What could done about the ISS

This is speculative at this time, and could become a series of posts.

The basic idea is as follows
The ISS then would be saved for a long as possible, and integrated into a series of space infrastructure improvements that would facilitate the development of space resources.

This is the bare outline which is being fleshed out here over a series of posts.  Some of these posts have already been written, others have not.

I) Based upon what I understand it to be as of now, here is what the policy according to these links:
 Obama's policy, the pdf report I mentioned here.

II) This is what the policy could become based upon these links: (not yet written)
    A) what could be feasible technically, financially, and politically
III) my own opinion of what it could become according to these links:
    A) heavy lift rocket could continue to be developed which could lift the following:
    B) a reusable space tug could be developed; a modified service module like Apollo (not written about)
    C) with a heavy lift rocket and space tug you could be able to:
          a) build a lunar orbital station (not written about)
          b) the orbital station could interface with the ISS which in turn, interfaces with Earth
          c) return crew from space with a return capsule
    D) continue with the Altair lander, but make it reusable also (not written about)
          a) land on the Moon
          b) land on Mars
          c) possibly visit near Earth asteroids
    E) with the Altair, it could be possible to deliver tons of cargo to the Moon's surface and, in addition,  return crew and material from the surface
          a) this could enable you to build a permanent lunar space outpost
    F) with tons of material and crews deployed on Moon, after building a lunar outpost that could
    G) mine the moon for fuels and useful materials that could be used to further
expand the reach into space that could take you to the rest of the solar system
and beyond.

The future of US manned space program

If this is true, moon base won't happen: the article says that Ares launch vehicle is "off the table".  It is the Ares launch vehicle that is supposed to go to the moon.  I think the Ares I program got terminated, not necessarily the Ares V.  Without a capability to return to space, the manned space program would be grounded indefinitely.  As it stands now, I think there will be a hiatus, but at most it will be for seven years.  Unless of course something goes wrong.  The ideas that I have presented in earlier posts will probably not be implemented.  Something else may be, but not as I have written here.

I spent most of today reading the Review of  US Human Spaceflight Plans Committee that was set up by the Obama Administration shortly after he took office.  It is an extensive PDF file which I have read only the executive summary as of now.  It is pretty unclear to me right now, but it looks like there won't be landings anywhere, only flybys.  Maybe asteroids, the Moon, and Mars.  If I am right, it will be mostly a show program.  A dog and pony show for the people.

Update:  Yes, this site is the one that I needed in order to learn what is going on with the space program.  The word is that they are going to go to an asteroid.  But what do you do when you get there?  Take pictures?

Here's a good idea, assuming that it works.  The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  It will resupply the ISS.  Cheaper, but unmanned.  Crews on the ISS will have to hitch a ride with the Russians.

Thoughts on a would be Moon base

I got an idea for this post this morning.   I was wondering if there's a way to quickly build a moon shelter and permanent base on the moon.  Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I started to search for what was already out there on the web.  I came across this:  a pdf file on some proposed designs of a moon base.  It has occurred to me that NASA must have plans like these out the wazoo.   So, why haven't these plans ever been implemented?

A further search brought me to this a link about Gregg Easterbrook, who is a critic of manned space flight.  It would be wrong to blame him for the plans not being implemented.  I don't want to slam Easterbrook here.  Only to point out that the criticisms are too harsh.   It has to be balanced by something.  The manned space program needs a champion, like in the early days.   These days, the critics, like Easterbrook, have the upper hand.  To offset the critics, a there must be a champion of manned space flight.

Here's the article he wrote about the shuttle in 1980 ; it is fairly critical article and its tone turns out to be wrong in most respects, but it proved him to be prophetic in predicting failure as two shuttles were lost.  With the loss of two shuttles, his point of view gained ground.  But why did the Shuttles fail?  Was it design failure, or did some other explanation account for this?  To answer this question, it would take an extensive study the reports that came out of each disaster.  Basing it solely on memory, I suspect that a change in specifications led to both disasters.  If these specs weren't changed, perhaps both Shuttles could have survived.  The Shuttle wasn't an inherently unsafe design, if that is true.  To confirm that opinion would be out of the scope of this post.

In Easterbrook's 1980 article, he mentions that a permanent moon base was considered before deciding upon the shuttle program.  He says that a base would have been useless.  But the moon base would not be useless if it can solve the launch problem.  If men and materials can be launch into space at a reasonable cost and be done relatively safely, we can open up the solar system for business.  At one sixth the gravitational field of the Earth, getting to the near Earth asteroids would entail much less energy and consequently, much reduced cost for fuel.   Having a moon base that is self sufficient in terms of life support could mean multiple missions from the moon, before having to return to Earth- giving further savings.  And mining asteroids for fuel and metal ores could defray the costs of manned space flight.  They may even be able to turn a profit.

A Moon base needs a champion.  If the critics win, it may never be done.  At least, not by the USA.  Someone else could and probably will.  If that happens, American leadership in this field will go by the wayside.  Like many other things.  Isn't it time that this trend be turned around?

Update:  So, how much M type asteroid worth?  This question is answered in Mining the Sky:


"As an example of the magnitude and economic value of space resources, we shall assay
the smallest known M asteroid and account for its market value.  That distinction
belongs to the NEA known as 3554 Amun.  Amun is only 2 kilometers in diameter, the
size of a typical open-pit mine on Earth, with a mass of ... thirty billion tons.
... the total market value of Amun ... $20.000. billion" -John S. Lewis
Mining the Sky, pp. 111-112

more info here
According to this: the feasibility of mining asteroids is close with present day technology.
Here is a site that I just found with plenty of info.  It is called spacefuture.com

Those are late nineties numbers, as the book was written then.  Prices have gone up.

I ran the numbers and each ton of the asteroid would be worth $667 at that time.
This would not seem worth the time orthe expense to bring all back.  I suppose you
would need to pre-process the ore before you brought it back.  Platinum at todays
prices would be about fifty million per ton.  The Altair lunar lander which was to
land men on the moon was supposed to be able to handle (in unmanned versions)
up to 15 tons of cargo.

Constellation Program

This isn't exactly news, but I'll start off this new post by mentioning it anyway.  Obama cancelled it and now it is official since early this month.  I didn't know this until I googled it and came up with the link above.  This pretty much renders most of the space stuff here pretty speculative as far as I can tell.  Unless a new launch solution is found, it is not likely that the private sector will do it.  Go to the moon, that is.  I will segue into that discussion below.

What I am getting from reading the Wikipedia article on it is that the government is betting that a better launch platform will be developed.  Perhaps that is the case, but in the meantime, there is no launch platform.  In the event that no significant improvement to the launch problem can be found, we could be left with no manned launch capability for quite some time.  There would still be unmanned capability with the current technology.

It is a bit ironic that Obama cancelled the program because of budget concerns.  This coming from an administration that passed the huge boondoggle which was called a stimulus.  If you consider the Constellation  Program as a boondoggle, then perhaps it was just one boondoggle for another.  As I have attempted to draw attention to however, the potential in space is far more than just raking leaves.  Obama may be right in betting on a better launch platform, but if he is wrong, this is a bad bet.  That is, we will lose out on the benefits of manned space exploration, as well as having to reinvent the wheel in case, for some reason, it becomes necessary to restart a manned space program.  In that scenario, the decision to cut the program in order to save money will turn out to be a failure.  It will cost more.

Wouldn't it have been better to just go to the Moon again and set up a permanent base there?  It seems pointless just to go to Mars.  If you are on the Moon permanently, you can start to do things there, instead of doing them here.  It takes a lot more to launch from Earth than from the Moon.  A permanent base on the Moon can help with the launch problem.  It costs 10,000 dollars per kg. to put a payload into Earth orbit.  A single launch to the Moon which can be leveraged into several launches from the Moon ought to help lower these costs.   Waiting for a better launch system could take a long time.  With the technology we already have, we could be building a base on the Moon now.

Update:  I didn't read this at the time, but from what I heard of Buzz Aldrin's criticisms of  former President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, I would have agreed with Aldrin.  But now, I think a trip to Mars may be a bridge too far.  It is much more sensible to follow Bush's original plan than to go to Mars "someday".
That someday may be never.

Better dig deeper

Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators.  Goldilocks couldn't be reached for comment.

Waiting for the Great Pumpkin

Nuclear Power costs for different countries from an IEA and OECD study.  Check out the comments for some interesting info.

Costs for nuclear power generation in USA is substantially higher than in S. Korea and China. This is because of excessive red tape supposedly for reasons of safety.

High tech is supposed to be developed to deal with the so called problem of Climate Change, but technology already exists.  It is called nuclear energy and it has been around for decades.  But it is being blocked because fear has been stirred up so much that it is much more difficult and expensive to use the technology than what it should be.  We are being scammed into waiting for the new technology that will save us.  Kind of like Linus talking Sally into staying all night in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear.   My point is that the technology may never appear and even if it did, it may get blocked.

More info on The Capacity Factor Blog.  Check out this post too.

The Ergosphere: Why the Integral Fast Reactor had to die

There's no energy shortage. The only shortages are the ones that are contrived.  Learn it.  Love it.  Live it.

Using nanotechnology to recycle a greenhouse gas for high-energy fuel

At the risk of contradicting myself, I will include a link to an interesting idea that I got from a Google search.  It is over a year old though.  The shelf life of this stuff may be rather short.

This reminded me of a lot of web searching that I did on the topic several years ago.  I scrounged up a few copies of pdf files for ideas that supported fuel cells for automobiles.  The topic interested me because I knew that prices for fuel were going to go up and they sure did.  At 150 bucks a barrel, the price of oil was ruinous.  As far as the environmental part of this is concerned, it doesn't interest me much.  But the economic and national security aspect of this problem certainly does.

Here's what I wrote about it in 2004:

My web searching back in 2004 yielded some ideas that could lead to a fuel delivery system for hydrogen fuel cells.  It would involved recycling carbon dioxide by producing hydrogen from electrolyzing methanol.  This would solve logistical problems with moving and storing hydrogen.  However, it would require advances in fuel cell technology and/or a cheap and plentiful source of rare or expensive catalysts.  Obtaining the expensive catalysts could come from mining asteroids.

A side product of this was a bit of research that I did on Al Gore.  Of course, Al Gore is big time on these issues.  One thing I thought about is why he didn't become president.  No, not because Bush "stole" the election, but what was it about the man that frustrated his ambitions?  I think that my posts on arrogance can explain it as well as anything.  I think you could write a book on the subject.  Really.

Advanced Propulsion Design for Space Exploration

Here's another one I got via Instapundit and Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence blogs.  I read the abstract and thought it interesting, so I downloaded the pdf file and spent the last few hours perusing this thing.

Not that I know anything about the subject matter, just as a matter of curiosity.  A few items of interest, to wit:
1) it is not necessarily feasible for putting humans in orbit because of high g forces  2) it may have the potential to transport very large objects into space at low cost per kilogram 3) the technology required is not unreasonably demanding.   Now I am taking the guy (Parkin) at his word that thing will do what he says it can do.  If he is right, then this concept has a chance.

How does it work?  It uses microwave energy to heat hydrogen and uses that as thrust to lift the rocket into space.  For a more detailed explanation, see the abstract and pdf file if you are interested.

Update:  It uses hydrogen as a propellant, but this would seem to be a problem when the hot
hydrogen meets the oxygen in the atmosphere.  Maybe it would go boom instead of going up.
This idea was a doctoral thesis, so I don't how that turned out.

Update 2:  I skimmed over the document again and found no discussion of this hydrogen issue.  Perhaps it isn't an issue and I am mistaken.  Or it could be an oversight by Parkin.  At any rate, I'll still say this looks like an interesting proposition.

Oh, so that explains it

Don't let the bed bugs bite.