QuantumG's Blog

It was Stiennon and Hoerr's space-nerd spectacular "The Rocket Company" ( now available on Kindle!) that introduced me to Kroemer's lemma: The last 40 years has seen a lot of futile effort by space enthusiasts to find the one magic product or market that will justify building a truly commercial space industry. Well, it hasn't been found, and we're tired of waiting for it. And if you accept Kroemer's lemma, it can't be done that way anyhow. Even if you guess correctly what it is that won't create a huge growth in demand for launch services so that costs come down, that demand won't -- and can't -- come into being until the cost does come down. So who is Kroemer and what is his lemma? Herbert Kroemer is a Nobel Laureate in physics who wrote, in 1995, the Lemma of New Technology : The principle applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been -- and will continue to be -- applications created by that t...

Bob has a secret. His secret is not just something he finds valuable, but something lots of other people would find valuable too. Perhaps it's a new way to make energy, or to dye wool or to build yachts. Perhaps it's just his mother's maiden name. We don't know, because it is Bob's secret. Does Bob have an obligation to share his secret with us? Can we go to Bob's house and demand he tell us his secret? Can we threaten Bob to get the secret out of him, or promise him payment for his secret and then renege? If not, why not? Alice would like to know Bob's secret, so she offers him a significant amount of money for Bob to tell her. Bob is worried that Alice will tell others, but she promises not to tell anyone else. Having heard Bob's secret, Alice wishes she had thought of it herself and would prefer no-one else to know the secret, not even Bob. This, of course, is impossible, but Bob offers the next best thing: he'll promise to never tell anyone e...

When I first heard of this proposal I was reminded of the recommendations of the Space Studies Institute to do ore processing experiments on orbit as the first step to building O'Neill colonies. They were talking about using Lunar regolith simulant in low Earth orbit, with the goal of developing the techniques to utilize the products of a future lunar mining operation, but as an asteroid resources advocate I'd always preferred to think about doing the same thing with a captured asteroid. A few years ago I wrote about colonizing a near-Earth asteroid (without moving it), with a focus on artificial gravity issues. The reality is that we don't yet know enough about the composition of any asteroids to have a decent shot at making water, oxygen, plant nutrients, or any of the other things you'd need for a space colony. We need to learn it before the colonists are sent, and having a captured asteroid to experiment on is a great way to do it. Ultimately, though, the larg...

On a recent edition of The Space Show , Jon Goff discussed a lunar analogy to the 10 year patent grant awarded to Columbus on trade with any of the lands he discovered. This follows on from the great work done by Mike Mealling at dispelling myths about Columbus' funding which, I believe, he was inspired to do after watching one of my videos . Unfortunately, I think Jon fails to convey his analogy in a convincing way. Being somewhat libertarian, Jon is a little too concerned with where the tax revenue comes from and too specific with who will receive the incentives. This may also simply be a result of the origin of the idea - the analogy to Columbus - and the attempt to describe it as such. Talking about who will be taxed to fund a government program is never popular. Even "let's tax the rich" is too specific not to leave a bad taste in the voter's mouth. Politicians have learnt that the subject is completely avoidable anyway. Talking about who will receive t...

Recently, Ken Anthony invited me to critique his work over at Planet Plots . Although I've only scratched the surface of his blog, there's not much I disagree with, and recommend the visit. The only problem, as I see it, is a lack of depth.. and a lot of hand waving. Just about anything can be explained away with "free people will figure it out". I very much agree with that sentiment, as Ken knows, but aren't we free people? Can't we figure it out? For example, take what the Mars Starter Kit page has on it. There's many links to the Open Source Ecology wiki , which is a fantastic resource, but ultimately it's still just geeks in front of the computer screen.. where's the meat? Elon Musk made a comment the other day that has stuck with me: " Making standard efficiency solar panels is about as hard as making dry wall. It's really easy. In fact, I'd say dry wall's probably harder. " The context indicates that he's talk...

Sending humans in a SpaceX Dragon v2 capsule to EML-1 or 2 is a worthwhile possible step in a 100% commercial return to the Moon. The SuperDraco thrusters to be included in the sidewalls of the crew Dragon capsule are more than capable of performing the trans-lunar injection burn, as well as station keeping at the Lagrange point, rendezvous with any preemplaced assets - such as a lander - and returning the crew to Earth. The total delta-v for such a bare bones mission to EML-2 is a mere 4835 m/s. EML-1 is similar. This is a "quick transit" 4-day trip up to EML-2, so the crew spends less time in the radiation belts. A good estimate of the dry mass of the Dragon v2 is 8000 kg. Using an isp of 320s, the initial mass in LEO is just 37344 kg, or 68% of the maximum payload mass of a Falcon Heavy. Just going to a Lagrange point with a crew on Dragon would be a momentous achievement and could be done for a mere $150M. However, it is just the first step. If we fill the remai...

As the first flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy in 2014 approaches more information is slowly becoming available. In a recently released NASA study , Wilhite et al revealed an estimate for the mass of the 5.2m wide hammerhead fairing. Combined with the maximum payload to low Earth orbit, it is now apparent that payloads that don't require the fairing could have an initial mass of over 55 tons. This seems sufficient to mount a single person lunar landing (and return) mission with just the one launch. For simplicity, I will assume a two ton single stage lunar lander with additional drop tanks. I'll use a self-pressurizing mixed monoprop, like NOFBX from Firestar (isp 320s). Starting in LEO the vehicle will perform three burns (3107m/s, 3140m/s, and 2890m/s), not stopping in lunar orbit and dropping tanks after each burn. Hopefully, SpaceX will kick in some PICA-X for the heat shield, which will be mounted on a Mercury-sized capsule. The lander will look much like the Od...

NASA recently announced their Gateway station for beyond LEO exploration to the wider press. This is not news to the space advocate community with articles going back to December of last year. Even so, now is the time when this concept will be received by the politicians as "new". Soon, they will be introduced to the Gateway as either being a part of their plan or something which challenges it. Many space advocates have complained that the central element of NASA's beyond exploration plan - the Space Launch System - has no payloads, or costs so much that no payloads can possibly be developed to fly on it. The obvious exception to this has been the Orion crew capsule, which is simply seen as too expensive compared to commercial crew offerings. Congress could see the Gateway station as the answer to this criticism. That would be a good thing - whether you like the Space Launch System or not. The reason is simple: there's nothing else. Up to now, the plan h...

Were you absent when the suborbital tourism movement was being coined? Did you miss the philosophy lessons? Gather 'round young ones, let's sit on the grass and discuss the beliefs that make men build planes when they really want to be building rockets. Way back in the 70s, the realization that space would never be a frontier until launch costs had been reduced led many to pin their hopes on the Space Transportation System, and later on the only surviving component: the shuttle. During the 80s, it became obvious that the shuttle would never achieve a reduction in the cost of access to space and, in fact, NASA had stopped claiming that this was the goal of that program. During the 90s, various rag-tag efforts were made to turn LEO and MEO commsat launch into a massive market which would require the kind of launch capability that only a fully reusable vehicle could service - something like the mythical DC-X that many believed was killed for challenging the Shuttle. Some say they ...

Dear Dr David Livingston and the Space Cynics , I would like to submit a Walking Eagle Award nomination for the Ad Astra Rocket company for their "Human Transportation to Mars" concept . The primary basis of my nomination is the size of the nuclear reactor proposed, but even if such a reactor and all the other support infrastructure to launch the mission from an Earth-Moon Lagrange point was available, and their propulsion technology actually worked, I think there is a very strong argument that such a fast transit decreases mission safety because it eliminates the free-return-trajectory abort mode. The only nuclear reactor the US has ever flown in space is the SNAP-10A, which produced a mere 650 watts of electrical power, from 45 kW of heat. The SP-100 reactor program, which were never flown, was to produce 100 kW of electrical power from 2 MW of heat. The Russians flew reactors which produced 3 kW to 5 kW of electrical power, and built some 40 kW reactors that were neve...

I have previously written about why space settlement is important , but just how important is it? In a recent interview Rand Simberg comments: "What risk you're willing to take is a function of what it's worth to you. In World War II, we sent up squadrons of B-17s over Germany every day - sometimes half of them didn't come back. We tried to minimize the casualties, but we didn't stop flying just because we were having huge losses. What they were doing was important, and we were willing to risk lives to do it." He was not just referring to the current government efforts at human spaceflight, but also to the growing concern with safety by private spaceflight providers. Just how important is commercial spaceflight? At a recent hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology , Rep E.B. Johnson (D-Texas) answers: "So far the only potential non-NASA market that NASA has identified for Congress are super-wealthy space tourists, and no...

The philosophical basis of copyright law is a travesty that is not worth going into here. The resultant statist defense of "intellectual property" is heavy handed and infected with cronyism because the philosophical basis is of such poverty. The typical libertarian response is to disavow any right, as such, to protection of intellectual property. I'd like to suggest this is an extreme response and describe how something akin to copyright is valid in a free market, libertarian society. The fundamental basis of libertarianism is private property. In this theory there can be no question that the correct and proper owner of work is the creator of that work. (A possible caveat is that all the inputs to the work were already owned by the creator - if you create a sculpture out of my marble, not only is that sculpture mine, I may have recourse against you for using the marble without my permission.) In terms of homesteading, the creator of a work has a greater claim than an...

Well it seems someone managed to sneak into the commercial crew office at NASA and smack them with a clue stick. Today they announced that there will be a third round of Space Act Agreements to maximize the $406M awarded for the program in FY2012. That's the way NASA sees it anyway. What this actually means is that the partners which are selected - and we're told they desire to select more than one - will be free to pursue their own goals without the burdensome oversight of the growing commercial crew office. It means that companies like SpaceX can design their Dragon capsule to service both NASA's needs and the needs of other companies like the recently announced Statolaunch without asking Mother May I? I can't wait to see the milestones.

As an advocate of commercial spaceflight I can understand why many find it difficult to write objectively about SpaceX - which is arguably the poster child of this nascent industry. As a result, the majority of negative commentary about our darling comes from a horrible "journalist" like Andy Pasztor at The Wall Street Journal or a traditional aerospace mouth-piece like Loren Thompson at Forbes. An occasional coherent comment on a blog or space forum may be accepted by the space community as containing a nugget of truth, but these are easily filed in the don't-think-too-hard-about basket and forgotten. I've taken to thinking about the criticism I have heard, and after some long and rather arduous discussion with these critics I've processed it through what I hope are reasonable and constructive filtering. Here's the finished package. The Circuitous Route To Reuse Since SpaceX first announced the Falcon 9 they have claimed it is designed to be reusable, bu...

NASA's Commercial Crew Development program, or "CCDev", has been a resounding success - and that's why they're not doing it anymore. Inspired by the earlier Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or "COTS", and funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 stimulus to the tune of $50M, CCDev came out swinging in 2010 with five US companies producing impressive results on what was essentially bonus pay to NASA. As such, it was no surprise when a further $270M was provided for the second round, or "CCDev2". This round is now coming to a close, with continuing achievement from US companies with minimal oversight from NASA. Also, a number of "unfunded" CCDev agreements have been made which receive only use of NASA facilities and expertise - they too have been successful. With all this success, it might seem strange that NASA is dropping the CCDev program - but they are. They intend to move on to a "p...

It's the end of civilization.. or so some would have us believe. If they don't get their wish, they intend to take it.. by force. Humanity going into space isn't about leaving them behind, but wouldn't it be nice? With my most humble apologies to Jeff Greason. As a follow up I posted this over at kuro5hin .

Today's space launch market is used to place satellites - commercial, scientific and military - into orbit, with the majority going to the geostationary orbit. In all such cases, the launch vehicle does not perform the final maneuver to circularize the orbit. The satellite is dropped off and circularizes its own orbit using on-board propellant. This is a significant delta-v change of about 1.6 km/s, and the remaining fuel is used to maintain the orbit, usually for 25 years or more. Launch to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, circularize using on-board propellant. This is the standard model for how satellites are deployed into space. It is a mature process which has served us well for decades. However, when planning an exploration architecture, it has always been treated as irrelevant. Here is a list of some current (and one near future) launch vehicles, their listed throw mass to GTO and the calculated mass that can be placed into the first Earth-Moon Lagrange point using a 3...

There's so many things packed up in this clip. For a start, the House isn't trying to cut the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) because "we don't have the money" or to save money or for any budgetary reason what-so-ever. The House is trying to cut JWST because the Government Accountability Office reported that NASA, and the contractor, have been mismanaging this program. They reported this three different times and required reports on what NASA was going to do about it - NASA didn't provide those reports. The House even said that the reason they were looking to cut JWST was to send a message that ignoring oversight will not be tolerated. Does that mean the JWST isn't important? No.. no-one is saying that. Everyone agrees that JWST is important and that it will give results of significant scientific discoveries should it ever be completed and launched.. but when will that be? Within a two week period - after the House suggested cutting the budget ...

The solution to so many space logistics problems is: use a bigger rocket. Propellant depots allow you to add another solution: use more rockets. Now, for some reason, many people who are advocates of propellant depots object to just using existing space storable propellants because that would mean you'd need to launch more mass than if you used cryogenic propellants. Well, so what? More launches - that's a good thing! We don't need technology development to make propellant depots work. They already work.. we already have one in orbit! Suppose you want to send 100 tons to Mars transfer orbit. You need either 236 tons of storable propellant or 144 tons of cryogenic propellant (and that's being overly generous to cryogenics). Instead of 5 Falcon Heavy launches you now only need 3. So what? How much is that worth? So, ya know, NASA has selected companies to study storing cryogenic propellants in space .. and that's great. Technology development, in general, is...