Megaconstellations.

In the center, being pulled from these three sides of concepts, technology, and consequences, are the goals in space exploration well worth pursuing. Evaluating these goals are the place to start.

What are these end goals? To get rich? To survive as a species?

We could solve Climate Change and provide a western standard of living to 10 billion human beings. We could remove the nuclear arsenal to months away in deep space on human-crewed spaceships and thus end the launch-on-warning nuclear threat to civilization. We could build miles-in-diameter artificial hollow moons to colonize space with and eventually travel to other stars. We actually have the technology to do this.

It does not appear these first two goals complement each other and in fact are the opposite. This is my problem with NewSpace….it is the wolf pack pleading with the flock of sheep to trust their good intentions.

I would cite 2 other sources for my comments:

https://www.verneh2.com/news-article/verne-and-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory-achieve-cryo-compressed-hydrogen-storage-record-demonstrating-first-system-suitable-for-heavy-duty-transportation
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181821/http://www.la.dlr.de/ra/sart/publications/pdf/2003-4597.pdf

The best replacement for the SLS-SRB’s, in my view, would be partially pressure-fed boosters using cryo-compressed liquid hydrogen storage and expander-bleed cycle engines. These would be essentially scaled-up versions of the Japanese LE-9 331,000 pound thrust engines, in the 2 million pound thrust range. These boosters, each mounting 2 engines and four per pair, might also offer propellent cross-feed to the SLS core and would be ocean-recovered like the original Shuttle boosters. Along with the RPAM concept at the top of the page, with a dual side mount, this would drop 4 items per launch into the ocean to be recovered by a ship off the coast of Florida. While the RPAM data provided cites a weight of approximately twice the lift of our current heavy lift helicopter (CH-53K), a twin RS-25 derivative RPAM able to be helo-captured might be feasible.

I believe this would make the SLS into what the Space Shuttle was intended to be.