patrick.net

STARLINK

Not dependent on legacy DARPA Internet infrastructure
Promotes P2P mechanisms.
Will be encrypted end-to-end.
No last mile costs.
No undersea cables to tap or cut.
No Secret Rooms at Telecoms, No more 33 Thomas Street or 611 Folsom Street.
No more reasons not to live in a rural area.
First Mass Manufactured Commsats.
Total communications for US Military anywhere in the world, instantly deployable and unhackable.
Krypton Powered Ion Propulsion - first ever.

Goodbye, Comcast. Goodbye, AT&T.

https://www.starlink.com/

66 Mass produced satellites on a deployable stack.

CornPoptheOriginalGangster says

Krypton Powered Ion Propulsion - first ever.

Superman?

Boeing successfully lobbied to cancel a NASA initiative to test space refueling, as it would endanger the SDHLV/Ares/SLS.

Zubrin worked on the first version of the SLS back in 1988, when he was in his 30s. It was considered a no brainer and was expected to fly regularly no later than the mid 90s.

It is now almost 2020 and no Ares/SLS has preformed so much as a suborbital test, the total dev costs of Ares/SLS is in the tens of billions with no product nor even a tested prototype.

Since 2010, a family of two, soon to be three, reusable medium and heavy lift rockets has been created by private industry (SpaceX).

Now let's talk about Orion.

At a ridiculous 26 tons, it cannot land on the moon even if launched by the SLS, because it's so damned heavy. Hence, we have the Gateway Boondoggle. All the exposure of deep space with few benefits.

In comparison, the Apollo CSM weighed 9 tons, and Dragon weighs 10 tons.

Unlike the Orion, the Dragon has built in thrusters, not just RCS, which is a launch escape system AND has enough DV to get off the moon in it's basic configuration. With a supplemental service module and upper stage, it could orbit, land, come up from orbit on the moon, and possibly return to Earth (might need to replenish in LLO so it had a margin of safety when landing on Earth, and so it could circularize in a lower Earth Orbit before landing).

The Dragon has it's own built in LES, but Orion will have to have one added to the launch stack.

And Guess which one cost billions of taxpayer money for no product while the other had flown several times, delivered cargo to the ISS, returned and was reused (albeit without a crew, yet)?

In fact, the Dragon could have a self-propelled landing ON MARS (it would be cutting it real close without an extra propellant store, however).

We're witnessing the end of cost-plus contracting, the glory of Lockheed and Boeing.

There's simply almost no economic, scientific, technological, or engineering justification for SLS or Orion or the Lunar Gateway.

If it becomes possible to refuel just the Falcon Heavy in LEO, then there is no case for SLS at all, not even for Mars.

Since periodic comet destruction of the earth is inevitable, and has been found recently to be much more common than previously suspected (now it is known that celestial events have wiped humanity from civilization in the stone age at least several times) I think the first priority of space programs should be methods for re-directing space objects away from earth so that we can actually survive to continue scientific advancement and space exploration.

Yes, exactly. If we aren’t building a comet/asteroid shield for the Earth, we aren’t valuing our civilization. We’ve already had several near misses in the past hundred years. Why aren’t we making this a priority? We need to get into space stat! All this farting around landside is just wasting time and tempting fate.

The #1 problem is finding them.
The #1b problem is that finding them would be a cinch with a network of Lunar Radar/Infrared/Visual Telescopes, no atmosphere, solid foundation, maintainable with a lunar presence, and half of them would be outside all the radio noise pollution from Earth at any given time.
The #1c problem is that interstellar ones could be a huge bitch to find and even bitchier to do so before they got close. We only saw that Oumeatakalakahaymeinuyouwanalayme one on it's way out.
The #2 problem isn't really one if we can find them far out, that is just smacking them with something would throw them off enough not to hit earth. The further they are away, the lighter the push needs to be. We'd only need nuke level power if they were already too damn close.

The real terror threat is 200 years from now when terrorist symps on a belt miner decide to propel one to Earth unless their demands for $100 Trillion dollars ($1M in today's money) is satisfied (inflation, y'know).

There have been efforts to address cataclysmic strikes. I expect an "Earth Defense System" will be created well before end of Century.
Here is a link to Jerry Pournele's old blog: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/another-asteroid/
Jerry passed away but his comments, and comments from smart readers, live on. Smartest guy in the room on so many subjects!! Enjoy

Small package car:


Uh....

That's a prototype and not including the reusable Booster, of course. The final will be made of rolled steel rather than plates. We already saw two prototypes tested successfully this summer on short length hopes.

Meanwhile SLS hasn't even done a suborbital test yet, and it's really 35 years in development, itself just a modified Shuttle Launch System without a Shuttle on the side.

Zubrin worked on the first version of SLS, Aries, back in the 80s.

It’s good to see that Musk’a space company has detractors. Anything revolutionary has to have an opposition.

Detractor? I admire Elon as much as the next guy, but he's not above a joke.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/01/relativity-a-new-star-in-the-space-race-raises-160-million-for-its-3-d-printed-rockets/
"With $140 million in new financing, Relativity Space is now one step closer to fulfilling its founders’ vision of making the first rockets on Mars.

Tagging along for the ride are a motley assortment of millionaires and billionaires, movie stars and media moguls that are providing the money the rocket launch services provider and manufacturer of large-scale, 3-D printers needs to achieve its goals."

Get the Rocket Report from Ars Technica to stay on top of all things rocket:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/rocket-report-blue-origin-crew-flights-may-slip-to-2020-final-soyuz-fg-launch/

I subscribe and get a nice weekly summary.

BTW, anyone investing in Space companies?

Yep: billionaires.

Ha! Good one.

SpaceAngels.com seems interesting.

Good resource and pro-Entrepreneurship.

Zimmerman is also anti-Google/Facebook/Twatter

https://behindtheblack.com/

Good news:

Those comments resulted in some modifications intended to streamline the process and give companies more flexibility. One of the biggest is that NASA will no longer require lunar landers to dock with the lunar Gateway to serve as a staging point, at least for initial missions to the lunar surface.

https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/nasa-solicits-proposals-for-manned-lunar-landers/

That's the hoped for SLS Part Two, another two decades of underperforming, overexpensed real estate that does nothing useful. "Oh we're gonna take it to Mars". Yeah, after 20 years in a high radiation environment, after decades of tech progress, we're really gonna put people on it for a 3 year mission to Mars and back. If you believe that, I have some revolutionary game changing Segways for ya.