It is off to work I go. Will try and write something on break.
93 Days
The Seven Deadly Sins
1. Support the police! 2. Support the troops! 3. Taxes are theft! 4. Social programs are communism! 5. Regulation is bad! 6. Government is bad! 7. Wealth trickles down!
These talking points explain everything for many conservatives. Yet none of them have any merit. I am so sick of being beat over the head with this stuff.
1. SUPPORT THE POLICE!
Taking a rough look at the demographics, about 163,000,000 Americans fall into the category of adults under age 65 who are most likely to interact with police in a “negative venue” such as being felony suspects or repeat criminals or actually being arrested. “The best current estimate is that just less than 1% of all noninstitutionalized males age 18 and over are psychopaths.1 This translates to approximately 1,150,000 adult males who would meet the criteria for psychopathy in the United States today.2 And of the approximately 6,720,000 adult males that are in prison, jail, parole, or probation,3 16%, or 1,075,000, are psychopaths.4 Thus, approximately 93% of adult male psychopaths in the United States are in prison, jail, parole, or probation.”
With most of the psychopaths in prison the less dangerous type classified as sociopaths are quoted in some sources as making up around 4% of the population. Rounding down slightly to give the lower number of female sociopaths the benefit of a doubt we have about 6 million people with sociopathic traits in the U.S. and this segment of the population is essentially why the police exist. Counting all sworn police officers, prison guards, and parole and probation officers, a very rough estimate of around 2 million are controlling the 6 million on the street that represent “the problem.”
Or, considering the entire population, one person out of 65 is employed to keep three other people out of that 65 “under the control” of our society. I hope my math is close to correct. Consider it as a big room with 65 people representing the entire population. Some are young, some are old, but one adult has the authority to remove anyone who is disrupting the event. There are three other adults in the room who are very likely, for whatever reason, to individually try and disrupt the event. It is important to understand if those three combine against the one, it is not going to end well. To prevent that from happening all adult guests agree to abide by some rules. If those three combine against the one the guests will combine against them to enforce the agreed upon rules and prevent “civil disorder.” This is distinct from civil disobedience in that disorder is dangerous, while disobedience is how rules are questioned and beneficial change occurs, or, to use another term, “progress.” The adults that make up that part of the population who decide what the rules are will decide on any single issue and be “conservative” and conserve the old rule, or “progressive”, and change the old rule into a new one. This system is utilitarian (the greatest good for the greatest number) and not a zero-sum competition (one winner eventually takes all).
If the number of people in the room who are likely to break the rules and disrupt and ruin or even end the event is beyond the naturally occurring number of sociopathic anomalous individuals- then this is an indication of something being very wrong. That failure is historically a misidentification of exactly who is “the problem.” The poor and oppressed who are unwilling to bear any more disadvantage and abuse are not the cause- a small clique of high-functioning sociopaths are always at the other end of that wealth spectrum. If we had less inequality we would have far less police. And if they kick your door down in the middle of the night and you are disappeared, you might wish you had not so strongly supported the police.
A police state is not going to fix society.
2. SUPPORT THE TROOPS!
It is interesting that in many infantry tables of organization around the world the basic element is a “fire team” made up of four individuals- a team leader and three subordinates. Two fire teams make up a squad (8), five squads make up a platoon (40), and five platoons make up a company of around two hundred soldiers. As was noted in our society we presently have one person with authority to control three others who are figuratively out of control. Just as that police patrol officer may not be an especially remarkable person, the team leader in that smallest fire team element of an Army is also just another soldier who, for whatever reason or merit, has been given a basic responsibility to accomplish a mission. The mission of the soldier is to protect your people. Protect your buddy, protect your country, and protect your loved ones by doing the first two. Even if you lose your own life. That makes you remarkable. Always been that way…until recently.
On 16 July 1945, war as the human race had known it for thousands of years ended. The first atomic bomb made any future war impossible to win. And we have not had a real war since then. A few nations without nuclear weapons have waged limited conflicts but no World War III between the superpowers has occurred due to M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). The bomb was made due to a letter sent to the President of the United States 81 years ago by the scientist whose equations made the weapon possible. That scientist sent the letter because some colleagues had approached him warning of a possible Nazi bomb. 
Despite the almost zero possibility of a non-nuclear war, the United States spends more money on the military than all the other nuclear powers combined. We spend over 16 percent of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) on the military while Russia, our most likely adversary, spends less than 4 percent. The vast amount of tax dollars being expended is almost incomprehensible to the average citizen. The U.S. could easily afford universal health care, free college education, and build a solar energy economy with money from the defense budget- and still spend more than our two main rivals, Russia and China, combined. The reason we do not reduce military spending are the immense profits involved and this phenomenon is called the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). The fantastic array of expensive non-nuclear weapons seem to confirm this as obvious. Our most recent endless trillion dollar “war” has made the rich so much richer, and the rest of us so much poorer. Truth.
The republican President who as a general made the incredibly difficult decision to invade Europe in bad weather and thus began the defeat of the Nazis warned us about this. The defense industry owns politicians at every level of government and shareholders in defense corporations hold over 80 percent of stock market wealth. The reason for much of the inequality in the United States is remarkable- we have been brainwashed into pouring money into the pockets of the super-rich with the simplest of all propaganda slogans:
“Support the troops.”
3. TAXES ARE THEFT!
This is how to smoke out Neoliberal agendas every time. Just bring up taxes. Almost every single thing having to do with inequality and environmental problems is connected with the super-rich avoiding taxes. Very little of the technology they “develop” is paid for by their corporations- almost all of it comes from University or defense research projects paid for by the taxpayer. 90 percent of everything the one percent do or say is really about one thing only- not paying a penny not only for technology but also not paying anything for the healthy educated workers that made them so obscenely rich. It not just the free infrastructure and human resources they exploit in their corporate welfare package that is clearly Orwellian- the one percent take most of what millions of people actually deserve for their labor and put it in their own pocket. Productivity goes up and wages do not is the indisputable proof they are liars when they say taxes are theft. They have reduced their tax burden while reducing wages while becoming billionaires:
The super-rich are tax dodgers and are actually the thieves. Really.
4. SOCIAL PROGRAMS ARE COMMUNISM!
A coworker engaged me in a conversation one day last year I was hesitant to enter into with him and it ended as I expected. He started off by complimenting me as being a smart guy and a good person to work with and then qualified it by questioning my “patriotism.” He had deduced from our few previous conversations about current events that I might lean a little left. I answered with a story about myself- that I had not grown up with much guidance and had been free to explore what I was drawn to instead of being steered in a certain direction. I liked to read and did not like team sports or games. I then said that what we believe about life is a series of connected stories we come to accept as being “real.” This was pretty “wordy” and he did not like it much.
I continued and stated my “patriotism” is based on the story of the great depression. He nodded like he knew what I was talking about but of course he did not. I went on to say the great depression happened because the government did not regulate the financial industry and instead allowed “free market economics” to run their course. After the crash, the labor unions and suddenly powerful American communist party approached FDR and told him either the government stepped in to ease the suffering or it might mean revolution. FDR paid attention as the USSR had formed in 1922, only seven years before the stock market crashed in the United States. FDR, who was a capitalist, went to his rich friends and told them there was going to be a “New Deal.” Social Security, unemployment insurance, a federal jobs program, and Fair Labor Standards (minimum wage, 40 hour work week, and overtime) would be the four legs of the deal- but the most important part would be the government strictly regulating the banks and financial markets. This was mostly based on the theories of a British economist named John Maynard Keynes and is usually referred to as “Keynesian Economics.”
In a nutshell, Keynes promoted the idea of a capitalist economy imbedded in a socialist society and this is called “Imbedded Liberalism” (free market entrepreneurs were originally called “liberals” and the meaning has since changed- a little confusing). The government would regulate (not control- an important distinction) the capitalist economy and if it crashed despite this regulation an established social safety net would provide for and insure workers did not lose everything they owned as they had in 1929. To pay for this large government regulating the economy and maintaining social(ist) programs the rich would pay taxes at a much higher tax rate than the working class, which is called “progressive taxation.”
The “deal” is simple enough to understand: you get to be rich but you don’t get what makes your wealth possible for free. The state will take some of your wealth and put it into a “lockbox” to insure your workers are not going to become homeless and starve because bad business decisions cause the economy to fail….again.
I went on to say what made America great was the New Deal and that was why I was a patriotic democrat. I finished by saying the democratic party and society in general has over the last half century been infiltrated by an extreme form of free market capitalism called “Neoliberalism.” And the only way to Make America Great Again is to go back and start over with another “New Deal.” Because of climate change the best plan is a “Green New Deal” that congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is promoting. He did not like this at all and I will not go into how badly our little talk ended. They really hate her.
Imbedded Liberalism is not Communism.
5. REGULATION IS BAD!
When I was in Alaska back in the 90’s I remember how dangerous the fisheries were. Close to forty fishermen drowned the first year I was up there. Regulations were passed requiring life-saving equipment, mandatory training, vessel inspections, and the outcry against this was intense. The fisherman were very unhappy about it. The next year fewer fishermen died. The year after that even fewer. Five years after the regulations came into effect less than half a dozen fishermen were lost. I have several other examples of the effects of regulation over my lifetime and they all have something in common- there was great resistance to the regulations, much anger and resentment with many people complaining their “rights” were being violated by “the nanny state.”
The real reason people were upset was, of course, greed. Regulations always cut off the flow of money going into somebodies pocket. Those who are going to lose money have to be dragged kicking and screaming into compliance. They will lie and obfuscate and try any trick available to cash out or get that last penny up until the last moment. Guaranteed. That is how business works. Persuading the public such regulation is a communist plot or a corrupt hoax is just another business tactic. Regarding these unethical practices the most heinous example of all is the Koch brothers and climate change. Neoliberals have almost zero regard for human life and regard the majority of the population as little more than domestic animals.
The Neoliberal ideology that presently dominates economic activity on this planet has no ethical or moral imperatives- it is simply about getting rich as the only possible meaning to existence- the only end goal and acquiring wealth as all that matters. It is more of a religion for sociopaths, a cult, than about commerce and markets. When money is the god of this world making rules to limit “wealth creation” is blasphemy. And like any holy war the demonic forces working against the individual becoming a semi-divine billionaire must be relentlessly attacked and destroyed without mercy. Any weapon that gives the individual an advantage over Satanic “collectivists” is allowed.
When I used to get dragged into conversations about this (I avoid them now) with right wing conservatives at some point I was compelled to reveal to them the harsh truth and I would say to them, “the only reason you own anything is the rest of us let you.” The point being the golden rule that states those with the gold make the rules is not reality. It is what those with the gold want you to think is reality.
The only regulation desired by the wealthy is regulation that protects those with wealth from those without.
6. GOVERNMENT IS BAD!
If you “love America” then you love the American Government. The Government is the nation. No difference. If you vote you create that government. If you feel your vote is not counted you assemble and protest as guaranteed by the 1st amendment of the constitution. We the people are the government and we are the nation. That Ronald Reagan inspired Americans to distrust and called for reducing government was schizophrenic and played to the delusions of narcissists and other neurotics who honestly believe their own interests are all that matter. Here is found the great divide between the individual and the collective. Ayn Rand used this language and is a popular figure among those who hate any form of control imposed them. They often call themselves “patriots” but this is a strange and bizarre persona they wear like camouflage. The Neoliberal takes certain ideas and converts them into something different that matches their ideology. The primary conversion being the corruption of the word “freedom.” To those of us who are not, we clearly perceive Neoliberals as understanding the word as actually meaning “greed.” In other words, to Neoliberals freedom essentially means being free to practice absolute greed.
The reason Ronald Reagan disliked Government was his Neoliberal ideology. He was not about Democracy, or the Republic, or any other of the various systems societies organize themselves around; Reagan was a Neoliberal. In Neoliberalism everything must generate revenue, must make a profit, for an “owner.” This was later referred to as “the ownership society” by George W. Bush but it is simply a continuation of the Neoliberal revolution of Reagan. Calls to run Government like a business are the most pernicious expression of this ideology. Perhaps the best way to understand Neoliberals is to look at them as consciously evolving capitalism into a version of fascism. While the nazis made race their central theme it is wealth that occupies the center of Neoliberal ideology. Accuse me of playing the nazi card but replacing race with wealth seems to work in this case. The nazis exterminated their “useless eaters” while the Neoliberals treat non-revenue producing humans as a byproduct with no value- to be dumped as waste.
Government is not focused on the individual owner competing against other owners for the largest share of a market. Government is about the people and how they interact in their society, how they, as a people, effect and affect the collective functioning of the state. Democracy is especially antithetical to an ideology based on survival of the fittest and recognizing only the acquisition of wealth as having any meaning. America famously turned the world upside down with every man a king and the government the servant of the people- Neoliberalism has twisted this into a very few men are kings who are served by unfortunate people with no government serving them.
In a Democracy the citizen is the Government and that is not so bad.
7. WEALTH TRICKLES DOWN!
This has taken me several hours to write and now I have come to that last deadly sin. Voodoo economics is not so much the big lie that is told so many times everyone believes it- it is that- but also a sleight of hand that few people are aware of. Trickle-down, or Voodoo economics, is used in discussion as a replacement for that most ancient and fundamental feature of civilization- redistribution of wealth. By endlessly demonizing this term, Neoliberals have validated exploitation, theft, oppression, and cruelty as the basic operating principles of society. The reason they have succeeded is because of the specific artificiality of civilization. Modernity has caused a kind of collective amnesia in the human species and we have forgotten our hunter-gatherer origins. Stone age hunter-gatherer groups were necessarily egalitarian. Egalitarianism is identical in meaning with redistribution.
Human beings are social creatures (socialists) and have always had to share and sacrifice within a group to survive as an individual. The group dies, the individual dies. There is no disputing this. Unless you are sociopath- then you don’t understand how that works. Neoliberals dispute this because they don’t understand, and in this sense they are certainly sociopathic. The most successful Neoliberals are absolutely sociopaths as they have effectively turned off their empathy for their fellow human beings in order to horde obscene amounts of wealth. If this were not true they would be building schools and hospitals in third world countries instead of buying private jets and yachts. See how that works?
Unlike many Americans, as a Presbyterian Christian and a “liberal”, it is not embarrassing or strange to me that I freely express these ideas. That is what I am. In the same way Neoliberals are what they are and are also unashamed. They see absolutely nothing wrong in buying mansions and half a million dollar Italian supercars. In fact, they think that is exactly how the world works- that they are doing their part by supporting the workers who build the mansions and supercars. They are the good guys and deserve to be rich- and it follows those who are poor deserve to be poor. It is the useless eaters who actively call for taxing the rich that are evil- and should be selected by nature out of existence. We all get what we deserve, right? So it is a matter of opinion if the French nobility who went to the Guillotine by the thousands deserved their fate. Survival of the fittest- they were not smart enough to continue keeping the unwashed masses in servitude and so were selected out of existence- by a horde of useless eaters. Maybe the aristocracy thought it would make them more money?
94 Days
I missed making this a 100 day countdown. Oh well. There is so much in the news about Trump “delaying” the election I thought I had better do my part.
This is my part. https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/election?p0=263&iso=20201103T00&msg=2020%20US%20Presidential%20Election
Last Lessons
My 60th is fast approaching and any illusions I had about not being old will end. That number cannot be argued with. In Korean culture it is a big deal and my wife and daughter keep telling me this. I tell them it is going to be just another day. I have never been big on birthdays or holidays. But…I guess it does mean coming to terms with being an old man. Some very amazing people, like the author of Animal Farm and 1984, never made it even to 50. Paraphrasing Orwell:
The highly socialized modern mind, which makes a kind of composite god out of the rich, the government, the police and the media, has not been developed — at least not yet. Maybe the pandemic will do it.
Below a certain income the petty crowds the large out of existence; one’s preoccupation is not with art or religion but with bills, medical insurance, working too much overtime and possible unemployment. Money is the real god of this world.
Think of life as it really is, think of the details of life; and then think that there is no meaning in it, no purpose, no goal except the grave. Surely only fools or self-deceivers, or those whose lives are exceptionally fortunate, can face that thought without horror? The solution is the Common Task of Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov.
I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a minimum wage man gets a job supervising or moves into a salaried position, he acts as one in a higher class whether he wills it or not. By fighting against the system he becomes part of it. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income. And I have always despised supervisors too much and was afraid of being someone who is hated as they are. All part of the fear of failure and being seen as a failure. And yet I despise myself for not being the boss. Like the Alpha Male of the troop having the same misery-causing stress hormone levels as the lowest rank ass-bitten baboon. As I explained to a coworker the other night; people are actually all equal in one sense, we have the same human emotions and mental mechanisms driving us. Super-performers just have some hot rods in their heads while we have less powerful vehicles. All drive the same road. Perhaps the economy model mind survives better as in “orchids and dandelions.” Perhaps we children of a lesser God are “happier.” Nobody really knows.
There is the really disquieting prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere word socialism draws towards it with magnetic force every Kool-Aid drinker, nudist, tree hugging sandal-wearer, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in the land. Just like the word conservative draws sadists. I like all the other nuts better.
The essential job is to get people to recognize war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda. One is almost driven to the cynical conclusion that men are only decent when they are powerless. Why many middle managers are monsters. And just to be clear those two sentences are taken from two different commentaries by Orwell. I use them out of context. I can do that (my blog).
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere. Probably that has always been the case. Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion and such truisms as a virus need not kill hundreds of thousands but the economy will need to be put on hold — have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter. Fauci’s death threats are proof.
Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.
Review of The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek and The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus, reviewed in The Observer (9 April 1944).
Interesting how Orwell reviewed Hayek’s book in 44 and now Neoliberalism runs the world. Sadly, there is no concept of right or wrong now, only the profit motive and how much naked absolute greed the sociopath billionaires can get away with. Enough about that. Closing in on 100 days till the election and then I will doubtless have plenty of reason to revisit this whole range of human conditions.
Right now I am waiting on a punching bag stand that I should have ordered months ago. I am so out of shape it is depressing to think about how much I will have to do to get back in condition. Nobody is above the law is what came out in the news yesterday. Good news if it proves to be true and not fake. Roger Stone walking seems to contradict that.
Jordan Peterson is not in the same class as George Orwell. He would be the first to admit that. He is in a different “class” entirely. He is more like me, a dot-connector. And I would be the first to admit he has a significantly higher IQ. The fact that the left has demonized him, and Sam Harris, is depressing. Both of them are well worth listening to. They represent the two ends of a spectrum to me that I rely on to support my own worldview.
Let’s move on to getting back in shape.
Cruiser Ascendant Fans
Almost 800 views and now the comments are arriving. The mockers and trolls sitting in mommy’s basement seem to have found something they can giggle and pee their pants about. Disgusting. I thought the spacex muskrats were bad…these guys are like a whole other legion.
All of these master race super-warriors and professional assassins seem to have a bug up their arse about anyone having an original idea or trying something new. For those actually interested and not trolling I have put hundreds of rounds (a couple hundred anyway) through this gun over the last couple years developing it and it works. It is different and will be difficult to get on target very fast at first and never quite as fast as shouldering and looking straight down the barrel. But that is one of the trade-offs.
This setup is designed to allow sighting of a PGO shotgun, which is the main drawback of this type of weapon. It solves a problem and the basement trolls slapping their knees and guffawing at it have the collective imagination of a brick. Since this is now out there, I will add a couple of more detailed techniques to ensure proper use later today after I get some pictures-to-illustrate taken.
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And here they are:
In conclusion, a Pistol Grip Only (PGO) shotgun is more compact than a stocked weapon, making it easier to store in and deploy from a vehicle (why the police originally used it) and is more maneuverable in confined spaces. It also does not punish the shooter anywhere near what a stocked shotgun does. The hard plastic grip provided with many off-the-shelf cruisers does hurt the hand and a soft rubber after-market grip like the Hogue Tamer solves that problem. The main problem is aiming it. An offset sight is a trade-off as it adds complexity and due to the sight sticking out from the side of the barrel is not quite as easy to store. The “bazooka” position is also a quite different technique compared to “shouldering” and aiming requires an unorthodox offset sight picture. In my view the pros outweigh the cons.
As for the toxic comments, what a bunch of creeps you are.
10 July 2020
Over a thousand views and the crazy hate mail I received kind of rattled me, so I took these posts down yesterday. I felt bad though for those genuinely interested so I have reposted this one for a little while and will then probably take it down again. The original post that details the concept is not going back up.
20 November 2022
I put the “Joe Biden Shotgun” post back up and it has a couple more pictures.
“The Joe Biden Shotgun…is back” post has more info.
Independence Day
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.” Donald Trump
So…if someone was just surfing the internet and happened to come across my blog and it began with this picture and this quote, what would they think?
While the President stated the next day, “We are now in the process of defeating the radical left,” he said nothing about the radical right.
I have to begin by stating the “merciless campaign” is a few hundred thousand people very upset about unarmed human beings dying at the hands of the police. Since 3 times as many per capita of the deceased are black it is being directly connected with racism and there is no greater symbol of this than statues of “heroes” who 160 years ago fought against the United States to keep blacks enslaved. Slavery, in my view, is the quintessential example of Neoliberalism which, in case anyone reading this has not noticed, is the current dominant ideology affecting the entire planet. The free market ideally includes everything, including people. And for several hundred years in the Americas it did include human beings bought and sold as property.
I am personally “witnessing” this struggle for the soul of America and further state the effort to “wipe out our history” began during the early part of the last century when most of those symbols were placed on public display. The statues were part of an effort to “indoctrinate” the population in “The Lost Cause” of the Confederacy. Make no mistake, in regards to the lost cause, I strongly desire to “defame” and “erase our values.” A few of my coworkers, who I mention often in this blog and are almost all strongly conservative, have talked about Antifa and for better or worse I completely shocked them by stating my own view: If I happened to be involved in a scenario involving Antifa and alt-right protesters in conflict I would be on the left. My coworker’s eyes went wide and their jaws dropped when I dared to say this. I followed this shock and awe utterance with the simple truth that I hate nazis and that is what Antifa shows up for- to physically fight neo-nazis and racists. Antifa means ANTI-FAscist. My coworkers have been told of course they are part of “the radical left.” We are “defeating” the people fighting the neo-nazis? It is not all about race though and the fact is I believe this is more about greed.
I remember when I heard the news about Iris Chang and felt so bad about it I did something pretty strange. I went to my favorite bookstore and on the shelf where her books were I placed a card expressing my profound sorrow. I had to do something. As I left the store I saw people gathering around it. Anybody who knows the story that goes along with her book, “The Rape of Nanking” knows why I did this. Before I left San Francisco I visited her grave (east of San Jose). The instructor in a history class I took in college once almost broke down in a lecture talking about the holocaust and how the research he did for his thesis had affected him. I have personally seen the look on present day German military officers faces at holocaust memorial ceremonies and the sadness and shame was not anything anybody wants to see. The point I am trying to make is revising history to keep your crimes hidden is the key tactic in play here. Iris did not let the Japanese government get away with it. Deborah Lipstadt did not let David Irving get away with it. There were no fine people on the other side.
Having served in the military and traveled to some bad places I understand, as some of us do, the evil “we” are capable of. Genocide has been for many primarily an excuse to exercise greed through violence. The final solution steals everything those people you just disappeared from history owned. The Roman Empire, from which the word fascist is taken, had an inside joke about everlasting peace for subject people who made trouble- what they really meant was extermination. The greed that has infected our world is advancing and will soon become a terminal disease. The lies used to make us hate and disown each other as human beings also make extinction a distinct possibility. Those lies used to manipulate the masses may destroy all of us much sooner than anyone thinks. We just refuse to believe it can happen, which is one reason I started this blog. If our species is to survive, we must ask, as Pilate asked in that verse I consider the most important of all in the Bible, “What is Truth?”
The truth is simple. The powerful want everything and if that means everyone else suffers in wage slavery and squalor then that is survival of the fittest. The less powerful get what they deserve. We all get what we “deserve” is the universal justification to do what thou wilt. Nothing works better to convince people of this than telling them someone else is getting something for free and they are paying for it (divide and conquer, thanks again Rome). Lying is simply a best practice in the business of amassing and hoarding obscene wealth. Those stupid enough to believe the lies serve those who tell the cleverest lies. This corruption is what drove so many across a dangerous ocean to a uncertain future in a new world.
“We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children or trample on our freedoms. We will safeguard our values, our traditions, customs, and beliefs.” Donald Trump
The statues were almost all of Confederates. And a few others who owned slaves or were instrumental in the destruction of native Americans. Aside from revisionist history that needs to be erased, nobody is erasing or trampling any freedoms. What is being safeguarded is obvious. But if you say what it is…they will deny it. Coded language.
Americans should celebrate their independence from the British because it “turned the world upside down” as the story goes. It made every man a king and those in government the servant of every man. In America you would not be made a soldier to fight in whatever war the king-ordained-by-God started and you would not have to bow down and be ordered around by a higher class. The local lord did not tax as he wished and own all the land and in effect you along with it. In America all fell under the same rule of law and anyone could gather in protest of unjust laws and be elected as a representative of the people. It was not perfect as those who were male, white, and property owners were actually the only ones with all the freedoms. But it was a start.
Now it seems we may have to try again. We could start by taxing the semi-divine super-rich progressively so they are actually paying for the workforce that makes them so rich instead of getting it for free (91 percent taxes on the 1 percent in the 1950’s made America great). Stop allowing the super-rich to corrupt the political process. Universal health care, universal education… you know, getting what we need, what those Scandinavian countries get. A Green New Deal.
Since all of that is the opposite of what is going on now- looks like we need to turn the world upside down again.
Analytical Armament
It was a little slow last night and I had a fairly involved argument during breaks with a coworker. The issues encompassed politics, ethics, morality, etc. Since most of my coworkers are almost all extremely conservative I normally would never get into it with them but this person is the one exception and is not happy with the right. We agreed on many issues but fell out on a couple and I gave it my best shot to bring him around to a more progressive view. I think I might have actually changed his opinion on a few things. So I have been thinking about it and going through a particularly interesting lecture by Jordan Peterson in search of some deeper understanding.
Any progressives will scoff and hammer me for this because Peterson is demonized by the left. I have had to accept what I consider an unjust and flawed characterization in this case and just move on as I am a fan of both Peterson and Sam Harris. Ironically Peterson and Harris do not agree with each other while the left dislikes both of them. Looking at the YouTube comments for both of these videos the progressives present as spiteful and arrogant. Self-identifying as a progressive myself I don’t like this but it is not a perfect world and that is an important lesson in itself.
That we do not live in a perfect world was a big part of the discussion with my coworker last night. Concerning Peterson and Harris, both have a narrow perspective on the same thing and come across (to me at least) as the blind men describing the elephant. In the third YouTube video below I believe what Peterson is describing perfectly is Neoliberalism. However, he seems to think that Atheism and the views of Sam Harris are the better example of how a non-existent moral compass operates.
A very divisive issue in American society is gun control. And last night I begged to differ with my coworker on his opinion of “ultra-liberals” being idiots concerning guns and he cited anti-gun relations visiting and harsh words being exchanged. Knowing I have guns and carry a gun all the time (he does not carry) he expected me to agree with him and was surprised when I told him my opinion of assault rifles. My coworker does own an AR-15 rifle and, as with many men, has a deep emotional attachment to it. I understand why…it is the apex predator of firearms and psychologically represents great power (even though they are not that expensive- what a deal!). It is the equivalent of a very expensive sports car as guns go. I shocked him when I bluntly stated private citizens should not own these military grade weapons which allow a person to kill other people at a rate of about one hundred per minute. Maybe not a hundred a minute but it is a good way to address exactly how lethal these weapons are. Regarding 30 shot semi-auto rifles and 15 shot semi-auto pistols overkill is an understatement.
Hi-capacity magazines allow a single deranged shooter to do what no militia-man with a muzzle-loading flintlock could do in 1776. Carrying a half dozen magazines a person can kill many people in a very short time. Nobody can argue what I just wrote is not 100% accurate and true. In the time it took to load a weapon for a single shot when the second amendment was written a hundred aimed shots can be fired from a AR-15 with no problem at all. A rifle makes this easy but a pistol can also be almost as effective if the shooter has had enough practice and can get close enough. My coworker was unhappy with me stating nobody should own such weapons and I responded with my best argument which was nobody needs to kill dozens of people who are attacking in a human wave. It is just not going to happen except in a zombie movie. “They might as well make hand grenades legal” which is not a great argument but horse shoe close.
The example often given in defense of military grade weaponry is the Korean store owners in the LA riots of 1992. On top of their stores with their rifles the approaching mobs saw them and went elsewhere. The problem of course is when that mob intent on taking what you have also has firearms. The other go-to is “if the Jews had guns the Nazis would not have been able to exterminate them.” This is one of those big lies that gets told so often alongside “global warming is a hoax” and “trickle down economics actually works.” The biggest lies of all are told in the interests of keeping the secret: the politicizing of anything and everything is done to divert attention from the forever war the rich wage to avoid taxes. Everything from health care to the environment to social issues is, in the end, all about avoiding paying taxes. Simple.
The very best weapon those few who have acquired most of the existing wealth in this world have to keep their treasure safe is not firearms but simply lying. The manipulation of the unwashed masses is the only tactic keeping the guillotines from coming out.
In the final analysis the best weapon for the common man and woman is to be able to think critically. http://www.criticalthinking.org// Given accurate reporting of factual information and those several thousand year old rules of logically evaluating what is presented even people with a mediocre average I.Q. like me can figure out what is going on in the world. As long as money rules politics and the propaganda game is played with millions of dollars paid out to minions and talking heads to influence the public then eventually the cycle of empire will prevail and the whole scam will collapse. And then heads will roll. Humankind can no longer afford this rise and fall in crash after crash.
For progressives the first goal is to enact campaign finance reform. They know exactly what will happen when donor and lobbyist money is no longer allowed to corrupt the system and within a few years, as the bought dogs are voted out, those who presently own everything will find themselves redistributing most of that bread to the peasants. And they will be happy to avoid losing their heads. I would suggest to my fellow progressives it would be worthwhile to reconcile with those embracing firearm culture in the United States and this is not a difficult matter at all.
Meanwhile (as Stephen Colbert says), the media boot-licking millionaire talking head minions of the billionaire class robotically weave their way through a daily mission of deceiving the unwashed masses (and usually themselves). Far down the food chain out in the real world sociopath middle managers scheme to screw over the employees and enrich their employers while doing as little as possible (it is a difficult balancing act). And those at the top….do what? I don’t really know what their semi-divine existence consists of. Perhaps some of them put in 12 hour days while others play golf most of the time. Who knows? What I do know is most Americans are not living “The American Dream.”
My right wing coworkers have several times grimly asked me, “do you believe in America?”, or something similar, whenever I mention the cost of medical care, school debt, climate change, and taxing the rich.
I have once or twice tried to explain The New Deal and how it culminated in my father, who was a mechanic, providing for his large family, and how greed separated those two lines on the graph. But their eyes just kind of go glassy on me and I stopped doing that.
If this is the most important graph to show to “average” Americans, the most important one for space enthusiasts is this one:
In other words, those fortunate enough to make 15 dollars an hour should be making over 30 for a minimum wage and the “middle class”, which is disappearing, should be making those 30 dollar an hour jobs hard to find and making over 50 an hour. Really. Progressive taxation is the rich paying for their work force making them rich. Right now the rich are stealing from the rest of us- they are the criminals. They avoid responsibility by lying and blaming everything on…the poor. In regards to space we should be spending most of the defense budget on turning the Moon into a factory site. Instead of mediocre hobby rockets taking off once a week to spew space junk into Earth orbit we should have Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLV’s) going to the Moon.
Only a state sponsored program like the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam can expand humankind into the solar system. Only Space Solar Power created by a cislunar infrastructure can solve global warming and end poverty. NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. Worse than both shuttle disasters.
It does not have to be a perfect world for our species to survive. It just has to be a better one.
Ergo Big Three
Persistent players in my inner fantasy world seem to make an appearance in popular culture at regular intervals. In this case, not so much fantasy but nightmare. Imagine the end of the world. Really. Not kidding. It could happen. Most people don’t believe that. I believe there is a mechanism hidden from conscious view that regulates how we process death and this also connects with our children, all children, ergo species extinction. For any self-aware being the ultimate horror is oblivion and approaching death in our minds automatically generates absolute terror. Yet…most of us would lay down our lives for our loved ones, especially our children, without much hesitation. We cannot understand exactly why we must deny death because…we are designed that way. We will risk our lives engaging in risky behavior like riding motorcycles (I did for years) and drinking and other bad habits and delude ourselves that somehow the reality of what we are doing is not important. So it follows it is a fact we simply cannot wrap our heads around why we are driven by invisible agents to do so many illogical things. The ancients knew this and blamed it on “the gods.” I am high in openness according to my Big Five profile and thus prey to endlessly questioning what is going on inside my head. One of those things always in the back of my mind is Extinction Level Events (ELEs).
So there is what I call, having nothing to do with the Big Five, the “Big Three” possible ELEs, which are 1) an engineered pathogen, 2) a comet or asteroid impact, and 3) a super-volcano epic. I watched the trailer for the movie Greenland and did not feel good about it. An impact could throw enough material into the atmosphere to block out the sun for years to come and this is also the danger with a super-volcano. A big enough impact or a long enough volcanic epic and all mega-fauna on Earth could disappear- as it almost did in the Permian extinction. In regards to pathogens it is similar in concept to think of a particularly nasty bug killing off a third of the population but, as with most impacts or volcanic events, the majority of life survives. While there is nothing we know of that says a big impact or volcanic epic, or even a volcanic epic triggered by an impact- cannot wipe out life on earth, diseases do leave survivors because a 100 percent lethal pathogen would render itself extinct.
This is where our playing with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) would make it fairly easy to extinguish ourselves with a engineered 100 percent lethal pathogen. So in my view the engineered pathogen is the biggest danger to our species. It is terrible to think of a large impact or super-volcano killing off 99 percent of the human race but that would leave 78 million alive. Even if only one out of every 100,000 human beings were to survive that would leave a completely viable population of 78,000 left to repopulate the planet. It is only when numbers drop below about 2500 is a population in danger of not being genetically viable. If only one in a million human beings (7800) survived a catastrophe that would be well over twice as many needed for a viable gene pool. Unfortunately seven thousand people would not be left if an engineered pathogen were to be released. Nobody would be left.
On the bright side even the 2500 minimum gene pool number is not really the lower limit as sperm banks can cut that in half again if all the survivors are females. Careful genetic screening would allow the human race to start all over again with as few as 1000 females. The trick it where to start over if we can no longer live on Earth. It is easy to assume if a pathogen can be engineered then so can a vaccine but this may not be the case. Earth may become uninhabitable for centuries or millennia and since humans require Earth gravity to thrive no other natural bodies in the solar system are available as a second home. We would have to create new worlds. Thank you Gerard K. O’Neill.
We do not maintain a population of one thousand young females in outer space in case the world comes to an end. It is well within our ability to construct miles-in-diameter-hollow-artificial-moons that can sustain ecosystems large enough to support populations in the thousands. It will take at least a half a century and a massive investment of resources to set up the industrial infrastructure on the Moon to manufacture space habitats. In the meantime there is a way to keep a Moon work force healthy and that is rotating them up to Low Lunar Frozen Orbit (LLFO) space stations to be periodically rehabilitated with artificial gravity. To maintain the health of a thousand women in shielded stations with tether generated artificial gravity would require an undetermined number of “Fat Workshops” in LLFO. If ten percent would have to be in orbit at a time and a station could accommodate ten people then ten stations would be required. That is a completely arbitrary guess as I have no idea what percentage of the work force would have to be in rehab.
As I have written several times, any extraterrestrials observing us would consider us too stupid to survive. If we at least had a self-supporting off-world “Survival Colony” of those one thousand young females then they might shake whatever we would consider their heads and say we were not too smart (but maybe smart enough). It would puzzle observers from other stars that we have plenty of nuclear weapons, which are perfect devices for deflecting impact threats and also lifting large masses off the surface of the Moon for use in space habitat construction, but we only use them to threaten each other with destruction. Crazy.
F-1A, Nova, M-1, and how we failed
http://www.astronautix.com/n/novamm1c.html
The average American never really accepted the idea of millions of tax dollars in hardware being used for a few minutes and then dropped in the ocean. Watching that 3000 ton 39 story high fire-spewing roaring spire disappear into the sky and only a tiny capsule barely large enough to carry 3 people come back a week or so later seemed an incredible waste. If that 3000 tons had been a ship that sailed around the world twenty times without refueling nobody would have complained. Which is how far Saturn V and Apollo traveled to and from the Moon. A rocket will put a satellite in orbit that will endlessly fly millions of miles around the Earth. That rocket is a fragile shell pushed by an engine that is essentially a constantly detonating high explosive directional bomb. It seems reasonable it would wear out fairly quickly even if it accomplishes millions of miles of travel in that first push. Still, getting people to see it that way has always been a major obstacle to space exploration.
The present day success of the NewSpace flagship company is an interesting and queer reversal of that prevailing public opinion that led to the end of the first space age. The reality is that landing back the first stage is the ultimate parlor trick that has paid off in P.R. far beyond what it actually accomplishes. It remains to be seen exactly how much money is being saved by reusing the first stage of their rocket. I suspect much larger vehicles than even the shiny starship are required to break even and it would be a big surprise to the public if the numbers were revealed. So much is spent on recovering, inspecting, and refurbishing the rocket for repeated flights that just dropping it in the ocean and using a new one each time might just be cheaper. How can this be that, in the words of former Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon, “reusability is a myth”?
Labor is always the biggest expense and the man-hours spent on “turning a rocket around” compared to spending that time/money just building a new one for a single use can end up being not that much different. The more flights the more wear and tear and the more maintenance and probability of failures. The more engines and plumbing, the greater the complexity and the higher the associated costs. The “standing army” of well-paid technicians required to turn a rocket around was one of the major criticisms of the Shuttle program made by NewSpace proponents- but this does not seem to apply to their flagship. Really. The cult of maniac fans are triggered by any notion of this but it is actually true.
From Quora: “How much does SpaceX save by reusing a Falcon rocket?”
Answer by Jim Cantrell, CEO and Founder of Vector Space Systems:
“If you go through the R&D costs of developing a reusable launch vehicle, the opportunity costs (in terms of fuel used for return and the lost revenue opportunity for more payload to orbit) of returning the launcher to the first stage, and the costs of refurbishment between flights, generally accepted practice shows that you have to re-use the booster or launch the vehicle 5–10 times before you make your money back if you account for all the costs. Many papers have been written on this topic and this is a well established ‘rule of thumb’. This doesn’t even account for the price reduction that many customers flying on a ‘used’ first stage will likely demand. Thus I am thinking that very few, if any, of the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stages are going to be re-used for more than 3 or so flights and that SpaceX will therefore not break even on the reusability portion of the equation.”
On 3 June 2020 a Falcon 9 was launched and landed for the 5th time. So Cantrell was wrong and maybe they did at least break even with one rocket. But probably not. In any case the payload is far below what can be considered useful for any kind of Human Space Flight (HSF) application.
This brings us back to the original problem of space travel being perceived as just too expensive. What it really comes down to in terms of profit and loss is all loss and zero profit- at least for HSF. Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) telecommunications satellites generate billions in revenues but other than that there is very little money to be made in the private space sector. The Apollo 1 fire and ensuing draconian NASA oversight proved to the aerospace industry that Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit (HSF-BEO) was going to be hard money. Military pilots could be lost in various designs that were known to have safety problems without much said while astronauts were not expendable, even if their rockets were. The industry chose the easy money of cold war toys. Thus ended the space age and the Space Agency retreated to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) which had really stopped being space after being left far behind by Apollo 8 in 1968. That’s right, a couple hundred miles up is not really space. Try a couple orders of magnitude farther out as the appropriate edge of space (GEO at 22,236 miles).
After Apollo, astronauts no longer left Earth orbit and these missions would more accurately be called “orbital flight.” A decade of Shuttle missions then made clear not much could be accomplished in LEO and possible cargo versions of the Shuttle attracted more and more attention. These variants could loft Earth Departure Stages (EDS) into orbit and eventually capsules and landers would be sent to the Moon using Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) techniques. Sidemount was not perfect but it could have served to return humans to the Moon until a much larger Nova class vehicle to be discussed here entered service.
After Apollo and Skylab NASA was desperate to continue Human Space Flight in any diluted form even if it meant satellites and humans sharing the same ride. The Space Shuttle was going to replace all expendable launch vehicles by sending up everything, satellites and astronauts, on a single multi-purpose machine that only expended a large fuel tank and reused everything else. It sounded like the answer to NASA’s P.R. problem but the program would finally end, in the opinion of many, a tragic failure. A rocket with no escape system for the human crew seems in hindsight to be an absurd proposition- but only after losing two crews made it undeniable. The Shuttle ended up costing about as much as the Saturn V per launch and so, ironically, we could have just kept going to the Moon for those 30 years for the same amount of money. Likewise, the International Space Station (ISS) was assembled at vast expense over many years when for want of a few million more dollars Skylab would have been a wet instead of smaller dry workshop and been larger than the ISS in a single launch (interior living space).
I mentioned the Apollo capsule being all that came back seeming like a waste when what was really incredible is what followed. That we could have gone to the Moon a hundred more times or put a hundred space stations larger than the ISS in orbit, or a combination of both, for the same amount of money- is a sad and depressing commentary on U.S. politics. The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) had no interest in HSF-BEO even after the 1980 Alvarez hypothesis made it clear an asteroid or comet could wipe us out like the dinosaurs. Space Solar Power is the only practical solution to powering civilization carbon free and mitigating climate change and this global warming was also known well before the turn of the century as a possible threat. Yet the DOD will have none of it.
I have written at length on the mountains of treasure being expended on new stealth bombers and missile submarines and modernizing ICBMs and all that goes with a “credible” nuclear deterrent. In my view space is the only place all these problems can be bundled and solved in one fell swoop. But where is the profit in a insurance policy for humankind? Our short lives insure we do not care about the world ending and instead want only what we can get in our own time. That we are not focused on establishing a permanent human presence off world is a red flag our species might not be intelligent enough to survive. It may be our selfish genes are translating into neoliberalism and that great filter is dooming us, and most intelligent life in the universe, to extinction.
The engines developed or proposed during the first space age in the 1960’s make those used now seem like very poor efforts. Not building vehicles to use these engines was one of the critical wrong turns made by NASA. Anyone familiar with Apollo generally considers the Saturn V to be a tremendous machine with power to spare when in reality it was much smaller than what NASA thought would be required. Until John Houbolt managed to convince them Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) would allow a smaller rocket, much larger design variants, collectively referred to as “Nova”, were the plan. The most likely Nova would have used 8 of the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V and, using F-1A engines, would have had a total of 14.4 million pounds of thrust compared to the Saturn’s 7.6. And this is where a comparison with present engines becomes interesting. The current 440,000 pound thrust and 550,000 pound thrust Raptor and BE-4 engines have less than a third of the thrust of the 1968 F-1A engine. The shiny starship will require 31 engines to generate 16 million pounds of thrust. Adding one more F-1A to the 1960’s Nova design for a total of 9 engines would provide the same total thrust. As stated earlier, when trying to make reusability a break even proposition, the more engines the higher the cost of turning around the vehicle for another flight. Thirty-one engines is a self-defeating proposition if ever there was one.
Let us entertain the option to succeed instead of fail by reviewing a few certain conclusions. It is certain we can make the F-1B, the recently modernized version of the F-1A, and mass produce large numbers of them. It is certain (courtesy of the flagship company) we can land back liquid fuel first stage boosters on ships at sea downrange of the Florida launch facilities. And it is certain we must have “Fat Workshops” to enable any long-term human presence BEO due to the prerequisite Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity environment (NSLR1G).
Some Nova vehicle designs studied were extremely large and the proposed MM 1C used no less than 18 F-1A engines for a total thrust of over 32 million pounds, placing well over 400 tons into Low Earth Orbit. The 60 ft. diameter upper stage would have allowed for an optimum double-hull Fat Workshop for use as the fundamental building block of a Cislunar Infrastructure. Regarding re-use… the recent development of geared-turbofans for airliners gives a clue as to the best path to follow. The new and very expensive super-alloys used in the compact gearbox enabling geared-turbofan technology can likewise be applied to turbopumps and building the largest practical turbopump is key. The reason the large pumps are important is while combustion instability may be a limiting factor in thrust chamber size a single turbopump can supply two chambers. One large turbopump consumes half the maintenance time and resources as two smaller ones so those 18 engines can use half as many turbopumps (and technically become 9 instead of 18 engines).
The same rationale applies to hydrogen engines and the largest made now are the RS-25 and RS-68A at 512,300 and 705,000 pounds of thrust. The Aerojet M-1 was developed until funding ran out in August of 1966 and would have produced 1.5 million pounds of thrust to start with and more when developed further. These thrust chambers in the 2 million pound thrust range and large turbopumps feeding pairs are the only way reuse is going to break even for BEO missions and most efficiently enable a Cislunar Infrastructure. There is no cheap. Private efforts have not been able to manufacture them and only state-sponsored programs like those that produced the F-1 will make it happen. This is of course the antithesis of NewSpace dogma and why NewSpace is a pernicious ideology and has done so much damage.
The ISS proved beyond any doubt that sending up little pieces and assembling anything in orbit is a complete waste of time and will accomplish little at astronomical expense. Only scaling up beyond what was necessary to reach the Moon has any chance of expanding humankind into the solar system. With a launch mass of over 12,000 tons for a Nova MM 1C and 3,000 for a Saturn V, and lofting 400 tons into LEO versus 100, the obvious conclusion is we are not building rockets to the appropriate scale if we are ever to effect Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO). The rocket stage currently being landed on recovery vessels for reuse masses around 29 tons at shutdown while a Nova class stage as described would mass over 650 tons. The Nova stage is only about 30 feet taller but over 7 times wider at the base.
They are going to need a bigger boat, though landing back 650 tons of stage is not so extreme considering the maximum landing weight of the largest cargo jets are approximately 400 and 600 tons. The shiny starship will supposedly reenter and reuse the entire 2nd stage but, realistically, expending the second stage tankage while recovering the engine module is the likely necessary sacrifice to the rocket equation. The shuttle External Tank (ET) was about the same length but only half the diameter of this Nova second stage. Philip Bono, who was the father of the Vertical Take-off Vertical Landing (VTVL) concept in the early 1960’s, proposed using a lower thrust setting rocket exhaust plume to absorb heat and shield a stage at reentry speeds. Using stainless steel construction and a percentage of propellants to bring the second stage back down- and then more propellants and landing legs to land- would incur a significant payload penalty. But…as I inferred, if the scale of payload matches the resources expended to turn around the vehicle then it can break even. Getting that Fat Workshop on the way to the Moon is the trick and this is where 30 million pounds of thrust at lift-off becomes necessary to make any kind of reuse scheme worth the trouble. No free lunch.
To support missions beyond the Moon to the outer solar system a Super Heavy Lift Vehicle (SHLV) program to enable building a cislunar infrastructure is the first step. Cosmic ray water shielding must be acquired from the lunar poles and brought up to the waiting workshops (the “Fat Workshop” concept) before any long duration human missions are possible. Once these crew compartments in Low Lunar Frozen Orbit (LLFO) are shielded then humans can again leave Earth’s gravitational field and return to the Moon to maintain a permanent presence. After the water shielding comes the tether systems to provide artificial gravity and then a Lunar Cycler fleet and GEO human-crewed telecom platform network will follow. Eventually, true atomic spaceships using crew compartments from this production pipeline can depart for Ceres and the ocean moons of the gas and ice giants.
Unfortunately, the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) and the NewSpace flagship shiny starship are both simply too small to support such an effort. Going four times larger is the necessity while billionaire hobbyists claim they can accomplish great things spending less than what NASA has on their Moon rocket. If space clown tourism and strip mining Earth orbit with tens of thousands of pieces of smallsat junk is their idea of great they need to find another hobby. NewSpace is all hype.
And so, we fail.
Kathy in Control
NASA has a new head of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate. A really good pick since she was an expert on the RCS and OMS on the Shuttle. Now she has to deal with the new elephant in the room NASA will not discuss with the public: the hypergolic abort systems on the SpaceX and Boeing commercial crew astronaut taxis.
While the Orion capsule on the Space Launch System (SLS) went with a traditional expendable tractor escape tower the commercial crew entries decided they could do better than expending those expensive towers and went with a dual-purpose system. Both commercial crew taxis dispense with a service module and instead combine their escape system with an orbital maneuvering system. Both companies made an extremely bad decision that is a step backward into the cognitive dissonance that produced a Space Shuttle with no escape system at all.
NASA could have required a reusable tractor escape tower, ocean-recovered by parachute like the Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). Instead, the space agency appears to have let the NewSpace “Public Private Partnership” concept work its supposed magic. Unfortunately, the temptation to make the escape system a “moneymaker” instead of a “moneywaster” was obviously too much for the commercial crew competitors. As with the Shuttle, crew safety took a back seat to going cheap and now it appears we (or rather, the astronauts) are stuck with these bad designs for the foreseeable future.
The simple mission of the tractor escape tower is pulling the capsule free of the rest of the stack and super-accelerating this minimum mass away from a possibly disintegrating launch vehicle. The 8-ton SLS Launch Abort System (LAS) activates in milliseconds to blast the Orion capsule away at 12 G’s using 400,000 pounds of thrust. The commercial crew taxis do not come close to this performance. This is a sacrifice of crew safety in the interest of doing more with less. Not expending escape towers or even part of the hypergolic system in the case of the crew dragon is the money-maker SpaceX and Boeing have traded a great deal of survivability for.
There is no cheap.
I expect the 8 tons of the Orion LAS is too much to add to either commercial crew stack and just bolting it on to either capsule is probably not going to work. So, as Kathy Lueders is quite aware of, there is no easy solution at this point. Except to call these hypergolic systems a wonderful added capability and not a problem at all. See how that works?
Good luck Kathy.
June 3, 2023, Update. Kathy now works for SpaceX.
And I am adding these numbers from a Space Review site forum comment:
The single best measure of the effectiveness of an escape system is thrust/weight ratio. This shows how fast the system will get a crew away from an exploding launch vehicle. The only upper limit is what will kill the crew, which is between 65 and 75 Gs. I am guessing that would take over a 20 to 1 thrust weight ratio. Anything under that is what you want. That is how you survive your rocket blowing up. Unless the escape system itself is wrapped around you and it blows up. While that has happened with a hypergolic system it can’t really happen with a solid fuel escape tower.
Thrust/weight:
Orion 17.5
Apollo 11.3
Starliner 5.58
Crew Dragon 4.82
Starship 1.17
Thanks to Lee for the numbers.
Ice on the Moon 