Ice on the Moon

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.

 

The reality is that a certain demographic, I call them “The Ayn-Rand-in-Space Cult” are attracted to these forums as a way to shout their ideology from the mountaintops. Their interest in space is only incidental to their libertarian worldview. Anyone with any experience with this knows they are the most malicious toxic bunch on the internet. And they truly believe they are a vast legion of far-right patriots who will see John Galt return in all his glory through the person of rocket jesus. Really.

Those of us with a vision of a bright future for humankind need to speak up or soon we might find ourselves in a new dark age. Fascism is on the march, again.

If you look at the way NASA wrote the specifications for Apollo and had industry design and build it and now give away that power to determine what will be built to corporations and companies like spacex, it is not “odd.”

Unfortunately, this is something that historically has led to failure after failure because the profit motive only seeks…profit. They care very little about accomplishing a mission, that is only incidental and in the interest of future revenues. I see this in the escape systems of the dragon and starliner, which are both inferior to the escape tower concept but were chosen as “moneymakers.”

The Space Shuttle is very interesting in that it is in many ways the opposite of the Saturn V. It was built on the cheap to be cheap and ended up being just as expensive but instead of going to the Moon it just went a couple hundred miles up. That is what you get when making money instead of getting results is the real goal.

This handing billions of tax dollars over to industry is being done in these small chunks of a hundred million or so dollars at a time because…they can get away with it.

Unfortunately, the majority who comment here are in the Ayn-Rand-in-Space Cult and are going to be extremely “critical” of this article. Due to a change in the blocking feature on this board I will happily not see those comments and hopefully they will not see mine and spam accordingly.

I would suggest hydrogen, that thrice damned propellant that NewSpace fans have written volumes about because their favorite company does not use it, as one solution.

The world will not end if hydrogen is specified as the necessary propellent of launch vehicles. In fact, hydrogen produced only with green energy could be mandated for rocket launches. With close to a hundred thousand satellites going up in these megaconstellations this will not stop climate change but it will set the example.

Hydrogen is also the fuel of choice for future airliners. They will be fatter but they will fly just as far. And it follows that green ammonia, if practical, can replace gasoline and diesel in cars, trucks, and even ships, though not in jet engines and rockets due to the inability to filter out nitrous oxide. If nitrous oxide cannot be eliminated then ammonia is not an option and electrically driven options, though less attractive, become the requirement.

If these steps are mandated, made law, then industry has no choice but to start building up alternate energy sources. Solar Thermal with molten salt energy storage is likely the best path, though starting up some of these plants has actually been a problem due to the lower price of solar panels. The fossil fuel industry has of course fought against this kind of changeover, which could have been done decades ago. The Koch brothers being the most notable super-villains.

But even when international regulation is put in place, the challenge is not changing over to a near-zero carbon footprint, it is providing a western standard of living to a population of 10 billion human beings near the end of the century. I believe that challenge can only be met with Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources. That is the main reason I am a space enthusiast

If something is too good to be true it usually is. SpaceX has had success with the Falcon 9 but NOT in proportion to the hype. Not even close. Elon put his foot in the door by promising a cheap ride to the ISS and Obama opened the door the rest of the way and made the mistake of letting him in. And that is pretty much the whole story. Landing back the first stage is, in my view, much like the SRB’s on the shuttle that did not break even. The reality is that if they built the F9 with a single large engine as an expendable it would have resulted in the same costs. This is why Elon is promoting the shiny; F9 has run it’s course. It was a good thing they tried reusability, not a great thing.

Unfortunately, unlike the F9, which likely would have been a success no matter how it was designed due to NASA and the taxpayer paying for it, the shiny has some extremely bad design features. And it is part of an extremely bad business plan (Starlink). Small details can decide success or failure and the Space Shuttle is certainly the perfect example of that. By itself, the shiny might be a good second stage, but that super heavy is a monstrosity that would be better made into two side boosters, and there is no third stage and the chopsticks are a mistake.
A recipe for failure.

I really like your O’Neillian perspective Joseph, and thanks for the civil discourse.
Very rare here.

“Everything in O’Neill’s vision was predicated on the idea that getting stuff out of Terra’s gravity well was too damn expensive & had to get cheaper.”

Not true. If anything can be categorized as “everything” in O’Neill’s view, it was using lunar resources. His vision for the future was predicated on Space Solar Energy as the economic engine of space colonization. He considered this enterprise a state-sponsored public works project. This is antithetical to NewSpace dogma and why Elon considers space solar, “a stupid idea.” He can’t own it so it is stupid is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Bezos is just another Neoliberal hobbyist until he proves otherwise.

You just started off on the opposite foot. Completely wrong direction in my opinion. Sorry.

“Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?”. The answer was ‘No’. The reason for this is because of the tremendous energy cost-“

No..it had nothing to do with cost. It was about human beings having evolved in one gravity. And then you go on to argue that somehow because O’Neill was mistaken in some way, that NEO’s are better than Luna for resources. No. Where do you get all this stuff? I have dealt with people who take O’Neill out of context and misquote frequently but you are basing everything on the profit motive which indicates you are not really what you are presenting yourself as.

O’Neill’s formula was clear, and while he speculated often, and this is taken out of context by people for their own agenda, he promoted a future based on three things:

1. Space colonies, artificial hollow spinning moons constructed from lunar resources (because no natural bodies can provide Earth gravity).

2. A state-sponsored public works project to provide Space Solar Power to power planet Earth as the economic engine to enable colonization.

3. Using lunar resources to build a Space Solar Power infrastructure and enable space colonization as a solution to poverty and, as he incidentally foresaw, climate change.

” He posited Space Solar Power Satellites as a revenue stream, because the information age was completely unimaginable.”

No. He saw, correctly, that energy is the salient feature of modern civilization. Those who right now are “positing” information instead are not in touch with reality. They are ignoring the human condition on planet Earth. Placing profit first is exactly what Neoliberalism does.

Over half a century ago the first flight of the Saturn V took place and this launch vehicle, more than any other in history, is the benchmark by which all others are measured. The five F-1 engines in the first stage generated over 7.5 million pounds of thrust and the million-pound-thrust second stage lifted over 100 tons into Low Earth Orbit.

And now, a half a century later, we are ready for the first launch of a very different vehicle. The most controversial feature of the SLS is that it is expendable. Due to the designs of the available components, the RS-25’s and SRB’s, reuse was not considered economical. It is notable that the Space Shuttle used these SRB’s as a cost-cutting measure which led to them being far more expensive to reuse than the originally specified pressure-fed liquid boosters. Likewise, the extreme engineering that went into the RS-25’s in the quest for the necessary power and efficiency made them equally uneconomical “hot rods” that needed to be rebuilt after each flight. A lack of funding for more appropriate reusable engines made reuse of the Space Shuttle engines necessary and a lack of funding for other parts of the Space Launch System has led to delays driving the costs up to very high levels. There is no cheap.

The greatest amount of criticism is leveled at contractor mismanagement and ironically this is also a result of going cheap in that oversight actually costs a great deal of money and cutting back on it results in much higher costs down the road. A very hostile and dishonest popular culture portrayal of the system by the Cult following of a certain company competing for funding has now led to extreme criticism of the new Super Heavy Lift Vehicle. This does American astronauts a great disservice while being a boon to the adversaries of Human Space Flight. These anti-space and anti-American entities love to see the libraries of death-to-SLS internet content generated by gullible fanboys doing their job for them.

The best course for space advocates is to support more missions for the SLS to bring costs down and funding for future iterations replacing the SRB’s with reusable boosters and a module allowing recovery and reuse of the RS-25s. This would realize the original concept of the Space Shuttle; a Saturn V class launch vehicle that sacrifices a single tank on the altar of the rocket equation and reuses everything else.

You know they made sure to never orbit an External Tank as a wet workshop because they were afraid what that would inevitably precipitate? The first time the public saw someone floating inside an empty ET it would have made a giant Skylab the only acceptable ISS. As for the Shuttle not being able to stay up…well, I trust we can just disagree on that and remain open to new ideas. I am not ashamed to admit my views on space are quite fixed on a list of fundamental suppositions. One of those is that LEO is a dead end. After Apollo 8 escaped Earth orbit I don’t think we ever should have went back to LEO. One of the worst wrong turns NASA ever made. I view large GEO crewed platforms, shielded with lunar water, as the primary future Earth Orbit revenue generator. My views are fairly well know due to the intense criticism they receive. The NewSpace Fanboys have no problem posting endless SpaceX adverts and howling at the Martian moons so I do not take kindly to being trolled for simply expressing a different view of the future. I do not mind disagreement though. But there is a point where it becomes malicious nagging and pernicious naysaying. You do not do that of course. You are not one of them.

Tell me how a Space Shuttle could not carry extra life support pallets and solar panels and had the pallets switched out every 3 or 4 months by another shuttle- or simply transferred the lab hab module to another shuttle? Explain it to me Robert and I will delete my comments. I have looked at the shuttle payload and EDO pallets and it seems true to me. I could be missing something though. Unlike fanboys that lie like the rest of us breathe, I trust you to point out my errors. Let me know. I blocked Zed the Troll so we will no longer be reading each other’s mail.

Blah blah blah blah blah….if spacex is not doing it then it can’t be done. Riiiight.

It is EASIER returning the engines without the tankage. Duh. In fact, if launch vehicle development had progressed logically then that would have been how they did it; step by step by first returning the first stage engines and expending tankage, then both the first and second stage engines without tankage, then returning the first stage with the tankage attached, then the second stage with tankage attached (that is essentially what Starship is, a Shuttle external tank with engines, tiles and cargo bay). The third stage would be a wet workshop with that engine doing a free return around the Moon, re-entering and being reused. If the money had been available that is what would have been done with the Saturn V, year after year new iterations until the whole thing was reusable or used in some form.

This deification of a certain entrepreneur is absurd. As if he is the only one that can save us. Phil Bono proposed VTVL years before Elon was even born.

The obscene spending displays of the super-rich are especially outrageous in space. As Bezos remarks thanking his employees for paying for his joyride machine show. Now he has a union to deal with. The number of anti-union zealots that comment here complement the anti-government libertarian elements of NewSpace ideology.

Unions are what made America great. Not capitalism, which nearly destroyed democracy in the 1930’s. Of course the Neoliberals have rewritten an Orwellian reversed version of that history with libraries of think tank generated and paid for propaganda. It was labor unions, and the American communist party (which nobody likes to talk about), that suddenly everyone was joining when they could not feed or house their families, that went to FDR with an ultimatum. They told him if he and his capitalist friends did not want what happened to Tsarist Russia to happen to America’s robber barons that he better do something. And that is where The New Deal, social security, unemployment insurance, medicare, and all the other social entitlement programs came from. And a 91 percent tax rate on billionaires and corporate profits to pay for those safety nets. Unions appear when workers are not paid a living wage- which is happening now. Communists appear when Unions are suppressed. And revolution begins when they start shooting dissidents. Fascists take over when enough thugs take to the streets to enable a strong man to con a ruling minority. FDR kept that cycle from playing out and said his greatest accomplishment was he saved capitalism. See how that works? Space Tourism is a huge red flag.

That tax rate faded and ultimately ended with the Reagan Revolution and now we have space tourists who the rest of us look upon not as astronauts (well, those of us who are not drinking the NewSpace Kool-Aid), but as bizarro fools floating in a radiation bath and vomiting while looking out a window. Fake astronaut wings mean something only to fake human beings. And there seem to be a lot of them commenting here. I have blocked 27 of them so far this week. After I found out disqus had changed their blocking feature to go both ways.

The original concept was by Arthur C. Clarke, who proposed a GEO human-crewed telecom space station where “ISAM” would happen.

An international fleet of large shielded space stations in GEO would solve most of the issues that are becoming problematic in Earth orbit.

The methodology to create these true stations is to first send SHLV upper stages to the Moon, where lunar water will fill their cosmic ray outer envelopes of double-hulled “Fat Workshops.”

These crew compartments would then transit back across the cislunar sea to GEO where they would be connected to other workshops and spun on tethers to provide artificial gravity. An equipment/docking mast would be attached coaxially at the center of the tether system.

The stations would provide three critical functions:

1. They would be immune to even a Carrington level solar event and thus guard against the loss of overhead assets in that event.

2. With “laser brooms” they could continually sweep lower orbits clear of space junk.

3. They would enable the ISAM activities the author proposes.

I just explained to P.K. in another comment that, “Unfortunately, it is true. Mars has always been this gimmick they bring out to distract and run out the clock.”

I hold to a set of fundamental ideas concerning HSF and that seems to drive the fanboys batsh-t crazy because they are mostly opposite of NewSpace Dogma. I don’t do it to antagonize, just to educate.

The couple dozen who would dogpile me with toxic malevolent replies are now blocked with the new disqus feature that goes both ways so I am happy to express my view on this freely;

I do not believe we should be landing on the Moon yet. Make no mistake, I want the Moon turned into a giant factory complex as soon as possible but just landing with some people as a goal is not the way to go. I would suggest first they land robots able to find and process lunar ice into water and propellants. The second step would be for those robot landers to ferry water up to “Fat Workshops” with double hulls to fill them with water as cosmic ray shielding.

Only then….should we send astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon as they will have a place to stay that will protect them from cosmic radiation and solar events. The third step would be to attach a tether system to two workshops and spin them for one gravity. Then astronauts can stay out there for a year or more without suffering dosing and debilitation. The fourth step is to have several of these true space stations equipped with propulsion and utilized as Lunar Cyclers so that transporting people between the Earth and Moon can be accomplished without dosing from solar events while protecting the long duration Cycler crew from dosing and debilitation. The fifth step is to have GEO true Stations as well as Lunar Stations and Cyclers. The sixth step is to then build Human Landing System spacecraft.

And the seventh step is to start building factories on the Moon. All it takes is money and with enough all seven steps could be completed in as little as ten years…like Apollo.

It has been over half a century since the Saturn V flew. In terms of modern technology, a half a century is a long time. And while we begin to slowly return to the idea of there being best solutions, most of what was learned with that monumental machine is still not appreciated. What is even more unfortunate is that the mistakes made after Apollo were not considered and those wrong turns have gone uncorrected. All constructs follow their purpose. Perhaps 50 centuries ago there were four wheeled wagons and that design can be seen in the modern car. The ME-262 jet fighter is the same configuration used for most large passenger jets. The Saturn V embodies several fundamental design concepts that are almost impossible to improve upon.

The first fundamental is the 3 stages, with the first carrying the payload clear of the lower atmosphere and through the maximum stresses of the launch, then the second placing the third stage into a Low Earth Orbit, and finally the third stage carrying the payload out of Earths gravity well into outer space. The first stage using the largest and thus the fewest number of engines possible.

The second fundamental is the escape tower/capsule combination with the tower able to blast the minimum mass capsule at extreme velocity away from a launch failure off the pad and during the most dangerous parts of the ascent. The self-stabilizing capsule shape parachuting into the ocean represents far less risk than any other possible method of returning human beings from space.

The third fundamental is the Moon as the primary destination for Human Space Flight and indeed after Apollo 8 in 1968 the very definition of Human Space Flight should have been changed and Earth orbit not defined as HSF but rather Earth Orbit or Orbital Flight. Using this measure the space age lasted less than 4 years.

In the half century since Saturn V reusability has become a recent issue with the question of whether expending single use hardware is still desirable and to what degree reusability will replace this paradigm.

One lesson seems clear; the spaceplane is a failed concept. The penalty for wings and landing gear and all that goes with it is not worth the trouble. In regard to reusing stages, Vertical Take-off/ Vertical Landing (VTVL), which was proposed long before Apollo, now appears to be a new fundamental.

Russia detonating a nuclear weapon would activate multiple systems in the U.S., China, England, France, and the five lesser nuclear powers and set several hair triggers. The critical problem here is that M.A.D. is based on destroying the adversary completely with massive nuclear retaliation as THE way to keep these weapons from being used. It is all or nothing. The only way to be sure you have enough weapons to do that is to launch them before the enemy destroys them with a “first strike.” This is why satellites and communications are so important because it requires very little degradation of those warning and control systems before the button to launch everything is pushed. And that turns into the end of the world. With the tens of thousands of weapons that existed in the 80’s this meant almost the entire human race would die from the effects. Not that bad now but it would still be horrific beyond what anyone could imagine with likely half or more of humankind dying from starvation. Billions would die. What people do not get, and which is more terrifying than anything else about this, is that there are powerful people who would not have a problem with making it happen. It can happen though most of us do not think so.

I am sitting out in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest and this town has broadband. Ironically I lived in Florida close to some pretty big cities and had to use satellite internet and had no problem with it except during thunderstorms. Starlink is a field of dreams waiting for video gamers in Alaska to pay for a fleet of shiny starships to Mars. It is like Enron, Theranos, and Delorean all rolled into one.

It does not “seem” to have been, it was. The Space Shuttle concept was a Saturn V class launch vehicle that expended one tank on the altar of the rocket equation and reused everything else. It was and is an excellent concept. The Falcon does not do this and is not in the same league.

The reason the Shuttle always did this so poorly was that it was designed and run on the cheap and that can be traced back to three things;

1. The Vietnam War which made a fortune for defense contractors but pushed government spending over edge, leaving little left for NASA.

2. The rise of Neoliberalism which demanded “the market” decide all things, and the Space Shuttle “make space pay for itself.”

3. The Reagan Revolution which insured no improvements would be made on the STS and that pressure to launch would kill two crews.

“In orbit refueling” is the white elephant in my opinion. It became part of NewSpace dogma because the Falcon 9 could not and cannot lift enough to support any worthwhile lunar return missions. I remember well ten years ago when small cheap rockets and depots could do it all and anything not made by their favorite company was endlessly trashed by fanboys.

Of course that never stopped and the same philosophy, modified, continues with the shiny.

A Super Heavy Lift Vehicle can send whatever needs to be sent to the Moon directly. A very large payload can be sent by a dual SHLV launch with an Earth Departure Stage docking with the payload in orbit. This is the most efficient architecture for cislunar space and sending humans Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO) requires nuclear energy. Due to the requirement for shielding and artificial gravity, chemical propulsion is useless for human missions beyond the Moon. No magic depots needed.

What is “unforgiveable” to me is what NewSpace fans consider the solution to everything.

Actually Vlad, I started saying LEO was not space as a reaction to NewSpace dogma that proclaimed LEO as the place where propellent depots and tourist space stations would be and only the favorite hobby rocket was needed to make it all happen if only all the NASA money was just handed over to Elon. Remember?

I think what pushed me over the edge is when HLV tonnage was redefined. I remember when the Saturn V was the benchmark and that magic 100 tons was considered heavy lift and anything less was not. That changed because of NewSpace nonsense. The goalposts were moved as they say. I can move them also, or at least try to.

It was not about me, it was about fanboys, and I am sticking with it as long as the other nonsense continues. It makes sense to limit how much hyperbole and misinformation can be pushed on the public by defining what is and what is not. Now that you know what I am doing we can have an intelligent conversation about it.

Call me odd but I do not consider 62 miles up to be “outer space.” Sorry.

Ten…or hundred people can tell me 62 miles up is space but I do not have to agree since there is more than one definition of where space begins. It is arbitrary and subject to change because there is really no clear demarcation. The one I suggest using is the altitude where an object in orbit remains over one spot on Earth. That is 22,236 miles up. Anything hovering over a spot on the Earth, or in a different orbit that more than half of is above this altitude- I would call both Earth orbit and “Space”. I might go even farther and say outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere is “Outer Space.” Since the magnetosphere is largely absent above the poles then some orbits might be categorized as outer space I guess. Then there are the limits of Cislunar Space to consider. What would you suggest for that Vlad?

Because NewSpace fanboyism has tainted ALL discourse about space I really cannot tell you what I “believe” about SLS. I can tell you that America’s enemies love the NASA-bashing. I will not add to that trashing of the U.S. and it’s interests. In my view it falls under giving aid and comfort and is treasonous. While it is claimed it is all in the interest of making sure tax dollars are not wasted, I consider that a wink wink nudge nudge simply because these same people screaming at the top of their lungs about cost plus have zero to say about the ISS or the DOD or the recent Space Force budget. It is plain to me it is about an ideology, and the fanboys are ideologues I often refer to as “Ayn Rand in Space libertarian whackjobs.” It is anti-government, anti-taxation, and promotes the profit motive and “entrepreneurs” as the only way to expand humankind into space. In my view it is cult-like and bizarre to work against national space programs so viciously in the interest of promoting a private company. I do believe it is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Those fanboys that comment here, most of which I now have blocked, are well aware of my worldview and downvote me regularly.

“In general LOX\Kerosene and LOX\Methane give more thrust than hydrogen.“

Yeah….rocket science is not “in general.” Hydrogen has more energy per kilo.
You are wrong.

“Also in terms of ISRU making Oxygen is what gives the most bang for the buck not hydrogen and there are ways to make Oxygen out of lunar soil-“

And in terms of ISRU it is ICE that is, by far, by ANY MEASURE, the most useful resource.

You are wrong again!

If you are going to insert yourself into a conversation with this obviously fanboy-biased stuff, do it with someone else please.

As for the Atlas/Delta comparison, using the charts on the wiki pages, for 155,000 more pounds of lift-off thrust the Atlas lifts 210 more kilos (463 more pounds) to GTO.

Atlas
4,750 kg to GTO Maximum thrust (860,000 lbf) (sea level)
Specific impulse
311.3 s (3.053 km/s) (sea level)
337.8 s (3.313 km/s) (vacuum)

Delta
4,540 kg to GTO Maximum thrust (705,000 lbf) (sea level)
Specific impulse Sea level: 360 s (3.5 km/s)
Vacuum: 412 s (4.04 km/s)

The second stage of the Saturn V was actually of much lighter construction than the third stage which is contrary to what you stated, even though what you stated does make sense. If you have never read the story of the second stage it is epic. As for the Delta vs Atlas, I used to know some stats on those birds about 10 years ago but can’t recall much- and I don’t feel like studying up. If I am recalling correctly though, the Delta lifts more than the Atlas. It is just more expensive due to the engine (mostly). That is not what you are inferring if I am reading you correctly.

I do recall that hydrogen was thrice-damned by a certain fan club because their company of choice did not use it. I remember that vividly and the less-tankage-is-better-than-more-Isp argument rages on to this day it seems. The reality is that thrust being equal, a 450 Isp engine Lander is going to land and lift a lot more than a 350 Isp Lander…no matter what. Methane is interesting in that it is right between kerosene and hydrogen. Higher Isp than Kerosene but much less dense- like hydrogen. The worst of both worlds, but also the best for now because it is easier to store than hydrogen. While Hydrogen Peroxide is not nearly as toxic as NTO, it is still far more nasty than LOX.

In my view it all depends on cryo-cooler technology making hydrogen practical. If cryo-coolers can be made to work efficiently then ice on the Moon makes hydrogen the way to go. If a way to brew methane out of lunar resources can be found then that is plan B.

“Nothing like Apollo LM would ever be approved today,-“

It would absolutely be approved today. The design was nearly perfect if you want to put two people on the surface of the Moon from lunar orbit and then bring them back up. The pressure-fed hypergolic ablative thrust chamber engines, one variable and the other one not variable and even simpler for abort or ascent, were and are as good as it gets even now, over half a century later. What really surprises me is they have not simply taken that design and reproduced it with better materials. That is essentially what SpaceX did with the Falcon 9, which closely follows the design of the original Saturn 1B. Unfortunately SpaceX did not follow it closely enough and use an escape tower.

Hydrogen has the most energy- the highest Isp’s, well over 400. Because it requires more tankage this works against it in some ways but for upper stages it cannot be beat because of that number. Despite being extremely difficult to store and other problems- it is what took America to the Moon and von Braun, though initially being against hydrogen, eventually admitted the two hydrogen upper stages were the main reason Apollo succeeded.

Another reason hydrogen is desirable is the expander cycle rocket engine- the RL10 with an Isp of 460 seconds (!) which is a fairly simple engine and thus very reliable is the prime example. Hydrogen is so troublesome to maintain if these highest Isp numbers were not important then it would not be used. It is as simple as that. The ice on the Moon makes hydrogen desirable because propellants can be made from that ice. The trick is keeping it from boiling off. A high-powered efficient cryo-cooler would make all things possible in cislunar space by way of the lunar ice. But I have yet to see or hear anything about that hardware yet.

“Hydrogen is especially suited for heavy duty transport applications in buses, trucks, trains, ships, aircraft, and applications in stationary power.”

Only the last two really…ammonia works better in piston engines and ships with the caveat that nitrous oxide is filtered out of the exhaust. Ammonia transports far more easily that hydrogen. But you can’t filter jet exhaust so for commercial jets it is the go-to in the future.

I like the Stratolaunch as a candidate to use liquid hydrogen, carrying it in the two fuselages. A passenger pod equipped to detach and safely land with parachutes would make it a revolutionary commercial passenger jet.

“-for both a sustainable human presence on the moon and also future human missions to Mars,-“

Whenever Mars is mentioned it is a flag that what is being discussed is total B.S.

A “sustainable human presence on the moon” first of all requires a radiation sanctuary of some kind. I have seen nothing about that anywhere. Nothing.

There are three ways to do it in my opinion:
1. Find a lava tube we can move into, which would be great, but there are zero missions I know of to find one.
2. Have a plan to erect some kind of structure over a small crater and then an excavator to pile regolith on top.
3. Use robot landers to take ice-derived water up to lunar orbit to fill a wet workshop or workshops with water for radiation shields.

I would suggest work on flying around the Moon with people on a very limited number of missions to perfect that, while landing robots on ice deposits to perfect ISRU, and place some workshops in lunar orbit. And while we are doing that we can look for lava tubes AND perhaps do some robot construction on the surface.

Landing humans on the Moon just for bootprints is nothing more than a repeat of Apollo and will accomplish very little. Some kind of permanent presence is the goal, either in lunar orbit, in a crater, or in a lava tube.

“The budget proposal includes $822 million for Mars Sample Return-“

“The proposal includes $224 million for development of commercial space stations-“

Over a billion dollars, and add another 3 billion for the space station to nowhere.

4 billion dollars that is not pointed at a lunar return.

“President Joe Biden’s administration is announcing billions in new funding for climate, clean energy and environmental justice programs as part of the President’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2023.
Several environmental and science agencies would see significant funding boosts if Congress approves Biden’s budget proposal, shared first with CNN.
The US Department of Energy would receive $48.2 billion, the Environmental Protection Agency would receive $11.9 billion and the US Department of Interior would get $17.6 billion — all significant funding increases from the Trump-era funding levels each agency started with when Biden came into office.”

Take just one third of that funding, about 25 billion, and double NASA’s budget with that entire 25 billion dedicated to the establishment of a cislunar infrastructure enabling Space Solar Power as the solution to climate change.
Just for starters.

The abort system is a bad design anyway. I was wondering if they were just going to modify the toxic dragon and mount it in the Starship in some way so it would have some kind of escape system.

There is simply no way Starship is going to be human-rated without something like that.

Some version of it was also a far more likely lunar lander than the 14 story office building.

The best course would have been to strip out the hypergolics and add an escape tower. With a human-rated FH and a high energy upper stage it could probably go around the Moon.
But Elon don’t like hydrogen so…

Starship as a second stage, with the “Super Heavy” as two shorter boosters mounted on either side, with a third stage stacked on top of Starships nose- would be the best configuration. No need for any escape system if the Starship is all propellent. But this was not to be. Too bad.

Kind of sad when one considers a third stage carrying a pair of Dragons- one with an escape tower and the other modified as a lunar lander. A far more practical scheme than what is being pursued. Again…too bad.

Elon has his own vision and the Moon was never a part of it. The whole Moon thing is something they want to suck up NASA dollars with while they build Starlink. Only Starlink really matters because Elon is gambling, and it is a gamble he will likely lose, that he can take over planet Earth’s internet and pocket all that money humankind now spends on terrestrial broadband.

Classic Enron gambling….like a drunk sailor in an indian casino that thinks he will own the place by the end of the evening.

Walmart…why are the shelves not filled with products made by American companies with 200 employees each- if all our companies went to automation?

What you are doing is lying in that way the Neoliberals have perfected over the course of a century of “explaining” their system of making money the god of this world and ignoring human beings. The American worker has been screwed over by corporations who are un-American psychopathic entities actually having personhood status under the law- which was corruptly voted into existence by Neoliberals. The ones and zeros have been gambled and used to avoid taxes to the extent that cheap labor and financial instruments have made America mostly a “money market” which is to say, not a market at all, but a swindle. Most of what industry we do have is either based on defense or used as a way to launder the rest. The service industry pays barely enough for people to survive on, which is wage slavery. The few legitimate industries are held up as a distractor. Wealth inequality is astronomically high and taxes on the rich are incredibly low. Exactly what Neoliberalism is about. Exactly what you are about. It is a game that consists mainly of telling stories with made-up numbers that justify the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The big hammer I have been repeatedly hit over the head with is…people have never been better off, what are you complaining about? My last job I was working 13 hour shifts, mandatory overtime, and could not take time off without months of notice in advance, and barely keeping up with my bills – and that is America for 8 out of 10 of us. A rapidly shrinking middle class will bump that up to 9 out of 10 soon enough. Now…you can come up with some more propaganda to argue against everything I just wrote. There are libraries of it to draw from. Right wing think tanks. In the end it is really about one package deal: Evading taxes and regulation and ending all entitlements except for the wealthy.

What any one person has seen “directly” is like saying I know the world is flat- I have seen this directly. And yes, there are people who believe the world is flat. Are they lying?

See how that works? The key word in our discussion is JOBS. The word being used deceitfully is PRODUCTION. If automation has made everything so wonderful then why are people working such horrendous hours for so little money? Jobs and production are terms completely predicated on quality of life. That some are demi-gods sailing the oceans on yachts or flying across oceans on their private jets while most of the human race is thousands of times below that standard, as if we are billions of bugs compared to a few magnificent pachyderms gracing us with their droppings…is what I have personally seen directly and that is not voodoo.

Neoliberalism.

“Horse buggy being displaced by cars is creative destruction.”

Creative destruction in the Neoliberal sense is not automation, it is predation. Neoliberalism does not distinguish between the two, it only recognizes profits generated by commodities. That is their religion and human beings are way down the list of anything that has meaning. Keynesian economics, which you mentioned, is the sworn enemy of Neoliberalism because it places welfare of human beings first. That is blasphemy to a purely market driven system which holds as dogma that “The Market” is the only generator of anything good and all else is evil.

Now that is the truth. What to do is what The New Deal did; tax billionaires and corporate shareholder profits at over 90 percent and sink that money into infrastructure and social safety nets, not megayachts and offshore accounts. The Reagan Revolution ended the New Deal. The confusion is that most democrats now are really on the right and even call themselves “capitalists.”
Progressives are a minority. Only fear of the guillotine makes them notable.

Fusion is essentially putting a star inside a box and is not likely to be practical. Really…it is just not going to work well enough to use it for commercial power. If fission is not really economical compared to renewable energy then fusion is a non-starter. It is one of a list of projects that vested interests have made fortunes off of by promoting it. Missile defense being another one that was never going to work due to physics yet still absorbs mountains of money. We see the same basic mechanism with Nuclear Thermal Rockets which try to contain energies that melt all matter like butter. But there seems to be plenty of money to be made promoting it instead of the politically problematic and far superior Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. I do not know a lot about OTEC except that the environmental consequences would most likely be catastrophic. Changing the temperature of the ocean is sure to bring unforeseen negative consequences. We are presently dealing with an impending catastrophe due to heating up the atmosphere and doing essentially the same to the ocean….does not get my vote.

A relatively narrow beam of microwave radiation, that does not appreciably warm the atmosphere, hitting an antennae field, out of all the ways to generate tremendous amounts of electrical energy, since it comes down from space, appears to be the least harmful. I will absolutely admit there is the possibility it may have an unforeseen effect on the atmosphere. But considering how much cosmic radiation and other types of energy bombard the Earth this is unlikely to be a show-stopper. Unlikely, but not impossible.

As for a single-point being a weakness, Wind turbines and solar panels are back-ups, and my own favorite, which has trouble right now competing with solar panels due to start-up costs, is solar thermal with molten salt energy storage. Green Ammonia, which runs internal combustions systems amenable to filtering out nitrous oxide (like piston engines) is a way to store and transport energy like we do with fossil fuels right now- without generating any greenhouse gases. But it does not work on things like jet engines or rockets due to not being able to keep the exhaust clean.

The original comment was deleted so some of the verbage has changed- to be less offensive to the Musk Cult- and reposted:

I don’t know how spending money on LEO stations can be justified, especially if they are going to be “commercial” since there is no ROI for anything but government research. It has always been a sad fact that the Space Shuttles, with solar panels and life support pallets, could stay up as long as needed. Entire lab modules could be swapped from one shuttle to another if necessary. The ISS was never anything but a huge waste of time and resources and should be deorbited as soon as practical. The supposed 100 ton payload of the shiny would make it better than any inflatable LEO crewed platform.

The Moon is the place to establish a permanent human presence. A “true” space station, with a massive cosmic ray shield using water derived from lunar ice and tether generated artificial gravity is the next step. Even if it takes several years to fill up “Fat Workshops” using robot landers, having these shielded habitats available will allow astronauts to go on year long deployments without career-ending dosing or debilitation. In fact, if they experienced no radiation mishaps, with Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G) crew compartments they might be able to spend a full 20 years of regular space deployments without reaching a lifetime dose or unacceptable bone/muscle loss and debilitation.

The logical progression is robot lunar landers filling up these upper stage wet workshops in Frozen Low Lunar Orbit (FLLO) with lunar water and only when they have full shields sending human missions.=======================================

That “national commitment to solar power” is of course the key. That is the “product.” That is what is going to expand humankind into the solar system and beyond. There is really nothing else except some vague snake oil pitch to make humans a “multi-planet species.” Except, Earth is the only planet suitable for colonization. We will have to manufacture artificial worlds to colonize space. Only Climate Change makes Space, by way of Space Solar Power, an urgent project.

I should have specified: LEO is a dead end for Human Space Flight. Comparing LEO as a duck pond and Deep Space as the North Atlantic is appropriate. I see our present situation as trying to negotiate an ocean with a canoe. We have not even figured out how to make a kayak yet really. What is required to travel in space, even across the small local cislunar sea to the Moon, is a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G). The lunar resource of intrinsic value is water derived from ice that can be lifted into space to fill cosmic ray water shields using 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth.

“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time. That it would cause asphyxiation of society because the truth is, most people don’t change their mind,” Musk said. “They just die. So, if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas and society wouldn’t advance.”

Elon is getting more and more bizarre and likely will not be running spacex much longer. Someone that keeps adding to a lengthy list of really messed up statements is not going to last.

Anyone can see the gears turning in this kind of mind….useless eaters needing to be eliminated is not far away. Of course, what is most disturbing of all is the fan club. So much like Trumpists.

I joined the Army in 1980 and at that time there were over 60,000 nuclear warheads ready to incinerate the Soviet Union and the United States. Anti-nuclear activist Carl Sagan, now only remembered for the tv series Cosmos, testified before congress that nuclear war would fill the atmosphere with so much smoke and particulates that a “nuclear winter” would ensue and most of the human race would die of starvation. Of all the historical events I have witnessed in my life, the most memorable was the night of 27 September, 1991. I had left the Army years before and joined the Coast Guard and had duty that night and went up to the command center to check on the progress of a SAR case. Bush was on TV informing the public he was taking the B-52’s off alert. And we all knew this meant that the cold war, that millions of us thought civilization would not survive, was over. I tell people this affected me more than 911 and they don’t understand. They did not live that decade in the military waiting for the end of the world like I did. And now…I am worried again. There are still more than enough missiles ready to burn down civilization. At the push of a button.

The world we live in is fragile. Billions of people will die of starvation if the global transportation infrastructure is disrupted. Very few realize how easily that could happen.

“Initially, NASA considered adding a second EDO pallet to Endeavour, placed in front of the first, for a total of thirteen tank sets, that would have allowed an orbiter to remain in space for 28 days, but managers decided against it when the International Space Station assembly began, and instead removed the EDO capability from the orbiter, to reduce its weight and allow it to carry more cargo to the ISS.[1][5]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

That never-completely-filled cargo bay of dreams had room and payload for more pallets. And another orbiter could bring more pallets up, or a laboratory module could be swapped over to the other cargo bay with the arm. Solar panels would have extended endurance even longer, probably to about 4 months with added pallets and enough room for science experiments. Like I said. Not what you said.

As for lifting water into orbit- for every ton of water that can be lifted into space from Earth, 20 to 25 tons can be lifted from the Moon into space for the same energy. No “mine” required; the ice is just below the surface, with evidence indicating sheets and quantities of millions of tons.

The comments on several forums are being censored and disappearing. It was a good run but it appears to be over. The SpaceX fan club has hijacked it all.

A few are still going up but that is likely to end. They will continue to be posted here as they appear but may not stay on the original forums for very long:

Hope it was worth it to him. He has significantly raised his risk of cancer and permanently damaged his body with this mission.

Until a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G) is established as a requirement for space stations, Lunar Cyclers, and Spaceships, Human Space Flight Beyond Low Earth Orbit (HSF-BLEO) is going nowhere.

The path to meeting that requirement are “Fat Workshops” placed in lunar orbit and robot landers filling them with lunar-ice-derived water. When these shielded habitats are ready then Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO) can begin with a permanent human presence in cislunar space.

A very interesting design but not for any space launch applications. As a commercial passenger carrier with a passenger pod designed to separate from the carrier aircraft in the event of allow the passengers to survive…..I think this is technology the Stratolaunch aircraft should be testing, Along with that, I would say using liquid hydrogen is also a technology that should be tested. The volume in the two fuselages might be enough LH2 storage to give it sufficient range. An end to airline disasters would be a worthy goal.

I don’t know how spending money on LEO stations can be justified, especially if they are going to be “commercial” since there is no ROI with these money holes. It has always been a sad fact that the Space Shuttles, with extra life support pallets, could stay up as long as needed. Entire lab modules could be swapped from one shuttle to another if necessary. The ISS was never anything but a huge waste of time and resources and should be deorbited as soon as practical.

The Moon is the place to establish a permanent human presence. A “true” space station, with a massive cosmic ray shield using water derived from lunar ice and tether generated artificial gravity is the next step. Even if it takes several years to fill up “Fat Workshops” using robot landers, having these shielded habitats avialable will allow astronauts to go on year long deployments without career-ending dosing or debilitation.

The logical progression is robot lunar landers filling up these upper stage wet workshops in Frozen Low Lunar Orbit (FLLO) with lunar water and only when they have full shields sending human missions.

Not great news for those of us who want the space station to nowhere to end so those resources can be focused on a lunar return.

I expect the possibility of a Super Heavy detonating is just too much for anyone to sign off on. I doubt anyone in the FAA will risk being blamed for the equivalent of a nuclear weapon going off in Boca Chica.

I expect the possibility of a Super Heavy detonating is just too much for anyone to sign off on. I doubt anyone in the FAA will risk being blamed for the equivalent of a nuclear weapon going off in Boca Chica.

The time to avoid “the menace of space debris” was when megaconstellations were first proposed. When the people with oversight responsibility failed to stop tens of thousands of pieces of space junk from going up a disaster was inevitable.

The only possible reason to accept the risk of a megaconstellation would be to solve the biggest challenge facing human civilization; climate change. Space Solar Power is the only appropriate role of a megaconstellation. Low latency for gamers has to be the worst possible reason to allow this menace to civilization.

“-to explore the Moon and Mars, address climate change,-“

Well, two out of three ain’t bad…Mars, like LEO, is a dead end.

The Moon should be the focus of the space agency, as a way to solve climate change by using lunar resources to enable space solar power. A significant percentage of the DOD budget, at least 10 percent (70 billion dollars) should be directed at a program of monthly launches of 150 ton+ payload SHLV’s. The primary goal of the space agency should be to industrialize the Moon and accomplish energy delivery to Earth allowing a western standard of living for 10 billion by the end of the century.

The 100 billion minimum budget should be matched by international contributions and another 50 billion by industry. In fact, by making industrial concerns aware of future restrictions on the use of fossil fuel energy, they will likely, with very little enticement, contribute more than that. With a quarter of a trillion dollar annual budget, just for starters, the solution to climate change will finally be “addressed.”

The new Military Industrial Complex swindle….proliferation of a satellite cold war. Much like the cold war that peaked in the 80’s, and made me and millions of others fairly certain civilization was about to end, instead of 64,000 nuclear weapons (1986) we will have over 90,000 satellites in megaconstellations within ten years. They are not nuclear weapons but, unfortunately, they vastly increase the risk of a nuclear exchange with the present stockpile, which is more than sufficient to incinerate every large city on Earth and precipitate a nuclear winter and death by starvation of the majority of the world’s population.

Way too many engines. Poor design. They would do better to try and build fewer and larger engines. The chopstick recovery is also something they should never have entertained. The whole multiple small engine philosophy is a farce. It is simply trying to go cheap by not building bigger engines. Much of what SpaceX has accomplished has been over-hyped and the Starship is likely the hubris that will undo them. Not optimistic.

Perhaps signing off on a vehicle that may explode with the power of a nuclear weapon made by a company that actually believes in blowing up test articles is a little too much for anyone with oversight to take responsibility for.

Separating the vehicle into two boosters and the orbiter, with fewer larger engines, might have allowed it to be possibly launched from an offshore platform. Elon might want to rethink the chopsticks also.
Not optimistic. In fact…skeptical.

I would suggest this company look into the Medusa concept using nuclear devices to push a “spinnaker” equipped spaceship. What is needed is a low mass device several thousand feet in diameter that can withstand the plasma pulse generated by a directed energy device of the kind researched by the Strategic Defense Initiative program of the Reagan Years. There is perhaps a “sweet spot” in the physics that will allow such a sail to efficiently utilize the energies and enable human missions to the outer solar system. Testing such designs in scaled down form in space may be the niche this company is looking for. The more compact the sail can be folded and stored, and sections of it joined together, would all make such a system more practical and perhaps make Gama a revolutionary and history making company.

Nuclear Thermal is a dead end.
For a reaction a million times more powerful than chemicals a little more than double the Isp.
For great expense the result is not proportional and a tremendous waste of resources.

Stan Ulam, one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, realized that it was hard enough keeping a chemical rocket from melting and trying to contain nuclear energy was pointless. He thought outside that box and developed the concept of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, and he considered it his greatest work.
Nuclear Pulse has always been the only viable path to Interplanetary Travel, and will be for a long time to come:

It is no use discussing this with fanboys because they have been programmed to mock and denigrate the concept of Nuclear Pulse. Entrepreneurs will never be allowed possession of nuclear pulse devices- only governments will have control and that is blasphemy to the NewSpace Cult.

Unfortunately, the originally specified pressure-fed ocean-recovered boosters were and are the key to a Super Heavy Lift Vehicle program. Being pressure-fed they would be tough enough to land in the ocean with parachutes and could take a great deal of abuse. Likely built like nuclear submarines pressure hulls. But that did not happen and nobody is looking at it now. As a second stage the Starship might work well. But there is a practical limit to how tall it can be and adding a third stage to it’s present configuration is not going to work.

It is just not good any way you look at it.

“-programmed to mock and denigrate the concept of Nuclear Pulse-“

NSWR instantly became the worst nuclear propulsion design ever proposed. Where almost nothing can go wrong with Pulse, the NSWR is dangerous and unworkable in every way.
Only Bob Zubrin could make the case for blowing up a spaceship with it.
The NSWR makes almost as little sense as going to Mars.

Nuclear Pulse is mocked and denigrated by NewSpace for several reasons, the main one being it is not and cannot be a SpaceX product. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion “evokes” admiration for the scientific genius of people like Stanislaw Ulam, Freeman Dyson, Wernher von Braun, Arthur C. Clarke, and even anti-nuclear activist Carl Sagan, ALL of whom either helped develop or endorsed Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

Sarcasm and nonsense verbage, troll-smile emoticon juvenile garbage; this is what scientifically ignorant fanboys do. And do so well.

Nuclear Pulse is mocked and denigrated by NewSpace for several reasons, the main one being it is not a SpaceX product. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion “evokes” admiration for the scientific genius of people like Stanislaw Ulam, Freeman Dyson, Wernher von Braun, Arthur C. Clarke, and even anti-nuclear activist Carl Sagan, ALL of whom either helped develop or endorsed Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

Sarcasm and nonsense verbage, troll-smile emoticon juvenile garbage; this is what scientifically ignorant fanboys do. And do so well.

Perhaps this is a foot-in-the-door for this company because they know Nuclear Thermal is a very inefficient way to use nuclear energy for space propulsion. The name of the company might be a hint they have other things in mind. Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars is the key to super-efficient nuclear space propulsion:
https://iceonthemoon.org/th…

https://sgp.fas.org/othergo…

Yes….it does not look to be practical at all. Confining that kind of a continuous nuclear reaction is a huge challenge and the penalty for failure is over-the-top horrible any way you look at it. Nuclear Thermal has to be kept down to such low temperatures that the Isp is super low for such a large investment. The saltwater rocket is an order of magnitude more difficult to make work than Nuclear Thermal and will likely cost an order of magnitude more but is simply too hazardous to be practical. Formulating the saltwater “fuel”, let alone making the actual engine work, is a nightmare.
Non-starter.

Nuclear Pulse, on the other hand, has always been the gold standard and go-to as being almost guaranteed to succeed. And really, with the trillions spent on this technology, and over a thousand actual tests, it is as close to guaranteed as it gets.

A sufficiently gargantuan Space Solar Energy infrastructure can beam-propel a world-ship out of our solar system at some percentage of the speed of light. And that ship can slow down when it reaches it’s destination star centuries in the future by using H-bombs. So we can actually possibly build starships now with present technology. Have to turn the Moon into a mega-factory first of course. The real trick is freezing people, which would make a world-ship much smaller and far more practical. Freezing people without damage is actually not that big of a technical challenge. Though massively shielded, just the particles already present in cells would necessitate reviving passengers every so many years for a few months for cellular self-repair. So for a voyage of several centuries the passenger might age a few years.

A new Earth is not really required for humans to expand into the galaxy. A sufficiently resource rich asteroid belt/Kuiper belt would allow humans to construct artificial hollow spinning moons and support populations in the tens of billions.

Not really open to that “possibility.” There is just too much hype following SpaceX claims. An unbiased look at what they have accomplished reveals they have not worked any miracles. Elon’s people have done some good work that the great one takes credit for but much of what they are doing now is bound to fail…and fail badly. The shiny is essentially a stainless Shuttle external tank with some fins, heat tiles, and some engines. A computer program lets it land vertically.

It uses a booster with far too many engines and sacrifices a huge amount of lift to bring all that structure back. No escape system. And the list goes on.

I have to believe that at some point in the near future climate change is going to become the big issue for the human race. It will also become clear that it will be necessary to provide a western standard of living for a population of close to 10 billion. And the third step will be the determination that there is only one possible solution: Space Solar Power by way of Lunar Resources. When this happens, everything will suddenly be about Super Heavy Lift Vehicles sending payloads to the Moon. And we only have one. As for the other one, I also foresee Starlink failing which means Starship is not going to be around.

The boosters will be replaced with more powerful liquid reusables. The RS-25’s will be mounted on a module with a heat shield and be recovered for reuse. And since it will likely double its flight rate every couple years, that will drive costs down.

“A plant that employed 20,000 workers making auto glass, would employ barely 200 today. Thus, our economy rolled jobs over into services.”

Nice story but it does not explain why we do not have those factories with 200 people in them.
It is because those factories are not in America. Because, as I said, those companies chose profit over the American worker.

Your statement that “American manufacturing never shrank” is absurd except in a very limited and cherry-picked misleading sense. Exactly how Neoliberals con the population into making themselves poorer and the rich ever more fantastically and obscenely wealthy.

Directions change. As a matter of record, directions change to places like the Moon when such a destination was verboten for many years. Shouted from the highest rooftops that NewSpace was going to make Mars the second home of humankind with tourists, the F9, and depots.

And here we are…going to the Moon with a big rocket and government employees. It is not a shame at all. What is sad is the toxic ideology working directly against humankind expanding into the solar system and the deluded legion of fanboys actually cheering on the end of Human Space Flight while believing they are doing the opposite.

LEO stopped being space in 1968 when Apollo 8 “moved the goal posts” and flew around the Moon. LEO, like Mars, is a dead end. The cislunar ocean is the next step and bizarre space tourist “missions” like Polaris are simply obscene spending displays resulting in faux astronaut wings.

“-core stage production is impossible to ramp up-“

“-wouldn’t get production rate to any point close to that required to reduce the unit cost.”

“-not that there’s going to be any money forthcoming to do that-“

“Starship is already past the point where it can fail in comparison to SLS.”

“-SLS-Orion dead-enders may perhaps cause the SLS to be flown – briefly, one hopes-“

The shiny is being built to place tens of thousands of satellites into LEO and if that megaconstellation fails, which seems likely since there are not enough customers to support it, then there will be no shiny Starship. Just like there are no Shuttles anymore.

The SLS was specifically designed to go to the Moon without a fleet of Super Heavy Lift Tanker missions enabling it. All by itself. We had better make it work.

For finished goods like….all the stuff in Walmart? The Military Industrial Complex makes a tremendous profit for shareholders. The benefit to society in terms of “goods” is almost nil.

This cherry-picking and spinning of factoids are all well-known tricks that obfuscate, misdirect, mislead, and misinform. The truth is in wealth inequality, the debt Americans hold, medical bankruptcy, school loan debt, etc.

“For less than one SLS/Orion mission NASA will get the full development and two flights from lunar starship.”

“Will get” is not now. The battle cry of “cost plus” and the endless disparaging descriptors do not remove the SLS from the launch pad….now.

The fanboys screaming death-to-SLS are a happy fact to the many who want no NASA and no Human Space Flight. That makes the NewSpace movement, in effect, anti-space, because no “private enterprise” is going to pay for something with no ROI. I will keep saying this.

If someone is working for an organization and is opposed to the flagship program he or she is being paid to support and even spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing it anonymously on internet forums, ethical issues are definitely a problem. In the military we would occasionally have someone that, for whatever reason, did not want operations to go well and would sometimes actually make sure they did not go well. They usually ended up discharged. I can’t stand that kind of duplicity. It makes me sick to my stomach…especially when it involves national prestige and our future in space. I have on several occasions interacted with self-identified NASA employees on forums who were essentially double agents for a certain company. It is a feature of NewSpace ideology which is Neoliberal in nature and without any moral compass or integrity.

I will say this…. whether the many here commenting are NASA-bashing out of “patriotism” or in the interest of promoting a private company or are just projecting their anti-tax/anti-government worldview onto space exploration and actually want state-sponsored Human Space Flight to end, the result WILL be the end of Human Space Flight if their intentions are realized.
I don’t want that.

Those who believe space tourism or asteroid mining or retirement condos on Mars are going to expand humankind into the solar system are living in a fantasy world. That SLS is no fantasy.