Skyhooks of silica

I suspect these two goofs felt comfy with CNTs only because they already knew all this stuff was (literally) not going to fly in the 2000s. In these the 2020s, Jensen instead has figured upon anhydrous silica with no "Griffith flaws" (per Copilot). This is a cable we should be able to spin from Lunar regolith and ship up to space for cheaper. Let's see what this buys us.

Jensen was targeting 13.8 GPa of pure laboratory SiO₂ so ρ = 2.2. The deltaV equation √(13.8*2/2.2) = 3.54 km/s. That'll get you to Hohmann for any porkchop of Mars - or for Venus (2.8 km/s); but the next-good Byrnes-Longuski cycler to Mars is "6S9" which is terrible.

If we could stationkeep a tether-hook at STL1, this would work for a faster cycler to/from Venus: the 2L4. Venus herself could not use a 13.8 GPa cable. Both of us can however run the 3-0-2-9 cycler - in the 3.4+ km/s range on either side - and then we can keep both tethers in high-orbit.

The Nuclear-Inertial skyhook

On topic of ideas from the Shuttle era, ToughSF links the Nuclear Inertial rotational-tether. doi 10.2514/6.2000-3611 by Allan Goff and (Dr.) Joel Siegel. I don't think many picked up on this as opposed to other tether plans.

What disassociates this from the others: the counterweight is a moving crawler that also doubles an an electric thruster for reboosting the tether, all kept powered by a nuclear reactor.

They recommended it for yeeting cargo to... Mars. No seriously. From here the bestcase (Hohmann) injection burn requires 2.95 km/s; another 2.65 km/s is required to push from Hohmann to match Mars'. To take the strain, they moot *sigh* Carbon Naynoe Toobz of 20 gigapascals ("GP") breaking-stress over that ρ = 1.3 g/cm. Equation #6 told them up to 5.5 km/s of deltaV out of this setup, on the Earth side. 8.8 GPa for 50 GPa.

That's a lot to play with. Say we have already injected something into the 100 Mm orbit. We have a chart for several cycler orbits in Longuski-Byrnes 2002 (remember that?), with their outgoing v_∞. For Aldrin's 6.54 km/s, which is a Martian flyby to return our chassis, Copilot recommends 5.2 km/s. The bespoke "S1L1" is also in reach.

The mission profile at the end, even for the Earth side, relies on a relay of two skyhooks: Earth supplies the lower 'hook from a "spaceplane" (in 2000, considered more workable than a reusable rocket), which LEO hook flings cargo up to the HEO 'hook. We'll wholly ignore the Mars side for now (likely forever).

They thought the cargo could go up to 100 "tons" at a time, implicitly metric. Equations #9-11 say more tonnes means increasing the thickness (in cm₂) of the cable whatever-it-is, which tapers.

For this poast we'll leave aside the CNT hardcore. We assume such GPa as can do Mars' or Venus' Hohmann - only; like Jensen's SiO₂. Which is itself a reach.

Here we'll talk about those nuclear reactors. Per 'hook, such is to transfer momentum between payload and tether. HEO as in, past GEO: maybe; LEO, I doubt. Nuclear is chosen over solar for a few (good) reasons: brute force, and infrequency of resupply. The paper assures that that each pull to another orbit is minor. This may allow some enthalpic solution as doesn't have to stay in LEO for long. But that would have to be supplied.

Barnard's necropolis

So last year, and the year before that, we were talking Proxima Ophiuchi aka Barnard. It has four planets, all with minimum masses double-to-triple Mars'. Xander Byrne and crew are pondering What It All Means.

Besides irradiated Marslikes. We already knew their sunsides were too baked. Also the UV on any of them would be too low for "abiogenesis" even for inner "d" which is the most-roasted. The latter doesn't account for seeding from any other systems this ancient star had passed-through; but if I'm a spore-shooting alien fungus, I'd not bother with Barnard.

The star is ancient, so doesn't flare much, which helps in telling that these planets were for real in the first place (this had been a problem). It is enriched in magnesium by contrast with silicon and thorium. Byrne's paper extrapolates that the planets should be ferropericlase. I don't frankly know what that mineral is, but Petrov says that this doesn't hold water well.

The four are resonant like Trappist-1... and the Jovian system. The inner planets d,b,c might be in a 4:3 MMR chain but since we have less data than what we have for - say - Trappist-1; the paper whiffs on this one.

The paper is able to use the resonance to impose upper mass limits - which is great. Even if the planets aren't great; they're all subEarths. Given the resonance they likely formed about where we see 'em. That is (well) within the soot line let alone the snow line.

So these are all low-mass. And: with more space than Jupiter's moons have. So they don't pull on each other as much. Add to that, their internal radioactive elements (which are halflived well beyond Earth's): they are internally "cool". And the outermost planet e is tidally locked which people aren't anymore saying about Trappist-1.

Knock-on effects are that the planets won't have seeped out volatiles after initial formation. Barnard is quiet... now; but these stars - M dwarf - tend to be flare stars when younger.

The paper also brings "gap complexity". Barnard's four are simple, 0.131. The paper argues that this implies no giant outer planets, but we must counterargue that our system has a lower 0.126 inward of 1.5 AU and... we have four giant outers. Of course we've been looking at this one since van de Kamp so... yea, we ain't seen nuffin'.

It is not Elon's content

People subscribe to X because they want to support X. X doesn't have a great user-interface if you're not on that system, so alternatives xcancel and nitter.net have provided that service for us. I tend to get my information from those sidechannels. At least those two sidechannels are now down due to ceaseanddesist orders.

When linking from here, I do strip out those URLs and for "x.com". In the event that the site has some other form of monetisation.

I'll say this much: without the sidechannels, X is useless to me. I'll route around it. I'll not use it. This blog here has never been an income stream; I don't know if I want it to be.

I think the C&D is a bad move. I doubt X is Elon Musk's primary income stream. Much of Musk's income comes from doing launches and that depends on goodwill from Musk's allies, especially the ally in charge of the US military. In that light X.com is an advertising channel. The sidechannels have been helping Musk present himself as a free speech advocate. Without the sidechannels, X.com is just another Facebook; and Musk is just another Zuckerberg.

Ezekiel with the rabbis

Ezekiel was a proponent of the Babylonian approach to Temple; opposed in his life to the Levi family, the latter more Egyptian. At some point the "Zadoq" faction within Levi injected themselves as an exception to Ezekiel's rules, such that the book got readily spread around the Jews. Daniel and 11QT the Temple Scroll adopt it; New Jerusalem tries to work with it.

Despite Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones, which could support Daniel, rabbis seem to have appreciated the base text a good deal less. Tova Ganzel summarises the Rabbinic (prose) tradition. I find most-dramatic how Ganzel n. 6 raises the mishnaic ruling Megillah 4:10 against bringing his content into the haftorah. I suspect that the Babylonian Prophet rarely found much welcome in the tents of meeting.

A major issue giving to the rabbis headache was, indeed, that Ezekiel did not come from the same place as the mainline Bible had come. As mutually-aware rivals, contradictions between Bavli and Masri halakha were the whole point, of both. With both in the canon, people would have to reconcile their rivalry. The Zadokites had done this, sort of, but their attempts (like 11QT, New Jerusalem, Damascus Document et al.) went out with the Temple, any Temple.

Ezekiel's imagery proved too popular for the poets to ignore. Elʿazar's anti-Roman piyyuṭ notes the throne-chariot in all her shining glory, and Copilot tells me others bring up Ezekiel 37's dry bones. If I am reading this right, Elʿazar found a dodge around Mishnah: do it in piyyuṭ.

As to the core of how Ezekiel was nonetheless allowed to be widely read even if Jews couldn't directly utter from it at the services, this surrounds Hananiah ben Hezeqiah. He was a man of the Tannaim (up to 220 CE) who did the Mishnah. Hananiah stood forth as the one rabbi who wanted to keep Ezekiel "in circulation". The question wasn't if Ezekiel would remain canon, nor booted to join Daniel in the third-rate scribblings. Much of the tradition believes that Ezekiel owned real power - in fact, so much power it was dangerous, like Raiders of the Lost Ark dangerous. Ezekiel would instead have been locked in some secure chest like the Zohar. Christians have parallel experience with the Gnostics. Ganzel must warn that these traditions are not in Mishnah nor even Tosefta; they appear first with the Amoraim = the Talmud era, mostly complete by 540 CE. Which leads to Elʿazar's era.

A deflated idea

0II∞ has a website.

Over the late 2000s they sneered at "the odd billionaire", along with governments, having a monopoly on spaaace. Their plan was to raise a balloon and launch roggets thence. A successful test was had in 2017.

Balloon-to-orbit is the only way to retrieve a crew from Venus' 55 km altitude off that hellpit back into orbit and home. So this poast comes a little late in this blog's career. Sadly it remains ahead of any real implementations here over Earth.

0II∞'s Bloostar aimed for 70-100 kg payloads launched with methalox, like what the Raptor drinks. I'd mooted maybe something like spinlaunch for such dumb cargo although spinlaunch is a lot of overhead to "bloon" up to the strato'. A strato-runway might work for jet-to-orbit. To get real counterweight in 22 km, they'd likely need rotors wired to a modular reactor; but that's a problem for later.

It seems they shifted to tourism. For odd millionaires.

Maybe the issue was that they dreamt all this up back when the Merlin engines looked sooty and unworkable. The Merlin remains sooty, but the Falcon 9 works. Cargo-to-orbit is now a lot cheaper than was then envisioned. And the Starship is coming.

Loonybins

Paul Johnson was the great Tory historian of that great reactionary decade 1980s. Everyone read Intellectuals and Modern Times. Private Eye, which was not a Left mag, read through his work and honoured him with a nickname: Loonybins.

Johnson has now been factchecked, by Claude AI. h/t Richard Hanania; Bryan Caplan relays this, against interest he'd asked after it in 2010. (If I may, this speaks well of Caplan's humility.)

Some reviewers had already hit it for instance in this review which is floated in Caplan's old comments.

Looking over the list, several of these mistakes look like typoes (like a misplaced decimal) or like an error brought over from Johnson's own sources (the 135k toll at Dresden was all over the place, I think I saw it first in Vonnegut). But there are others and they all go in Johnson's direction. It is also a pity that Loonybins did not take the time in 1991 to correct these.

Looking around, historians of the early American era don't like Loonybins either.

But hey. The selenical binface helped win the Cold War, right? Like how PizzaGate, Vox Day, and other fakenews helped push Trump in 2016! Unfortunately Johnson left behind a time-bomb. Since he's discredited, and not in the way Cofnas and Murray be "discredited" - but on his actual ethics - all nonLeft historians have to scramble that they're not like Johnson.