Ice on the Moon

NASA has stated that between 2 and 3 RPM are the likely limits for humans to be able to function in an artificial gravity environment. I would go conservative and just call it 1RPM as the best place to start.

Using the easy-to-find “SpinCalc” website we get a tether length of 5868 feet to generate 1G rotating at 1RPM. I believe this over-one-mile tether system is what will eventually be used to generate artificial gravity for astronauts. This seems impractical but actually it is space with all the room needed and tether materials like Spectra are light and strong.

Debilitation is the lesser evil though and the more difficult problem is Dosing. That will, for a small crew with a small living area, require well over 1000 tons of water shielding. And this gives us some idea what a “true” Spaceship will look like: a “Bola” over a mile long spinning at 1 RPM with an over-one-thousand-ton-mass at either end. On the plus side the water shield will facilitate closed-loop life support.

The tether system will likely be several tethers with “elevators” used to transport mass and fine tune and dampen out oscillations. Astronauts would ride these elevators a half a mile to the center of the tether to and from a zero gravity “mast” and docking station.

Starting with a basic mass of 2000 tons, which is about 4 times that of the ISS, add the structures which must take the loads associated with spinning and also the tether system. Everything necessary for Space Station, Lunar Cycler, or Spaceship operation may or may not come in under the 1000-ton mass budget opposite the water shield/crew section.

Start with a basic Space Station and then add propulsion systems for Lunar Cyclers and eventually Nuclear Spaceships. The two options for a Spaceship are some new form of Nuclear Electric or Nuclear Pulse. A Nuclear Pulse system would require reeling in the tether system and configuring the Spaceship for propulsion and then, after the necessary number of pulses, “splitting the ship” and going back to artificial gravity cruise mode.

Mars is a “dead end” for colonization for several reasons. Musk has led humankind away from the path envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill and has done humankind a great disservice. A sci-fi meme and its proximity are the sources of much of the attention, time, and resources directed at Mars. Its gravity well and lack of oceans should cancel this attraction out but does not simply because scientists are not willing to tell the truth. Oceans are where life will be found. Not a radiation blasted desert in a partial vacuum. Icy bodies with oceans have shallow gravity wells and ice resources for conversion into fuel which make them the places to land and send submarines. Mars seems like it can be reached with chemical propulsion but due to the need for radiation shielding this is false and misleading. A deception. Nuclear energy will be required for any Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). With some form of nuclear propulsion other than nuclear thermal the just-close-enough Mars reasoning disappears. Ceres should be the first human mission destination. Not Mars.

In 2008 the scientific community had an opportunity to join together in solidarity and promote a path for America and allies to pursue in space. The discovery of ice on the Moon should have completely changed the course of NASA in regard to Human Space Flight and made the pure research community beneficiaries of a new focus on space. A certain entrepreneur and a lack of cooperation within the science community squandered that golden moment. If acted upon fourteen years ago we could have been seeing humans landing on the Moon and occupying a permanent base by now. Sidemount was the Super Heavy Lift Vehicle capable of sending payloads to the Moon. NewSpace and “the flexible path” was the end of the dream.

We now have a second opportunity, but the window is closing again. Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources is the solution to the Climate Change Crisis but, like the ice on the Moon, not a single word is being said about it. Nothing. The trillions of dollars of international funding in a Space Solar Power infrastructure would empower the research community and enable them to accomplish missions they cannot even dream of now. Wake up….Human Space Flight is the path to more science missions, not in competition with them.

“I strongly believe that the right to bear arms is an important safeguard against potential tyranny of government. Historically, maintaining their power over the people is why those in power did not allow public ownership of guns,” Musk told CNBC on May 25.

The billionaire then told the outlet that he supports “tight background checks” for all gun sales and limiting sales of assault weapons to people in special circumstances, like gun range owners, or people who live in a “high risk location, like gang warfare.”

A few hours later, Musk reiterated his position with a very clear tweet:

“Assault rifles should at minimum require a special permit, where the recipient is extremely well vetted imo,” he said on Twitter, responding to a question from a user.

First….A flintlock Musket required close to a minute to load and fire one shot. A modern hi-capacity semi-automatic rifle or carbine, modeled after military assault weapons, with a moderate amount of operator proficiency, can kill one hundred people per minute. A hi-capacity semi-automatic pistol is capable of close to the same performance, though requiring more training and proficiency.

Second…”Well-regulated” means restrictions on who could possess firearms. Weapons that can kill one hundred people per minute should not be available for purchase over the counter to 18 year olds.

Third…The idea that personal firearms can somehow keep a modern military from subjugating the population may have had some validity at the end of the 18th century but has zero validity early in the 21st century.

As a systems troubleshooter with a mind conditioned to think critically, I have observed how cognitive dissonance takes over people. I have seen it dozens of times at every level, in my work on aircraft and up the ladder to higher rungs in the chain of command. What is bizarre is that when it is over people conveniently forget they were so stupid and make excuses…and often make the same mistakes in the future. Those involved in space have unfortunately always conflated two very different arenas and continue to do so. There is “Space Flight” and there is “Human Space Flight.” They are, besides the common attribute of space travel, almost completely different fields of endeavor. The Space Shuttle is perhaps the ultimate example of this dissonance, as it combined, against all logic, human and cargo missions. This was probably the best feature of the cancelled Constellation program- the separation of crew and cargo launch vehicles.

A Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity environment (NSLR1G) is the prerequisite.

Birchbark canoes were never going to cross the North Atlantic.

Sending astronauts Beyond Low Earth Orbit has significant risk attached to it due to solar events. Seven Apollo missions carried humans Beyond Earth Orbit and there was a very close call avoiding one solar storm during that less than 4 year space age.

Dosing and debilitation is the elephant in the room NASA will not discuss. There is a “career dose” that once reached means no more space missions. This makes for very short careers for astronauts as without massive shielding humans are not going to live and work in space for twenty or thirty years like they do on Earth. It is likely that a Mars mission cannot be accomplished without exceeding this career dose.

The plan for a lunar return should have been to preposition a shielded habitat and not send astronauts until it was ready. Until that happens there is not going to be a permanent human presence in cislunar space like there has been in LEO.

Not only am I running out of time, it may be humankind is also.

Well….it is possible, at some point, the scientific community is going to have a “don’t look up” intervention and say that at least, at the very least, several billion people are going to die when our fragile civilization begins to unravel due to the accelerating effects of climate change. The DOD already knows this is going to happen and are not hiding it, though they are also not taking action like they should. Too many important people have invested in fossil fuels, and they see no way to cash out…..yet.

A couple of experiments validating Space Solar are coming up and if all the weird little coincidences that drive events in history just happen to line up, like they did with Apollo, then it won’t be “someone” willing to spend the money.
It will be everyone.
And not just billions, but trillions from every nation on Earth.
God willing.

I have commented several times before that prepositioning a radiation sanctuary either in Lunar Orbit or on/beneath the surface should have been the plan from the start. But like I just said, when you are trying to go cheap and complete a plan that has a start and finish within a budget, what makes sense goes out the window. Remember the ISS was never meant to just go on and on. But people are invested in so many ways now that it has a life of its own. If it was a Moonbase that would of course be justified but it is not in any way some kind of permanent base with millions of tons of resources at hand. It is essentially a bunch of tin cans flying in circles a couple hundred miles up.

I prefer the idea of a fat workshop in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) filled with a thousand or more tons of lunar water to start with for several reasons, but there are other options. The ideal is an immense lava tube we could just move into and they possibly exist. However, we know where all the craters are. We pick one the right size, use robots to frame over and cover the top and then bulldoze regolith on top. With a couple trashcan nuclear reactors and some inflatable structures in the crater I would say that is a safe place to stay for a long time. Connect to another crater with a covered over and regolith shielded trench and then more inflatables. And so on.

SIS: Sphere-Inside-Sphere.

The key to expanding humankind off-world is NOT a cheap rocket. The key is a construct that will allow humans to live and work in space without the permanent damage caused by Dosing and Debilitation. This construct, minus radiation shielding, was proposed at the beginning of the space age as the “wet workshop.” That is, an upper stage that after expending its propellants is converted into a crew compartment. Incorporating a shield would make this a “Fat Workshop.”

The baseline, the “Parker Minimum”, is the 16 feet of water required to stop cosmic radiation and this space between the inner and outer sphere to contain the shielding is the main feature. Such a stage would of course be very large. Water to fill the shield can be brought up from the Moon with 20 to 23 times less energy than from Earth. An electromagnetic rail gun, to send water slugs into space from the Moon, may be an “order of magnitude” more efficient.

By attaching two S-I-S workshops together with a several thousand foot tether system, this “bola” can be spun to provide artificial gravity. The large water shield would be used in a closed loop life support system to provide air and food and solar panels attached to the tether system would provide electricity. This construct would provide a near Earth environment, independent of outside support, for several years. A true Space Station. By docking a nuclear propulsion system it would be the first true Spaceship.

The concept is a spherical Super Heavy Lift Vehicle with two “doughnuts” of engines and a central Earth departure engine. The larger doughnut would mount the first stage engines and the smaller inner doughnut the second stage engines which would detach with small tanks, and a heat shield for the second stage doughnut, to land back with. The center engine would detach after burning and make a free return around the Moon to reenter and possibly be helo-captured.

The ISS days are numbered and when it goes LEO is going to be left to others. Forever.
LEO is a dead end. The Chinese may operate a platform for a few years and then splash it. There is nothing left to be learned there with humans that is worth paying billions a year for.

For humans to undertake long duration missions Beyond Earth Orbit will require massive radiation shielding on the order of 500 tons even for a small capsule that may or may not enable a couple of astronauts to go on 6 month tours. Probably not enough room. Realistically, well over a thousand tons for a small crew will be the requirement. For multi-year interplanetary missions that figure doubles. At least. With larger crews it gets bigger fast.

This “Parker Minimum” (after the 500 ton figure specified by Eugene Parker to shield space travelers from cosmic radiation) has always been the elephant in the room. Nobody, especially NASA, wants to address this issue. And the issue is quite clear; for humans to live and work in space they must be provided an environment that does not cause permanent damage. It gets worse because it is a two part problem with Dosing AND low-gravity Debilitation going hand in hand. Addressing Debilitation requires an artifiical gravity system and relatively heavy structures able to handle the rotation and loads. Dosing and Debilitation can only be addressed by providing a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity (NSLR1G) crew compartment with enough interior space to prevent negative psychological effects on the crew.

For a short mission of a couple weeks, perhaps on a shielded Lunar Cycler, the required interior space may be relatively small, and if the one gravity is waived the structural weight can be greatly reduced. This is probably where the Boeing and SpaceX taxis will be going if they are around long enough- intercepting Lunar Cyclers. They will likely launch and to minimize dosing intercept the Cycler at it’s closest approach within an hour or at most two. The astronauts coming from the Moon and those going to the Moon will transfer in a few minutes and those returning to Earth will be reentering within an hour or so. Those going on to the Moon may be on board for a couple weeks as Lunar Cycler trajectories are convoluted.

The other possibility is the exchanges taking place on large shielded Space Stations in GEO and others in some kind of Lunar Orbit, with some kind of cislunar nuclear electric Spaceship transporting astronauts across the cislunar sea.

Musk did influence, if not determine, NASA policy concerning a lunar return. Anybody can see the facts supporting that. Shotwell even publicly stated, “we are not Moon people.” Reading between the lines of Obama’s infamous “been there” speech makes it obvious. Except to spacex fanboys of course. They love to do the Orwellian/Firehose of Falsehood misinformation thing and call the truth a lie. It works for Trump, why not Musk?

So far this week my comments have now been connected to the Unabomber and Q-Anon by spacex fanboys.

SpaceX did not get in the way of any O’Neill like projects. NASA, nor the US government were going to do any of that within our lifetimes.

I just wrote a long couple replies to someone about that. I will cut and paste for you. I think he really did “get in the way.” In my view he has set us back more than a decade. And the damage is accumulating.

Ukraine is changing the nature of mil-space right in front of our eyes.

I spent 23 years in two different branches of the military doing several different jobs and then retired and was a military contractor. The Military Industrial Complex is a real thing and what you are seeing is clever marketing. Don’t be fooled. Everything up there will get turned into junk in one afternoon in a real war. It is a scam. Like missile defense. Megaconstellaitons are a disaster unfolding before our eyes.
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The truth is evidence for ice on the Moon should have shifted NASA’s focus to a lunar return as ice makes a permanent human presence, and many other projects, possible. Why did this not happen?

NASA did not immediately make plans to end the ISS and return to the Moon because Elon and that guy I voted into the white house decided we had been there and done that. His hobby rocket could not take anyone to the Moon so what could, Sidemount, was strangled in the cradle and here we are. Over ten years later and after one person finally threw the B.S. flag on the Moon being verboten (Jim Bridenstine) rocket jesus is still keeping us from expanding into the solar system with bizarre Martian fantasies and a shiny redux of the space shuttle that will require a whole fleet of tankers. And of course his cult of worshipers have done immense unrealized damage to public perceptions of space.

Again, the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

“Here are the high points of Obama’s 2010 speech and he NEVER said what you said he did. Typical spacex fanboy misstatement and misrepresentation.”

– in striking contrast to the Falcon 9 rocket we just saw on the launch pad, which will be tested for the very first time in the coming weeks.

And we will extend the life of the International Space Station likely by more than five years,-

And in order to reach the space station, we will work with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable. (Applause.)

Next, we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced “heavy lift rocket” —

How do we shield astronauts from radiation on longer missions?

So the point is what we’re looking for is not just to continue on the same path — we want to leap into the future; we want major breakthroughs; a transformative agenda for NASA. (Applause.)

Now, yes, pursuing this new strategy will require that we revise the old strategy.

And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. (Applause.) So we’ll start — we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. (Applause.) By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it. (Applause.)

Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.

It is proof of the adage that truth is stranger than fiction Andrew. We have this bizarro Tony Stark character all over the map, that has done tremendous damage to space exploration and, incidentally, delayed any insurance policy for our species, by portraying himself as rocket jesus.

He took a NASA engine design (Merlin) and put it on essentially a clone of a Saturn 1, and has had great success launching satellites with that, but as to how much cheaper he is doing that than others….he is not letting the numbers be known. He built spacex with tax dollars by promising a cheap ride to the ISS which was needed after Columbia. He has hyped reusability, which was also old NASA technology, and made himself a celebrity. And his Cult of Ayn-Rand-in-Space whackjob followers are well known as the THE most toxic creeps on the internet.

Now we have his latest project, Starlink and Starship, which go together, since the success of Starlink is going to depend on Starship. But he is not working off taxpayer paid for technology anymore. His “genius” is now facing a real test. The numbers say not enough customers. We will see.

I am a follower of Gerard K. O’Neill whose legacy Musk has thoroughly trashed with his statements about Space Solar Power and by promoting NewSpace ideology, which works directly against any state sponsored megaproject like Space Solar.

So I freely admit I am NOT a spacex fanboy and have suffered their harassment for years because, unlike most others trolled into oblivion, I keep criticizing NewSpace. In my view Starship is….really beautiful, I will give it that, but it is actually just a different version of the space shuttle with many of the same problems and some new ones. I hope it fails. I hope Musk no longer has the power to screw up space exploration any worse than he has already.

I thought spacenews was finally realizing what toxic creeps commenting on their forum they had been enabling and aiding all these years and was going to let me keep commenting but they would never answer any of my emails. Now they have shadow-banned me it appears. Sad that they will forever be associated with Musk’s legion of cyberthugs. I will from this moment on tell everyone I talk to about space for the rest of my life what noxious enablers the people running certain blogs are, Ars Technica probably being the worst. But there is one place left that still allows me to post my comments:

Mars was considered by a couple space colonization groups, including O’Neill’s, in the 70’s when the original work was done and all the planets were were ruled out for several good reasons. But…a certain entrepreneur decided that Space Solar Power was a stupid idea and Mars really was a good second home for humanity. This was a contrarian view to the previous logical path of a state-sponsored public works energy project enabling colonization. Such a megaproject would be impossible for even the richest oligarch to own or control. This entrepreneur promised something for nothing and made a entrepreneurial “NewSpace” ideology popular. This has in the last decade tainted all discourse on space- and its pernicious influence has set progress back several decades at least.

He is the gold standard of false prophets. A billionaire who decided he would parade himself in the media circus and become a celebrity and who has done more harm to space exploration than any other person…ever. Algorithms and social media have popularized an Orwellian opposite view of him. And as long as this bizarro hobbyist buys influence and people believe in his ridiculous projects, the damage will accumulate. His persona appeals to the very worst to become his sycophants; those that worship greed and strong authority figures. They are typically anti-tax, anti-government, and anti-American, though they sometimes portray themselves as ultra-right wing “patriots.” And several dozen of the most toxic of these Ayn-Rand-in-Space whackjobs have certainly found a home on these forums.

 3 things:

1. Human exploration missions are more likely to use mini-subs to explore the subsurface oceans of the icy bodies in the solar system. Like Ceres, which is a far better first destination than Mars.

Mars is a dead end.

2. There is going to be very little walking around on the surface…in fact, after the first few boot prints on the Moon missions, they will likely say no more of that- except in real emergencies. Because of radiation of course. There might be plenty of lunar lava tube exploring in space suits though. Maybe.

3. Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision of space colonization was the Earth largely depopulated and becoming an adventure vacation destination. He saw almost the entire human race living in space colonies.
There is nothing on Mars of interest that you will not be able to see with VR googles. Sorry.

I am a scuba diver and it is a really great sport. People dive into their early 70’s. You don’t even have to know how to swim that well. Maybe you could give that a try and write about Ceres or the ocean moons of the gas and ice giants. And while there might not be much “tactile”, there might be some antics in large inflatables under the ice (depends on the pressure environment- maybe not realistic, maybe so) and in that super low gravity. No radiation.

The National Defense Authorization Act, budgeting $740 billion for defense, was signed 27 December 2021.[12]

The DOD spends around 20 percent of the federal budget. Throw in the DOE (nuclear weapons) and DHS and a couple other defense related expenditures and this trillion dollars a year accomplishes….what?
It reminds me of the ISS at 4 billion a year accomplishing…what?

How about 4.4 percent of the federal budget, which is what was spent on NASA during Apollo, being spent on a Space Solar Power by way of Lunar Resources public works project to solve the Climate Change crisis?

We would have Super Heavy Lift Vehicles launching weekly or bi-weekly for the Moon. And the other nations of the world doubling or tripling that.

“I’m proud to be a buff of the space program and I’m proud to be a part of helping fund it,” he added.

He ain’t no space buff.

“-a new post at the office of the assistant secretary of defense for space policy, which oversees a larger portfolio including space, nuclear weapons, cyber, missile defense, electromagnetic warfare, and countering weapons of mass destruction. He will work within the office of John Hill, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space and missile defense.
Hill’s office is in charge of coordinating guidelines for “responsible behavior in space”-“

Countering weapons of mass destruction is fairly easy concerning space; move the U.S. nuclear deterrent into deep space, months away from Earth, on human-crewed “space boomers.” This would solve myriad problems and accomplish so many things at once it is by far the best path forward.

In terms of missile defense, the only real “defense” is the same it has been for almost three quarters of a century- to detect incoming missiles and respond with Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.). This doctrine has kept another world war from happening for so long that we all seem to think that is not a possibility anymore. Recent events are a wake-up call. Submarines and bombers are now forever vulnerable, and the “first strike” nightmare has returned.

The very first step is to STOP proliferation in LEO by ending the construction of these megaconstellations and strictly regulate the number and type of satellites allowed in orbit. The ongoing downward spiral into a new cold war in orbit will lead to destabilization and put the planet again in the same situation it was in the last century, which I remember well; on the brink of Armageddon. International treaties radically reducing the number of satellites would be “responsible behaviour.” Large human-crewed GEO platforms with laser brooms can sweep the lower orbits clear.

Before the robots take over and the inevitable malfunction and cascade of failures precipitates nuclear war and a new dark age, which takes us from danger of extinction into likelihood of extinction, we need to intervene.

The intervention is to stabilize the planet by solving climate change with Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources. By placing humans back into the loop, in GEO and lunar Space Stations, Lunar Cyclers, and Spaceships, and focusing on ending fossil fuel energy generation, we can avoid impending catastrophe.

Neoliberalism is wrecking planet Earth, just as it did, most notably, in 1929, with the stock market crash. In the 21st century the consequences of waiting for a climate change crash will result in the deaths of billions. What is needed is a preemptive “Green New Space Deal” with Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources.

I feel strongly that America has failed at leading humankind into space. Of the long list of brilliant minds that have spent large parts of their lives working to save humanity by expanding our species into space, Gerard K. O’Neill was, in my opinion, the single most important voice. O’Neill has not only been ignored but replaced by a false prophet embodying and extolling a toxic ideology.

Climate Change and the Neoliberalism driving it is wrecking planet Earth. The solution, the only solution, is to power civilization using Space Solar Power, and create those satellites to power civilization by exploiting lunar resources. To build these factories on the Moon will require a vast state-sponsored public works energy project and every nation on Earth contributing their part.

These tax dollars spent on Mars return sample missions and probes to the outer solar system? The entire focus of science and industry must be on the Moon and on Climate Change for decades to come if we are to avoid a catastrophe that will cost the lives of billions. The best path to expanding humankind into space begins with humans actually living and working in space for long durations without suffering permanent damage.

Planetary Protection by way of nuclear propelled and armed human-crewed Spaceships with massive cosmic ray water shielding and tether-generated artificial gravity is the bare minimum prerequisite and starting point. Sadly, profit is the mission as the DOD is busy forming “public private partnerships” to weaponize Low Earth Orbit. We are obviously an endangered species.

“-Endurance-A that would send a robotic rover to the moon’s South Pole Aiken Basin on a commercial lander. The rover would travel 2,000 kilometers across the basin and collect 100 kilograms of samples. Those samples would be returned to Earth on a crewed Artemis mission.“

Lunar activities are about the only effort I could support out of all of it, even though I am fascinated by the possibility of life under the icy surfaces of the ocean moons of the gas and ice giants and other bodies like Ceres. And of course, planetary protection using human-crewed nuclear armed Spaceships might be a good idea to keep us from ending like the dinosaurs. As I have stated many times over the years, any aliens observing us have likely come to the conclusion we are too stupid too survive. Any really intelligent species would have protected themselves from impact threats long ago instead of just hoping for the best.

There really is only one practical propulsion system for pushing the multi-thousand ton masses of shielding and artificial gravity structure required for Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit and that is Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. There is nothing else that even comes close to it but due to the use of what are essentially repurposed nuclear weapons it has been one of those untouchable subjects for over half a century. The other miracle propulsion system is Fission Fragment, which uses a particular isotope; Am 242 if I recall. It has long been known that this stuff works far better than any other fissionable, and is actually the only one that works in a controllable and practical fashion, in a certain really good engine design that is similar to a rocket engine. Unfortunately, to manufacture this fuel for Spaceships would entail the creation of a whole new nuclear industry and that would be close if not over a trillion dollars. What is left is not very impressive with Zubrin’s nuclear salt water rocket just plain crazy dangerous and Nuclear Thermal a pathetic waste of money and fissionable material as it produces an Isp only about twice that of a chemical rocket.

My view has always been colored by my military experience and goes like this; The Apollo 1 fire was the end of the space age before it even began. On that day Aerospace concerns realized that Human Space Fight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO) was going to be hard money. They chose the easy money of cold war toys. You can have a whole list of weapons systems costing hundreds of billions of dollars and they don’t have to work very well and can fall out of the sky regularly, and even kill a fair number of people, and the money keeps coming. Not so with Spaceships. They have to work. It is simple greed that has kept humankind from expanding into space and it is simple greed that is now overheating and wrecking the planet. We are in big trouble because mammon is the god of this world and could care less whether we destroy ourselves. Perhaps the best example is Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars. To this day his gift to the defense industry, free money forever in the form of missile defense, continues. It does not work yet billions are spent on it every year. Ironically, Reagan joked about an alien threat from space that would unify humankind against a common enemy when it was already being theorized in the 1980’s a meteor impact killed the dinosaurs off. Yet 40 years later we have no defense against this alien threat. We only have a faux defense against other humans. 40 years after Climate Change was identified as a threat to civilization and mentioned by Gerard K. O’Neill as one reason to pursue Space Solar Power, we are instead pandering to rural video gamers with smallsat megaconstellations.

So I am sorry, I cannot join in the fun with you. I have children and their children are in danger. The species is in danger. If all that matters are billionaire hobbyist enterprises, we are doomed.

In my view we should be using robot landers to derive water from lunar ice, convert some of it into propellants, and shuttle cosmic ray water shielding up to double-hulled “Fat Workshops” in lunar orbit. The SLS should be sending these Fat Workshops and robot landers to the Moon long before any humans. When we have radiation sanctuaries with full cosmic ray shields then send the astronauts. Connect these workshops into “Bola” stations with tether-generated-artificial-gravity systems and the astronauts could stay in space for years without any ill effects. This crew compartment pipeline would be used to create fleets of Lunar Cyclers and Spaceships along with Space Stations. That is the prerequisite to any permanent human presence Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO).

The best plan is robot landers deriving water and converting some of that to propellants to ferry water up to double-hull “Fat Workshops” in lunar orbit, even if it takes several years to get these radiation sanctuaries set up. When we have a place to put astronauts that is a Near Sea Level Radiation environment and thus completely unaffected by even the worst solar storm, THEN send astronauts. The second part is to attach two of the workshops together with a tether system and spin it for 1G. Once we have a “Bola Station”, and even better, several of them, in operation, everything becomes easier. Astronauts could live in these NSLR1G stations for years with near zero dosing and no debilitation, the only problem then being psychological limitations. Thousands of tons of water make growing food and a closed loop life support system practical.

The third part is a Lunar Cycler fleet that will allow shielded travel to and from the Earth and Moon every week or so. I would say THEN everything becomes far easier as we will have constructed shielded habitats of some type on the Moon itself and can finally start landing people. Something like ten years to establish a permanent base.

Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO) is about the humans first and dosing and debilitation can only be addressed by providing a NSLR1G environment. Sending people out in tin cans to suffer permanent damage is not accomplishing anything. There really is NOTHING in space to accomplish with humans except space colonization and the only way to finance that is by powering civilization with Space Solar Power. O’Neill is to space what Einstein was to physics.

He figured it out.

Unfortunately, the Megaproject of all megaprojects is not interesting anyone…even with Climate Change catastrophe on the way. We need 4.4 percent of the federal budget like Apollo…. just to get started.
What to do?

Being a “believer” in the NewSpace god is really just taking the mark of the beast. Musk is the antichrist of space colonization.

Missile defense is a scam, always has been. It was Reagan’s present to the defense industry; free money forever. They rig a test every couple years to make it look like it will work but it is not going to stop any real attack by an adversary. It costs billions and is worthless. Like the Trump force. Exactly what it was designed to do- generate the maximum amount of revenue. You see, actually sending humans in harm’s way is a big expense that has always been a problem for the military industrial complex. They get very little ROI on infantry technology. It was why Rumsfeld lost his job; remember that? We were welding scrap metal on vehicles and spending billions on high tech and they busted him for it. He was fired and the troops were then riding around in MRAPs. Space Force needs a mission that is explicitly dangerous for it’s service members to merit the prestige and entitlements of a branch of the armed forces. That they presently do not is an insult to the military and all veterans…like me. It really was Trump’s way of giving the middle finger to the military that he considers suckers and losers. Commander Bone Spurs smiles everytime he thinks about the military service he created that does not have to fight- just like he did not have to. That can be fixed but nobody wants to do it because they are still terrified of Trump. Everyone is. He is the worst danger to the Republic since the civil war.

SpaceX fandom continues to shout the praises of reusability from the mountaintops so that all may bow before the glory of the great one. Except….the Vulcan Centaur is quoting a price not that different from F9 and simply expending everything.

How can that be?

SLS is a good example of why. Reusing the SRB’s on the SLS will not break even and because of the expense of creating an engine return module to make the RS25’s reusable, it is not worth doing it. The Falcon 9, if designed with a single large first stage engine and a simpler expendable structure, would cost about the same as the reusable version. That is why the Vulcan Centaur is going to cost about the same.

So reusability is not worth the trouble? I did not say that. Likely the most expensive part of the Falcon 9 is all of those engines. Reducing the number of engines to, for example, four (one large central engine and 3 small steering/landing engines), would bring the costs down and make it more profitable. Likewise, equipping the upper stage engine with a heat shield and parachute and some recovery technique would finally make the Falcon as reusable as the Space Shuttle, which only expended a big tank instead of an engine and tank like SpaceX. Using this philosophy the “Ultimate Falcon” would have had a single engine and a lift-off thrust in the 2 million pound thrust range and a second stage with a similar layout and some kind of engine return scheme, while expending only the upper stage tankage.

The logical progression would have been to continue the Saturn V and with each iteration make it more reusable. First returning the first stage engines in a return module with a variable thrust center landing engine in the five engine configuration, and also reusing the escape tower and capsule. Second doing the same with the second stage by using a single main engine and 3 or 4 steering/landing engines to return that module. Third would be upgrading to more powerful engines so the first stage tankage could be reused while also increasing payload. Fourth would have been to do what SpaceX is attempting now with the shiny and return the second stage tankage. The fifth iteration of the Saturn V would have been a 3rd stage engine return module that did a free return around the Moon and then reentered with a heat shield and parachute and was recovered. The 3rd stage itself being a wet workshop. NASA took a different course though. The logical progression would still be the best course; iterations of the SLS could do the same thing.

I actually corresponded with the B612 crew back in the day when they first started. You are correct…they are a big danger to the human race because they actually work extremely hard to keep what will save us- nuclear devices- from being used for deflection. In my view moving all nuclear weapons into deep space on human-crewed Spaceships is the best solution. I personally do not want robots flying around out there with nukes.

A single 80 mile diameter comet hits us and civilization ends, along with most of life on Earth. Not much chance of stopping it on short notice.

The solution is to move the nuclear arsenal into deep space on human-crewed “space boomers.” I would expect the first step would be to disband the Trump Force and reform and rename it on the same day as “Space Corps” or “Space Guard” or something like that.

Space Nuclear Strike Force (SNSF)?

These Spaceships would be perfectly capable of deflecting any impact threats with nukes. Any aliens observing us have likely already decided, since we should have had such a planetary defensive capability decades ago, that we are too stupid to survive.

If KBR smells money you know there is more on the way.
The new cold war with fortunes to be made for defense contractors.

And they thought space was going to be hard money. That was before smallsats and cheap launchers. What a mess.

For anyone unfamiliar with the way this works, the Trump Force now has the same budget as NASA and they are going to spend every penny of it because if they don’t, they cannot request more next year. And more the next year.

While NASA has been underfunded since the end of Apollo the Trump Force can always just scream “SUPPORT THE TROOPS!” and an avalanche of tax dollars will be directed their way. That is why it was created.
And KBR will make sure they get their cut.

Basing the nuclear deterrent MONTHS away in deep space would realize the over half a century old dream of a nuclear weapon free world and end the launch on warning scenario that has always been just minutes away from ending civilization. Such Spaceships, with guest scientists on board, could also do exploration missions to Ceres and eventually the moons of the gas and ice giants. And protect the planet from impact threats.

You move your business to someplace cheaper and they will eventually make it just as expensive as where you came from. Unless you go overseas to a country where a repressive government can keep your costs down. All part of that race to the bottom that is a key feature of Neoliberalism. At some point slave labor and even chattel slavery is the only way to “compete.” Absolute greed inevitably corrupts and corrodes any system it infects and brings it crashing down. This is the fundamental difference between the progressive economics of Imbedded Liberalism (The New Deal) and the zero regulation/taxation of Neoliberalism. While one seeks to prevent collapse and suffering the other just does not care about human beings, only profit.

“An experiment planned by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) dubbed the Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS) will investigate technologies to monitor the region of space between Earth and the moon.“

A fleet of Lunar Cyclers are likely the best way to “monitor” cislunar space. As described in my other comment, a massive water shielded crew compartment with artificial gravity is the basic prerequisite to maintaining a permanent human presence Beyond Low Earth Orbit (BLEO) and these “Fat Workshops” will probably be used in three forms as Space Stations, Spaceships. and Lunar Cyclers.

A Spaceship will necessarily be capable of missions Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO) into the outer solar system. Space Stations will likely no longer be found in LEO since there is really no justification for descending so deep into Earth’s gravity well.

“Beyond surveillance and tracking of objects, it’s not clear what else the Space Force might do in cislunar space.“

That is completely obvious: planetary protection with human-crewed Spaceships using nuclear pulse propulsion.

“-If successful, NASA’s return to the moon will lead to a permanent presence there and lay the groundwork for scientific research and commercial development.“

A human presence in space depends upon a specific set of problems being solved. I have written about this on my blog for several years and refer to it as the “Parker-Dyson-Spudis Continuum (PDSC).” The first problem, as described by Eugene Parker, is cosmic radiation. And the solution is a massive water shield. Dosing and debilitation is the twin problem that must be solved and as well as a massive water shield, artificial gravity will also be required. Chemical energy is largely useless for pushing this type of construct, containing thousands of tons of water and a robust spinning structure, likely on a tether, with loads providing one gravity. Tours of duty of over a year with little dosing and no debilitation would allow full careers in space and providing an environment that does not cause permanent damage is a prerequisite. I refer to this as a “Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G).”

“-$61 million for AFRL’s experiment and $70 million for a thermal nuclear propulsion demonstration-“

It is hard enough keeping chemical rockets from melting and Nuclear Thermal presumes to contain a reaction one million times more powerful. The result is, for huge expense, an engine with an Isp only about twice that of a chemical engine. For the time being there is only one technology available to push the mass required- Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. The first work was done on this concept by Freeman Dyson over half a century ago and there is still nothing comparable.

The only place to assemble, test, and launch such Spaceships is the vicinity of the Moon, which also has water that can be lifted into space with 20 to 23 times less energy than from Earth. The original work done on the ice on the Moon was performed by Paul Spudis. It follows that the Super Heavy Lift Vehicle with a double-hull upper stage “Fat Workshop” is the fundamental building block for any “permanent presence” in cislunar space. In my view robot landers that can derive water from lunar ice deposits and process some of this water into propellants to shuttle water into lunar orbit to workshops is the key technique to be perfected.

The only green initiative in space that is going to address climate change is Space Solar Power.

And the cult leader of the Ayn-Rand-in-Space mob said it is a stupid idea.

That 400,000 pounds of thrust and 12G’s getting the minimum mass of the capsule away from a disintegrating stack, 500 mph in 2 seconds for a pad abort, is hard to improve upon. After lift-off, max-Q, and staging, there is not much left that can go wrong so jettisoning it is a beautiful thing.
In my opinion it is actually as good as it gets and as close to “ideal” as possible. Sadly, it is viewed as a money-waster and not a moneymaker and that is where the hypergolic systems on the LEO taxis come from. They sacrificed some crew safety to Mammon. They are betting they can get away with it and that is not a good bet if you are an astronaut.

There is a reason to treat escape systems so seriously Ryan: at some point we are going to need nuclear energy to travel to the outer solar system and transporting that material into space, in my view, is going to require a capsule and escape tower and packaging it to survive the worst possible anomaly.

Perhaps “the key” is to see through the sophistry inherent in terms like “competitive public-private-partnerships.”

What must be understood is the two principal entities interacting- the public and private sectors. In Neoliberal ideology there is no “public” sector. The Market, like a god, decides all things. The god is money and the plan is profit and humans are incidental. This is the fundamental tenet. Truth is not on the list of articles of faith, rather, it is greed that is inherent in all matters. Possession of wealth is the only salvation and any form of redistribution is blasphemy. It really is a cult.
Through this lens ALL of these public private partnerships must be viewed. And the first thing that becomes crystal clear is it is NOT a partnership.

What you see is the private sector always, always, striving to destroy the public sector. One of the most time-honored methods is to infiltrate and wreck a public domain and then hold it up to the public (the enemy) as proof that only competition among profit-seekers can provide a service that is not corrupt and inefficient. This gambit was rather transparently displayed recently with the U.S. Postal Service. In all cases it is the public allowing representatives to steal and mismanage public activities that enable this kind of power-seeking.

Neoliberals consider this proof that they have a right to prey on us if we are so stupid we let them do it. Truth.

The spacex AX-1 flight took off today, 8 April 2022. Billionaire tourists to the ISS.

Feels like the end. NewSpace seems to have completely corrupted that most sacred American endeavor, Human Space Flight. I am so sad.

If those astronauts who sacrificed years of their lives to meet the standards allowing them to be selected to go into space believe the title they earned can be purchased that is on them.

A sacred endeavor honored by all is now likely corrupted and gone forever.

A sad day for space exploration, never to be forgotten, or forgiven.

Like the Space Force, a service whose members have no mission that sends them in harm’s way, yet enjoy all the prestige and entitlements of those that do….it is the pernicious effect of those with zero honor or integrity upon society.

NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. And the damage is accumulating.

NewSpace is essentially a for-profit ideology that rejects any activity in space that is not market-driven and a private or corporate enterprise. The anti-government, anti-tax, anti-NASA theme of most of the comments here, which are mostly focused on the flagship company, reflect that. In a nutshell, that is the problem. If you lean into Neoliberalism, it is of course not a problem, it is gospel.

For progressives like me, rocket jesus is not the prophet of space colonization- he is the anti-christ.

No…and the SLS is a perfect example of why. The fanboys have written, literally, libraries of comments over the years NASA-bashing and Death-to-SLS chanting. Why would Americans work directly against the interest of their space program? Though they say it is actually to use tax dollars wisely by investing in the more efficient flagship private company, that is not really why. And everyone knows this. It is simple to look up hundreds of comments over the years demanding NASA be dismantled and it all handed over to Musk. That is what it is really about.

The reality is there is a group that regards space as incidental to their true goal; pushing their anti-government, anti-tax, libertarian ideology. It is not co-existence they are after, it is zero taxation to support any state-sponsored programs. Including space. It is perfectly appropriate to their zero integrity/moral compass identities that they have gamed the system to get companies built with tax dollars and are now using that investment by the citizenry for their own profit-making. That is what they are.

Because of the manic toxic characteristics of the SpaceX fan club I cannot give Elon the credit he deserves. I cannot say he has done anything good without pointing out the damage he has also done, which outweighs the good. He is a product of Neoliberalism, that ideology which I identify as the cause of the ultimate failure of the U.S. space program after Apollo. And while he has found some success with his launch system, it is not as world-shaking as the media reports it to be. Starlink is an extremely bad development and this is all an extremely complicated subject you are asking me to explain. Let me give you three things to consider:

1. We are not progressing as a species on a path that will lead to survival, rather, we are going down the road to extinction. Elon Musk is right about a very few things and very wrong about a great many things. Which is a fairly good general description of why humankind as a whole is headed for extinction. Ironically, one of Elon’s few correct talking points describes the greatest single danger- we may have only a small window of opportunity in which to insure our survival before our history catches up to us and plunges civilization into another dark age. During that next dark age the inevitable extinction level event may come. And that will be the end.

2. The path to survival was accurately foretold by Gerard K. O’Neill in the 1970’s when he proposed space colonization as the future of humankind. Space colonies enabled by the economic engine of Space Solar Power Satellites constructed using lunar resources. O’Neill considered a state-sponsored public works energy project as the only way to make Space Solar Power happen. He also, incidentally, foresaw the planet heating up and saw Space Solar as a solution to that problem. The Reagan Revolution in 1980 effectively ended any possibility of a state-sponsored space energy program on the scale of Apollo. It is now time for a new deal.

3. Neoliberalism, which makes money the god of this world and is the underlying fundamental base of NewSpace ideology, does not care if humankind goes extinct. Absolute greed as a worldview is what drives people like Musk and Bezos to deny the validity of anything they cannot own. This is why NewSpace denies so many of the basic concepts already formulated by space pioneers. Anything that is on a scale so immense that only governmental resources can enable it is not tolerated by NewSpace. Anything that government must have control of is not allowed. Space Solar and Nuclear Pulse Propulsion are the two best examples.

Cosmic ray shielding, exploiting lunar resources, and space colonies; all non-starters for those who want their own private company to do it all, or for their corporation to own all the rights to.

SLS is the state sponsoring exploration. That makes it the only possible solution. Making future iterations of the SLS the vehicle that will enable a cislunar infrastructure is the correct path.

The Saturn V is the benchmark. It was not built by NASA. NASA engineers who were given a goal wrote the specifications and had commercial companies submit their designs. Not the cheapest, but the best, was selected. The Apollo 1 fire was the wake-up call to the aerospace industry that thought they were going to make a fortune off spaceships. The subsequent draconian oversight that ate into their profit margins made it clear that space was going to be hard money. Aerospace went back to the easy money of cold war toys. If you doubt that simply read the history of LockMart.

The system that made Apollo a success, goal oriented and not profit oriented designs, and oversight, went completely down the drain and this was obvious with the Space Shuttle. The SpaceX Starship is nothing more than a new kind of Shuttle, with some of the same mistakes and several new ones. And just as likely to fail.

You are sure about “everyone”…..I have busted several people who are anti-space and posing.

-“good old American know-how.”

A couple ex-Nazi SS officers and a lot of other Germans were at the top of that “pinnacle”.

“What about SLS from a cost standpoint corrects any of these past fallacies?”

“Fallacy” is an interesting term. As I noted, Aerospace took a huge hit after the Apollo 1 fire due to NASA oversight making them do what was required. Which cost them the mountains of money they were hoping to make. So they went after those people making it so difficult for them behind closed doors.

DOD projects have never had to measure up like the companies building Apollo had to. I worked on a lot of military hardware in my life and seen a lot more in action, and most of it does not do what it is supposed to. Cost plus is no great satan for submarines and stealth bombers. It is just business as usual. Exactly why the SpaceX fanboys get away with their libertarian screaming cheap is hard to define. NASA-bashing is incomprehensible to me as an American.

I believe it is essentially about goals. We have no long term goal like the Panama Canal or Hoover dam that is meant to accomplish something of real meaning. That was the genius of O’Neill and why he is the true prophet of space colonization. And Musk is the anti-christ.

I served in the U.S. military most of my adult life, so I can, I think, have my say about it, and what I say is we can take those immense fortunes and all those people using up their lifetimes like I did, and we can have them doing what they have been doing, building things that make us an endangered species, or we can build spaceships that are an insurance policy for humankind.
No difference except spaceships, unlike cold war toys, must work. Hard money.

Perhaps “the key” is to see through the sophistry inherent in terms like “competitive public-private-partnerships.”

What must be understood is the two principal entities interacting- the public and private sectors. In Neoliberal ideology there is no “public” sector. The Market, like a god, decides all things. The god is money and the plan is profit and humans are incidental. This is the fundamental tenet. Truth is not on the list of articles of faith, rather, it is greed that is inherent in all matters. Possession of wealth is the only salvation and any form of redistribution is blasphemy. It really is a cult.
Through this lens ALL of these public private partnerships must be viewed. And the first thing that becomes crystal clear is it is NOT a partnership.

What you see is the private sector always, always, striving to destroy the public sector. One of the most time-honored methods is to infiltrate and wreck a public domain and then hold it up to the public (the enemy) as proof that only competition among profit-seekers can provide a service that is not corrupt and inefficient. This gambit was rather transparently displayed recently with the U.S. Postal Service. In all cases it is the public allowing representatives to steal and mismanage public activities that enable this kind of power-seeking.

Neoliberals consider this proof that they have a right to prey on us if we are so stupid we let them do it. Truth.

1. Advancing ISAM research and development

In my view “ISAM” is about transiting material between GEO and the Moon. LEO, being deep inside Earth’s gravity well and only a few hundred miles above the surface, is NOT the most wonderful place to go. As the smallsat megaconstellation disaster slowly unfolds this will become apparent. R&D should, ironically, be focused on the Moon.

2. Prioritizing expansion of “scalable infrastructure”

There are essentially three different infrastructures to be developed: A ring of human-crewed space stations around the planet’s equator in GEO, a fleet of Lunar Cyclers transporting personnel between GEO and the Moon on a cislunar highway, and a Space Solar Energy project that will eventually scale up to immense constructs.

3. Accelerating the development of the ISAM industry

The accelerator is Climate Change and Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources as the solution. This is the only force capable of directing global resources and the investment of trillions of dollars.

4. Promoting international collaboration and cooperation on ISAM

Again….Climate Change.

5. Emphasizing environmental sustainability

Again….Climate Change.

6. Inspiring the future workforce

Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision of a western standard of living for the entire planet by powering civilization from space is the ultimate inspiration. Nothing can be more desirable than a bright future for humankind not only on Earth but in space.

SpaceX is selling cheap and its only real U.S. competitor is quoting essentially the same price with Vulcan. What that is telling us is that reusability is not the why the falcon is cheap. It might help to break even but everything else, like so many engines and a standing army to turn the rockets around, actually cancel out much of the gains. Great P.R. though and while I hate handing his gang of cyberthugs anything they can mock me with, reusing the first stage was one of the very few good things Musk has done. Unfortunately the damage to space exploration done by NewSpace ideology far outweighs the good. If you retire Off-world I expect it will be on the inner surface of a miles-in-diameter artificial hollow spinning moon. Courtesy of a Space Solar Power infrastructure. This was the vision of Gerard K. O’Neill and not the fakery of the false prophet Elon Musk. Mars, like strip mining LEO for video gamers, is a dead end.

No….competition does not drive an economy. Supply and demand does.

Government cannot regulate, that is, control how businesses operate, and also be “partners.”

You have to understand that we are in the last stages of democracy. Only a “mixed economy” with social programs supported by taxing top earners allow a democracy to function. Neoliberalism is essentially proto-fascism which is just Social Darwinism reframed with the wealthy at the top and those at the bottom being eliminated as useless eaters.

The key term here is “Redistribution of Wealth.” The wealthy constantly seek to distribute all wealth into their individual accounts while the masses seek to distribute wealth into the community. The tug of war between the two ends, ideologically, with fascism or communism winning. Both are Utopian systems that are impossible and thus eventually destroy society.

The Reagan Revolution was the beginning of Oligarchy, Plutocracy, Autocracy, whichever flavor or definition of absolutism you want to use. When a society allows absolute power to corrupt absolutely then the cycle of empire is inevitable. At some point the status quo breaks down and the streets run with blood. It has been that way for thousands of years. The problem is that now we have the technology to destroy ourselves completely.

Terran Space Academy has a YouTube video called “Super Launch System” that is pretty amazing. The points made in the video lead me to the conclusion, again, that a pair of the New Glenn boosters are likely the perfect replacement for the SLS SRB’s. They might even be able to make a crossfeed feature of some kind work well. The video proposes putting the core stage on top of the spacex Super Heavy but….in my view the New Glenns would work better.

If the Blue Origin boosters are adapted then mounting the RS-25’s in a returnable module that separates from the core stage would make SLS what the Space Shuttle was originally conceived as; A Saturn V class launch system that sacrifices one big tank on the altar of the rocket equation and reuses everything else. It was, and is, an excellent concept.

Considering the mass that could be landed on the lunar surface, without a tanker fleet, this is likely the best possible path.

“And together Blue Origin and Sierra Space have the Orbital Reef, which is another major project. And it has barely begun. And they may be working on this for the next 20 years. It’s a big deal.”

In my view, Dream Chaser is not happening because Space Planes are a failed concept. They sacrifice too much mass, have no effective abort systems, and it is as simple as that. The escape tower/capsule-parachuting-into-the-ocean is just too good; a nearly perfect concept. Nothing can take people into and return them from space as safely. It is sad the two LEO taxis bought with billions of taxpayer dollars have inferior hypergolic escape systems instead of towers.

As for “Orbital Reef”, the ISS required 3 billion a year to maintain and that has gone up to 4. Nobody except the government has that kind of money and the government subsidizing billionaire tourists is not going to happen. It is amazing they have gotten away with it on the ISS but actually building a tourist station based on government subsidizing ultra-rich tourists….not going to happen. LEO is a dead end and has been since 1968 when Apollo 8 escaped Earth’s gravity. Megaconstellations were a bad idea and will fail so, in my view, Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources is the only viable future project. We are going back to the Moon.

Blue Origin may find itself with nothing to do with it’s New Glenn if megaconstellations are outlawed. And make no mistake, what is happening in LEO is going to hit a critical mass soon enough and I suspect everything going on up there is going to change. The dot com bomb comes to mind. I think a pair of those New Glenn boosters would be good replacements for the SLS SRB’s. That is what I am hoping for.

Get used to the terminology being used: conjunction squalls
“When they sync up, you have the perfect storm: they’re in the same orbit plane but counter-rotating, crossing each other twice an orbit, again and again,”

This is only the beginning. The disasters will occur over and over with increasing frequency until they have to pull the plug on the entire concept of megaconstellations. And they knew if from the beginning.

“It’s not the government versus the private sector. That’s a silly way to think about it,” he said. “Where we need speed and innovation, we need to leverage the private sector.”

That is classic corruption speaking and the megaconstellation disaster unfolding.
The doubletalk is essentially about removing regulation so corporations can do whatever they want regardless of the consequences.

Incredible that after over a century of this the public is still largely stupid gullible prey for Neoliberal psychopaths.

Once it is seen SLS can put dozens of tons on the lunar surface at a time, WITHOUT a dozen tanker launches to enable that one payload, then expect the cadence to increase, and costs to go down.

“The panel highlighted a need for stronger international regulations to ensure space operations remain sustainable as the rapidly rising numbers of satellites being launched into Earth’s orbits increase the threat of potentially catastrophic in-space collisions.“

What he is talking about is “regulation” as in restricting the number of satellites and since these LEO broadband smallsats number in the tens of thousands to handle relatively small numbers of customers…this will just get uglier as time goes by. The only “debris removing technology” that can deal with clouds of pieces of exploded satellites is a “laser broom” from a higher orbit sweeping them down into the atmosphere. Nobody is talking about that because they are large and extremely expensive devices. Nobody will pay for them.

Those megaconstellations go up and we will for sure have many bad actors with launch capability sending up something that has an “anomaly” and blows up and wipes out a good portion of a constellation. They would do this for any one of a whole list of reasons.

The ISS needs to be deorbited and Human Space Flight efforts focused on a lunar return and cislunar infrastructure. For HSF LEO is a dead end. The only real solution to the rapidly multiplying issues making LEO problematic is to have large water-shielded human-crewed GEO platforms. The lower orbits should be reserved for only the most necessary satellites. The GEO stations can sweep the lower orbits clear of space junk with “laser brooms.”

What is happening right now in LEO and in other orbits with smallsats launched cheaply is a slow motion disaster unfolding.

Look for the outrage to grow as more and more organizations throw the B.S. flag on megaconstellations. At some point the money paid under that table to oversight authorities to let the horror begin is going to mean nothing.

As the reality of hundreds of thousands of satellites filling Earth orbit sinks in the brakes are going to be applied.

Until the whole lurching ugly mess comes to a screeching stop.

Smallsat constellations never should have been allowed in the first place.

“- such as Space Solar-“

I am a “green” and I absolutely support Space Solar Power as the solution to climate change. Call it “The Green New Space Deal” if you want.

I would say the reason we do not see any, or at least very little, mention of Space Solar is thanks to a certain “entrepreneur” who thinks it is “a stupid idea.”

He thinks it is stupid because he can’t own it. Only a state-sponsored public works energy project can build a Space Solar Power infrastructure. And that is blasphemy to the Ayn-Rand-in-Space Cult.

And blaming it on the Greens…..that is pretty transparent John. The first rule is always blame the victim and make yourself the real victim, right? Why don’t you try, let me see, how about the Koch brothers? Nobody talks about the billionaires who are the real life super-villains wrecking planet Earth.