JP Aerospace

There aren't many posts on their blog lately.  But, I found some stuff on Twitter.  This is a pic of their airship design that eventually will get passengers to the Dark Sky Station.  The Station will be frickin' huge, more than a mile in diameter, if memory serves.

The Dark Sky Station will be over 100k feet in altitude.  It will serve as a base between the ground, and their Airship to Orbit airship.  Will any of it work?

In my opinion, he has a plan that might work.  Only time will tell if it really does work.   Interesting thing about this is that in the Martian atmosphere, a thing like this could fly.  It may not even need helium, since the Martian atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which much denser than oxygen and nitrogen.  A simple nitrogen oxygen airship might float on Mars, perhaps.

Ascender 36 in flight.#jpaerospace #ascender pic.twitter.com/BwhHKGOw0a

— John M Powell (@JohnMPowell1) March 2, 2019

Fusion energy is coming. Maybe.

A quick rundown on what's out there.  Didn't cover everything, like the Focus fusion device, nor the Bussard device.  ( polywell )

The failure to cover these indicate to me a weakness.  Yet, the video gets all the views.  Why is that?

To answer that question, those processes are harder to understand.  It was for me, anyway, and so I think the case could extrapolate to the general public.

The polywell doesn't heat up a plasma.  The others require heating up a plasma to millions of degrees, and then controlling the plasma, which is a difficult feat to accomplish.  The polywell is underfunded, as well.  Isn't it a shame that people may ignore a promising area of research because the concept is hard to understand?

SSTOs: Do they suck?

Nobody really wants one.  But it is a catchy title.  Do they suck?  The VentureStar might have worked, but it was cancelled just before it went on its first flight.

We don't know if it would have sucked, since it didn't get a chance.

New Glenn Rocket

It looks like its main advantage is volume of the cargo, plus weight lifting capability.  A quick look at the dimensions, and it looks like it could fit in a BA-330 inflatable space station by Bigelow Aerospace, with room left over.

Everything you wanted to know about Spacesex, but you were afraid to ax

Why stainless steel over carbon composites?  This video explains why.

Off-grid post, 3.13.19, building ideas

As I wrote yesterday,  this was stuff off the top of my head.  Today, I committed it to paper.  Along with that, I made some alterations.

The rainwater collection pit could be above ground, saving me the need to excavate a lot of dirt.  I could pour my slab on the south side of the site, put cinder blocks around it, and build the floor above it.  Rainwater off the roof can be diverted into this tank.  The cinder block walls can serve two purposes, then.  As a water retention pond, and a wall.  The part above the tank would be the wall.

How high for the cinder block wall?  With only a small slab, it could be only a couple feet high, but with this idea, I could go higher.  But a couple feet on the south side is all I should want, because this will have a glass wall.  The glass wall allows sunshine in during the cold months.  A cover will prevent sun from heating up the place during the summer.

The north side of the solarium will have a higher wall.  The wall will face the trailer side, which is to be to the north.  A smaller slab will be on the trailer side, as mentioned earlier.

These ideas are now on paper.  That, and some calculations about how much materials I will need.

I didn't include wall materials.  If the cinder blocks aren't going all the way up, then the walls will have to be composed of something.  Perhaps metal.  Metal is more expensive than plywood, and costs have to be considered.  A cinder block all the way up could be cheaper, if I did it all with homemade concrete.   But what a bunch of freaking work.

An idea to get the sand occurred to me.  Once you break through the soil on top, the bottom layers get easier to use a shovel on.  At any rate, the augur bit chewed through that sand pretty well.  I could get the sand pretty easily.  As for gravel, that might have to be hauled in.  The less I use of that, the better.

Here's an idea:  Have a dump truck deliver about 20k pounds of gravel.  I'd still have to dig up 20k pounds of sand.  That doesn't make me feel confident.

This has to be considered a bit further.

Off-grid post, 3.12.19

Back to the glacial mode, it appears.  There has been this long gap between posts.  Not that I don't think about the project at all.  It just seems that I am spending a bit too much time on the other blog.

Lately, as I have written, I am considering an idea to use materials on site for construction.  Also, the idea to pore a slab has occurred to me.

So, do I want to pour a slab?  No.  Then, what is the new idea?  To pour small sections of concrete as opposed to large slabs.  For instance, rather than pour that big slab, and then put a cinder block wall structure on top of it, why not just use the pod idea, and some smaller slabs so as to incorporate both ideas?

If so, then I could lay down a 2'x32' "slab" on each side, and then pull the trailer between them.  After that, pour a 2'x12' slab in front and in back of the trailer, and then put up the cinder blocks all around the trailer.

Next to the cinder block structure, goes the solarium.  It won't feature a concrete slab floor.  Why pour all that concrete?  Perhaps another 2'x32' "slab" can be laid parallel to the others.  Post holes can still be dug that will be poured over, and will connect to the slab.  This will give something of an anchor to the whole structure, and make it a bit more stable.

The cinder blocks can be stacked no more than eight feet.  I don't want to go too high with it.  It may not get anywhere near that high.  Perhaps as few as two or three feet, then use metal to fill in the gaps for the walls.

Another idea was to dig a pit underneath, and that is where rainwater can be drained into.  That would be an important water source.  A 2'x8'x16' pit can store nearly 2k gallons of water.  The floor can be built above it.  Come to think of it, I could build the pit first, then install the rest of it around it.

Oh, one more idea.  I was thinking of using the roof as a solar distiller/ building cooler.  A glass covering for the roof over a shallow enclosure for some water to be evaporated, and condensed under the glass.  Rainwater will roll off the top of the glass into the pit below.

All of this I have written is off the top of my head.  It might help to make some drawings in order to visualize it better.  I have the basic drawings already.  These are modifications.  So, I've got that going for me.

Adobe bricks

Updated:

3.9.19:

A bit of research shows how to make concrete.  One of the components is sand.  The other is aggregate--- I take this to mean gravel.  Therefore, if there is a source for aggregate on the property, then all of the building materials can be obtained on site.  However, I don't think I have any gravel source.  I'd have to obtain it nearby, hopefully.

3.8.19:

One thing I noticed in digging my hole on that last trip, is that there is a potential building material here of great abundance--- sand.

I had this idea before, and now I am thinking of it again.  Indeed, I took some bentonite that I bought, and made something like adobe with it.  It did crumble up a bit too easily, so I need something else besides bentonite.

Perhaps concrete mixed with sand?

This requires some research.

Here's a video.  This is by no means the extent of the research.

Garmin waypoints to google maps

Looks like you can translate between the two, and save your work.

After transferring all the garmin waypoints to google, I now have a better picture, ( I think ), than I did before.

It is nearly a mile to "blueberry hill" from my place.  This would be as the crow flies.  I thought it was about a half mile.  So, there's that.

There isn't nearly enough information in the google maps.  Nothing like traversing the ground to get you the complete picture.  However, it is also useful to see the big picture.  Each procedure complements the other.

I have been told that there are alternative routes to use if the roads flood.  That is a possibility out there.  Just one look at the google maps can tell you where the likely bad spots are.  They can be pretty bad indeed.  I was told that the road was flooded for two weeks back in 2014.  This was a period of heavy rain.

On the way out, I timed it at 30 minutes or so.  Actually, I took a video, and kept it on for the entire exit trip.  The quality is horrendous, but it did tell me this much.

All in all, even though I spent only a few hours out there on the last trip, I did get some info.  Some food for thought.

Carbon dioxide to carbon

How interesting.

The only downside seems to be that certain green groups oppose it.  Not surprising to me that this is so.  At the heart of green theory is that man's technology is the problem, therefore, all tech, including this ( even if it works), is bad.

New method to turn CO2 into coal https://t.co/XQ8VMgOUXg

— Greg Meadows (@BootsandOilBlog) March 7, 2019