IntenseDebate - cjameshuff

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: A lo... · 0 replies · +2 points

Have you considered maybe the people who "dare" to criticize it might have good reasons? This "great idea" sacrifices our ability to gain more knowledge about Mars while exposing the astronauts to greater health risks and doing little to enable further missions. It sacrifices the safest and most productive part of a lunar mission in favor of extending the most hazardous and least productive part part, and even increases the hazard. It's a dead end.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: A lo... · 0 replies · +3 points

Because it was largely a politically and ideologically motivated stunt with little scientific value. It was a stupid way to approach closed life support, implemented by people trying to fit reality to some mushy-brained ideal of a "natural" system running without mechanical support or intervention. The people who could make it work have little interest in doing so, they've got more interesting and scientifically useful things to do.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: A lo... · 1 reply · +4 points

"Eugene Parker would have readily said had he been asked"

Actually, he did so in the article Gary's referencing, including a superconducting electromagnetic system that might do the job with 9 tons. Meaning Earth-equivalent shielding, not just enough to reduce the hazard a bit. But of course Gary never mentions that part...

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: A lo... · 1 reply · +1 points

Iodine's being used for smallsat thrusters because it can be easily sublimated as needed with a little heater, they don't have to spend mass and volume on valves. Its advantages are not relevant at the scale of even large satellites, let alone passenger-carrying spacecraft.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: A po... · 0 replies · +4 points

Lava tubes are *caves*. There's nothing ready-made about them. You're going to need heavy construction equipment, blasting operations, etc. just to get easy and safe access to the interior, and more to level the floor, clear obstructions, locate and deal with unstable portions, etc, and then you can finally start to work on putting an actual habitat together in one. And then you're back to cutting rock every time you need another access point, electrical conduit, or heat exchanger line run up to the surface.

The moon's single most plentiful resource is regolith. It's available everywhere. You can bury a habitat in regolith anywhere on the moon and not have to deal with all the complications and hazards of building in a natural cave.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: From... · 0 replies · +4 points

Vulcan allegedly has a path to salvaging engines for use in building a new first stage. It still involves throwing away most of the first stage, and all the integration/testing work and status as a flight-tested vehicle.

Rocket Lab is working on actual first stage reuse, though, and they're going to try to recover the booster from their next launch.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: The ... · 0 replies · +2 points

...what space station was that?

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: Why ... · 1 reply · +3 points

It's nearly as difficult gravitationally to launch from Venus as it is to do so from Earth, even before considering that the atmospheric pressures and temperatures would require you to do so from a buoyant launch platform, something that's never been done with an orbital rocket. You'd need a rocket massing tens of tons just to get to orbit to rendezvous with a spacecraft capable of returning the samples to Earth.

That's not impossible, but this is not a small airship you're talking about. Typical weather balloons have payloads of a few kg. You're better off sending ten tons of instruments spread across multiple balloons, you wouldn't even need the return spacecraft. Now find funding for that when the biggest payload ever sent to Mars was barely a ton.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: Revi... · 0 replies · +10 points

SpaceX's goal wasn't "get a kerolox gas generator two-stage launch vehicle off the ground and into orbit", it was "get to orbit, cheap". Every part of their approach is a means to that end.

Ultimately, a launch vehicle is going to have to launch, and do so cheaply and often enough that people will want to use it. You're not going to get there by picking a technological solution you favor and attempting to force the problem to fit it. Your enumeration of the required traits of a "True Spaceplane" just formalizes this wrong-headed approach.

3 years ago @ The Space Review: essa... - The Space Review: Hugg... · 0 replies · +1 points

You need a lot more than some software for optical interferometry.

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