Saturn Saturday

Here is a little vid of Saturn's moon Hyperion taken from the Cassini space probe:



By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Fantastic Future Friday: Space Based Solar Power II

In last weeks post Space Based Solar Power I left out some of the details in order to make it concise. Eventually I will merge all my posts on this topic into one long article but here is the next phase of Space Based Solar Power.

With more research and interest in Solar Cells they will become both more efficient and weigh less. It is a reasonable expectation that within 15 years solar cells will go from 14% efficient to at least 40% efficient (the range that the newest generation of solar cells are achieving), and that they will become lighter, hopefully half the weight of current ones.

With Solar Cells being in that range they will not only be useful for Space Based electricity but of course down here on Earth, as they become the roofing standard for south facing roofs.

Solar Cells on Earth have one big problem, night. Although battery efficiency will get better storing all the power you need to get through the night adds tremendously to the cost of Solar Power.

They also run into the problem that it is more efficient for heavy industries to gather together, so recycled steel can go straight to the steel pressing plant that sends their product straight to the assembly line, ect. It also allows industries to have a pool of semi-skilled workers available.

Without radically altering the lifestyle humans have been enjoying since the invention of fire we would still need a large power plant to handle these problems, that’s where the Space Based Solar Power Plants come in.

The best location for a Space Based Solar Power Plant to be built would be in a Geo-synchronous Orbit (GEO), high enough that it’s orbit around the Earth is exactly 24 hours, so it appears to be over the same spot at all times.

However it takes a lot more fuel to achieve GEO than LEO (Low Earth Orbit) so the first launch would need to include a upper, upper stage that was basically a ion propulsion Tug.

Ion propulsion uses electricity to speed up ions to extremely high speeds, making them very efficient but they have low acceleration. They also need a source of electricity.

As the space based solar power plant is built, it will use a super heavy lift rocket (like the Ares V) to lift small solar power plants that can generate power in the megawatt scale. As it's being built the power generated can be used to power the ion propulsion Tug, slowly lifting the parts from LEO to GEO.

The first few sections would be lifted months apart. Not only to give the tug time to lift the parts but for testing and problem solving phases. As more parts are lifted into GEO they can supply more energy to build the plant speeding up the process.

After the first power plant is built the amount of energy that Earth needs from it will be uneven with homes and businesses using Earth based Solar during the day and Space Based Solar at night, so the Space Solar Power Plant could be used to power the ion propulsion tug during the day lifting the parts and equipment needed to place a permanent base on the Moon.

One of the things that could be sent would be equipment to mine for Xenon and Argon to use as a propellant for the Ion Propulsion Tug. With power and fuel not having to be lifted from Earths surface the cost of moving material beyond LEO would become negligible.

Once robotic space exploration is freed from having to rely on fuel from Earth the Space Based Solar Power Plant could be used on something that would give mankind its greatest benefit. That power could be used to capture a Near Earth Asteroid.

Sending a probe to land on a small one and a half mile diameter Metallic Near Earth Asteroid it could unfurl a solar sail made of reflective Mylar, the power from the Solar Power Plants could be used to power lasers to steer it into Earth orbit.

Once it is within Earth’s orbit it could be mined for it’s metals, an Asteroid that size would have over $50 Trillion worth of Iron and precious metals such as gold and platinum, or roughly the World’s Gross Domestic Product for 2007.

With minor advancements in robotic manufacturing and unlimited energy from Space Based Solar Power Plants the whole system of scarcity based Economics will be a thing of the past as anything you can dream up, you can just draw into a diagram and robots will have all the necessary materials to make it for you within days.

Imagination and Creativity will become the new currency, not gold and gems. The human mind will be the most valuable commodity as simple stuff like iron, gold, gems become as cheap as air.

This will bring a whole new dawn for civilization and a fantastic future.

Fantastic Future Friday: Space Based Solar Power

In my earlier posts on Alternative Energy Sources I concentrated on small-scale power sources for the end user. I did that because coming from the energy field I know that the US needs to work on either saving energy or finding new energy sources that add up to 1.5% of our current energy usage every year in order to maintain our lifestyle. This has to be done now and the working at the end user level is the quickest way to do it in the short term. However, It does quickly reach the point where you just can’t conserve any more so we need a large-scale solution.

Space Based Solar Power:

The concept is simple, in space the energy from the sun is 144% greater than here on Earth, under the thick atmosphere. There is also no weather to cause problems or oxygen to corrode the solar panels. So a large Solar Array would generate much more power than one here on Earth.

Every day enough energy falls on Earth in the form of Solar Energy to power civilizations current needs for a year, so solar power could supply all our needs for centuries.

As solar power releases no carbon dioxide, the only harm to the Earth will be the actual heat formed by using it. At today’s levels of energy use that heat is too small to be measured against the sun’s heat on the Earth. It will take several centuries of increasing power usage for solar from space to have a noticeable effect.

Experiments have shown it is possible to beam that energy down to Earth in the form of microwaves at roughly 80% efficiency.

So all we have to now, do is get them up there.

Right now that is to only weak spot in Space Based Solar Power for use here on Earth.

In order to be useful, a space based solar power array would need to be kilometers wide, vastly larger than anything we have ever tried to build in space before. So building it would involve launching more weight into space then we have ever tried.

In order to lift the current generation of solar panels in a large enough volume to build a 3 gigawatt power station, it would require lifting 80,000 tons into low Earth orbit, or roughly 3,000 Space Shuttle launches. (If my math is wrong Stephanie B will correct it in the notes.) This means it is probably impractical at this time, but there are a few emerging technologies that can overcome this limitation in the next decade.

Current solar panels are 14% efficient, but the newest generation panels are 40% efficient reducing the size (and weight) needed by two thirds. With more people installing small-scale solar systems in their homes the demand for efficiency will increase and over the next decade their weight/power will reduce, so less weight will be needed to be sent into low Earth orbit.

The Ares V is classified as a Super Heavy Lift Launch System as opposed to the Shuttle which is “merely” a Heavy Lift Launch System. It will be able to lift 188 Tons as opposed to the Shuttle’s 25 Tons.

If the Ares V is successful in 2018 and solar panel efficiencies continue to increase over the next decade. Within 15 to 20 years it will be practical to build a solar power array in space freeing us from the need for fossil fuels, and that will lead to a fantastic future.

Fantastic Future Friday: Geo-Thermal

This is the fourth part of my three part series (It’s a Douglas Adams type thing) on Alternative Energy.

Residential and Commercial Geo-Thermal Heating and Cooling:

Way Ahead of Humans in the use of Geo-Thermal Cooling

Last Friday I talked about using solar heating for hot water generation and heating a home in the winter. A big use of power is the opposite, cooling a home during the summer months.

The simplest Alternative to the big compression Air Conditioners is right underneath our feet, Geo-Thermal.

The basic idea behind Geo-Thermal hvac (Heating and Air Conditioning) is that the Earth between 10 and 40 feet underground stays at a constant temperature between 50 to 73 degrees in most parts of the world.

In the summer months it’s much easier to cool air that is that temperature to the standard 68 degrees than the outside air that is in the mid 80s to 100 degrees.

Geo-Thermal Air Conditioning also has the advantage that it has few or no moving parts so once it is installed it’s easy to maintain.

The simplest Geo-Thermal Air Conditioning system is so simple that prairie dogs have been using it for 1,000s of years. Since humans like to use fancy names when it is installed in a home it is called an Earth-Air Heat Exchanger.

The only components to this system are a tube between 4” and 24” buried 10 foot underground. It is open to the outside air at one end and either attaches to an existing central air unit, or uses a solar chimney to draw the air up into the home.

The only draw back to these systems is when the moist warm air is drawn into the tube and cooled down the moisture condenses and can cause mold. So the air needs to be heavily filtered. In some places the humidity isn’t high enough to cause this problem (lucky bastards) and the increased amount of fresh air in the home actually decreases indoor mold and mildew. In other areas with high humidity and a high water table (harder to drain the water) it is the biggest consideration in the system.

A more complex system is to use pipes buried 10 foot underground filled with saltwater and pumped into pipes in the house where fans blow across them to provide cool air for the home. This is good for the people in high humidity areas as they don’t have to worry about the mold.

The most complex system is one that uses existing heat pump (regular AC) technology, but instead of using the outside air to either pump out the excess heat in the summer or the cold in the winter it uses the water that has been pumped underground to heat or cool the unit.

The energy and cost savings from these units are phenomenal, a simple Earth-Air Heat Exchanger can pay for itself in the first summer it is used (depending on the climate).

As I talked about in my last post of this series anything that reduces peak power demands for electric utilities means they can build smaller more efficient power plants. If new homes are built to take advantage of Geo-Thermal heating and air conditioning, and existing homes get systems installed, it takes the load off the power plants during the high temperature days when they are taxed the most.

Besides the cost and energy savings that small-scale solar bring to residential customers, the flexibility it brings to the power grid can’t be understated. By decreasing the demand on the existing power grid it frees up city planners to look at other considerations like quality of living and better access to parks and recreations, instead of having the number one priority be how do we get power to theses people?

Having our homes less dependent on the existing power grid will lead to a Fantastic Future.

Number 1 on the Runway

Yesterday NASA launched the Ares 1X test rocket, with spectacular results. As I saw it on the launch pad with the Space Shuttle on NASA’s other launch pad I was reminded of the old NASA quote that goes back to the Mercury Missions, “You’re Number One on the Runway”.

At the time that quote was a joke as obviously there were no other spacecraft ahead of them waiting to take-off.

It’s not so much of a joke anymore with two Spacecraft waiting to take-off (even if the launches are weeks apart).

With the Ares 1X successful test, and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket moving along, in a few years we could see Cape Kennedy nearly always having two rockets waiting to launch, opening up great opportunities for the human presence in Low Earth Orbit.

Space Station Missions will become much simpler when they know the next flight is only days away instead of the current system of having to plan everything with the expectation that if something goes wrong the next flight might be months away.

If the Ares 1 and the Falcon 9 turn out to be even as reliable as the Space Shuttle, not a hard goal, America can start making real plans to use space.

By having 2 separate craft doing missions to space, the odds of continuous missions are exponentially improved. If they both had a 1 in 10 chance of a mission scrub that took them out of commission for months that would mean a 1 in 100 chance of something taking both of them out of the picture. (Not to mention the Russians and Chinese launches.)

Those are odds that make working in Low Earth Orbit practical.

I can’t wait until Mission Control has to seriously say to a crew on a manned flight, “You’re number two on the launch pad.”

To those people that are against having NASA go forward with building new spacecraft, I am reminded of the words of John F. Kennedy:

“the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space.”

Fantastic Future Friday: Alternative Energy

This post is the third post of my planned three part series that started With Temper-Tantrum Tuesday: Energy Conservation and Solar Energy and What We Know Wednesday: Peak Oil.

Alternative Energy is simply any energy source that isn’t derived from what we think of as the conventional fuels we have used throughout the 20th century (fossil fuels and nuclear).

As I explained in Peak Oil if the world doesn’t wean itself off oil at a rate of 2% or more per year we are doomed. We can’t replace it with Natural Gas as the same Peak effect will hit Natural Gas only the spike will be much more dramatic. Coal releases so much Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere that even the Climate Change Deniers (at least the ones that don’t just put their fingers in their ears and say, “LA-LA-LA-LA, I can’t hear you”) can’t deny increasing our coal usage fourfold over the next twenty years will hurt the planet. Without getting into the debate over Nuclear Power it takes roughly 15 years to get a Nuclear Power Plant up and running, so it is out as a practical option.

The great news is we already have the means to offset our use of Conventional Energy sources available now.

Small Scale Solar:

Solar Heating:
It’s possible for a small family in a conventional house to most of their hot water from a 10 square foot (3’2” x 3’2”) solar panel mounted on their roof. Replacing a typical 80,000 Btu furnace with solar heat would take solar panel would take a solar panel roughly 250 square feet (16’ x 16’) and would only heat the house during the day.

However, even in the coldest areas a furnace doesn’t run continuously, I should know I grew up in the coldest place in the continental United States, so except for the coldest parts of the winter a household can use solar power to heat their homes during the day and only use a conventional furnace at night and in the coolest winter months.

Using the sun to replace conventional heating sources can go a long way towards reducing our energy needs and anyone with a little carpentry skill can do it.

Small Scale Solar Electricity (Photovoltaic):

There are two types of Photovoltaic systems available, AC and DC. The DC (Direct Current) systems are fairly cheap and easy to install. Their drawbacks are they use DC and most electrical appliances are designed for AC.

A small 250-watt solar panel with battery back-up can power roughly 5 halogen lights, so it would easy to set up a house that was completely lit by the sun.

The AC (Alternating Current) systems are a lot more complex but offer huge advantages. An AC system converts the electricity coming off the solar panels from DC to AC, not only does this mean you can plug it into your house’s conventional power grid but in most places you can sell the excess power back to the electric utility.

The Advantage of Small Scale Solar to Utilities:

Using small scale solar not only saves the consumer money by reducing their electric consumption, it helps the utilities especially in rural areas.

Electric Companies have to built their power plants based on peak rates, the maximum power usage they can expect at one time, even if most of the time usage isn’t anywhere near that.

They also have to make sub-stations to boost the power when it starts to dip in areas that are far away from the main power station.

Some activities like Aluminum production and Steel Recycling can be moved to off peak hours, some like farming can’t. For rural areas utilities have to build their plants figuring the farmers and residential customers will be using their peak energy usage at the same time.

By having residential customers use solar for their heating and some of their electricity needs it lowers the peak amount of energy used and they can build smaller power plants to serve the same needs. When some of their customers switch to Solar AC systems they can have the residential customers supplying electricity to the grid at the same time as the farmers need it most decreasing the amount of sub-stations they need to build.

The final advantage of small scale solar to the utilities is during power outages. When a storm takes out the power grid, the electric companies have to scramble to get it back up again. Obviously, if people are getting their own heat and some of their electricity from the sun it lessens the urgency, but it they have some people generating AC it lets them rebuild the system in a more organized fashion.

If you’ve ever gone through a major blackout (who hasn’t) that lasts a few days, then you know turning on you TV or Computer in the days afterwards is a scary thing. As they try to rebuild the grid they end up constantly switching the routes that electricity takes from the main station to your house.

With several small sources of power feeding into the grid from more localized sources it is easier for them to balance the amount of power in the areas of the grid that they get up and running.

With more people switching to solar power not only will it reduce our dependency on fossil fuels but also the existing electric grid will be able to offer more reliable power and that will lead to a fantastic future.

(I had intended to look at more sources of Alternative Energy in this post, but it got a little long, so next week I’ll look at Geothermal Energy in the fourth installment of my three part series.)

Catspiracy Purrsday: Blog Action Day

Investigating the Catspiracy, Tigger’s Evil Plan to rule the world, I have found the Evil Cat Minions are trying to fight Climate Change.

At first glance you would think the Evil Minions would be all for a Warmer Climate, as they like laying in the sun.

Solar Powered Minion

Solar Powered Minion 2

However, if global temperatures rise just a few degrees, sea levels will also rise leaving the Evil Minions stranded.

Stranded Minion

As the sea levels rise they will use anything they can get their paws on to use as a floatation device.

Minion using a floatation device.

Since the Catspiracy is against Global Warming, everyone can do their part and use fossil fuels with reckless abandon. Sure it will create untold devastation on human civilization, but if you hate cute and furry kittens the loss of most large cities, millions of people dieing from starvation as crops try to adjust to the new weather patterns, mass extinction of species that humans rely on to feed themselves, and many other bad things will all be worth it.

So unless you want to live in a world where cute and fuzzy kittens plunder your lap and fill you full of warm and happy thoughts, you need to do your part to insure Global Warming.

Just remember if you don’t, this could happen to you:

Fantastic Future Friday: The Lovely Lunar Landscape

I was hoping to write a few words on the LCROSS impact on the lunar surface this morning. Unfortunately, this morning I had trouble accessing GOOGLE, which is a problem as Google Adsense is on nearly every page that I normally look at so every page I went to I had to wait for my computer not to make a connection with Google before it continued.

I could be old fashioned and watch it on TV, except I don’t have one.

Now that I’m back up and running, it turns out the visual of the impact was disappointing to say the least and the analysis of the smaller than expected plume will take weeks, not days.

So I will have to write a philosophical piece than I had intended.

In space exploration the greatest missions have been the ones we sent to boring places.

The Voyager missions looked at Jupiter and almost in hindsight snapped a few pictures of the Jovian moons. Everyone (at the time) knew that Jovian Moons were dirty ice balls of no real scientific interest. When they were photographed we learned that those dirty ice balls were worlds.

Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system, Europa almost definitely has an ocean under that ice and Ganymede probably does as well. We found out that this place of little scientific interest was one of the best places to search for extra terrestrial life.

After Apollo we ignored our own Moon as we figured the few pounds of rocks we brought back could tell us all we need to know. Until Bush pronounced we were going back to the Moon in 2020 it was totally ignored. Now we are looking at it again, and every time we look at it we find totally new things.

Just in the past year we’ve found heavy elements on the surface and water in the surface soils. Both of those things were believed not to exist.

In a few weeks we will have analysis of soil that has rested at a depth of 13 feet under the surface, more than twice as deep the Apollo missions were able to dig.

There have been a lot of predictions as to what the analysis will show but I will give my own prediction. All the predictions will be wrong, what we will find will completely shatter our current thinking about the Moon.

I’m willing to bet that we find something that no one expected, and with that discovery we will have completely change our preconceived notions as to what we can do with a base on the Moon.
This new knowledge will lead to a fantastic future.

Fantastic Future Friday: Personalized Medicine

With all the talk about “Socialized Medicine” coming from the Right-Wing, I’d like to use this week’s Fantastic Future Friday to highlight one of the Government’s plans for improving our nation’s health, and the rest of the worlds health by default.

Dr Francis Collins has been named the Head of the National Institutes of Health, and one thing he is passionate about is the idea of “Personalized Medicine”.

As head of the team that mapped the human genome, Dr Collins wants to use that information to specialize medicine to individuals instead of the current one size fits all.

As anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows, people’s bodies react differently. A diet and exercise routine that will make one person lose weight at a rate of 5 to 7 lbs a week might make someone else following the exact same plan and lose 1 lbs over an entire month.

It’s the same thing with drugs and medicines, the current approach to medicine is to find what works with the greatest amount of people and use that on everyone with a particular illness, then vary it slightly to account for the person’s individual response.

Our current for-profit healthcare system encourages this practice, as industries believe in the economies of scale, basically if you can do something over and over again it gets cheaper on a per unit basis.

For an insurance company it is much more profitable if they can find a procedure that works on 51% of patients and deny treatment to the minority if testing to find what procedure works costs more than one and a half times the cost of treatment for the majority.

The better a treatment works on the whole, say 75% vs 25%, the more incentive the insurance company has to deny treatment to the minority.

That’s where personalized medicine comes in.

The grand idea is that you can look at a newborns genome and determine what risks they are predisposed to have. Then once doctors know what risks a person has they can tailor a specialized preventative treatment program for that individual to follow.

If you know someone is likely to have a heart attack, you can work to lower their risk all their life instead of waiting for them to have a costly and life threatening heart attack.

You can also determine before hand the odds of the mainstream treatment working on an individual, so you can determine the best treatment for that individual.

This information can work two ways, either the insurance companies can use this information to figure out the rates to charge people giving some people lower rates and telling the rest to please die quietly, or it can open up a brand new approach to personalized preventive medicine.

In the future personal genome mapping can be used to determine the best way for someone not to get sick, and when they do get sick the best treatment can be determined without intensive and expensive testing.

With this emphasis on a personal preventative approach to medicine will mean people will live longer healthier lives and the cost of treatment for individuals will drop.

So called “Socialized Medicine” will lead us into the field of “Personalized Medicine” and that will be a fantastic future.

Fantastic Future Friday: Water, Water Everywhere

Water is the key to life, and by extension Space Exploration. The human body needs 3 to 4 liters of water everyday just to survive. So that’s why it is so fantastic that there has been two discoveries of water on other worlds this week.

The first discovery this week was of water on the surface of the Moon. Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy does a great job of explaining how the water was found and how the amounts of water were calculated in his post “Water on the Moon…? Yup it’s real” I can’t explain how the three spacecraft Cassini, Deep Impact, and Chandrayaan-1 found the water without seriously plagiarizing his post, so I won’t even try.

Basically they found that on the surface of the Moon there is between 0.1 and 1% water. This translates into roughly a liter per cubic meter. While this is less than the most arid regions on Earth, which have 1 to 5% water volume, it still means any settlement on the Moon will have a source of water that they don’t have to bring from Earth.

The importance of this can’t be overstated as in order to get one pound of material into low Earth orbit it takes 24 pounds of fuel, at the minimum. To get material from the Earth to the Moon takes even more. If a lunar settlement can get even a fraction of its water needs from the lunar soil, it can translate into tons of material that doesn’t have to be lifted out of Earth’s gravity well.

If we can find ice deposited by comets in the craters near the poles, where sunlight can’t reach it, this would be an even better source, but having a confirmed source of water on the Moon means that plans for a Lunar Settlement can proceed with plans of using native water letting it expand much quicker than if all the water the settlement needs had to be brought up from Earth.

This discovery could also mean that we can send humans to Mars cheaper than if there was no water source on the Moon. The biggest obstacle in sending a human crew to Mars is cosmic rays and solar radiation.

The ISS is inside Earths magnetic field which shields it from this radiation, the Apollo astronauts only spent 8 days outside of Earths magnetic field and were exposed to the same amount of radiation that a worker in an atomic energy plant receives in a year.

Any expedition to Mars will require astronauts to spend up to 6 months in space, each way. This adds up to a lifetime’s worth of exposure during the round trip.

One proposed solution is to have the astronauts travel inside a large water tank. The outside walls of the craft would hold a few feet of water that the crew could use on the journey. This would lower the exposure to radiation during the trip.

If they can get their original supply of water from the Moon this would lessen the amount of mass needed to be lifted off the Earth. Once on Mars they could refill these water tanks, which brings me to the next discovery announced this week. Water has been found on Mars.

We have known water ice was present on Mars since the first telescopes saw that Mars had icy poles. This discovery shows that water ice is present just below the surface much closer to the equator than was previously thought.

With this discovery a mission to Mars can count on having all the water they need for living on the planet and as a fuel for getting back home.

These two discoveries are showing we have all the resources we need to open up the inner solar system we only need to have the will to take advantage of them.

That will lead to a fantastic future.

Fantastic Future Friday

I’ve spent a while thinking up a topic to fill the Friday posting on this blog. I realize most people nowadays have been drawn into the consumer over the citizen philosophy that the US government has been pushing for the last 30 years. So people have been working all week to have fun on the weekends instead of enjoying their work. So it would be nice to have a nice uplifting post on Fridays to set the weekend off right. (Although my explanation probably just killed that effect).

I was wondering about what uplifting topic to talk about when I read (and watched a cool video) over at Bad Astronomy, “What does 3.6 Million Pounds of Thrust Look Like” and I thought people might like to read the thoughts of a semi-professional science fiction writer about what the future has to offer. In the profound words of the mighty Crisswell in Ed Wood’s classic film, Plan 9 from Outer Space, “We all have an interest in the future, for someday we will all live there.”

SPACE: IT’S EVERYWHERE WE NEED TO BE.

As I noted last week NASA successfully tested their Ares I-X Rocket, Reports are also coming in that congress is pretty receptive to giving NASA the budget it needs to run a real space program.

What that means to you:

In the short-term 2015-2020: the International Space Station (ISS) will continue flying and with a crew of six, instead of the minimal crew of three, real research can start to be done. There is promise that research into micro-gravity pharmaceuticals can produce new lines of drugs that cannot be produced here on Earth.

Enthusiasm for this type of research has died down because it is clear that even if there was a breakthrough in drugs in micro-gravity there would be no way to produce them in quantities to bring them to the market.

If NASA is given a real budget, then by 2015 or 2016 there will be four types of manned rockets able to reach the ISS, the Ares, SpaceX’s Falcon, Russia’s Soyuz, and China’s space program as well as a half dozen unmanned rockets that can be used for cargo.

With a space infrastructure being developed it’s not a stretch to see how if a truly valuable drug can be made in micro-gravity, like a cure for Alzheimer’s or AIDS, a pharmaceutical company could spend several billion a year to produce it in commercial space station by 2025 or so.

With more options to get into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) private firms can take a serious look at working in space, this will lead to them demanding more options for getting into space reducing the costs more and making more products profitable to make in space, leading to more options, making more products profitable.

It’s been known since the days of the Apollo that space offers trillions of dollars to companies that can take advantage of it, but until the cost of getting into space come down no company can afford to take advantage of it.

Once the critical threshold is reached where the profits of working in space outweigh the costs, demand for space access will drive down the costs and space will quickly open up.

With a new budget and a new rocket NASA might help reach that threshold, and that will open up a fantastic future.

That’s Dongtastic III: Test firing of the Ares I-X

Yesterday NASA successfully test-fired the first stage the new Ares I.

Click here to see the test.

This is Dongtastic news as it means the first 36 miles back into space is available. NASA managed to build this new rocket on roughly the same budget, adjusted for today’s dollars, as the Apollo program spent on catering. (Citation needed)

Now that the research is done on the first stage booster, hopefully the per unit cost (sale price) of this booster is comparable to other boosters and it can be brought to market so through economies of scale private companies can greatly reduce the cost of the first 36 miles into space.

Even if it is slightly more expensive than other boosters, having another first stage booster to choose from gives space exploration a bit more flexibility.

Go NASA.

To Infinity and Beyond, or Die

President Obama’s Space Panel released its report yesterday and as expected NASA needs $3 Billion more per year to continue to advance in space exploration. $3 Billion is 0.4% of the Defense Department’s budget.

Ignoring the fact that every dollar NASA spends returns ten dollars to the GDP, and two to three of those dollars are recovered in taxes; and ignoring that advances made in scientific research continue to advance the economy for decades as those findings filter out to private companies. The simple fact is any civilization that does not continue to advance dies.

Without Space Exploration filling our kids heads full of wonder, they will instead turn to thinking up ways to carve the biggest niche of the contracting economy for themselves.

In the 60s kids wanted to be astronauts and scientists and build a bigger pie for all to share. With the death of the Apollo program those geniuses turned to finance, slicing up declining resources in order to get a larger share for themselves.

Instead of new innovative technologies, the geniuses of our day gave us Mortgage based Derivatives and Default Credit Swaps. They created money out of nothing and last year we saw the result, that money based on nothing was cashed in at its real value nothing.

It’s time to get serious about building a better world or Western Civilization will go the way of the Roman Empire and fall to whomever decides to take it over.

What are we waiting for?

I just read Phil Plait’s post over at Bad Astronomy about the Ares-1. He included this cool picture of it:

Ares-1 courtesy of Bad Astronomy

I checked up on the latest news and found out the static test of its primary engine has been rescheduled for Thurs Sept 10th.

As I’ve reported on this blog before NASA is at the state where it has to “Go Big, or Stay Home”. In order to make the Ares-1 fly on time and have the Ares-5 able to take us back to the Moon in the 20s NASA needs an additional $3 billion per year.

We have known since 1985 that the Space Shuttle was a dud, it couldn’t maintain the schedule necessary to reduce costs without becoming too risky. For 25 years we continued to pour money into that program draining the money that could be used for researching the next spacecraft.

The biggest thing we learned from the Space Shuttle Program was that the worst space program still gives us good returns on investment as the technology is passed out to the private sector.

If instead of cutting NASA’s budget every year, we had increased it; NASA could have been working on Space Shuttle alternatives for 25 years.

The aircraft industry has known since the 80’s that they would need to replace aluminum with carbon fiber for the skins of their aircraft, but that would require open testing of how it reacted to repeated pressurization and de-pressurization.

If NASA had been given the money to look into a Space Shuttle alternative in ’85 they would have needed to explore this field and the research would have paid for itself as American Aircraft would still be dominate in the world.

The new generation of spacecraft both public and private would be greatly helped by this as Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One’s biggest limitation is its Carbon Fiber skin.

SpaceShip One

SpaceX’s Falcon rocket series could have used this data as well, increasing its capabilities immensely.

Falcon 1

If NASA had been given this small increase, less than twice what the Federal government gives to Wal-Mart to help them eliminate competition and grants for Abstinence Only Education (a program proven not to work) we could already have commercial access to space as the research flowed down and NASA could concentrate on getting us to the Moon.

So what are we waiting for, lets build the damn Ares-1 rocket, then the Ares-5 and get back into space on a permanent basis, so we can advance as a civilization, instead of pouring money into Monopolies and programs proven not to work.

An awesome sight

Check out this video of Io’s shadow covering Ganymede over at Bad Astronomy.
Two Moons Circling.

Even if you’re not that into Astronomy, you got to admit it’s pretty cool.

Celebrating 40 Years of Moon Landing Conspiracies

Monday July 20,2009 will mark the 40th anniversary of Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories. There are dozens of these floating around the internet, but most of them have serious flaws. But there is one Conspiracy Theory no one has challenged, I have seen this Theory on message boards that I post on, and on quick notes I type out to myself, so I will report on that one.

One of the big elements that people who believe we went to the moon, point at is the effects of one-sixth gravity on everything that was filmed, from the lunar shuffle the astronauts had to do to move around to the way dust fell when it was kicked up.

People have tried to recreate this effect on Earth and the only way to recreate it is to fly in a specially modified plane and that does large parabolic arcs simulating whatever gravity the pilot wants for about 25 seconds for every 65 seconds of flight.

NASA knew that people would get suspicious if the astronauts weren’t shown walking about in one-sixth gee so they built a huge soundstage roughly 4 miles wide to simulate the curvature of the Moon and built 3 huge jets with a roughly 20 mile wing span to simulate the Moon’s gravity.

They had identical sets on all three jets and had them take turns in the 25 seconds of one-sixth gee. The camera feed switched to whichever jet was simulating the Moon’s gravity at the time.

Now in order to fly these jets NASA needed huge engines shown here:

To keep the Russians from finding out about these planes, NASA needed to make them stealth and applied an early version of the stealth “paint” that military aircraft use today adding several 1000’s of tons to them.

With that much weight they wouldn’t be able to fly using normal jets so NASA needed to use He3 fusion rockets. The nearest source of He3 is the Moon.

So NASA secretly sent rockets to the Moon and built a Lunar Base with a few hundred people to mine He3 and bring it back to Earth to power the planes to fake the Moon Landing.

After Nixon canceled the Fake Lunar Landings in the 70’s there was no need for NASA’s lunar base to mine He3 and it was dismantled. But some evidence remains as seen here:

There were a few problems with this plan, like why didn’t the fake astronauts experience long-term radiation sickness that one would expect after being exposed to the cosmic rays of space?

NASA countered this problem by slowly exposing 24 out of the 33 astronauts that were supposed have gone to the Moon to powerful radiation giving them cataracts.

The astronauts who faked the space expeditions have become recluses afterward, taking low-profile jobs like: Senator, Authors, TV show hosts, and media consultants. People rarely see them doing tours where they might be questioned about their experiences and accidentally give away something about the conspiracy.

NASA also knew that the few scientists who weren’t in on the conspiracy would want to examine Moon Rocks. So they took roughly 1,000 kilograms of lunar rocks from their Lunar Base and thoroughly analyzed them. Knowing what lunar rocks were made of, they scoured Antarctica for lunar rocks and found 382 kilograms of lunar rocks (most of the lunar rocks that had landed on Earth). That’s why only 30 kilograms of lunar rocks have been collected in Antarctica in the forty years since, NASA took them all.

Elvis Presley found out about this conspiracy and NASA gave him the option of faking his own death or being killed. He naturally faked his own death on the toilet, as there is nothing undignified in that.

How many people were involved in this conspiracy?

Conservative Estimates point to at least 400,000 people being directly in on this conspiracy. The engineers who helped build the Saturn V and Lunar Lander, the international partners who helped monitor the radio transmissions, of course anyone who worked for NASA, the entire 10th mountain division who spent months combing the Antarctic for moon rocks in secret, the people that worked at NASA’s secret Lunar Base to mine the He3 for the secret jets.

Indirectly, all those people’s families and their families. So altogether several million people. Showing what type of agency NASA is to make such a vast conspiracy.

Never underestimate the power of NASA they anticipate everything that could possibly go wrong in a plan. BTW: NASA finally had good weather and were able to launch their $1.7 billion Space Shuttle Endeavour, it is unable to launch if it sprinkles cause engineers overlooked that fact that if water gets into the thrusters, it will freeze when it gets into space making the orbiter useless.

Shut up and put your mouth to a better use.

Talking is something she shouldn’t use her mouth for

Beauty and Brains don’t have to be incompatible, and I do appreciate when a female uses her natural beauty to attain celebrity status and then carefully researches an issue and uses her status to raise awareness on an issue. Look at Angelina Jolie:


Ok, that was a pleasant 5 minutes, and a great excuse to stare at Angelina. Oh, and her work on raising awareness on refugees is admirable.

But then there are woman that use their celebrity status and looks to espouse the silliest ideas that if it weren’t for the fact that most of the people talking to them are too busy staring at their breasts they would be laughed off the stage. The number one chick who should shut up and put her mouth to a better use is Jenny McCarthy:

In the early stages of her career she was determined to give all males who were between the ages of 12 and 123 stronger forearm muscles. A noble goal in itself, I know she strengthened my left forearm considerably.

She moved on to show the world her range of funny faces:

Then she took on a cause, Autism. That seems like a laudable cause and would be if she took the time to research what the hell she was talking about, but instead she plunged head-first into it giving out advise that is actually more dangerous for kids than the chances of getting Autism.

For those of you that don’t know Autism is a mental condition makes the person’s brain tune to a completely different reality, in mild forms it can make a person totally unable to recognize social patterns, in severe forms it will leave the person unable to speak.

The causes of Autism is unknown but extensive research has shown that there is no link between Autism and Vaccines, Center for Disease Control

But that doesn’t stop Jenny from going on all the media outlets and saying that vaccines cause Autism. The worst part is people who listen to Jenny’s advice might end up aggravating a mild case of Autism into a full-blown case.

PERTUSSIS (WHOOPING COUGH) is a nasty disease that leaves the victim coughing out all the air in their lungs; it can go on for weeks. The victim can turn blue from lack of oxygen and pass out.

Vaccines have nearly wiped out this disease so emergency room doctors rarely see it and aren’t trained to deal with it.

If a parent follows Jenny’s advice and doesn’t have their child vaccinated they can get this disease and the lack of oxygen can cause brain damage, aggravating a mild form of Autism into a crippling one. And chances are the Emergency Room techs won’t have a clue as to what it is since vaccines have made it a very rare disease.

So Jenny please shut the fuck up! If you need something else to do with your mouth I can think of something, I’ll even dress up like Santa.

The next group of chicks that should do something better with their mouths, are the actresses that support PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), not People Eating Tasty Animals.

PETA sounds like a good cause, end killing animals for their fur and treat them as humanely. But the PETA people have taken it way to far, like this quote:

"Pet ownership is an abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation."

-Ingrid Newkirk, President, PETA, Washingtonian, August 1986

No it’s not. Cats have evolved with humans, as we starting gathering food and storing it in a permanent place, rats took advantage of that. Then Cats took advantage of having the Rats in a convenient place.

As we evolved together cats and humans developed a symbiotic relationship and cats even developed a language that humans react to. That’s why a purring cat puts people at ease.

The cat has evolved to experience a greater emotional bond with humans than with other cats, it’s stray cats that get emotionally deprived.

It’s a similar situation with dogs.

They also want to end ALL laboratory use of animals.

I agree with the Humane Society that their should be standards to keep pain and suffering of lab animals down to a minimum and oversight to see if a test needs to be done on an lab animal, but in the end animal testing is necessary to help both humans and animals.

So for the PETA celebrities that go nude rather than wear fur, while you’re nude I’ll put something in your mouth to keep you from repeating the propaganda from these misguided fucks.

BTW: If you are legitimately concerned about animal welfare the ASPCA and Humane Society are good organizations with rational thinking.

Finally Gwyneth Paltrow, claims that Shampoo Causes Cancer.

At least not using shampoo will only hurt someone’s social life and not their actual life, but it’s a dumb comment and her mouth could be put to better uses.

Private Industry vs. Government led research

Obama has promised to return science to its rightful place in America, pledging to restore Government funding in Research back to 3% of GDP up from its current 0.6%. Whenever anyone suggests raising the amount of Government money spent on research, someone will always respond that Research and Development is better handled by private industry.

Private industry has shown that it responds to a huge technological challenge much better than the Government, just look at the two different approaches taken during the 70s energy crisis.

When Hubbert showed that American oil production had peaked and the world’s oil demand would outstrip world oil production between 2005 and 2010 countries took two different approaches.

Japan started a government lead consortium that did major research and development into making fuel-efficient cars. They shared this knowledge with the Japanese car companies who then competed to market cars that used this fuel-efficient technology.

In the US, the home to the largest three auto manufactures in the world, Jimmy Carter proposed a similar plan but the big three argued that private industry could handle a crisis better than the Government could and all three companies handled their own R & D.

As history shows, private industry handled the crisis. That’s why the big three American Car manufactures still dominate the world car market and hardly anyone has ever heard of Japanese cars like Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda.

Oh I got that wrong, Toyota and Nissan are the largest and third largest auto manufactures and two out of the big three American auto manufactures are bankrupt.

Private Industry alone cannot handle large technological challenges for a simple reason private industry has to focus on the short term. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two is a great example of this. It is a neat relatively low cost solution to send people into space.

It is built out of existing materials used in unique ways to achieve a modest goal. Unfortunately its performance is limited by how well carbon fiber can handle extreme heat. Manufactures of Carbon Fiber Resins will of course improve on their product’s ability to handle extreme heat but it is already near its physical limit.

In order for something like SpaceShip Two to go into orbit, the next big leap, it would need to be built out of something as light or lighter than Carbon Fiber. There is already a material like that: Buckypaper. Composed of nano-tubes (carbon molecules formed to circle around forming a tube that is one molecule and as tough as diamonds) in a polymer. Buckypaper is as strong as steel and you could cover a football field with it and it would weigh less than a gram, additionally its heat conductivity is higher than copper.

Unfortunately, Buckypaper is too expensive at the present time to be used in any applications and because of this, it isn’t mass-produced so its costs won’t go down so it won’t be mass-produced.

Industries that could use this product (just about any industry) know if they started using it they would only need to use it for a few years as loss leader (losing money) to drive the costs down. But no large company is going to step forward and be the first one.

The reason is simple, they don’t want to spend all that money to completely revolutionize an industry only to have their competitors start using the product that they spent the money to get on the market.

That’s where the Government comes in. If the US Government started ordering huge amounts of Buckypaper to use in the space program, military, and start making a limited edition Corvette out of it (The fed owns 60% of GM why not get some use out of it) The costs would go down.

As the costs go down SpaceShip Three could use it to go into orbit, Airplane Manufactures would start using it place of Aluminum and finally we could have cars that weighed 100’s of pounds instead of tons, saving billions of barrels of oil every year.

Once the Government put forth the initial money for research and developing a technology through its bleeding edge (the time when it is losing money) private industry could pick it up and run with it and do what it does best make incremental improvements to existing products and use them in unique ways.

As new products are brought to market based on the technology that was developed through Government funded research the Government would start getting its money back in the form of taxes.

There is no shortage of problems that the Government could use this approach to, The race to the Moon, Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the great thing about it is this method has been proved to boost economic activity.

During World War II a huge portion of GDP was poured into research to win the war. Afterwards that research was plowed into civilian consumer products that made their pre-war counterparts look a century old, not just a decade old.

During the Space Race whole new industries started up based off research done to get us to the Moon.

In a 100% peacetime application the example I used above of Japan Inc. from the 70s and 80s brought a defeated little island nation to be an economic powerhouse for decades.

When it comes to the question of the Government funding vs. Private Industry in research, history shows that hands down the Government funding research and then handing it over to Private Industry is the winning approach.

A Brighter Tomorrow

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in front of the TV at my Grandparents house watching the Moon Landings. Even as a five year old seeing those 12 astronauts walking on an alien world filled my young brain with hope for the future.

I thought I would get a chance to walk on the Moon as well, because just like when my mom was growing up Jets were a new technology that only a few people could travel in, but by the time I was growing up they were commonplace. Taking it back further when my Grandmother was growing up Lindbergh’s non-stop solo flight to Europe was a technological feat.

Now my wife and I are thinking of having a kid, I call this Project Scion, and even though I look forward to watching Moon Landings with the kid, this was not supposed to be a generational event.

Looking at the world today with the total economic collapse, the fact that last year demand for oil (the life blood of our industrial civilization) outpaced oil production, the fact that the largest climate shift in human history is looming, and thousands of other signs of doom and despair you might wonder why we have chosen this time to raise a child. The answer is simple for the first time since I was a kid growing up I feel optimistic about the future.

Over the course of my life I have watched science, research and development budgets being slashed. I was a kid when Nixon cut the last three Moon Missions, but the Skylab missions still had me hopeful of the future.

I was old enough to know that the Apollo-Soyuz was the last mission for the indefinite future I lowered my expectations. Even with NASA boasting of how the Shuttle would be all things to all people and would cost only pennies a day to operate it was obvious that it wouldn’t be the spacecraft to return us to the Moon and I’d have to wait for space technology to advance.

While that was happening I did have a glimmer of hope, Jimmy Carter announced that freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil would be the moral equivalent of war. I imagined a brave new world, where we could use our brains to advance as a people and put the vast scientific know how that allowed men to walk on the Moon to solve the problems that plagued mankind and in the pursuit of those goals we would make discoveries that would let us once more go into that final frontier.

Then he was laughed out of office.

I watched as Reagan and Bush slashed not only NASA’s budget but all funding towards Science and Technology even as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were putting some of the space technology (microchips) to use in the hands of the public.

If it wasn’t bad enough that they slashed Science budgets, the whole tone of the nation started vilifying science and by extension intelligence. Being intelligent in America became a curse.

When Bill was elected I thought things would change, clearly an intelligent person would recognize the importance of inspiring other intelligent people to succeed instead of having to hide, but instead he put on an “aw shucks” routine and played dumb while slashing scientific research in this country to the bare bones.

By the time Bush came through and declared war on science and the “Intellectual elite” it didn’t mean much as even when discoveries were made they wouldn’t be developed. Bucky Tubes and nano-technology have been around for a couple of decades now. If they had been funded so they could develop into mature technologies we could have cars that weighed hundreds of pounds instead of thousands, as well as planes and of course spacecraft.

Seeing policy makers turn public opinion into down right hostility against anyone who could think for themselves made me decide against having a child that, if genetics is any indication, should be a super-genius.

But now it seems that people are looking around and noticing what 30 years of embracing stupid and rejecting science has led to.

No new innovations in science has led to innovations in money making like Default Credit Swaps, and Mortgage Backed Derivatives.

Not inspiring our children to wonder “What if” has meant all our industrial products come from overseas as Japanese and Korean’s wondered “What if we did this to improve a car?”

In times of great crisis there is great opportunity. To overcome the challenges that are in front of us we will need to once again foster an environment where an interest in science is considered something to be praised not scorned. Where critical thinking is seen as the solution to a problem and not “the problem”.

After watching a country’s Science policy go from science and research being a source of strength for our nation to something that should be despised, I wouldn’t have a genius kid while our leaders considered logic a menace and truth the enemy.

We’ve seen what happens when we embrace the stupid; Peak Oil, Financial Ruin, Death and Destruction on a massive scale.

It’s time to put intelligence back to work, and that is why I am hopeful for the future.

It will be a long time before we can forget what embracing stupid does. 60 years if history is any guide. So that gives my kid plenty of time to grow up in a world that values intelligence, honesty and a strong work ethic.

So America I am putting you on notice, I will watch the Moon Landings with my kid but I will not sit by and let the world make it an event to have me watch the Moon Landing with my Grandchild.

You’ve got 60 to 80 years to make sure that a Moon Landing is no more eventful than a plane crossing the Atlantic.

Fun with the Sun

I’m busy building the Powerful Mark V (Speed Racer Reference) Solar Water Heater. It’s finished but I need to wait until next weekend to tie it into the houses water.

As I quick side project I thought I would solve the worlds water problems.

There are lots of places in the world that have limited or no access to clean drinking water. Whether it’s due to geography, pollution or because the small town they live in tried to cut corners and rebuild the city water system on the cheap, messed it up and had to wait to rebuild again until Obama handed out stimulus checks for “Shovel Ready” projects, people need clean water.

So I built a quick solar powered still.

I took one of the bottles I had in the Solar Heater Mark I and attached a hose I had from the Washing Machine, these screw right on. One the other end I attached an empty bottle.

I dug a hole about ½ inch deep behind the Solar Heater Mark I. I put the empty bottle in that hole and put the full bottle back in the heater.

As the sun warms up the water in the heater it will evaporate, filling the empty bottle with warm water vapor. As this warm water vapor comes in contact with the cool plastic that is touching the ground it will condense.

The droplets of distilled water will collect in the empty bottle giving me pure clean drinkable water.

This set-up is just a test model. I figure I can build a bigger system using two 10-gallon cans and tie it to the main house water with a valve and use an aquarium pump to supply my house with clean distilled drinking water on tap.