Hand, shown

Beale:

Intelligent Genetic Manipulation. We have no idea by whom. But I suspect all the recent alien disclosure stuff is because it is fairly obvious that the genetic record is going to prove that the human species, at the very least, was constructed. With a few more advancements in genetic science, we may even be able to figure out more or less when it happened.

I've unbolded the silly. We've more-or-less been over this. But in light of new findings let's return to this vomit:

When humans emerged from Africa, and for that matter when contemporary humans in Africa emerged into other African environments, the environment hit us but hard. We couldn't control how to handle the coronavirus, nor the malarial parasite. So it was, until came the Late Glacial Maximum, or "Mesolithic", or whatever you call the slip from the general suck of the Pleistocene into 24kBC's full-on Ice Age. Selection was natural. Over hundreds of thousands of years, sometimes supplemented by distant relatives who had been out there for millions.

By that point humans of all sorts still hadn't domesticated any of our neighbouring animals. Well okay: so Alpha (2018). That movie hasn't much been deboonked. Maybe some coëxistence happened with scavenging wolves in the 30skBC. Don't care.

It's in the Neolithic we start seeing goats, sheep, oxen, donkeys, llamas. Again: this isn't the poast to pick apart millennia. Just to point out that, after the Ice Age, a slew of animals got selected - by intelligence. Our intelligence.

It would be a surprise if we hadn't intelligently designed ourselves as well. We had the smarts to pick friendly sheep; why not friendly farmers. To a Sumerian king, a farmer is just another beast of burden.

Or, for Beale... a Cahokian or Chaco Canyon king.

Ebrahimi progress

A subset of the VASIMR process is the Ebrahimi, alfvén recombination. This is being evaluated in the lab. I'd not say "tested" yet.

They can get 10-20 km/s upstream. This scales with the strength of the magnetic field, for which they got good tests up to 9 kV. Thrust in turn correlates with plasma density which their equipment kept low, 1-3e-6 kg/m³; and with the velocity-squared of the exhaust; and with the area of the plasma column cross section. It has so far transpired that their speedy upstream velocities suffer interference, and that they want a bigger lab but they would say that.

Keep in mind the very physics are still young and may involve Navier-Stokes.

VASIMR update

As long as we are looking in on orbital manoeuvres for low-mass craft, and/or entheppy drives: let's check in on VASIMR. Especially if we are getting space actuators.

The main practical uses thus-far have been high-isp high-efficiency trips. That's the outer system. Like far out: Eris, for one. This blog was considering gradual spin-up of space stations before humans set foot in them; heaven knows we all have time before they get there. Teased was also a human Martian visit in 39 days, which demands 200 MW[e] (if they want that cargo, I'd add: several roggets). I don't think such missions rate high on the priority-lists, given that what I'd linked came out 2011.

The company testing VASIMR is Ad Astra. Looking around the news, reporters are aware of Ad Astra's existence to itself and to the space community at large. Because the power they need is high, they need nukes. If we go back to 2024 they had a deal with SpaceNukes. At higher voltages in megawatt realms, Ebrahimi will surely follow. I think at that point, a thruster-customer may as well use fusion. Although, if either's customers stick to stationkeeping Venus in the hectawatt range, they might all get by with solar.

From Ad Astra I smell the scent of Howe. Company going quiet 2025-6.

VASIMR is clearly not a bad tech. I suspect it might have been a premature tech.

Leviathan evaluation

Some people earlier this decade assembled to propose Leviathan to NASA: Venus Aerobot for Low-altitude and Surface Explorations. Surprised they didn't call it the "valasé"; "vaflasé" might have sounded too Welsh. 22 pages, 50+ appendices.

They've figured that the tech mostly already existed 2021-5, excepting the one-way Starship for chassis. The stats on th'ship matter, so they've had to leave those parameters blank. SpaceX has had a working model of the one-way since late last July (with heat shield!), so Leviathan might want to run one more pass through the text.

The aerobot alone is 30 tonnes. They want also 17 tonnes of methane and a 20 t drop-tank. With the other material, all rounds up to 75 t. For propulsion purposes, Leviathan adds the standard Starship fuel tank, all six Raptor 3 Vacs, and all the other equipment once in orbit. Google AI estimates 120-160 tonnes here. I've told it to use the high end because Venus needs heat shields.

The Levvies expect refueling in LEO. Google thinks 400 t should do it; if so, that means four additional Starship there-and-backs. SpaceX hasn't yet offered that service. As long as we are dreaming of nice-to-have space infrastructure: someone else can compete here. The delta-V to get into a Venus Hohmann is the expensive part of the trip, because Venus can aerobrake. Starship, remember, comes with excellent heat-shield.

Over our sister planet the aerobot floats between "-2 km and 4 km". The -2, I think, means they can dip over the plains and not just over Alpha / Beta Regiones. Dunno about Maxwell, which rises, what, 10 km; nor even "continent" Aphrodite. So they're swimming through not just hot high-pressure CO₂ but supercritical.

As to how it floats, they've picked Project Loon's architecture with an internal titanium-foil "bladder". Methane is the lifting gas.

They need 6-7 kWe power, so are requesting a 10 kWe reactor. For that they're begging NASA - and not, say, SpaceNukes. Mostly because this has been a focus of NASA research over the five years the Leviathan project wrote the paper. If they won't let explorers raise a reactor into LEO, I'd hook a wind farm to the lee side of Maxwell, to charge any surface missions thence. And charge the Leviathan... to use it. Heh heh heh.

Two other essential pieces of tech: a lander, also NASA which in this case it may have to be; and Ingenium's refrigerator.

Unlike LEO or our moon, or asteroids, or even maybe Deimos: we cannot expect this planet to return treasures for investors. This project is for exploration. So they want a grant: NIAC-1. They justify it by comparison with the Martian rovers and Ingenuity-soon-Skyfall. Nerds tune in to watch this stuff, they say.

It should be permitted to say that Charlie Kirk sucked

This blog has never argued for the assassination of Charles Kirk, and certainly not for celebrating the "Kirkversary". The culprit - and Tyler Robinson's trial is I think pointing to the correct culprit - deserves justice. Those online pundits muddying the waters deserve... banning (Beale is right about one thing, that "free speech" is unworkable; I'd ban him too). I will further remind that I left the Catholic Church over their preference for Gaza over Kirk.

This is where readers can smell a "but" incoming. I don't want to say "but". So, I'll say - "that said":

I didn't ever think much of the man. I thought TPUSA was malign from the start, like Campus Crusade back in the day. I pegged Kirk as a Quaker Nationalist, which half-baked ideology (which it is - both) I disapprove. If you pressed 2009ish Yarvin on it, he'd disapprove too. Mencius Moldbug would dig him out and hang him, with ... Locke, to paraphrase; Cromwell on the rope next-over.

As to Kirk in life, Richard Hanania has lately poasted a dossier of various stances he'd took, which, he Considers, Harmful - to the body politic. As is well known, you cannot cancel Herr Hoste. So they're trying to cancel Sohrab Ahmari, for agreeing with Hanania.

I cannot read all of Hanani-Hoste's paywalled article like Ahmari can. Here and there one can read the odd snippet. Like that Kirk supported Carlson past the point Carlson was worthy of this (which is how Carlson got to speak at the funeral, which funeral I virtually-attended instead of Communion With Gaza). Or like that Kirk supported "Stop the Steal". This blog did not support StS. I thought some states were stole, in fact, but not such as would have made the difference, and that Team Trump had lost the room by the end of the week.

Because I haven't (because: can't) read Hanania, I can't judge all he wrote. I can judge only what I can read, which here range from "true" to "honest arguments can be brought". There also exist Kirk's vaccine comments.

So whatever. Ahmari can say what he wants, and shouldn't apologise. As to "Captive Dreamer", Yarvin, whoever else: if you want us to treat Kirk as some icon like Steinem or King, then I'll start mocking Kirk like I've mocked those eminently mockable American Saints.

Some opinions on early Islam

Joel Hayward, who had joined the jund, in 2022 put his book Warrior Prophet through "Claritas" Press. For some reason Catholic-coded institutions seem to love supporting apostates. Anyway I haven't read it; it isn't apologetic like Esposito's, it seems more honest like the works of Juan Cole and Jonathan Rape-Rape Brown. In 2021 I'd poasted a roundup of modern consensus around the maghazi; maybe some of that is in Hayward's book.

From late 2023 as you know I'd moved more toward the preMuhammadan era of Near Eastern Araby. So I might not get to Hayward's work anytime soon. That much isn't a reflection of my views on Hayward, who for all I know has good reason for embracing the faith of the surat al-anfal and of its supposed author. He can try convincing me later.

For more evenhanded takes, rather than "Hellz ya he kilt 'em Khaibar JAHOODS!": Razib is recommending Kyle Orton who runs a 'stack of his own. Adomnán's hadith from Arculf, the Islamic understanding of religio... basic Ibn Warraq stuff from circa 2000 before the towering day.

Relevant to this blog might be the milieu of Late Antiquity. That would track more with IQSA 2015. I was writing Tidings of Flame around the time of Orton's poast.

PS. Happy New Year.

Passive shielding

This isn't really the magnet blog, so I'll relay Space Startup News who knows better. He's talking radiation-shields. To replace his overview, here is one from 2025.

What appears to have inspired our boy is Zenno. They announced a few weeks ago they'd loaded Supertorquer on "Starburst-1". The latter is Portal Space, which rideshares Transporter-18. Present plan: Falcon-9 next month. Portal are trying to shift sats between MEO and GEO, which engine they grandiosely term "Supernova".

Zenno's Supertorquer in this, confusingly termed a "flagship", is the actuator for this ship. It's a superconductor: a passive magnet at 3,500 A·m. Contrast, the usual passive shielding of lithium-hydrates which then add to the dry mass. SSN points out that superconductors are now a commodity, made more-or-less cheaply. (This is because of the work done in the fusion field. If those customers go away, as they well might, this application will keep superconductors in business.)

Although the Zenno magnet be passive it must be kept below 100 K or so. The mission is going to use power (by solar), if nothing else for the "TRL11" diagnostics also on board. It is in fact sun-sync so will be in daylight for a full year. Basic thermodynamics will heat up the chassis, and that heat is not going to be blowing propellant all the time. One assumes radiators will be brought.

Portal's aim is to use Earth's magnetic field for control authority. That's the "torque" part, to turn itself about. This leaves, for propellant, only shifting orbits. I imagine it also simplifies the design as the engine(s) shouldn't need gimbals (the solar and radiators get their own torque). In a future when sats might use the spicy-meatball for higher I_sp, any improvement on shifting cargo about is good.

Naturally the torque part works only over planets with dynamo. Such include the four big'uns, plus Mercury and Ganymede-why-not. We gotta start somewhere so, Earth it is.

This mission already-excellent hasn't even got to SSN's stake in it. Zenno want to test how well this magnet, which again is passive so always-on, keeps out the radiation. That can help scale to such human-rated habitats as can't bury themselves under regolith. Thinking here not so much of longterm space-stations outside Van Allen (Jensen imports regolith - and hydrates), as the shuttles to/from those stations or, perhaps, the stations-under-construction. Meanwhile all those LEO stations are likely going to stay lightweight (so micrograv) so will need the shields too. So much for those BVDs!