Ice on the Moon

Everything about how the world works became much clearer after I read a book last year called “Democracy in Chains.” The author did a great job and she wrote on a dense and complicated subject in a way I, just an average person, understood quite well. The central focus of the book was, in my view, taxes.

From other readings I have come to understand that taxes are what make a state function. This is an inescapable fact those of the libertarian persuasion refuse to accept. And it is greed that blinds them and leads them down a path that results in nothing but ruin and anarchy for everyone. Almost everything that has gone wrong in America, and by extension, the world, has to do with the rich avoiding taxes.

If Fascism was replaced by Neoliberalism then Communism was replaced by Oligarchs. The two go together as Neoliberalism is an ideology and Oligarchy is the practice of that ideology. America is presently fighting a form of Fascism called Trumpism that is a response to Neoliberalism. Across the spectrum the Neoliberals want to be Oligarchs and are using the Trumpist dream of a Fascist America, who call any opposing them Communists. It is a strange brew whose main ingredient is the destruction of truth and this era has, in fact, been named, “Post-truth: Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth”^[1] and the “circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth”.^[2] Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry.^[3] The term garnered widespread popularity, in the form of “post-truth politics“, in the period around the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. It was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.^[4][5]

And that…is the truth. They (Republicans) have calculated quite carefully that Trumps rabid base is the key to them staying in power for life and becoming rich with no apparent risk for trying to do so….so why not try? They would be stupid not to try. That is what they are. And if we let them we deserve it. They believe that. If enough democrats do not understand the danger America faces over the next 4 years and work to vote them out the Trumpists could destroy this nation. “History doesn’t repeat itself,  but It often rhymes” – Mark Twain. The parallels with Fascism in Europe are obvious.

The Green New Deal is not frequently being addressed by that term due to a great deal of propaganda that has had the effect of programming many Americans to dismiss any notion that our planet is getting hotter. The above video highlights the kind of bought dog politician that represents fossil fuel interests. A Green New Space Deal that makes the ultimate solution of powering civilization carbon-free from space the goal- is thus even farther away.

Only one technology is missing to allow actual star travel: revivable cryopreservation. When we can freeze people without damage and revive them decades later then centuries long voyages to other star systems become possible (and desirable as an insurance policy for our species). Accelerated out of the solar system by beam propulsion to some percentage of the speed of light the starship would arrive hundreds of years later in some nearby system and likely used nuclear pulse devices in combination with other techniques to slow back down. Since humans have radioactive particles present in their bodies causing damage and some damage from outside radiation occurs even in a massively shielded environment, the passengers would likely be revived after a certain period, perhaps a decade or two, for a short period, perhaps a few months, to repair the damage to their DNA.

There are processes that use different techniques to prevent ice crystal formation during freezing and this is the major problem with cryopreservation so it is not the technical challenge that is widely assumed. Interestingly, the societal disruption from such a discovery would change the nature of human life profoundly and be the most significant event in human history. Some monkey or dog is revived without damage after being frozen in a lab one day, maybe tomorrow, and the world would suddenly change. Nobody would allow their loved ones to die when they could be frozen until the technology to reverse aging becomes available. It would immediately become “The Great Rescue” as the world mobilized to save those close to death. As soon as the race was over and the pipeline into cold storage was created would come “The Great Race” to reverse aging. As hundreds of thousands, and within a few years, tens of millions are placed in storage, vast resources would be focused on reversing aging. And when that problem was solved next would come star travel.

This is the bright future that initially attracted me to space travel: the only practical way to send people to another star is by way of suspended animation. And that technology would profoundly change humankind simply because we love others and will not let them die.

So I am looking for others who might like to join me in popularizing and promoting this path. Please comment as I have reopened the comments section.

I have been commenting on a couple different sites for the last couple months and it was not a good experience…as if it ever was. The far right has such a stranglehold on these public forums it is scary. The moderators refuse to shut down the harassment when someone (like me) offers alternative opinions. So when people visit these sites they find fanboys that send them away shaking their heads and with no further involvement in space and this is sad. I have tried over the years to be an alternative view on a half a dozen such forums and have always ended up banned for replying to the dogpile of insults and intolerance that inevitably occurs. The sad truth is anything that hints at any “liberal” policy or not found on the SpaceX website is trivialized, mocked, and denigrated. This has become such a pervasive theme on internet forums associated with space that the damage is irreparable. So enough of that. I have reposted this from an earlier entry; before Biden was elected it was “Bernie and the Green New Space Deal”, when I was hoping for a progressive nominee, and now have re-branded. Here we go again:

Converting the United States Military Industrial Complex into something that will create a sustainable future for humankind will be the great feat of history. Nothing impossible about it or even extremely challenging in terms of technology. It is what we should do as a species if we want our children and grandchildren to have any kind of a future. The problem, of course, is that minority of psychopathic neoliberals who happen to control most of the worlds wealth and want nothing to do with anything that does not give them even more god-like power. So we have something we should do and we have a stumbling block. And then what we have is a dire need for people like Bernie Sanders.

The present Army Navy Air Force Marines establishment is about fighting wars here on Earth against other superpowers whose people collectively have no desire to watch the world economy crash and possibly billions die in a global conflict. It is mostly a façade and militaries exist largely as a safeguard against an individual like Hitler coming to power in one of three or four superpower nations. As recent events show, this is not so unlikely. The nations thus retain their militaries as a safeguard against any other power seeking to subjugate them. The United States maintains armed forces so far beyond what other nations have it is absurd and why we do that is fairly obvious- it is an industry that makes a lot of people rich. Those people and companies want to keep making money and anything threatening their gold mine is acted against swiftly.

The best strategy is thus to not threaten Military Industrial Complex (MIC) “wealth creators” but instead offer those players an alternative. That alternative is Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) using the Moon as the new industrial base to power planet Earth. Solar thermal towers with their mirror fields and molten salt storage are about the only practical technology for generating energy in a sustainable manner on Earth but unfortunately all the great deserts of the world combined are not going to enable a western standard of living for 10 billion people. And make no mistake, the only way out of this is to provide a decent standard of living for everyone on Earth. All of us.

While NewSpace ideology has caused inestimable damage to space exploration and colonization, the flagship company has at least popularized Vertical Take-off Vertical Landing (VTVL) as being the most efficient method of reusing rockets. It will likely be decades before reusing really large Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLVs) breaks even economically but at least the Ayn-Rand-in-space-train-wreck has done something “not harmful.” Whether VTVL would have happened anyway if the shuttle boosters had been the originally specified pressure-fed ocean recovered type instead of solid fuel remains to be seen. I suspect with pressure-feds a variant of the shuttle would still be flying.

The way forward is a first stage at least half again as large as the Saturn V, landing on a ship at sea, as the first piece of hardware. Four large engines and a smaller central landing engine, will become the standard. Much like airliners have become a giant version of the original German ME-262 fighter, the standard rocket will become a larger version of the Saturn V. The second stage will likely fly around the planet and land back at the launch site using ceramic tile technology with one central engine and four smaller landing engines- or a low thrust setting might be utilized to form a plume shielding the vehicle during reentry (as proposed in the 60’s by Philip Bono)- or a combination. And the third stage will be a wet workshop with the engine section possibly doing a lunar free-return back to re-enter and land for reuse.

SHLVs from the U.S., from Russia, from China, with versions built under license by European and Asian companies, will largely replace the cold war toys and nuclear triad hardware still being developed or modernized.  Warships and warplanes will no longer be the money-makers. The new Military Industrial Complex wealth creation strategy will be based on giant rockets. Lunar-water-shielded wet workshops will first go into Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) and then to a Lunar Cycler fleet and finally as spaceship crew compartments. Eventually immense power stations will lift from the surface of the Moon and find their way to GEO where they will begin to beam carbon-free power down to planet Earth.

That is the Green New Space Deal.

Beyond changing over the Military Industrial Complex from Earth-based to space-based and powering planet Earth carbon-free there is the original colonization plan of Gerard K. O’Neill. In any plan similar to O’Neill’s, a hundred years from now the population of Earth may begin to decrease as beam-propelled space-liners leave daily for space habitats. Within a few centuries Earth will be a place to visit like a national park. Not only will Earth be a garden but miles in diameter Bernal spheres will be sent on centuries long voyages to other star systems. There are very few technical challenges to this bright future. In contrast, the road humankind is on now has a good chance of ending in extinction.

My comment from The Space Review: Unfortunately the legion of NewSpace fans that have hijacked almost all public discourse on space do not tolerate creative & crazy ideas like Space Solar Power satellite factories on the Moon as the solution to climate change. They are mostly libertarian far-right Ayn Rand types who worship Elon Musk as the embodiment of John Galt, Howard Roark, and Tony Stark, all rolled into one Cult figure.

Only a state sponsored program is going to enable any space mega-projects and Musk is not a Space Solar advocate. He instead wants to strip-mine Earth orbit with tens of thousands of his very own small satellites beaming internet to a world that does not need this contrived convenience…and his followers are not open-minded about anything not found on the SpaceX website.

Comment by Vladislaw· 

“that have hijacked almost all public discourse on space do not tolerate creative & crazy ideas “

“You mean how you hijack all public discourse and do not tolerate creative and crazy ideas put forth by SpaceX? You are your own worse enemy. You do not tolerate ANY idea outside of your own.“

Projection and lies, the very foundation of Trumpism. And Vlad hates Trump. So it is also The Cult of Musk, like The Cult of Trump, that needs to end.

Counting the hours now. Thank you God he is out. Thank you God.

“In 1969, the Space Task Group proposed a plan for the post-Apollo future space program. One component was a space tug so crewed flight between the Earth-orbiting space station and the lunar-orbiting space station, from there to the lunar surface. For budget and other reasons, President Nixon rejected this plan, ultimately approving only the space shuttle.”

We see the results of Nixon going cheap. If liquid rocket boosters had been used instead of the SRB’s it is highly likely an iteration of the Space Transportation System would still be going strong today.

What we know now a half century later is that cosmic radiation makes long duration missions Beyond Low Earth Orbit (BLEO) in the “Cislunar Sea” problematic. Not only dosing but debilitation makes any multi-year human activities in space without a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity (NSLR1G) environment to be ruinous to health and simply unacceptable. Young females are especially vulnerable to damage and higher risks of cancer from dosing and debilitation.

We now know the best form of the space tug proposed in 1969 is the “Lunar Cycler.” A fleet of Cyclers might be the superhighway connecting a lunar industrial infrastructure with Earth. The stumbling block is exactly what doomed the Space Shuttle; going cheap. There is no cheap. The biggest obstacle to expanding humankind into space right now is “NewSpace” which only allows “entrepreneurs” and the profit motive to determine how we leave Earth. This path is even more certain to fail than the Space Shuttle which was sold on it’s relative cheapness and ability to “pay for itself.” Only massively shielded crew compartments and tether generated artificial gravity systems are going to enable humans to live in space for years at a time. These constructs will mass in the thousands of tons. Water as shielding brought up from the Moon using 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth to double-hulled “Fat Workshops” are the most practical solution.

The new administration has the opportunity to address Climate Change by proposing Space Solar Power satellite factories on the Moon as the ultimate solution. A “Green New Space Deal.” The prerequisite is a state sponsored program of Super Heavy Lift Vehicle launches of 6 to 8 lunar missions per year- to start with. The ISS needs to end and those funds redirected, and iterations of the SLS with reusable boosters and a reusable engine module, as well as a very large diameter upper stage double hulled wet workshop, are the fundamental building blocks. The obvious source to pay for this is the DOD. A pipeline of fat workshops going to Low Lunar Orbit (we now know there are sustainable “frozen orbits”) and then utilized as Lunar Cyclers and GEO platforms can also provide, by mating nuclear propulsion modules, true spaceships.

These spaceships could carry nuclear devices to deflect impact threats and conceivably replace the present strategic deterrent of terrestrial delivery systems. An Earth free of nuclear weapons, powered from space carbon free. As envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill, lunar resources and space solar power would be the economic engine eventually enabling the colonization of space.

“We are still on track to take the first woman to the moon by 2024 and complete a Mars landing by 2029.”

Possible to orbit the Moon by 2024 but the Mars statement is, in my opinion, totally impossible. Simply because radiation, that elephant in the room NASA does not like to talk about, is just too ruinous to health, and added to debilitation, is not going to allow humans to go anywhere without massive shielding and artificial gravity. And it might as well be added that shielding will be lunar water lifted with 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth, and a tether generated artificial gravity system several thousand feet long. A minimum thousand tons of water and roughly equal masses spinning around each other would be a “true spaceship” and we will not be seeing that by 2029.

The SLS may get us to the Moon a half dozen times but much more powerful reusable boosters will be needed to replace the SRB’s and the engine module will need to be recoverable and reusable. This future iteration will require funding…now. And it will essentially be what the shuttle should have been; more lift than the Saturn V with a core stage tank as the necessary sacrifice to the rocket equation. The best way to begin that is to end the ISS ASAP and redirect those resources.

“You’re right: in the 1960s, NASA defined a bold goal, determined the best way to accomplish it, and told industry what to build to make it happen. Those days are over. Today industry decides what it wants to build, their senators tell NASA that it must accomplish things that way, and NASA is left to awkwardly try to explain how this fits into some kind of coherent goal. What a sad state of affairs.”

You’re wrong: in the 2020’s, NASA is still the Space Agency of the United States of America and “those days” are NOT over. Not if the New Administration tells the public those days are back.

A Super Heavy Lift Vehicle carries that refueling depot with it and goes direct to the Moon. The very raison d’etre of the Saturn V. Not only does a SHLV make depots unnecessary, but diving down through the Van Allen belts to within a few hundred miles of the Earth’s surface to a rendezvous as an everyday maneuver is….far more that just putting gas in your car. It is a mess popularized by NewSpace as the small rocket snake oil cure for all difficulties.

If “relying on smaller rockets plus propellant depots” will allow more frequent missions why does the SpaceX “Super Heavy” have over 11 million pounds of thrust? Quoting NewSpace dogma, which was useful in promoting the inferior lift Falcon 9 in years past, quickly gets SpaceX promoters into trouble.

The Super Heavy is a booster design in the right thrust range but with only one problem- the Raptor engines are about one quarter as powerful as the Saturn V F-1 and thus four times too many. The Starship is not a good design at all being simply an attempt at creating a shuttle variant that does not expend an external tank. It has no escape system for starters- a fundamental mistake of the shuttle it repeats.

Once NASA gets out the way? NASA did accomplish reusable boosters- the Shuttle SRB’s each had almost half a million pounds more thrust than the Falcon 9. The shuttle was actually a Saturn V class launch vehicle that wasted most of it’s lift on the Orbiter. The Falcon is a much less powerful vehicle which uses too many smaller engines. The Crew Dragon has a poorly designed escape system that packs over 3000 pounds of hypergolic propellants into a small capsule. The P.R. hype of their products and the endless damning of NASA by a legion of fanboys has made it obvious who the “main obstacle” is. The NewSpace ideology of “smaller-cheaper-no Moon-NASA inept” has done a great deal of unrealized and profound damage to space exploration.

The only practical way to have any kind of cislunar habitat is going to be utilizing lunar water for cosmic ray shielding lifted from the poles using 20 to 25 times less energy than from Earth. Since a capsule would require around 400 tons any acceptable amount of living space for even a small crew is going to mass well over a thousand tons of just water to start with. A true space station would not only protect against dosing but also debilitation with tether-generated artificial gravity. The definition of “true” being a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity environment (NSLR1G).

It follows the only practical way to place these kinds of water-shielded compartments into space is a double-hulled “fat” wet workshop since this will already be stressed for one gravity and the outer propellent layer can handily contain the water shield. These Fat Workshops are going to require an even more powerful iteration of the SLS than is being considered now lifting well over the 130 metric tons specified. And of course the critical hardware is a semi-expendable Robot Lunar Lander that can convert lunar ice into propellant and make as many trips as possible bringing water up.

Once a pipeline for these true space stations is operating then docked landers can be used as propulsion modules to allow Lunar Cycler operations and a fleet of Cyclers will create a constant flow of personnel and materials to and from the Moon. Each one of these several Space Stations and likely half a dozen or more Cyclers would mass several thousand tons and a state sponsored program of expanded SLS launches the only practical way to establish this permanent Cislunar human presence and infrastructure. Space “entrepreneurs” are not going to do it.

Out of all the hardware listed such as the Super Heavy Lift Vehicle (SLS) and Fat Workshop and Robot Lunar Lander, the most important piece of the puzzle missing is a cryogenic propellent engine in the 2 million pound thrust range. Either that or the unlikely option of a much greener solid fuel booster. When this F-1 class SHLV engine appears it will be a signal we are ready to commit to a real space program.

Those 147 need to resign. And Fox News shut down. And Trump imprisoned. Most important, Americans need to understand these conspiracy theories are lies used to manipulate them. Trust of the fifth estate must be restored. That means Facebook has to come clean and turn off those algorithms driving people insane. And it better happen quick. Instead of one Timothy McVeigh, we have thousands of them looking for their opportunity right now.

At this moment, 4:30 in the evening in Arizona, the D.C. curfew is going into effect and the police are moving in to move everyone out of the Capitol. The news is saying the rally where Trump incited the mob to march on the Capitol was organized by “Women for Trump.” This is disquieting to me because the Russian Revolution started with women marching. And a woman was shot and killed during the storming of the Capitol though the details have not been released. The races in Georgia have been called and the democrats have control of the senate. Trump praised the mob saying they were special and loved and to go home. Not very sincerely in my opinion. Trump was visibly happy. And calls for the 25th amendment to be enacted to remove the President from office are being talked about.

On the epiphany, during the year the Christmas star reappeared, with the pandemic and the fires that burned across the west, Americans voted against the populist strongman. But those that did not…tens of millions…are wondering if this is the moment that their grievances will be addressed. That those not white enough or evangelical enough or free market capitalist enough might now be “purged.” A black and a Jew were elected in Georgia of all places to take control of the senate- and this will only fuel conspiracy theories. Both my wife and daughter are scared and crying.

7:00 Ben Sasse is cracking jokes and giving a feel good speech- after acknowledging a woman had lost her life on the premises only hours previously. Some of them actually laughed. And there are reports of the cabinet considering the 25th amendment and removing Trump. And members of the Trump administration resigning.

I now realize the power the millions of Trump supporters believe they wield- the power of the bully, of the narcissist, of the sociopath, of the psychopath, wherever they fall in that arc. My wife told me last night the Korean proverb of the Buddhist monk: the monk that is unhappy in the temple needs to move, not the temple. On the forum where I comment on space flight I am relentlessly trolled by a gang of libertarian cyberthugs. Why do I keep going back there? In my workplace I am unhappy with the laziness and incompetence of my supervisors and coworkers. I need to find another job. And in regards to the nation I am a citizen of, I have been thinking quite clearly in terms Truth and Power. There is the Truth that is and the Power that does.

There are those with a worldview that leans toward utilitarianism:

The doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority, the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct. It is in one sense the embodiment of the Christian life.

There are those with a worldview that leans towards objectivism:

The philosophy that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (see rational egoism), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism.

So… pursuing ones own happiness through capitalism does tend to enable people to make jokes in the same building a woman died by violence a few hours earlier. It is the power that ignores what does not make one happy or trivializes that which distracts from the pursuit of ones happiness. The truth is the greatest happiness for the greatest number can only occur when the death of a human being is not ignored and the fact that an election was not “rigged” is accepted.

12:32 in Arizona and I am watching congress vote on “the objection” and looking at the number tallies go up. Those Republicans who are supporting Trumpism must never be forgotten or forgiven and voted out.

137 republican traitors in congress and only 64 that are not is my last count at around a quarter after one Arizona time.

01:30 in Arizona and here we go, Pence and Pelosi are standing side by side and down goes the gavel. 7 senate traitors- and the objection is not sustained.

And now we go through the 50 states…And now it is over.