Ice on the Moon

Unfortunately the spacex fanboys are a malicious gang of thugs and will not “be respectful.” Coastal Ron, the Godfather of them all, years ago actually threatened a blog run by a Lunar Geologist on Air and Space magazine with legal action because they were criticizing spacex. They shut the comments section on the blog down. Truth. If you go to America Space or Spaceflight Insider you will find little or no commenting because those running those sites long ago began serial deleting all comments due to spacex fans trolling anyone with a bad word to say about the NewSpace flagship company and founder. The remaining popular blogs are mostly spacex infomercials whose forum moderators instantly ban any non-believers.

It is a Cult.

They have hijacked all public discourse about space over the last ten years, trashing NASA as “pork” and demonizing anything not spacex. They are a pernicious corrosive anti-space entity posing as space enthusiasts but essentially promoting a company as their extreme libertarian ideal. Toxic is the best word to describe them.

The gift that has been pouring tax dollars into corporate pockets since 1984- Reagan’s Star Wars.

The most profitable scam in DOD history. Missile defense that will never work as advertised.

It is fascinating to me because several of the projects inspired by the original Casaba Howitzer research in the 1960’s such as Excalibur resulted in mountains of data applicable to Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

Pulse is the only propulsion system in sight that can enable Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). The recent talk of millions directed at Nuclear Thermal Rockets (NTR’s) is sad proof that only those companies with insiders in Aerospace will get funded and those dollars will ultimately go to waste. NTRs are a complete dead end.

Meanwhile…vast sums continue to be squandered on missile defense that does not work and the weaponization of Earth orbit with smallsat constellations. The public does not have a clue.

Propaganda. The USSR was going to crash no matter what- because of greed and corruption and very little to do with Star Wars. Their present Oligarchy reflects exactly that. Reaganomics has largely destroyed the middle class in the U.S. and made us more like the USSR. In my view, obviously informed by different sources, your comment borders on Orwellian.

As was noted in another thread, 4 billion a year for the space station to nowhere so it can “test” hardware.

An incredible waste. Time to move on to the NRHO, HALO, frozen Low Lunar Orbits (LLO), and other places. LEO is a dead end.

Funny how this company is pursuing “outposts.”
I guess that is the newspace-correct term for Wet Workshops.

BLEO platforms would hover 22,236 miles above the equator and see all of the western hemisphere. For long duration human missions without permanent damage to crew from dosing they would require a massive cosmic ray water shield. This is the “Parker Minimum” of around one kiloton (to provide a small crew enough room for psychological health). They would also require an equal mass at the end of a several thousand foot tether system to provide 1G of artificial gravity to eliminate debilitation. This would allow long deployments for even young female service members (most vulnerable) without incurring significant dosing or any debilitation.

If the SpaceX Starship can make it up to GEO with a useful payload this might be it’s niche. However long it takes to enter service, and it could be longer than it took the FH, it would take several years to get the SLS Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLV’s) carrying “Fat Wet Workshops” into Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) to load the water for the cosmic ray shield and then transit back to GEO (requiring 20 to 25 times less energy than lifting water from Earth).

I would suggest the ultimate goal of a Space Corps (rebranding is necessary due to Trump) be to relocate the nuclear arsenal to months away in deep space.

This would accomplish several things:
1. The half-a-century impossible dream of no nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert on Earth realized.

2. Restoring deterrence as ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers are all now vulnerable to a first-strike.
Submarines were the last leg of the triad standing but sea glider drone tech is now ending that.

3. Protect Earth from impact threats with these superpower fleets of “space boomers” also capable of deflecting asteroids and comets with nuclear weapons.

4. Enabling voyages of exploration to the outer solar system with guest scientists on board, as has been done with Submarines on cruises under the Arctic ice-cap.

5. Establish a Cislunar industrial infrastructure with ice-derived cosmic-ray water shielding being lifted to crew compartments for spaceships in frozen Low Lunar Orbit (LLO).

6. Establish a construction pipeline for GEO space stations, Lunar Cyclers, and spaceships.

7. Establish a “Nuclear Moon” program to assemble, test, and launch Nuclear Pulse Propulsion equipped spaceships. Nuclear pulse eventually lifting immense masses off the surface of the Moon in support of a Green New Space Deal that will solve the Climate Change crisis with Space Solar Power satellites.

The gift that has been pouring tax dollars into corporate pockets since 1984- Reagan’s Star Wars.

The most profitable scam in DOD history. Missile defense that will never work as advertised.

It is fascinating to me because several of the projects inspired by the original Casaba Howitzer research in the 1960’s such as Excalibur resulted in mountains of data applicable to Nuclear Pulse Propulsion.

Pulse is the only propulsion system in sight that can enable Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). The recent talk of millions directed at Nuclear Thermal Rockets (NTR’s) is sad proof that only those companies with insiders in Aerospace will get funded and those dollars will ultimately go to waste. NTRs are a complete dead end.

Meanwhile…vast sums continue to be squandered on missile defense that does not work and the weaponization of Earth orbit with smallsat constellations. The public does not have a clue.

This is the way it works with Human Space Flight Vlad, please pay attention:

There is NO PROFIT to be made in HSF. Not going to be for a long time. The SHLV’s required to effect a lunar return and establish a permanent human presence off-world are only going to come from a state-sponsored public works project.

As with the first space age (with the goal of landing humans on the Moon) the government space agency will determine how a permanent presence is to be accomplished and then contract with aerospace concerns for the appropriate hardware.

Read it…understand it….and then consider the quasi-marketing B.S. Cult of personality and toxic cocktail of Neoliberal and Libertarian ideologies being endlessly cycled through this forum.

My breath to waste, thanks for your concern though 😦

“Commercial space” proponents are the ones trolling me, in case you haven’t noticed. These automatic disgusting relentless insults and denigration are way beyond anything I deserve.

The problem, as I have stated, is the feedback loop of foul-mouthed bullies feeding off each other year after year until they believe anything they want. Much like our government over the last four years.

I don’t have a problem. I am simply expressing my views on a public forum.

The fanboys here are absolutely and indisputably cult-like and allow no criticism of their belief system. I am critical of the whole NewSpace ideology, sincerely believe it is hurting and not helping, and this is a forum about space…and I will express my views. I should not be harassed.
It is wrong.

Like I told Ron before I blocked him:
You can preach on this street corner all you want, but you don’t own the street.

“This is a hypersonics first deal, then GBSD, then space.”

The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile program is the replacement for the Minuteman ICBM, by the way. This is about cold war toys, not about space. It is not surprising the Musk Fans have such animus for LockMart.

The hatred for any company other than the favorite here is over-the-top in the comments section of the other article concerning this story.

The Cult surrounding the NewSpace flagship company and founder allows no criticism of their ideology on this forum….it is completely toxic to any free speech or differing views.

It is a classic feature of all Cults that an enemy upon which to focus the negative energy of the very flawed and unsuccessful membership is required. “OldSpace” and NASA as part of that demonized entity are unceasingly trashed and denigrated. And anyone who is not playing their part is ruthlessly trolled by SUPER-TROLLS like se jones and his various accounts.

This is why NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. The unrealized profoundly pernicious effect of a decade of unrelenting propaganda and corrosive trolling on forums. It has likely sabotaged any collective efforts to direct America back into space in a meaningful way.

The worst bunch on the internet and working directly against any progress in space. No doubt about that.
The Cult of Musk, like The Cult of Trump, needs to end.

The RL-10 and IVF (Integrated Vehicle Fluids) technology is the only thing I have seen available that would work for a Hydrogen Oxygen Lunar Lander in the near future. I presume it is fairly developed since it uses a piston engine and has been in the works for several years.

“At the heart of the patented IVF design is a small 6 cylinder internal combustion engine, that aspirates GH2, with O2 injection, that is joined with starter/generator, small batteries, a coolant loop, and a compressor with many similarities to a hybrid car engine.”

IVF replaces the conventional RCS system and several others.

“In the early 2000s, NASA contracted with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to develop the Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) demonstrator. CECE was intended to lead to RL10 engines capable of deep throttling.[14] In 2007, its operability (with some “chugging”) was demonstrated at 11:1 throttle ratios.[15] In 2009, NASA reported successfully throttling from 104 percent thrust to eight percent thrust, a record for an expander cycle engine of this type. Chugging was eliminated by injector and propellant feed system modifications that control the pressure, temperature and flow of propellants.[16] In 2010, the throttling range was expanded further to a 17.6:1 ratio, throttling from 104% to 5.9% power.[17]”

The IVF system and deep throttling RL-10’s seem to provide what is needed for a Lander, where other designs will face boil-off problems and also still need hypergolics.

“-I’m not talking about the more recent SJW/identity political movement.”

Why does it seem like you are? Damning NASA and the people “running these programs” is the NeoLiberal Kool-Aid millions of Americans have poured down their throats to varying degrees.

Got news for you….it was all bought and paid for by right-wing “think tanks” and the super-rich funding them who have been after one thing since The New Deal raised taxes on them to 91 percent (after their free market crashed due to greed and corruption, which they always do). That one thing they want is “freedom” and “liberty” and just to enlighten you those are code words for “NO TAXES.” They are almost there.

The key to your whole “take” on “Western Civilization.” You have been conned. The less than 1% that own most of the wealth on this planet want you stupid and living on almost nothing- and working 80 hours a week for them if they can get you to do it. If you actually are stupid enough.

Mars is a dead end. It is a tenet of the Musk Cult that making Mars the second home of humankind is the altruistic goal of the great one. Complete B.S.

Mars is the worst place to go and simply a P.R. tool- so the billionaire can keep conning people into supporting his hobby projects.

The Moon as a Space Solar Power satellite factory to solve climate change and a multi-trillion dollar Green New Space Deal is the only path to expanding humankind into the solar system. NewSpace is presently the biggest obstacle to any progress by promising much for little which will result in nothing. There is no cheap.

Well, the great hope is they start making an engine in the 2 million pound+ thrust range. This is the missing piece of the puzzle for Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO) missions.

The recent methane engines from those two NewSpace companies are one quarter the appropriate size needed to support Super Heavy Lift Vehicle programs.

LockMart-Aerojet-Rocketdyne can likely build what the billionaire hobbyists will not. Some idea of just how badly such an engine is needed; the 15 million pound thrust of the “Super Heavy” would require only 5 engines if each generated 3 million pounds of thrust. (The 5 segment SRB on the SLS generates 3.2 and a liquid fuel engine would be far more efficient of course).

Five would be better than the 28 engine cluster-mess.

Let me guess…you don’t think engines can throttle down or two different kinds of engines is an incredible waste and it is better to have 3 times as many.

Landing back the engines is not necessarily the best idea and unfortunately the Shuttle SRB’s tend to color peoples perception of ocean recovery. If the Shuttle boosters had been liquid fuel they would have been taken back to the launch site and “turned around.” With a few other design flaws eliminated the Space Transportation System would still be going strong today, at least in a cargo version. The big dumb booster concept is to essentially have a strong stage that can withstand parachuting into the ocean and multiple reuse and a pressure-fed, or partially pressure-fed booster lends itself to that. A pressure-fed will always be much tougher than a conventional stage. A pressure fed would require some type of water barrier instead of landing gear and parachutes instead of extra fuel for the landing burn. Instead of landing on a recovery ship and possibly blowing up it is lifted from the water with a frame.

For landing back the best solution, since asking a several million pound thrust engine to throttle down to only a few percent is difficult, is to use two different size engines. For the first stage I would guess four large ones and smaller central landing engine. For the second stage a single large one and four smaller ones for landing. Four and one lends itself to landing gear but it could be done with three and one.

Smaller rockets are moneymakers for satellite launch but make Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit much more difficult and Super Heavy Lift Vehicles are the way to go.

And those 2 to 3 million pound thrust engines are what are needed for SHLVs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

“Due to the engine’s potential advantage in specific impulse, if this F-1B configuration (using four F-1Bs in total) were integrated with the SLS Block 2, the vehicle could deliver 150 tonnes (330,000 lb) to low Earth orbit,[15]”

And…why not drop those two boosters in the ocean like the Shuttle SRB’s and recover for reuse? https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
“Recoverable Liquid Booster: A large focus of the NASA/MSFC Shuttle Growth Study contract was upgraded Recoverable Liquid Boosters. The boosters would have a similar flight path fo the solid rocket motors, separating and deploying a parachute for recovery in the Atlantic Ocean. They were to be water-recoverable and used clam shell doors to protect the engines from salt water immersion.” They could even try feeding LOX to the core like they entertained with the FH.

And if they are going to do that why not have an engine module land back with the 4 RS-25’s and reuse them also. “An in-line integrated booster/ET with a recoverable aft engine pod”

That iteration of the SLS would be what the Shuttle really should have been.

https://www.aiaa.org/docs/default-source/uploadedfiles/about-aiaa/history-and-heritage/shuttlevariationsfinalaiaa.pdf?sfvrsn=b8875e90_0

It is not fake news, not “fluff.” What the Musk Cult has been flooding the internet with for a decade is far worse than any so-called fluff. It needs to end. Even Putin congratulated Joe so that is over and this rabid fanboy excoriation of anything critical of Spacex has to stop. If it was occasional it would be one thing but it is automatic and endless and is cult members brainwashing each other in an endless loop. Just like Fox news has done to a certain segment of the public for a decade.

“I was happy to chat with them,” he said. “But I’m not going to speculate on what they may or may not do.”

Be great if Biden disbanded Space Force on the 21st and reformed it on the 22nd as the Space Corps. This would remove the taint of who signed them into existence. They really need to completely divorce their organization from the failed coup attempt.

And…they need a mission that puts their members in harms way if they want to enjoy the privileges and prestige of a military service. They risk nothing and get all of the benefits and that was the draft-dodger and chief spitting on the military he called suckers and losers.

Reply: Unfortunately it is connected by name and origin and that is easily remedied by simply turning it off and then back on with a new name and originator. See how that works?

And I have to add that “paying for itself multiple times over” is not what serving as a member of the Armed Forces of The United States of America is about. People might “fight hard over money” but that is not why we fight.

(Astra rocket) It’s utility for a terrorist or anyone to do massive mischief is close to 100%.

Minuteman does not put things in orbit. It is not only a missile, it is a launch vehicle capable of dropping a payload anywhere on Earth or use as a anti-satellite weapon- and should not be in the hands of these proliferating small private companies. Period. And calling me a nut case adds you to the block list. Bye.

It blew up in a way that an escape tower never would. Which is why I made my original comment. The Starliner is marginally better because the hypergolics are not wrapped around the crew compartment and the system can be jettisoned.

But there is likely no good substitute for a tower- it is a nearly perfect design in terms of crew safety. The Starliner and Crew Dragon are a poor compromise that sacrifices crew safety. They hated throwing away those expensive towers and went with something that would make them more money. Bad choice, bad design.

They could have went with a tower that could be recovered and reused but the temptation to make that system do something to maximize profit was too great.

It is really the same logic chain that led to no escape system at all on the Shuttle.

I read some of it but…it became obvious about halfway through he was biased. He talked about how solid rocket motors would not be good docked to the ISS and that was a tell… towers get jettisoned before orbit and he knows that. I just cannot waste my time with that.

Also: “The abort motors have to be powerful enough to pull the vehicle away from a failing rocket as quickly as possible. These systems can pull up to 15G’s of acceleration for a few seconds. Now I’m not saying that sounds like fun…. But…. yeah that actually sounds awful, like being hit by a semi truck for a few seconds continually… yeah, no thanks!”

This has always been a standard fanboy criticism and it is total B.S. and borders on Orwellian: you absolutely positively WANT as much acceleration as the human body can tolerate to escape a disintegrating stack. And the hypergolic systems fall far short of that mark while the tower gets close to it. Thanks for the polite discussion.

It actually does work that way. Just like the electoral college…I elect not to accept your false reality that I have to be accountable to you. The reality, like Biden being the president-elect, is that I am here to express my views. Not promote SpaceX. Sorry.

Over the years the SpaceX crowd has climbed up on this imaginary moral high ground and it is a sad fantasy. The ideology is toxic and based on libertarian B.S.

If it is SSTO you are inferring as something akin to the first flight then….that might be valid. The problem is simple physics. We live in a gravity well of a certain depth on a planet we don’t want to pollute with any nuclear propulsion byproducts and thus are right now restricted to chemical propulsion. Not expending anything on a launch is this benchmark that is not that meaningful in terms of dollars. Since “going cheap” is why the NewSpace fans seem to think it is meaningful it is more a P.R. tool than anything else.

In my view beam propulsion is the technology that will allow a “space-liner” to take off from Earth and escape Earth orbit with only onboard propellants. This will require a Space Solar Power infrastructure as a “second stage”, actually, as a second and third stage.

If you are not familiar with beam propulsion it essentially beams energy from the ground or space to the spacecraft to superheat a propellent (most likely hydrogen) to a very high Isp.

Okay now. what part of Musk telling NASA what he has to offer them in the way of launch vehicles is what they can take or leave do you not understand?

As I explained, this weird mix of John Galt entrepreneurial miracle and let-Musk-do-it-all-because-NASA-is-the-enemy is why NewSpace is..as has been stated..the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

I understand you are unhappy and want to bounce this off the imaginary audience the fanboys are always performing for here. But I am not buying it.
Let us move on to other things Vlad; The Electoral College just proved America is not a Banana Republic. Not yet.

Let’s go there and talk about a Green New Space Deal.

Generals are supposed to be very high IQ people- or so I was told when I was in. Yet we have Michael Flynn. And people in a service that has zero risk talking about how great it is to take risks.

They need to disband on the 21st and reform on the 22nd as the Space Corps and also identify what arena they are going to send people to and earn the prestige and privileges of a military service- and leave the taint of who signed them into existence behind.

I would strongly suggest, at a minimum, to designate all Nuclear Launch Officers as Space Corps. Not much risk there as long as the world is not going to end, but it is a start.
https://www.latimes.com/opi…

Sitting on your behind at a satellite terminal on a base in Cali or Colorado and saying “bring it on” is B.S.

Not a great plan in my view Vlad. It could work I guess- if there are volatiles trapped in the ice allowing methane to be reformed. But the mass penalty compared to a semi-expendable robot Lunar Lander would be very high. Not to mention refueling a starship in LEO is a long, long, way away. If ever.

That New Shepard, on the other hand, has the makings of exactly what is needed. Carried by an iteration of the SLS, a robot lander based on New Shepard could be “dropped on the biggest ice deposits on Luna.”

Space Corps on the Moon….?

An “instant base” is not going to happen without massive radiation shielding though. And even after there is shielded living space there is the problem of debilitation. I would say the best first step is true shielded space stations in frozen Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) with tether-generated artificial gravity. These space stations would allow astronauts to ride back up from a subsurface Moonbase, shielded on the ride up at least, to periodically rehabilitate in 1 gravity. They might accrue some dose on the way back down unfortunately. This might, ideally, allow an astronaut a very long career in cislunar space instead of quickly accruing a career dose and suffering permanent tissue loss.

Hmmm. I don’t think that is how it is going to work. The ice is going to be shared and not sold by private parties. This “claim” thing might have had some validity in the 1800’s but not now. Ice resources will be exploited for water that can be used for radiation shielding and sustenance or split for oxygen to breathe or for propellants.

What I think you are basing your causal train on is some kind of “market.” There is not going to be a market up there in cislunar space for a long time. Think about why we will be in cislunar space. Why? There are, in my view, three probable different “raison d’etre” :

1. A Green New Space Deal that makes Space Solar Power the focus of solving the climate change crisis. In which case trillions will get thrown at creating a cislunar infrastructure and turning the Moon into a factory manufacturing solar power satellite components. This would be great and I am praying for it.

2. The whole smallsat constellation concept turns out to be a disaster and it is instead decided to create large shielded human-crewed platforms in GEO to replace the failed Earth orbit satellite junkyard. In this case these GEO telecom support platforms would require hundreds of thousands of tons of water as shielding and this could be lifted from the Moon for 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth. This would solve many problems (they would be invulnerable to a Carrington event) and create a pipeline for Lunar Cyclers and true Spaceships.

3. The Nuclear Deterrent of the superpowers is relocated into deep space on “space boomers.” These U.S., Russian, Chinese, French, and British spaceships would also need at a minimum several hundred thousand tons of water for shielding and also Moonbases to support their fleets. This would realize the impossible dream of removing nuclear weapons from the Earth, ratchet down the launch-on-warning risk, and also provide planetary defense against impact threats. And also enable exploration missions Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit.

Or…All three at once. The water would be distributed to these projects by international agreement. It would not be the wild west.

If these 4 spacecraft- the two American taxis, Russian, and Chinese, can all dock to a simple multi-connector airlock, then up to six can all dock together at once. No need for the ISS. In fact, several of these simple “locks” could be up at once and would be semi-expendable. No need for the ISS. The experiments can be moved from one capsule to another if needed. Enough data on long duration human effects has been gathered so there is no need for the ISS. There never was really. It is a huge waste.

A “true” space station would provide a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G) by using a massive water shield and tether-generated artificial gravity. Such stations are a waste in LEO and would start in a frozen Low Lunar Orbit (where they would be filled with lunar water from Robot Landers) and then NRHO and GEO or serve as Lunar Cyclers and as “true” spaceship compartments.

Calling the ISS a “space station” is not really appropriate. I believe the correct term should be Orbital Platform or “O-P”. They stopped serving any useful purpose in LEO decades ago.

Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Space Policy Online.

The radiation problem facing astronauts on long duration missions in cislunar space can, in my view, be solved with lunar-ice-derived cosmic ray water shields. These thousands of tons of water can be lifted from the lunar poles with between 20 and 25 times less energy than from Earth. Career dosing and debilitation is the single most critical issue, especially for younger female astronauts.

The horrible treatment the SLS is getting on all of the spaceflight forums by NewSpace fans is unbelievable. You would think after the last 4 years this kind of cult behavior would be unacceptable. In my view when the SLS lifts off the world will give the U.S. a standing ovation- except those who hate the U.S. and…these toxic NewSpace fans that have hijacked most online discourse.

(Starship) It is essentially a revision of the Space Shuttle concept with many of the same limitations. Considering what it lifts into orbit I do not consider it the dawn of a new age.

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The best solution to a Carrington Event is massive water shielding- which would be necessary for any human-crewed space station in GEO anyway. A ring of these large space stations around the Earth replacing the present telecom satellites would simply shut down temporarily for such a solar event and with their hardware/software protected behind massive thousand ton plus water shields would suffer no damage.

The best place to fill those radiation shields is in Low Lunar Orbit by bringing the water up from the lunar poles using 20 to 25 times less energy than bring it up from Earth. The stations would then be transited across the cislunar sea to GEO.

The products of these little rocket companies are actually more capable than ICBMs. The likelihood of them being used to cause serious incidents or be used in terrorist acts and nefarious schemes has increased by an order of magnitude. The libertarians scream bloody murder at regulation but this is one of those activities, like nuclear power generation, that needs to be strictly regulated. And it is not.

My view has always been that smaller launch vehicles are extremely undesirable. The rockets we want can carry people to the Moon, that is, the only things we should be launching are Saturn V class Vehicles. They can bundle all these smaller launches together on a bus or with their own little boosters for extremely different orbits. This was essentially how the Space Shuttle was going to pay for itself. If they had not tried to go cheap it might have worked. The SLS, if it had reusable liquid boosters and a reusable core engine module and only sacrificed the core tank, is what the Shuttle should have been.

The entire spectrum of Earth orbit for-profit activities reeks of greed and corruption. Smallsat constellations are the strip-mining of a natural resource and should never have been allowed. International agreements should have mandated GEO human-crewed platforms instead- going high, big, and few, instead of the opposite direction.

“The SXM-7 launch, though, was only the third where the primary customer was neither the U.S. government nor SpaceX itself.”

Corporate welfare at it’s finest. With reusable rockets sitting around you have to launch something or it kind of makes them a joke; much cheaper to build them and drop them in the ocean. You then get rid of that huge rotten standing army of worthless people sucking up money not turning around rockets. See how that works?

Like I said, corporate welfare- only 3 launches not for the government or for strip-mining Earth orbit. Delta whataboutism? Sad. And… “Laughable” that this is some kind of market-driven Neoliberal miracle performed by John Galt. Never was that even though the fanboys are true believers. The Cult of Musk, like The Cult of Trump, needs to end.

“The Greens”? They must be one of those terrible threats to the stock market.

Yes, it IS a good thing we have people like the Koch brothers that demonized all the tree huggers before the planet was destroyed by environmentalists. Capitalists are actually the second coming. (Because money is really the god of this world.)

And THAT is the Neoliberal Orwellian diatribe paid for by hundreds of millions of dollars. That endless loop of propaganda in your head. It has been playing for 4 decades straight since the Reagan Revolution.

This virtuous cycle you are describing is a fabrication. The U.S. has a space program and the SLS and Orion are the flagship projects. Your fundamental mistake is in erroneously substituting your favorite private for-profit company for our space program. It is not reality and is a kind of cognitive dissonance…or some kind of lie used for marketing. Or something in between. In any case it is a ethically toxic choice you have made and it seems to influence much of what you write here. Too bad because I like you. But many people messing up any chance of a bright future for the human species, working directly against that, seem to be likeable people. I blame it on Neoliberalism.

SpaceX is not a utilitarian entity dedicated to making us a multi-planet species. They say that but it is marketing. And I have commented on this many times. You must not be paying attention.

Musk has his own plan to pay for his starships to Mars by strip-mining earth orbit.

NASA has it’s plan for returning to the Moon to stay with a program of Super Heavy Lift Vehicles. Compared to DOD projects SLS is chump change.

Musk is not NASA. If you want to dismantle the U.S. space agency and hand it all over to Musk and let him do it his way I do not agree with that. And my perception is that all your blah blah blah money money money taxpayer taxpayer B.S. is just a facade hiding exactly that. That is NewSpace.

Yes…anyone with a college education gets that. That is not the point. We don’t want that particular revenue stream as moral and ethical human beings. The ones who have no problem with it, the sociopath/psychopath component of humanity, need to be denied their opportunities to kill and destroy. This is one of the reasons Neoliberalism and Libertarianism are partners in crime with Fascism- they all make almost no distinction between what is good or evil. To them war is not necessarily evil and in some cases a sought after opportunity.

True soldiers are like fireman…they are there to end it, and would like nothing better than to see their profession go extinct.

I have to go with accomplishing public works that guarantee a better life for our children- and of course that requires companies to furnish the hardware and they will make money off it or they will not participate. Trying to pour money in their pockets up front is an invitation to criminality.

The example of this I always hold up is Apollo 1. North American and several other companies saw the race to the Moon as a gold mine and were doing their best to cash in. It is painted now as a patriotic cold war battle with the Soviets but while that was what persuaded Americans to allow it that is not why these companies were building rockets. Companies exist to make a profit. NPO’s step outside the capitalist system and get some tax breaks because they do not compete for higher profit margins, usually on humanitarian grounds. NewSpace fanboys seem to lack any ability to distinguish between advancing humankind and profiteering. A few seem to think NewSpace is like a NPO. Wrong. I blame it on Neoliberal conditioning. Brainwashed by the Kochs.

After the fire Aerospace concerns realized Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit was going to be very hard money. The draconian oversight imposed by NASA saw their profit margins going down to almost nothing. That doomed the space age before it ever really started. Cold war weaponry was where the easy money was and that is where they went. And stayed.

No Richard. Not anything close to being practical.

This is why the wet workshop concept was championed by von Braun; he understood that a structure already constructed to withstand the max Q of a launch would be sturdy enough for anything it would need to do in space- including being spun at the end of a tether to provide a 1G environment, or containing a thousand tons of water as a cosmic ray shield.

Take a look at the attached spin calculator and you will quickly see why a tether is the only practical technique for generating artificial gravity on a spaceship scale. For several hundred pounds of tether a couple thousand feet separation will generate 1G with only a little over 1 revolution per minute and an angular speed of under 150 miles an hour. Faster rotation generates all kinds of problems, the worst one being nausea and disorientation. Those small centrifuges are a non-starter for several reasons.

With a Super Heavy Lift Vehicle sending fat upper stages to lunar orbit and robot landers bringer ice-derived water up to fill the shields, a couple workshops spinning on a tether will provide a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity (NSLR1G) environment for astronauts. And that is the prerequisite for humans working in space years at a time. Nothing else comes close to accomplishing this.
https://www.artificial-grav…

“It seemed to offer a kind of hack-“

Not really. It is, and remains, the ultimate reusability scheme. I keep hearing people say it is “dangerous” when you are working in a pressurized compartment strong enough to carry hundreds of tons of propellent under multiple G-loads. Nonsense. NewSpace fanboys will say anything to demonize anything that is not in their favorite entrepreneurs business plan. Everybody had their own ideas about space and Thompson had his. If you think he was right that is on you.

“There’s been a lot of discussions on how to build a space station. Should it be a great big thing launched with a huge booster, or should it be modular taken up by a smaller vehicle and assembled in orbit, built up in segments or modules? Well, by then, the practical thing that had a reasonable chance of being funded and supported out of the Congress was a modular space station that you could fly into orbit with something like what we finally got to call a space shuttle. So you could take the modules in low Earth orbit, and if you had something like the shuttle, you could transport people. You could transport modules, you could maneuver in orbit, you could dock, you could work and so forth.”

On the shuttle:

“You can read in the history books about that it was too funded-constrained and this sort of thing, we should have been more visionary and built a bigger, better vehicle that cost less to operate. Well, I think that’s a lot of nonsense. That’s a lot of argument about he should have married some other girl, he’d been much happier. You don’t know how happier he’d been if he’d done that. It just wasn’t practical to take on a very large spending program at that time.”

Actually, nobody is “scared.” It is likely not going to be the gamechanger the fanboys think it is. It looks very cool (it is so sci-fi it is beautiful) but if you understand exactly how much is going into this monster and how much it actually lifts into orbit….it is not the dawn of a new era. The rocket equation has not changed. I grant it might be useful in a certain kind of architecture but the idea it is instilling fear is ridiculous. It is essentially a new take on the space shuttle concept and has many of the same limitations.
Easy on the hype.

“Beyond Low Earth Orbit” is generally meant to signify GEO in a future Human Space Flight context. There is no human presence in GEO being entertained right now- mainly due to radiation. I am a proponent of lunar-water-shielded GEO space stations though. Transferring to a Starship in LEO just so it can boost to GEO would be a waste. A Lunar Cycler is the best way to manage human travel between the Earth and Moon and intercepting Cycler orbits is the best job for anything launching from Earth carrying people. I am certain Starship would have to be refueled in space to intercept a Cycler. More efficient to just send a capsule direct.

It is often argued that if you can intercept a Cycler then there is not enough justification to have Cyclers- the intercept vehicle can just go to the Moon- but this is inherently flawed logic when it is realized that radiation shielding, life support, and other considerations make transit between the Earth and Moon undesirable in these small spacecraft.

The only place I can see Starship fitting into a cislunar infrastructure is if it can make it to GEO space stations. It might be useful for that.

I believe we need to get humans into space as a priority. But going to Mars is completely antithetical to any long-term human presence off-world. Why Mars keeps being pursued is a twisted tale of sci-fi popular culture as a marketing tool and certain entrepreneurial ambitions. Mars is a complete dead end and a tremendous stumbling block to human expansion into the solar system. In terms of an insurance policy for our species promoting Mars as a second home is a terrible mistake.

In my view the logical progression is first to have 3 key building blocks- 1) A state sponsored Super Heavy Lift Vehicle (SHLV). 2) A “Fat Wet Workshop”- as a double-hulled upper stage of that SHLV. 3) A semi-expendable robot lander to exploit lunar ice- to fill the cosmic ray shield of that Fat Workshop.

With these workshops filled with lunar water and connected to each other with tether systems Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G) space stations can be assembled. This first requirement- an environment that does not cause permanent damage to the human body- means astronauts can have very long careers in space before accruing a career dose of radiation or suffering tissue loss from debilitation. Presently astronauts, especially young woman, would be sacrificing their health going into space for any long duration missions. A harmful environment is a non-starter.

NSLR1G stations can transit from their Frozen Low Lunar Orbits (LLO) to Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and also be used as Lunar Cyclers. Eventually, with nuclear propulsion modules docked to these true space stations, a fleet of true space ships can explore the icy bodies of the outer solar system. Mars is the worst place to try and land and there are no oceans there. It is the subsurface oceans that are the best exploration destinations.

I don’t really consider a couple hundred miles up to be “space”…I prefer the term Earth orbit and personally draw the line dividing space and Earth orbit at 22,236 miles up. LEO qualified as space until we left it far behind in 1968 with Apollo 8 and then it lost the title.

But we have actually had a faster plasma engine for decades: Search Bonometti External Pulsed Plasma Propulsion (EPPP).

The 110,000 pound thrust BE-3 would be able to land a…large…payload on the Moon. And if refueled on the Moon could lift off with large loads of water for cosmic ray shielding in Frozen Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) workshops. Human platforms, likely SHLV wet workshops in LLO, NRHO, and Lunar Cycler orbits, will all require massive cosmic ray water shields. These platforms are the key to any missions Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). Docking a nuclear propulsion module to them makes them capable of going to first Ceres and then beyond. And tether systems to provide artificial gravity would also be needed and make them “true spaceships.”

The enabling technology for a long duration human presence in the vicinity of the Moon is cryo-cooler hardware capable of preventing boil-off losses of liquid hydrogen. This is critical and I have seen no development of this.

“The final engine specifications, released in April 2015 following the full test phase, included a minimum thrust of 89 kilonewtons (20,000 lbf), an even wider throttling capability by 20 percent than the preliminary numbers, while maintaining the previously released full power thrust spec.[11]”

No problem with “subsidizing” the military since they would support themselves by armed robbery of other countries if we did not. It is when they make up stuff to get money. You know what I mean Vlad. Why are you laughing at me? You think it is funny that we blow billions on the farce that is missile defense and the most expensive DOD project ever- the F-35 fighter? All that treasure for…nothing.

We should be building spaceships.
The problem is these billionaire hobbyists are not building what is needed.
And that results in two steps back for every one forward.

Just what they can do on the cheap and calling it the best.
It is a lie.

There is no cheap. The Shuttle, marketed as paying for itself, proved that, and the NewSpace dogma of everything-on-the-cheap has empowered a cult of toxic libertarian fanboys, much like Trump empowered his cult, to be the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. I am not the one that is blind.

Low latency is really meaningful to only one industry: video games.
No low population state lacking high speed internet can subsidize this.

It was a ridiculous field of dreams scam from the start. Much like those shiny starships to the Martian libertarian paradise it is supposed to pay for.

The Legal, Medical, and Engineering Professions are the triad which enables civilization to exist. All the fools here blathering about doing away with those pesky lawyers are the idiot children of the human race. If they actually believe what they are babbling. I suspect most are just playing that game we have seen in government for the last 4 years; the firehose of falsehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi….

“Thus, an army of trolls can influence a person’s opinion by creating the false impression that a majority of that person’s neighbors support a given view.[1]”

Mars is not the second home of humanity. One of the first conclusions of Gerard K. O’Neill’s research group in the 70’s was that no natural bodies in the solar system other than Earth are suitable for human colonization- the very first reason being human beings evolved in 1G. Mars is a gimmick.
A marketing ploy.

Artificial wings are fine but artificial gravity is pretty much a problem that can only be solved in an efficient way when you start with zero gravity.
See how that works Mr. Cartoons-make-me-smart?

This is akin to impact threat deflection: entities offering their “cheap” solution for a price when it is no solution at all. There is no cheap.

The problem is the thousands and soon tens of thousands of satellites in Earth orbit when there should be at most a few hundred. Ideally human-crewed GEO platforms equipped with “laser brooms” could keep Earth orbit fairly pristine.

This would require lunar water shielded “fat workshops” to be transited from the vicinity of the Moon to GEO. Which would require a state sponsored program of Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLVs). Of which there is only the SLS being stacked right now and for years to come. Unless you believe a certain entrepreneur who is promising a shiny starship impossibly soon.

Many years ago a certain organization was pushing their “gravity tug” as the solution to deflecting impact threats instead of using nuclear weapons. This is an example of placing civilization in danger to benefit some individual or group’s business plan. Criminal. The strip-mining of Earth orbit is the same dynamic in my opinion.

Starliner and Crew Dragon, if they would replace their substandard escape systems, could be used to intercept a fleet of Lunar Cyclers providing transportation between the Earth and Moon.

Other than that…all an incredible waste of resources in my opinion.

I would suggest they de-orbit that 4 billion dollar a year money hole and redirect the funding to a lunar return. If they had splashed it in 2016 as planned that would already be 16 billion that could have been used on a cislunar infrastructure. If they keep it up there till 2030 that is 40 billion down the drain.

“The ISS has been described as the most expensive single item ever constructed.[385] As of 2010 the total cost was US$150 billion. This includes NASA’s budget of $58.7 billion (inflation-unadjusted) for the station from 1985 to 2015 ($72.4 billion in 2010 dollars), Russia’s $12 billion, Europe’s $5 billion, Japan’s $5 billion, Canada’s $2 billion, and the cost of 36 shuttle flights to build the station, estimated at $1.4 billion each, or $50.4 billion in total.”

What will happen if there is any anomaly has already been demonstrated- loss of crew (that explosion was in no way survivable). That could not happen with an escape tower. The problem is that spacex fanboys like you will never entertain any criticism of your fantasy world. Not tolerated. That is why you try to paint me as “banging the table and screaming.” It is actually you doing that.

Baloney. An escape tower is not going to explode like that over 3000 pounds of toxic hypergolics wrapped around the crew compartment would. No way. They persuaded “actual technical professionals” there was no problem with the shuttle having no escape system and the same culture of cheap has taken precedence over crew safety yet again. Thank you for blocking me. I just wish all of your gang would.