Replacing the $38m RL-10

The RL-10 is an old and expensive engine and should be replaced with a less expensive, better performing modern engine. Two of them ($76m+) are used in the Centaur upper stage used by NASA.

...it appears that lack of support and interest from NASA and the US Government is the primary reason why Pratt and Whitney stopped perusing the RL-60.  NASA and the US Air Force are the primary customers for the upper stage engines made by Pratt and Whitney, and the government seems to be uninterested in supporting the development of a new engine and perfectly happy continuing to use the old and expensive RL-10.



Why should they care? It's not their money. This is one reason an organization like NASA is not the way to go to form a space faring civilization. The incentives are all wrong.

Possible replacements mention in the article: RL-60, Raptor, Chase-10 ($3m ea.)

SLS vs. Falcons

Development cost for the SLS are estimated between $20b and $41b over ten years. Launch costs projected to be $500m for 70 mt. with a 130 mt. version later.

Falcon Heavy will be ready this year at $120m for 53 mt.
Falcon XX will have a 126 mt. payload and will likely cost much less than $500m.
SpaceX, rather than taxpayers, will pick up the development costs.

To justify the SLS they will have to come up with a payload larger than 53mt and smaller than 70mt. and pay for that in addition to the SLS costs before SpaceX builds their 113 mt. Falcon X Heavy. Even then, it's really not justified.

SpaceX tends to keep improving their engines and leaping ahead depending on business conditions (which is why they abandoned the F5 and went straight to the F9.)

Anybody should see that NASA would have better use of $40b by just buying over 300 SpaceX flights. At 3 flights a year, that's 100 years, so only one tenth the cost per year for something that will not even be available for over ten years.

Can't congress do math? NASA does.

Another take (note: Dragon + Bigelow habitat for less than Orion.)

This is the required reading.

The saddest part is for what NASA has wasted on the SLS in the last few years would have given us dozens of people living on mars (property owners looking for ways to improve their community if I had my way.)

MAY subpoena?

Isn't it dereliction if they don't?

If they don't care...

...why do they vote?

Hitler’s America

I hope she wins a false arrest suit...

“If quoting the Constitution makes me a terrorist, we are in Hitler’s America.”

Maybe they can run for Pope?

Put down any beverage you may be drinking.

Obama's goal

In his own words is to grow the economy. Actually, he said, "My goal is how do we grow the economy." In other words, and proved by his whole time in office, is he doesn't have a clue.

Then there's the fact that his words and actions are often at odds.

Upping the ante

Wow. Quoting others is now hate speech.

Note the article makes a claim that an earlier ad, "referred to Muslims as savages." What it actually did was an 'if the shoe fits" message...

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, defeat Jihad.”

Which doesn't refer to Muslims but Jihad. Assume it does refer to Muslims, is it talking about all of them or just those who by their own actions and speech self identify as savages?

That's what exposing their quotes does.

Fast evolution

This is why the biggest mistake is confusing adaption with evolution.

Mars One signs contract with Paragon

To develop life support and space suits systems. I want to know mass and cost of them, but will probably have to wait on that. More, funding.

Want to be an astronaut mars colonist?

37.9 million square kilometers

That's what Google tells me is the land area of the moon.

I said here that I would explain a potential profit that would allow us to start living on the moon. I only hinted at it there, so I'm going to expand upon it here.

I'm more a mars advocate than the moon because I believe the moon is too close to allow getting free of the political entanglements of earth and mars is a better place for independence in terms of resources. But let's discuss the moon.

First, no nation on earth can GRANT land on the moon. You can't grant what you do not own. When you hear people talk about land grants in space they are showing a profound misunderstanding of some basic facts (that includes some really smart people.) If nations do start granting land it's because they claimed it first. Not possible otherwise. The act of granting implies a claim.

People have claimed land long before any nations existed and that right continues to exist. Claims are going to be made. We can establish a precedent if done in an orderly manner using agreed upon terms.

So, would it be profitable? What is break even?

Would 1000 sq. km. cover the cost of transporting one lunar colonist?

Golden Spike is suggesting $700m to be the cost for one visitor. Let's just assume for now the infrastructure exists for them to stay and live there (yes, a big assumption) or we could just say a round billion per colonist (that much? I can't believe we can't get that down when Elon and Zubrin are both claiming going to mars, which is much harder, would only be $500,000 per colonist... and both are claiming that's there and back, not just one way.)

In any case, 1000 sq. km. would be about 494,000 half acre plots. Divide that into the one billion cost is about $2000. That's too much. To make the business case we'd have to bring that down at least 20 times to get within the $100 impulse buy range. So for the moon, we would either have to get the cost per colonist down to $50m each or increase the terms to 20,000 sq. km. per colonist transported or some combination of both. It seems doable. There is certainly enough land.

This money doesn't go to any government directly. It goes to the transportation company which pays it's normal taxes. The colonist travels for free so anybody could go.

I'm not going to address how the colonists pay for life on the moon in this post. But they will each have about 500 plots they could develop according to the terms of my proposed charter. The transportation company will be selling their plots mostly to speculators on earth. I would hope that would be lots of companies in competition over a long period of time.

Personally, I don't think it will play out this way because of too much interference with earth politics. I much prefer the distance of mars.

70% in favor

Update here.

70% of Americans (over 200 million) in favor of humans going to Mars. Update: 7% would actually go (over 20 million. My plan allows the first 100,000 to go for free and arrive a millionaire.) Keep an eye here.

We are finding that mars soil is more suitable for life than we thought.

MSL finds elements of life (sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon) in hole drilled in sedimentary rock.

Mars Society pages: Soil, Materials, Plastic, Greenhouse.

PDFs: Photovoltaics, Materials, Processing of Metal Alloys.

Zubrin and sovereignty

Zubrin said... [Emphasis mine]

I think there need to be reasonable laws for claims of sovereignty on Mars. In other words, I don't think you can have one power go there and say, "Well, we landed here first, so we can claim the whole thing." I think there ought to be possibility to claim certain territories based on your activity in those territories. Without that, without there being some national sovereignties, there can't be private property.

Private property can only exist in the presence of government. You own your house because there are police there to make sure that you do. If there were no police, anybody stronger than you could throw you out of your house. In order for us to establish mining claims on Mars, there has to be someone with whom they are registered. So, I do think there needs to be national sovereignty in space, but I think that agreements need to be reached on criteria for establishing national claims on Mars territories.

But it doesn't have to be any existing national governments. The people living on mars can get a fresh start by establishing their own local government in the form of a settlement charter. Agreements only need to be reached by those making claims by possession which is what the settlement charter achieves. It does not require the blessing of any existing governments. Martians need to assert the rights they've had since before any government existed.

Statistics lie...

...and liars use statistics.

Thomas Sowell makes a very important point regarding economic mobility.

Most working Americans who were initially in the bottom 20 percent of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20 percent. More of them end up in the top 20 percent than remain in the bottom 20 percent.

This point is lost when you use statistics to prove the opposite.

In my youth...

...I would have gone to this, damn the cost, full speed ahead. Oh well.

No surprise

They don't even bother to hide the corruption.

Job loss and recovery

Legal insurrection has some charts.

Notice how short Reagan's yellow line is?

Even after 9-11 we recover in 48 months.

How long, if it does, will Obama recover?

There does seem to be a trend since 1990 that recovery takes longer...

THE Nanny state assumption

They own you. That's it, and sadly, you believe it. You protest, but you act in accord with that assumption. We all do, because we are forced to.

Consider the formula of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Not one of these is foundational to our inalienable rights. At the time this was written, the philosophical formula was "life, liberty and property." "Pursuit of happiness" was flowery language to replace property. If you have liberty, you already have the ability to pursue. But life and liberty are not foundational either. Property is.

That's because it was understood that property included your life and liberty. You own your body and the right to do with it what you will. The state assumes you do not own yourself. They have the right to tax you and otherwise regulate you. Control is ownership.

American exceptionalism, something Obama doesn't understand because it never existed prior to America, is the idea that you do own yourself and you lend some of your rights to the government by consent. The problem is consent is not really possible as Randy Barnett points out.

Time often demonstrates who was right in an argument: An enumeration of rights could [has] lead to an unwarranted expansion of federal power and a corresponding erosion of individual rights. The truth of that argument is now clear.

Locke was wrong. Property is acquired by possession. Chain of title simply provides legal defense. The indians didn't feel that need for legal defense and lost the land to those that did. Before nations existed, all property came to be owned by possession. All wealth comes from the trading of property in a chain of ownership that must at some point have been started by a claim.

We are at a unique crossroad in history. We can establish a precedent that will follow humanity for millennia. The universe is full of unclaimed property that can rightfully, morally and legally be claim if we do it in an orderly and reasonable manner. The settlement charter establishes terms to do just that and opens up the solar system to everybody (not just the 'well heeled.')

Amazing Grace

My 2nd Hero.

Why the stars?

I am so glad somebody referenced this article from 2007 and I had a chance to read it. You may not understand the conclusion if you don't read the article first, so do that... I'll wait.

...manned space exploration ... will make us better both individually and collectively; ... as individual human beings and as a nation. Anything else is an unconvincing lie. And it won’t work, either—it hasn’t before.

Will it make us better? It's easy to find some that will argue that it will not. The counter argument is simple. Imagine a solar system full of people living their lives. This means people being fulfilled, not gasping for air in a toxic environment. Happy people, enjoying life. Now take that vision away. Which is better?

The only counter is the one you will hear... it can't be done. They will be gasping. They will die. The only answer to that is to do it and prove those people wrong. They aren't going away otherwise. So it is up to those that believe in the vision to ignore those other folk and just do it.**

Which is one of the strongest arguments for it to be done commercially, because it is immoral to drag those naysayers along with us by forcing them to pay taxes for something they don't believe in. We don't need them. Commercial space is viable.

It is viable now.

** Inspiration Mars is a good example. It will forever put some naysayer arguments into the rear view mirror and landing will be the next logical step.