Ice on the Moon

Rocket jesus is firing people and whining about the economy.

Could be a sign his house of cards is collapsing, and the Enron of space is about to crash and burn.

Real space enthusiasts can only hope and pray the ten-year NewSpace nightmare is about to end.

We also have “Klan gone Hiel HItler” commenting and resident sociopath se jones and full-tilt psychopath TomDPerkins down the page. Along with a long list of second-string trolls.

This is the story of NewSpace: a bunch of fascist freaks that have harassed those really interested in space and chased them away from these forums for over a decade.

Maybe John Oliver will do an expose about how all these forums have been hijacked.

And that obviously hit a nerve.

I was going to post a reply to my cyberstalker, se jones, who had trolled me with “I’ve known Musk for many years, ever since he joined The Mars Society. We disagree about a lot of things, including SPSP. I keep an open mind about it, and follow the tech advancements. But for f-sake, it’s not fing RELIGION, and Elon isn’t some kind of sacred profit or something.”

Oh…but it is a religion. And se jones does not want anyone to know that.

I usually feel bad about being banned, but not this time. I am just so sick of them all…the Musk worshipers, the Trumpists, the Ayn-Rand-in-Space libertarian whackjobs and their endless harassment. Good riddance. I did my duty to expose them for ten years. The SpaceX Review, The SpaceX News, and all the other infomercials completely hijacked by Muskrats, will not be forgotten. Like Fox News and other assorted trash, they will be thrown into that larger trash bin of history, along with the rest of the NewSpace garbage.

But we have other things to worry about as Americans. As Adam Kinzinger said,  “There is violence in the future.”

Peter Weber wrote:

How Jack Welch helped create the America of Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk

The gap between America’s rich and the poor — or really, the rich and everyone else — has stretched into a chasm. That’s fairly indisputable. The current divergence between the wealthiest Americans and the lower 90 percent of earners began in the late 1970s, after a post-World War II era of rising wages and not-outlandish differences in pay between workers and management.

Who was Welch, and why single him out?

Welch joined GE’s plastics division in 1960, just after earning his doctorate in chemical engineering, and he rose quickly through the management chain until he was elevated to chairman and CEO in 1981. 

“GE was an industrial company when he took over — making most of its money selling appliances, light bulbs, power turbines, and jet engines,” Gelles writes in The New York Times. By the time he left, dozens of acquisitions later, it was a hydra-like conglomerate encompassing everything from medical devices to aviation and NBC, buoyed by profits from GE Capital, “which was essentially a giant unregulated bank.”

Soon after becoming CEO, Welch “closed factories and fired employees by the tens of thousands, unleashing a series of mass layoffs that destabilized the American working class,” Gelles writes. “He devised systems like ‘stack ranking,’ which mandated that the bottom 10 percent of workers be fired each year,” and “he embraced offshoring and outsourcing.”

“Up until this point, people who had a job at a company like GE or IBM basically figured that they had a job for life,” Gelles told NPR. “But he explicitly said that this notion was going to be a thing of the past under his watch.”

Welch certainly wasn’t working in a vacuum. By the time he was elevated to CEO, economist Milton Friedman had been arguing for years that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Welch also took the reins at GE just months after President Ronald Reagan, whose devotion to supply-side “trickle-down” economics was in many ways a federal policy analog to Welch’s management revolution. 

“Jack Welch was unquestionably an important and emblematic figure in America’s paradigm shift, but Gelles takes his book title too literally, pushes it too strenuously,” Kurt Andersen writes at The New York Times. “Whenever he refers to the post-1980 economic regime,” for example, “he uses his own word, ‘Welchism,’ instead of libertarianism or neoliberalism or any of the other familiar terms” that might broaden the blame to, say, all the presidents from Reagan on who “bought into libertarian economics.”

Does Gelles have a response to that critique?

Yes. Other figures — Reagan, Friedman, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell — had laid an intellectual and political groundwork for Welch’s corporate revolution, “but it was only when Jack took over GE that we actually saw what that ideology looked like in practice,” Gelles told Just Capital. “He was the one with his singular mix of ambition and a sense of impunity, and control of one of the largest and arguably the most influential company in the country. He was able to not only radically transform and reset norms at GE, which was this standard-bearer, but because of that influence, also bring the rest of the economy along for the ride, essentially setting a new standard by which CEOs and executives were evaluated.”

“This was one of those moments when an exceptional individual at a critical moment really goes on to shape the world,” he told Leonhardt.

Is Welch’s management style still ascendant?

It actually hasn’t aged very well. Welch did grow GE from a $14 billion corporate titan to the most valuable company in the world in 2001, worth $600 billion. And “for a time in the early 2000s, five of the top 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average were run by men who had worked for Mr. Welch,” Gelles writes in the Times. But “the Welch protégés who struck out on their own rarely fared well.” And neither did GE. 

Soon after Welch retired, “GE fell to the point of essential irrelevance in the American economy,” Gelles tells NPR. “In 2018, with all of Welch’s bad decisions catching up with the company, GE was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the bluest of blue-chip indexes and a real bellwether of the American economy.” The company broke itself apart last year.

After decades of corporate belief that “greed, for lack of a better word, was good for the country,” Christiaan Hetzner writes at Fortune, “an increasing number of boardrooms are discovering that being a good corporate citizen can be its own reward,” a movement called stakeholder capitalism. “The move away from the Reagan era of unfettered free markets toward an emphasis on prudent and proportionate regulation has, however, spooked prominent Republicans, who are now retaliating by labeling the shift ‘woke,'” he adds.

They needn’t worry too much: Welch established “a powerful and lasting influence on American business, informing how workers are treated, how shareholders are rewarded, and how CEOs comport themselves in an increasingly divisive age,” Gelles writes in the Times. “When Donald J. Trump is elected president, when Jeff Bezos argues about inflation with the White House, when Elon Musk negotiates his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter by using the poop emoji — this is the world that Jack Welch helped create.”

And now I know who actually wrecked the planet.

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.