The raptor that's eating the Starship

SpaceX is a lot of things; but mostly what it is, is a mass-production facility.

Elon Musk has raised the red flag on the Raptor engine. Each Starship needs 39 Raptors, and if a Starship crashes (as is predicted for Starship 20 because it's testing a new tiling-system) those are 39 Raptors SpaceX need to remake. Fast.

We are now learning what happened during that D-suite shakeup. Will Heltsley, ex-director of propulsion, hadn't been doing well and also hadn't been informing his boss on how well he wasn't doing. So Musk's email implied. I reckon some lawyers were at work last weekend too.

Raptor itself is something of a prototype, note.

On topic of those tiles: I wonder if a Starship can Disassemble itself on event of a Rapid Unscheduled, in midair. Even if the chassis be screwed, maybe Rocket Lab can run after some Raptors with their helicopter(s). So instead of losing many millions of dollars per RUD, SpaceX loses only a few millions of dollars - admittedly some of that to a sometime competitor but then, Rocket Lab doesn't need to compete in space.

"The Best Food On The Planet"

Cerno brings us Jesse Kelly, on how awesome [bird] eggs are.

I agree, of course. I further agree to decry chicken-egg waste, as when White People order egg-white meals and discard the yolks (the best part).

The small issue here, for Cerno readers, is that Cerno has alerted to us that most eggs come from "factory farms". These farms throw out not only the yolk. They throw out... the other half of the genome. Something tells me it isn't just Tyson doing this. Sex-selective infanticide, Steven Patrick might say.

If instead "you WILL eat the bugs", as we are schizophrenically warned - I might not protest overmuch.

On this first week of Advent

Candida Moss that "Mary loving Roman Catholic" late of Notre Dame, author of that classic anti-Cyril article "The Monster Who Gave Us The Mother Of God" as well as of some less-impressive literature on such mythical antiChristian persecution as we are not facing here... she is back. This time hitting the Jews. Catch "Did Archaeologists Just Find Evidence of Hanukkah Stories?" before this article too gets its new title and maybe content.

Yeah, I'll admit - I was always of two minds about Moss. That book she did was a disgrace. Since then... I will say, Dyothelete to Dyothelete: Ms Moss was right about Cyril complete, I'd say, with the "monster" original title. In this present article she uses the "BCE" notation, denying our Christ, because her editors told her to deny Him - but how it that different from any other of us, who sign "Equity" pledges to stay employed?

Today Ms Moss is talking a Lachish-Forest fort overlooking Maresha. She cites the archaeologists dating it to 112 BC. Which postdates what we call the "First Book of Maccabees".

As Moss was right about Cyril, she seems right about the fortress. The Judaea / Seleucia relationship did not end with the Maccabean "independence". In fact the Maccabees did not achieve independence; they needed to navigate their way against the Ptolemies and the Romans, and the Parthians. They found VERY soon that they still needed the Syrians. They didn't pay taxes anymore... directly... but they ended up paying more, in supplying soldiery. It may be that 1 Macc was commissioned by Johanan whom Josephus will name "Hyrcanus", exactly to demand that independence which (Johanan claimed) had been promised forty years prior.

As to that fort, if it dates to the 110s-100s BC, then I should look to John "Hyrcanus". John mounted a second Judaea rebellion in the wake of the Antiochus civil-war to his north, Grypus v. Cyzicenus. These events postdate, I think, the writing of 1 Macc (124 BC) and certainly of 2 Macc (as Jason of Cyrene intended it). Not exactly the Hanukkah story.

Twitter is Richard Spencer's publisher

I don't mind Parag Agrawal's spicy Tweets from 2010 about how, if srrvatives can't see the difference between trrists and mooslins, Agrawal won't see the difference between whites and racists. In this blog's iteration, we are past all that. Richard B Spencer agrees, himself; so why should anyone else care.

More to the point is that Agrawal has no interest in the First Amendment. That much, Agrawal mooted in 2020. And why should Agrawal care? Twitter is a publisher. What is posted there is posted with Agrawal's agreement, and endorsement.

If you want an Internet platform that obeys the First Amendment, then get Congress - formally - to put Twitter under PBS management. Same goes for Blogger. Same goes for any corporation with transnational aspirations.

As the ring turns

You might notice that I disassociated the Ring Of Iron from the rest of Paul Birch. Today I've been going over some of Birch' maths. As of now I've got I.2.1 and the second appendix so, you know, not all that much.

Birch was writing in 1982 and not only underestimated the temperature of his superconductor, but insisted on Kevlar for his rope. I hasten to butt in: he had a gut understanding of "unobtanium" insofar as it showed what advances we might get, in the next fifty years; which - in part - we did get, in five.

Here in 2021 tough men use T1100G (pdf); I'll go 1991, with Zylon. For Table 1, that's tensile (Y) 5.8 against density (ρ) 1.7, thus raising his Y/gρ by a factor of over 1.5. Given Martian g, that third column is a whopping 917 km. Fourth column, which "1/P" is the mass of rope needed per unit of freight (at 110 km), is 1.12. I like it!

I didn't understand section I.2.3 "system throughput". I got as far that on Mars, especially coming up from Mars to a (likely) Earth or Venus voyage, we don't mind having total g of 8.8 ms^-2, which is the g they got in Venus' clouds. Acceleration is then 5 ms^-2, so equation 13's time = √(2H/a) = 210 seconds from bottom to top - not counting deceleration at the top. Top to bottom takes a different amount of time because that'll be an initial freefall followed by a deceleration mostly aiming for Martian 3.7 ms^-2 toward the end. Birch didn't apply to become Mars' elevator-maintenance schlub so I shan't either.

Skipping to the second appendix, we got Coriolis. If you drop something at the top of the 110 km ladder, it falls to the east of the ladder's bottom. Ω/3 x √(2H³/g), plugging in equatorial Ω = 2π/(the Martian day in seconds). 633 meters east.

Balloon

Robert Zimmerman and Sissi Cao between them are talking "space" tourism - with a focus on balloons. Which isn't space. But that's good enough for this blog!

Airships are awesome and I should like to see more of them. Starting price for Space Perspective is $125k but that's going down (okay sure, the number stands to stay the same, as Bidenbux catch up...).

With there being an actual economy behind getting balloons 30 km over the surface I can easily see the Zeppelin factories ramping up again. I doubt we'll see "skysteading" à la Bio-shocque Infinite. I can see longterm high-floating labs. Maybe even factories: it must be easier to pump out a good vacuum at 30 km than it is, say, at these 5 km mining towns. Solar energy will be consistent as well. (We assume, at night, telescopes are remotely-controlled and already being used in balloons.)

A good Zeppelin could dock with those mines, mind.

One longterm drawback is that strato-vacuum removes that one more macguffinite to encourage us into space. Remember George O. Smith's Venus L4/L5 colonies, powered by sunlight through mercury-boilers? Heinlein's vacuum-tube shops on our Moon? Nyrath Chung remembers. And now we got photovoltaics and transistors down here. Sigh. And of course why be a space tourist in LEO if you can see the curvature of the Earth for a 'plane ticket or just, er, on the job.

On the plus-side: starting at 30 km or - better - higher, a balloon might catch light cargo from LEO (currently the only cargo from LEO) before cargo aerobrakes. Cargo hits the balloon which fills up with foam like your car's airbag; balloon just drops, cargo is now slow enough a Zylon parachute can do the rest. Although I am unsure how said cargo drops, what, 200 km to hit the fluffy pillow gently. I suppose: high-eccentricity orbit to minimise delta-V (which is just V when it hits the stationary target). Seems like some aerobraking will be needed from 130-30 km. But this way we don't need the full return-vehicle.

Also: how about SpinLaunch firing off propellant-canisters at a high altitude?

The great Martian monorail

A couple weeks back we checked DuPont and Murphy, on the assumption of Earth being 1.88 times Mars' radius. Suppose Mars' radius was wider at the equator by, oh, 110 km. Their equation was B' = B_🜨 × [Earth distance in Mars' units] × [Earth radius in Mars' radius]³ × (r'_s / r_s)³. Math.Pow(6371.0/3500, 3.0) / 1.38 = 4.37.

Mars is now looking at a magnetic field 1/50 B_🜨, just by raising that coil into a (very) low orbit. That is less than their estimate 1/40 and even mine own 1/45. That's one microtesla by their estimates, not 1.25; although I'd keep a bit over 1 μT just to allow for Earth's high-end, in case of cosmic rays.

Further advantage: since this chain is in orbit, Mars doesn't have to run it over Mount Olympus and across the Marinaris. They do have to supply it with energy but DuPont and Murphy thought they could do this with one megawatt. On the surface they cited wind-turbines as good-enough; in orbit, once it's magnetised, hanging ten square meters of 20%-efficient solar-panel to face the sun should catch the 586.2 W/m² to keep it magnetised.

So: Mars shall has 225,000 cubic meters of good ol' Bisco ringing it 'round. Working from 3000 kg/m³ DuPont and Murphy came up with 675,000,000 kg = 6[.75] × 10¹¹ g. Bisco's actual density is 6310 kg/m³, and its competitors in the Rebco range aren't much less, so I'm going with 1420 kilotonnes. I never was much fond of this duo's math. But anyway:

We are already planning on a Ring Of Iron, starting at 90 kilotonnes. This can already hang those 10 square meters of solar-panel to keep cool; it's not 1982 anymore, superconductors are feasible. It will be paying for itself in launch savings before any terraforming is even started. Adding to this ring will only add to its magnetic force, so the mass of exports the ring can pull at one time. We just have to command it to be equatorial - but that's not a problem, since we were slating our first such ring to feed Deimos anyway.

The structural-engineers down planetside can concentrate on building the Martian cities and railways. And boosting rare-earths and/or bismuth should Phobos run out.

Tethers, Inc.

We've been discussing how orbital rings have saved the Venus colony, and how Phobos shall be dismantled. Key to both schemes was the word "tether". Last year ToughSF was telling about how Kevlar tethers orbiting within Van Allen could move satellites out of LEO into the friendly mid-belt region, or into geosynch, or even to Mars or Venus themselves. (And yes, ToughSF knows that Kevlar SUCKS EIGHTYS STYLE so offers alternatives.) Sounds awesome. Why don't we have tethers now?

It hasn't been worth it, is why. As yet. It soon will be, I think.

Up to now, private industry has only just got started in getting stuff into LEO. And that's only become feasible because it has been economically feasible: reusable rockets. These are mostly by SpaceX although RocketLab is catching up at least to the Falcon model; there are also some nonrocket options coming online. Beyond LEO costs more. So it's been government agencies footing that bill, which means taxpayers, whom governments either despise (Republicans) or are corrupted by (Democrats). What's another two billion if you can just stick someone you hate with the tab. Hell: this makes waste into a feature.

We're at the point where the Tragedy Of The LEO Commons is coming to its third act. Luckily, also running in the LEO theatre is the feel-good hit of the millennium: The Starship.

Once Starship works, which it will (whether American activists allow it on our soil or not), SpaceX's customers will want lower prices. Elon Musk will respond to them with one word: "propellant". (Maybe "Tsiolkovsky".) Not because the propellant is pricey; it is not. More because that is mass and volume SpaceX would rather use for, er, cargo. Currently SpaceX is set to be The Only Game In Town for large loads, so they can just tell their customers, that's the way it is, and shrug. For small loads, though, SpaceX will be competing with RocketLab and SpinLaunch. Actually with the latter SpaceX might even want a partnership.

Imagine if a smallsat company could get its load into a higher orbit without... any propellant at all. They hire SpinLaunch to go to LEO. They then hire a tether company to boost it to the midrange. That should end up cheaper than whatever SpaceX is offering, even with that Santa Sleigh which is SuperHeavy.

So why doesn't SpaceX sue their competitors, like Jeff Bezos would do? Well... maybe because SpaceX doesn't mind what SpinLaunch is up to. SpinLaunch, coupled with a spinning tether, can get more propellant up to a high orbit. That is what an orbit-to-planet company wants: gas stations.

So: who is making those tethers, to supply those gas stations?

The Saturn system is too far away

I didn't quite have the time nor energy so late last night to digest all the gonzo from Greg Leal's site. This morning I'll figure out the Enceladus / Titan stuff.

Leal, excitable boy as he is, believes that Mars can be terraformed. I, less-excitable, counter-think that Mars will start on the Trade With The Rest Of The System model; such that the Ring Of Iron will be in place... rendering the equatorial surface even colder. With that ring up, Mars further has a magnetic field; by equilibrium, if Phobos doesn't bash up that Ring Of Iron in the meantime, Mars will get an atmosphere... someday.

Leal cannot wait and, to that end, would assuredly agree with Casey Handmer on big solar heating-mirrors at SML2 or (I'd prefer) the Mars / Deimos L4 and L5 haloes. Leal, also, wants more nitrogen - NOW.

Looking afield, he'd drink this chilly milkshake from the Saturn system. Why not Venus, which also has double Earth's nitrogen and isn't using it? Because he can't, duh. But what if Venus were orbited at 900 km altitude by a ring, which further can suck up Venus' volatiles...?

The question then becomes: delta-v budgets to get from low Venus orbit to a Mars-intersecting Hohmann, then Deimos; versus the budget for Titan orbit to Saturn escape to that Hohmann, then Deimos. For that here's the subway-map, admittedly Earth focused. If we jank around Earth, Venus LEO to Earth/Mars capture delta V should be about 4 km/s. It takes 4 km/s just to get from Titan LEO to the Earth-Saturn capture and then another 4 km/s for that Earth/Mars capture. Taking Earth out will improve both numbers. It won't improve the difference between those numbers. It is easier to get from Venus to Mars than it is from Titan to Mars.

Just getting the infrastructure to the Saturn system will be painful. I mean, some of the pain can be mitigated in that Saturn is so far that a NERVA engine becomes practical, maybe even Zubrin's saltwater torchship. But unless I miss my guess, there isn't much to mine out there; whatever metallics they use, we must export from the inner worlds.

tl;dr - if / when Mars demands nitrogen, the Martians will demand it from Venus.

The big chill

I just a few hours ago stumbled, by DuckDuckGo, upon Greg Leal's School. I have decided to treat this as The Bob Zubrin Blog In Absentia.

Leal can get a lot more gonzo than (say) Casey Handmer ever has got, or Nyrath Chung, or Hollister David. Leal jumped ahead with that orbital ring thing... in 2018. Leal was, in that year anyway, ahead of his skis - like Zubrin 2013. (Or for that matter DuPont/Murphy 2020-1.) Leal 2018 didn't understand that humans like to go in increments.

However: as Mars goes first with that Ring Of Iron... it'll be of interest what happens with all our planets in that <1.6 AU range, down here where the inverse-square law means something. Leal noted offhand that the orbital ring in our inner planets stands to solve global warming. Er.

What rings of insolation-using magnets shading our inyalowda planets actually solves is solar irradiance. And indeed: irradiance presents a problem, as our main-sequence Sun heats up 500 million years out, and beyond. Here on Earth I am less concerned with the whole biosphere than with Life As We Know It including ski-resorts.

In the meantime it stands to get very, very cold in our ring-shaded planets. I mean, much as I like to ski, I don't care to ski the Dominican Republic.

For starters: the Congressional Republic just took another setback terraforming Mars. The good news here, for DuPont and Murphy, is that here's that magnet for keeping the ions off. To mitigate: put mirrors on the inner side, to reflect some sunlight (and radiate heat) back onto Mars' equator at (especially) night. Mars will still be darker overall I think, will be colder than highland Antarctica in deepest winter. Gotta call in Casey for those Libration-Halo mirrors.

[VENUS 9/22/23: Moved here.]

But then there's Earth. Where humans have moved to the orbital ring because they have to, over dead white NeoEvropa. Maybe we'll keep our planet to a nice Pleistocene level with the wooly mammoths. I dunno. Someone else's problem.

Zubrin's Athena revisited

4chan alerts me to Robert Zubrin's 1996 proposal, for a manned mission to Mars in 2001. It's terrible.

For the low, low price of 2.15 billion y2kbux, Zubrin could buy you a trip to Mars... shadowing Mars... and back again. The crew would number two, each of whom will hate the other with a blistering hate a fortnight out of 1 AU. They share this cramped space for years because the journey is a Hohmann aka the long way 'round (the Sun). It's all 3.? m/s² so, tack on a LOT of physical-training back here on Earth when they are done. Best part: they don't land on Mars. So: Apollo ≤10 / Apollo 13 energy.

At $2.15G the US Government would get involved, like SLS and Webb. So, forget that ridiculous number, it's a sink. Forget the timeline too (counting from 1996: 2001, 2003, 2005).

The limit, of course, was that the total mass had to be 25.9 tonnes.

Starship, in a couple years, can buy many times that with a similar number of launches. That means first off: longer axis, so more artificial gravity without Coriolis, and more room to get away from the crewmate(s). Nitrox to fit. Better shielding.

For chrissakes a Starship-propelled mission doesn't even have to shadow Mars; the mad lads can bring enough propulsion to dock/land on Deimos, keep the hab spinning. Know what that means? Means that's more mass not interfering with the crew. Earth can send whatever cargo alongside them, without life-support, to set up all sorts of stuff over there. Better yet: before crew gets there; that unmanned "mission" mostly sets up a propellant-factory. Crew just needs to unpack what the robots didn't.

If we must have a there-and-back journey, send rodents on the Aldrin. The Athena was entirely useless.

Mars' orbital ring

Mars' radius is 3389.5 km and its present atmo and magnetic-field would certainly allow for 3500 km semimajor, especially given Birch I.3.3-4. Mars' ring at slightly more than half Birch' proposed semimajor requires slightly more than half the mass. Can pull more mass for the tether, too. As with all things Bagestan, I borrow here from Warhammer 40k, in this case the Ring of Iron. I assume the first iteration be equatorial since the Martians want it for the Deimos trade.

Oh right: and because it has to be built in the first place. That'll require Mars' other equator-circling satellite. In all Phobos' 10.6 billion kilotonnes, I am asking the miners to dig out ninety kilotonnes of useful metal. Per 10.1038/s41550-021-01306-2, Phobos and Deimos were once one body from beyond Deimos' orbit; so, I must assume, came that parent's impactor. These two satellites today are rubble-piles not easy to ascertain what elements make up their rubble. Since Birch was writing we've found plenty of superconductors which will be little trouble keeping cool in near-vacuum at 586.2 W/m² only half the time. Pace the Games Workshop I have no great hopes for iron (nor bismuth). I have higher hopes for rare-earths.

UPDATE 1/6/22: The workers dropping the material between Phobos and ring-altitude can be protected: by still more Phobos ejecta. I don't think we need sweep up much of the junk; it's a layer of redundancy, never unwelcome.

More: spewing out Phobos material and dropping more material to 3500 km semimajor would, by Newton, further help to even up Phobos' eccentricity if not to boost its orbit. And (if equatorial) this solves DuPont and Murphy's question of where to put that ring to protect the atmosphere; it gets the terraforming started. Where the ring doesn't pay for itself over Earth, over Mars the Congressional Republic is going to give serious thought to this idea.

Paul Birch

Paul Birch proposed in 1982 that where we cannot have practical geosynch space-elevators, we might try "Orbital Ring Systems and Jacob's Ladders".

[ADVISORY! The pagination is wrong between I.3.3 and I.3.4. p. 482 is 483; 483, 482.]

And yeah: Inyalowda cannot have an elevator. Deimos, even if it's in synch, cannot dangle a ladder past Phobos' ap'ares; must make do with a shorter tether. Earth's proposal keeps butting against ... what material can bear 35,786 km of its own mass. And then we got Venus, our own Moon, and Mercury which all spin so slowly they have no synchronous orbit. Ditto Jupiter's inner moons which (like Mercury) have prohibitive delta-V and radiation, anyway. We're stuck with Ceres down here.

And then, in 1982, came Paul Birch, to save us. Rather: to save Mars. But we'll get to that.

Birch figured Earth, at least, will have no worry if we had a series of interconnected stations all in LEO, chained together. The stations move; the circle doesn't. The circle is, further, magnetic. Magnetise a Ring Station and that station just ... sits there. It dangles its tether down to wherever on Earth you want it. That's not 35,786 km; that is more like 600 km, depending on how far out you put the ring, presumably beneath Van Allen thus protecting the magnet. 600 km of rope is as nothing to tether-enthusiasts.

The problem thus shifts away from "unobtanium" and toward - who gets to pay for 180 kilotonnes of various pricey metals in LEO (semimajor 6678 or 6978 km). Also minor issues like space-junk and other satellites. Reading Gregory Leal's 2018 lecture, I cannot see Earth agreeing to this in the near future... before seeing how it works already. Just look at Elon's Starship today (well, in 2023); it inspires us because it has been showing results. So, for the orbital ring, we need first to see it work on some other planet.

The Federation in Starship Troopers paid for Birch II.3.5 - a smaller version, ringing our Moon.

Leal recommended to do this for Venus, also. That is a harder sell in that, although Venus is only 6051.8 km around, its atmo extends much higher and, in fact, blows out a coma on the night side. Birch wouldn't worry about drag and needn't worry about Venus' magnetic field (there isn't one) but he might worry about ions. The wind will push out the ring... but, I fear, to bend the ring into an oval if all goes uncorrected (Birch I.4.1). So if Venus gets an orbital ring I should run it at the same 6678-978 km semimajor. Venus gets its materiel from asteroids.

From Mars to Phobos?

A year-and-half back I went looking up Tsiolkovsky dodges and turned up the space fountain. I took this seriously for Aphrodite Terra if we find our way around the corrosive clouds. Let us talk about Mars, which Weinersmith is taking rather less seriously.

Here's the fun part about Mars - besides that it starts with negligible atmospheric drag and 3.721 m/s². The shuttle back to interspace just has to hit Deimos. Here's the even funner part: we expect the shuttle, someday, can grab a chain dangling from (5989 km) Phobos. Hollister David for the chain allows 1400-4300 km before it starts dragging the present atmo and (more to the point) groaning under its own mass so let's start at the low end: 4589 km altitude. (UPDATE 2 PM MST - and leaving alone the orbital ring.) Give or take Phobos' eccentricity, which we are also hoping to correct.

MIT's original fountain scheme was for a permanent fixture, for Earthlings to get into (the lowest) orbit. Over Mars, the fountain exists to inject cargo into a 100 km altitude which thence blasts Herr Hohmann to 4589 km.

Downside: a constant tower needs a constant source of energy. Venus has this, in its eternal heavy winds. Earth will have this in geothermal sites, looking especially at such tropics as Indonesia; SpaceX photovoltaics also look good at this timescale. I do not find anywhere in Mars where the energy is renewable, constant, and sufficient. Is there a budget for hoisting a fountain for "only" a century at a time?

How about not building a fountain. Instead: ad-hoc boost a platform to 100 km at 6.1 m/s², at which altitude said platform fires its rockets. Boost this at night so superconductors give you the magnetism. That's a lot of bullets and casing to clean up afterward; but Rocket Lab can take the casing, and magnetic bullets are literally dirt cheap on Mars. Comparing the energy-budget for all this, with the budget for making hydrogen-heavy explosive chemicals; on Mars, that might be a wash, especially given Mars is low on volatiles.

On Mars, Lofstrom's Launch-Loop or the Bifrost Bridge look better as permanent structures. Once the orbital ring is up, I'd honestly file all these as local solutions: get ores and (maybe especially) water-ice off the more-polar regions, into the equator. Ditto for the Moon given what a joke the pogo turned out to be.

WTF is Polarised-Cardio

Mikhail Cernovich dropped a term on us today that I had to look up: "Polarized Cardio".

His fanbase flooded the place with comments about THE CLOT SHOT. Why?, Cerno should ask. But anyway; I actually agree that spike proteins are bad, and that the shot is dangerous. I just happen to believe, also, that THE VAXX is less dangerous (because throwing out fewer spikes) than... the disease itself. Because I am not a damned fool. I am not a conservative. But, I repeat myself.

I took the two [Pfizer] jabs April / May. Will take the booster, if/when it's good to keep off the B'529. I've been doing daily walks, workouts, walks since el Cinco; with a small walk interrupting the weightlifts.

To that end: among the srrvative chaff was this grain of wheat.

I'd really like to have this broken down for plebeians who are either too dumb to understand it, and/or are too interested in anything other than it. This "Polarised Cardio" stuff from Cerno sounds, to me; like one of my lectures on Dyotheletism or Kepler's equations would sound, to him.

Tolimán alone

This being Thanksgiving we should all pause to reflect on what is most important to us ... colonialism.

Some while ago I was musing about Alpha Centauri. Probably not inhabited. Probably not a good idea to inhabit except by Beltalowda in O'Neills around, oh, Centauri-Proxima L4 and L5 and even those will need to make their own fuel. Although I did wonder if the Alpha Centauri / Tolimán interspace hath Hilda.

I was reminded of this when peeking in at Centauri Dreams. They noted that Proxima is going to be a flare-star for a long time. I am pondering now Tolimán, aka the Ẓalīmān, aka "B". It's a K type, supposedly ideal. If it weren't being roasted by the local Alpha.

The local Alpha won't be with us forever. Actually the whole system will eventually run by us, so - this is looking to the long-term. Alpha bears 1.1 Solar masses which, by the handy equation M^-2.5, means its total lifespan is 0.788 Solar lifespans. Our sun approximates, what, 1E+10? so, 7.88 beellyion years of which Alpha (and Tolimán) has/have already used 5.3.

A lot can happen in 2.5 billion years. By then of course our own Earth won't be liveable, whatever we do, whatever this liar says. More to the point our whole galaxy will be sucked into Andromeda. Although, that won't affect the mutual dance between Tolimán and Alpha. Might budge Proxima.

When Alpha goes red-giant, this will bake off whatever volatiles are in the Tolimán / Alpha Hilda. Good news: when Alpha falls back to white-dwarf, more volatiles will be spilled out - a lot of them, I think, to be drained into Tolimán. And maybe into Proxima if it's still around, although if so I bet Proxima is taking her leave at this point.

Anyway Tolimán should have another 4.96 billion after Red Alpha bombards it, although depending on how much mass Alpha bestows upon it, that number might go down.

The hydraulic pogo

Here we are not trusting Hop's equations for time-of-flight, but trusting the basics for commutes local-enough to redo them linearly.

Notion is: power-source on the pogo pushes against the surface. Up you go into space. Expend more power: wind back the spring. Down you go onto the surface. Boing again. Repeat. Eventually you've got enough stored momentum that your last kick back can be at an angle. Orbit!

Oh what fun. Now, let's get started on something "practical". Say we want lunar pogo-bounce as does 200 meters at a time for about 28 mph sideways; hitting the ground at a 45° angle for 40 mph, each bounce. First let us anticipate the question - who wants this.

First answer: whoever hated those MAKO missions in the first Mass Effect. 45° will clear many obstacles. Maximum height won't be that full cos(π/4) x whatever-meters up; but with a 40 mph initial velocity-budget, you can adjust angle accordingly.

Also the mechanism can store and expend energy per bounce. Say the problem is 200 m out. You plot 100 m, 50 m, 25 m. Next jump can be more than 40 mph. This before we get into battery-storage perhaps with solar panels.

I'd assume the computer would auto-plot the best route in advance. Or at least assist you.

Major issue: safety. The inner cabin needs to cushion the blows. Start with Earthlings, Luna's first (so seasonal) visitors. We like it 9.8 m/s². As the pogo hits the ground, we exert 8.18 m/s² upward, to turn the 28 down mph into 28 up again whilst delivering that 9.8 m/s² to the passengers. So, about 6.9 seconds of upthrust.

Three and a half seconds away at maybe 18 m/s along this diagonal end of its arc means the pogo's "stick" has to extend 62.3 meters out. So a third of its time pushing up, a third swinging around the extended piston to point forward (1/6 to apex, 1/6 going down), last third pushing down. Will need to expend energy moving the piston.

I am thinking less "coiled metal spring" and more "hydraulic". Do we own a fluid that can compress 65 meters in 3.5 seconds, and bounce back? Probably; but how much total length would be needed? It would be a cylinder, so we'd also ask diameter. 20x150 m? Superheavy is 9 x 68 m; Empire State is 380 m. Why not.

Inertia of this mass filled with hydraulic fluid plus, you know, cargo will be an issue. Once set on its route, it cannot easily change said route. In case of emergency, dump the fluid and eject the passengers. (Loonies don't use parachutes; they use inflatable cushions.)

I already did the maths to pogo a mile at a time on the Moon: a full kilometer of pure hydraulics. LOL! But . . .

Ceres and Callisto let you boiiiing that mile faster and I think the angle be lower. And if they wanted total 9.8 m/s² they could get that with more upward force than 8.18 m/s². So less time to upthrust; less length of hydraulic.

I think the pogo is "feasible" on the Moon for 200 m at a bounce. Callisto and more so Ceres are looking good for 500 m bounces. And from Deimos... well, that station will be docked to it, not on it.

UPDATE 12/13: ... for certain values of "feasible". Dude. Just use electric-augmented trampolines. Or even Elon's vacu-suck.

UPDATE 3/8/22: Keeping in mind that the Moon is dusty. Offroad driving has speedlimits. For ballistic bounce the only limit - the only speed - is from Kepler.

Bouncing off some ideas

Trollin' through Hop David poasts yesterday, I impacted the pogo. It's one more way around Tsiolkovsky, where the planetoid has low surface gravity and no atmosphere. If the maths added up . . . which we're here to check.

The maths aren't even about the pogo (I am preparing different maths for that); they're about getting off and getting back, by rocket if you have to. Hop has a spreadsheet, for the moon-intersecting ellipse. Travelling "just" 300 km means launching at 670 m/s and hitting the ground again at 670 m/s. Says he.

At stake here is if the ballistic jump will beat out an electric golf cart for that distance - especially if no roads. And it will all be even more feasible for lower-gravity worldlets like Ceres and Callisto.

Checking the spreadsheet, say you want to go one mile per leap, 1.60934 km. Hop claims 114 mph per impact; then, of course, you slow down until aposelene (r = a x (1+e)) and speed back to 114 mph on return. As a velocity this is exerted at a 45° angle. Cosine is 0.7071, so the horizontal vector started and ended 80.8 mph. So on a flat surface, which even on our small Moon we can assume paved for one measly mile, I should be taking 0.742 minutes.

Then I look at that "ToF" at cell D27. This has the flight taking 0.185726903 minutes. Where one mile / minute is 60 mph (famously), we've traveled that mile at 5.384 times 60 mph. A golf cart leaving and meeting the ballistic would be travelling an average 323 mph.

Too good to be true, I daresay. Something bad happened on the way to cell D27.

D15 e is the eccentricity and D16 a is the semimajor axis (in km) of my ballistic trajectory. Hold on to e; not using it yet, except to explain why a looks like only half the Lunar radius on a short hop.

Hop assumes a "planet" whose surface is a perfect sphere of wire mesh and whose whole mass is locked in a tiny ball in the centre. (As he should.) Let's grant to that core its actual 380 km radius. Now: consider falling through a hole in the mesh at a slight angle against that core. You drop 1360 km, blast past the core; get wrenched at a g high enough to break your Lunar-weakened bones and to send your internally-bleeding and concussed body back to the surface. That - Hop notes - is a Keplerian ellipse, eccentricity near 1 and the focus at the core. Contrast the Ceres airless mohole journey. That isn't Keplerian; the focus shifts as you fall, and the acceleration shifts (to zero), so your true a is diameter - not radius. Because... the mass of that 380 km radius isn't 100% of the lunar mass, it's 0.75–1.75%. But anyway: we're staying over the surface so don't touch D16.

If we don't touch D16 we move on to D17 surface velocity, in km/s. Here Hop, unbound by the Moon's internals, does vis viva SQRT($B$4*D9*(2/D10-1/D16)). $B$4*D9 is Lunar μ here 4900 km³/s²; 4904.8695 is the measured value but hey. D10 r = 1738 km which is where the Lunar disc intersects the ellipse; Hop doesn't want to be more precise than that in case of mountains and craters. D22 has the suborbital period, which is Kepler: =2*PI()*SQRT(D16*D16*D16/4904.8695) in seconds. For the near-perfect circle (so a=1738 km): D23 has 108.35 minutes. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at 50 km so semimajor 1788 km, goes around at about 113 minutes (pdf). Kepler wins.

Time to look at D15, eccentricity. The equation checks out if I put 5458.5 (half circumference, as far as this XL will let me) as my travel-distance; it's almost a circle so e nears zero. And the time-of-flight is 54.17 minutes about half the suborbital period. Flight-time is bad only for short distances... meaning the distances we care about.

I take D26 to be the mean-anomaly against the mean-motion-constant. Last April I did some calculations starting with eccentric-anomaly at distance r given (cycler) orbits sent to Mars (and ideally back again). Hop instead has D26 = atan(sqrt((1-e)/(1+e))/e)/π, to be multiplied by the suborbital period. When it approaches a circle, this is very near 0.5; fine. Not so fine for a short hop. I have no idea whence Hop's D26 equation.

DART

Tomorrow NASA is to launch a DART at an asteroid. The plan is to test how to redirect a nearby space rock using inelastic collisions from Newton.

When I saw this in the news I vaguely remembered that project... being canceled. Sure enough: the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which was supposed to happen next month, is dead. But instead we're getting another mission that does the same thing under a different name, launching a week earlier. Um.

Seems like bureaucratic shuffling to me. But hey.

I expect this collision will end up knocking rubble about. Possible it doesn't move the main body out by much, diffusing much momentum to kicking pebbles off the other side. Still, knowing that is good too.

Besides the benefit to planetary defence, someday we might want to move a rock (or part of it) not just away but closer. Say we had a monster like Eros in TLL4, or SVL4.

LAUNCHED 11/24: Falcon 9 does the job. We've long been at the point that's not even newsworthy.

Dustposting, V

Not much worth our time this day (apart from, you know, getting paid) so: I'll dump Dust on y'all.

"Hey It's Me" was interesting. "Nine Minutes" was good.

"The Lonely Orbit" was neither. "Life Support" (I'd actually seen this over a week ago) was not good.

"The Atlas of False Desires" was not... even a movie. It was Karenware. "Horses on Mars" was also not a movie but had the benefit of not being preachy, just boring.

Segue to "Tales from the Multiverse", Rick and Morty tier, not as funny or insightful as it pretends to be. "Untitled Earth Sim 64" stands in for an Animatrix short that thankfully never made it. "Rocket Roaches" meh; doing for Georges Méliès what "The Beacon" was doing for Ridley Scott. Might have been interesting if it had come out before Scorsese's Hugo a DECADE ago.

University of Austin

It's a scam.

As we could guess from its origins, with Bari Weiss and her homosexual lover she calls "wife". Far be it from me, Gay/Straight Alliance alum, to complain about one's preferences; but more than that, I am an academic, and I shall never accept Weiss' redefinition of terms. If a soi-disant university tolerates a redefinition of terms then I class it alongside Trump University.

Something else Vox was right about.

The Byzantine system refutes itself

Per Justinian's Flea, Kyle Harper was the last straw for some; I had a comment on Mordechai's rebuttal myself (going against Razib Khan no less). Now, it's being argued more-forcefully that, ouais; Yersinia est une peste. Elle toujours erait.

PierrePeter Sarris has the full argument, thankfully not paywalled.

Even in 2019 when I was taking Mordechai seriously I had to say his economic argument was an own-goal for him. Sarris brings Justinian's response: the chastening which has been sent by God’s goodness [should have made workers] better people [but instead] they have turned to avarice. The working class wish to live like the bourgeoisie. No, says the Emperor!

We must agree that Justinian's early-540s measures (including ecclestiastical) kept the rattletrap going for another few more generations. But they didn't make 'em love 'im, that's fer sartan shure.

Balancing Deimos

Deimos is the kind of place we talk "semimajor" rather than, like dangerous Phobos, "altitude". Once it gets mamerostationary down to 20428 km semimajor, it needs to stay there.

Also, there's much room to boost this moon's mass. If we're also parking Libration satellites in the vicinity: I reckoned last year up to 2.56 × 10²² kg; so, Tritonlike. Deimos is nowhere near this; even Phobos (seven times heavier) isn't near this. The following applies whether that mass at 20428 km is still mostly Deimian or has been overtaken by Phobos material, however that has been done.

As Deimos pulls more mass from below, even if just from Phobos which is as noted starts over seven times Deimos' mass, eventually it will fall below the ideal (stationary) orbit. Conservation of momentum suggests to take on additional momentum from outside Mars' 1.52 AU.

Deimos (and Mars generally) is sited well to take on material from the asteroids. Some of these rocks are considered "Near Earth"; those as don't cross Earth's orbit are "Amors". Eros at 1.4579 AU is the ultra Amor. So we're looking beyond 1.52 AU.

Beyond Mars, the Belt happens to have subsections, delimited by Kirkwood back in the mid 1800s. Among those gaps are 5:1 and 4:1 resonance with Jupiter. That's 1.78 and 2.065 AU from the Sun. Mars has ensured the rocks here don't cross that orbit so - low eccentricity. The asteroids 1.78 - 2.065 AU are the Hungaria group; they trend 16-34° inclination.

Deimos should call dibs on the Hungariae.

Ganymed-no-E is a problem. 2.66 AU but perihelion 1.24 AU. It might actually strike this system one day. The Beltalowda need to fix this.

Paul Penzo's intermediate Martian moon(s)

One Paul A. Penzo came here to Boulder in 1984 to discuss "Tethers for Mars Space Operations", specifically a tether anchored above MΦL2. The thesis knocked around for awhile (pdf pp. 69f); until in 2016 Hop David brought it back to attention. That anchor is another satellite, running in a semimajor between those of Phobos and Deimos.

Orbiting at 6155 km above Phobos this could fling masses a tonne at a time toward Earth/Luna; at 7980 km, it can hit Ceres Station. Hop was unsold on any of that unless said exported tonne be of purest osmium or something equally expensive. And a thousand kilometers here and a thousand there, you're talking real money.

And that counterweight doesn't yet exist, obviously. Luckily the core of it is simple dead weight. The material can just be trash silicates fused into a big glassy mass. Add Kevlar or "Zylon" or some other tensile-tolerant cable. Lots and lots and lots of that.

The real prize is Deimos. The counterweight can dangle its rope from a "mere" 940 km over Phobos (~10300 km semimajor). It would fire up cargo to hit Deimos' own tether 2942 km belowdeck: one tonne of Zylon [for] 9 tonnes of payload. With an eight-hour journey in microgravity.

For those new here, they're asking - why does Mars need yet another satellite? Why not get to a low orbit and use Phobos as the one-and-only anchor, whose tether hits Deimos. Because Phobos is too much mass too low to the ground, is this blog's answer. The aim is to plunder Phobos, shifting all its weight for more-useful (but lighter!) satellites mostly lower in orbit, and for Deimos. This counterweight, anticipated temporary, aids the latter.

As we wait between these tether-whips, now they've got a "counterweight" that is shadowing Phobos' orbit rather closer than 940 km. I doubt Mars wants any of this falling into Phobos from above. Can't just nuke the thing and start over.

Hop suggested they winch back the Kevlar and punch the counterweight back up. This can be done in its own good time. I assume Deimos cannot dangle an even longer tether down to 10300 km semimajor to yank it.

Given that, the restoration of the counterweight can be an efficient high-I_sp process: ion-drive, maybe Ebrahimi-Alfvén. Thus: the Momentum Bank. The counterweight (there can be more than one) must actually have such a drive, and propellant, and robots.

How to get it up there in the first place: the options are to drop it from Deimos, which pushes it further out and lowers its mass; to push it from Phobos, which does lower its mass but also drags it down; or to bring it from outside the Martian system entirely, hopefully stealing some momentum from Deimos and/or kicking Phobos itself up a bit, although this process is complex and will certainly strew Mars' Hill Sphere with flying bullets.

Overall I'm thinking: go to Phobos, find a solid boulder of mass maybe 100 kilotonnes, attach a honkin' Orion to that, and knock it up to MΦL2 - at once. This does withdraw from the Trésorerie de Phobos, but we're hoping to reduce the total pain at the end as the moon sends more kilotonnes up there with less blowback.

Reuniting Deimos

Deimos at 23459 km semimajor is presumed the main waystation for Mars to anywhere. It were even better if 20428 km: that's mamerostationary. Luckily Deimos is small enough that it can lose some altitude just by exporting propellant and pushing back on outgoing craft.

Less-luckily Deimos has a countervail: Phobos, ripping by at semimajor 9378 km, and tidally pushing it further out. (Pace David Dickinson, solid Mars does not have tides: this is Phobos.) Meanwhile as Phobos loses energy to Deimos, Phobos falls further down, below its altitude 5989 km. Phobos is to crash Mars in a few million years which presents a Damoclean headache for the colonies we're hoping to host down there. And Phobos limits the length of a Deimos-anchored space-elevator: 23455.5-9517.58 = 13,937.92 km as a straight up/down line (a little longer of actual fabric given the "elevator" is, thereby, an unanchored rope at the bottom).

So: how about dismantling Phobos. Meanwhile Deimos can hold back on extending THAT long of a tether; we'll get to that, later.

Phobos has a lot of mass; if it were a "Near Earth" it would be in the Ganymed-no-E range. I don't know if the Martians even want the material that is on it, since they have plenty of metallics and supplies on the surface. Carl Sagan thought the Martians would blanket their soil with the moons' dark dust to warm it. But Phobos is already at 9378 km up. Phobos could sell its excess further up.

Phobos' best immediate customer is Deimos, roughly whence both moons came from, over a billion years back [doi 10.1038/s41550-021-01306-2]. Phobos-to-Deimos is delta-V 750 m/s but never mind that; its upward-bound exports should hit the Deimos-dangled tether, periodically closer. Deimos uses solar energy and whatever other power-sources to pull the cargo up, with a winch. Thus, I believe, dropping Deimos further down which is long-term what Mars and Deimos want.

Before you ask: I get pretty gonzo on this blog but I do not envision physically chaining Deimos to Phobos.

It should be clear from the above, Mars deems a tether dangling from Phobos to be an evil. The last things Mars much less its Ring Of Iron want for Phobos are for that moon to gain mass and get pulled even further downward. Also Mars doesn't want Phobos to collapse into an orbiting ring of rubble. But the evil can be mitigated if the mass Phobos gain from below be offset by removal of greater mass upward.

Shuttle shenanigans

Sierra Space, a subset of Sierra Nevada not based in that actual sierra, wants to land reusable craft upon a runway.

Anyway this Son Of Space Shuttle is the "Dream Chaser".

The Ozmens have this window because Boeing has failed (UPDATE 1/6/2022: and let's don't talk about Spaceport America). SpaceX is looking great but, I suppose, NASA don't want all their eggs in that one basket, which basket could well be filled with UAE, Japan, Israel and others.

Why a runway? - A runway means it can land back where it started without blasting so much blast in the area. The Falcon 9, by contrast, must land on some remote area (preferably a calm one, like a barge in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico) and be carted back home.

No, really. WHY?! They say: to access research flown down from the space station immediately. But can't they do that already? by beaming data down here at megabytes / second? For anything else, what's wrong with waiting a few hours to collect the lander from Elon's floaty platforms or some care-package in the Australian desert? Shenanigans. Shenanigans, I say.

I can imagine a medical emergency in space such that they need a quick dump back down here, to a full hospital. That's best next to the 'way, not just the limited equipment on the boat or the amber lamps. Well why not SAY so. Oh well. UPDATE 2/2/22: And other ships are, like, using the ocean. Coastal rocketry has Exclusion Zones: reasonable for test-flights, no longer reasonable for Falcon 9.

I am unsure about staging takeoff and landing at two land bases in the desert, alternating between; that might have been Spaceport America's pitch.

As for the station in question, they're looking to the private ones currently in development. Orbital Reef is noted; StarLab is another one. They don't mention Axiom so I'll do it.

Of the various ideas I like the LIFE pod the best, where I is for Inflatable. Yes yes, we can just toss Starship shells up there but as any apartment-dweller knows, you can't have too much living-space.

Various Martian landers

I am considering such Earth-to-Mars missions as don't have biotics, just cargo. Much the following applies to our own dear Moon or maybe Ceres, Callisto et al..

Among the first unmanned Starship landers (as opposed to the guinea pig flyby) is to build a propellant-plant, with robots. By "propellant", in a mid 2020s matrix, that means Raptor 2 propellant, which means oxygen and methane (which on any of these airless worlds can be chilled easily, underground). As byproducts of the process that's potable water and oxygen, with (for Mars) an argon / nitrogen mix to pressurise it all. In short, "propellant" is life-support.

The cargo is packed tightly, and sent over in micro-gravity. For raw material who cares about life-support en route. Who even wants reactive oxygen, or heat. Will need some radiation-shielding but, just enough to keep the flares and/or cosmicrays from the electronics.

When will these landers need that special armor? I wonder if the vessels will ever get back home; the plan is to use the (ex-)Starships as additional pressure-protected habitats. Wonder what happened to those glass domes; must've been reading Handmer.

And where the main chassis can be dragged down into a lava-tube they'll never need a shield on the surface either. Down there they should be able to inflate a series of tents until they can seal it all up with a Total Recall style series of thick metal airlocks which, I guess, those old Starships can serve as gates. Only such landers as bring humans to the surface need leave the surface for Earth again.

Or not for Earth... and maybe not from it. For the future, the Martians / Loonies / &c. will be building their own lower-key "Starships".

For Mars, based on The Martian; they can be shuttles up to Deimos with weak (plastic?) outer shells possibly depressurised. Such need rise only so far as the Phobos/Deimos tether system, until they get rid of Phobos and can just take the Deimos lift. Deimos should be the stage of Mars' commerce with the rest of the system, beyond merely refueling "in space".

Pigs in space

Teslarati lays it out: the first visitors to Mars will be using the Starship lander as a habitat (pdf). Before they even get there, Elon is to send many loads of cargo.

The Starship itself isn't, er, quite done yet; although the hard part seems mostly complete over this very year. Teslarati cites massive, ceramic, non-ablative heat shield technology (and a robot-built propellant-factory). I expect that shield is for landing . . . meaning, back here on Earth. The rockets won't need it for the Moon and I am unsure about Mars. However. The Martians (and loonies) need that tech if they're ever to stand on a 9.8 m/s² surface again which - yeah, the voters will want that.

As to the trainschedule the assumption thus far is that nonhuman cargo can take the literal long (Hohmann: 259 days porkchops willing) way around. Humans would rather arrive sooner but with this much mass all at once, NERVA (let alone neutron-directed fusion) won't be ready by the middle 2020s. Even if we could trim off a few weeks, the journey will still take that many weeks more.

Such "Starships" as land from space to Earth-surface can be habitats also from Earth-space to Mars-space. Artificial gravity at a reasonably Venerean 8.5 m/s² can be provided by spinning them around a central axle, at a reasonable distance to minimise Coriolis.

I recommend that one unmanned "Mars" mission, if it doesn't have to land, actually be a pigged mission: send literal guinea-pigs on an Earth-Mars-Earth trajectory. This vessel then returns to Earth, hopefully with live and healthy rodents at the end of it.

It is flyby (so doesn't care about vinf at Mars) and also isn't going BACK to Mars (so doesn't care about the turn-angle down here). As free-return it isn't Hohmann.

Ideal would be the selfsame 1L1 / 1-0-1-6 cycler which Aldrin plotted out. 146 days to Mars; with the foreknowledge that it's a much longer trip past Mars to aphelion and back. Elon doesn't like it for humans. But if just for rodents Elon would get his ship back, and maybe his rodents back too. Our squeakies will have to take that hit on vinf to reïnject to Earth's orbit: 6.54 km/s. (PS. I have small hopes for Martin Shoemaker's shipbuilding. We humans were better taking the McConaghy.) Anything's better than Robert Zubrin's $2.15 billion cuckshed.

Docking with an Earth-orbit space-station might be enough for this mission's purpose. Does it even need to be a full semipermanent station or just another Starship? Either way the Starship which tests this longterm flight need not be the same physical Starship that lands back on Earth.

The Chol plan

The classical "Maya" of the Chol-speaking citystate Sak T'zi' had a plan - at least, so say Moldbug's teachers and colleagues. LIDAR says Sak T'zi' agriculture went beyond what the burghers needed to feed themselves. Same with Yo'k'ib' the holy kingdom, hegemon of the region; called petri-nigri by its excavators.

LIDAR tells: surplus. The surplus will be preserved for future days with limited agriculture. Except - this is the Guatemala highland border we're talking about, Land Of Eternal Spring. So given a smallish population, it can feed that population indefinitely. The plan, then, is for a future population that's no longer smallish. Or to support a nonagricultural population right now, like the segment thereof building those terraces who are not currently farming.

I suppose there's Burma's historical solution (per Judith Richell), to malnourish the infants by choice and "custom". Or Japan's historical solution of infanticide. Or what we got here in the US, to encourage castration of the poors (stuck in public schools) by "transgender" ideology. We got abortion as well, which is also infanticide; but that's become unpopular. But anyway. Planning for the future by increasing supply such as first to improve nutrition presents to us the anti-Burma.

How... unAmerican! (Yes yes, "they duh reel murrkins" but, er... not Parians. Maya no Aztlan.)

That surplus could be redirected to elites, as well, as the press-release notes. Someone had to do the planning and, as we see, the planners did earn their pay. Sak T'zi' also had to defend herself from the Blackstone jihad.

What to expect in space 2022

To continue the Starship revolution, Handmer has a followup. But first, let's look in on Elon. Super Heavy (the booster) is to attach to the Starship next January.

Elon raises the FAA as the bottleneck but he's not done working on the project. So nobody can blame the FAA... yet . . . unless the FAA slips the timeline past January. Just like we couldn't blame Bezos' stupid lawsuit, although we may assuredly enjoy a good laugh at Bezos' expense (UPDATE 8 PM: like the judge just did). More serious is, of course, the "civil-rights" grift and, down the line, the company has micronesian NIMBY to look forward to.

I'd be unsurprised if Elon packs up and heads back to his native continent - Africa. Nairobi has oft been presented as a spaceport. Hey, maybe NASA's "Muslim outreach" will finally bear fruit; it does seem that Western Christendom is in its "moral science" phase, like Islam in the later Middle Ages.

Elon says the payloads will be decoys through 2022 although, if he ask me, I'd recommend he run some real loads: cheap / prototype loads that nobody will miss overmuch should a mishap occur (i.e., not The Webb Telescope), but will be Nice To Have if it all works. Handmer suggested mass-producing Lyra-probes, one-shots to interstellar visitors like 'Oumuamua, or to some 'stroid if the aliens don't visit that year. Seems win/win to me: prototype launches with prototype probes.

If it all works, SpaceX plans on Saul Perlmutter's telescope. Then Artemis, if NASA is even doing that by 2023.

I like this: SpaceX is already thinking about a future propulsion system design beyond Raptor (which is the methane upgrade to that kerosene-burning "Merlin" which nobody remembers, and is in turn being upgraded to a "Raptor 2"). This will be a wholly different design, he says - not a Raptor 3 / Merlin IV. I am unaware of what more is to be found with the chemistry of high-thrust, low-duration explosions short of nuclear which they won't let him do. Maybe he's considering the fluid-dynamical advances of late.

Dustposting, IV

I actually had content this past week or so; so, less time to waste invest on DUST eps. Although I did catch some, like "Recoil" - which I enjoyed. So: more recommendations / animadversions.

Starting with the negative: "Freight" and "Bubble" were nonsensical and bad. "Ripple Effect", meh; "Ender's Game" did anti-Heinlein better.

Worst of maybe all DUST ever is "We Were Not Made For This World" which isn't even a movie; it was a robot wandering around a desert with a voiceover. 3:42 minutes which feel like 3:42 hours.

Moving on, "Space Girls": a wholesome paean to the imagination, tho' unsure if it be "Science Fiction". (Compare Gravity, science fiction at the time... not so much now. Well... we were warned.)

"Asternauts" is good ol' redneck fiction; technically not even DUST, but better than most DUST. "Snow Ball" similar.

"Expo" (cf Moon) and "Ava in the End" were both great. "Hashtag" (starring Gigi from Farscape!) earns its place alongside That Black Mirror Episode. "The Black Hole" belongs in the fantasy section - or so I'd argue but: hilarious (reminded me of this classic). "Orbit Ever After" was okay, given some Newtonfail. "Ctrl-Z" is why we like two savepoints.

"Oblivio" was also good - although the menfolk won't like it. "The Masseuse" was Låt den rätte komma in or maybe Ex Machina if only, if only.

"Indigo" looked like a bummer, might have to try that again. "The Lonely Orbit" might be next on deck, maybe "Seechers" or "Life Support".

I noticed some full length non-DUST hardSF movies: The Last Star Warrior and The Last Scout.

UPDATE 6 PM: "Colony" and - just out now - "Infinity 7"; I am done for the night. Just horrible, both of them. Especially the former. I do recommend the comments to the former if you're up for heckling the white knights.

Mental health

Mental health is important. How it is implemented can be a problem. Let's talk about that.

Richard Hanania, having lost faith in public education where it touches history, also cannot trust how mental health is targeted toward children, adolescents, and young adults. He asserts, “Mental health” is a bigger con than Critical Race Theory, and much more destructive.

Interesting Hanania chose now to say it, in view of Elisa Jácome (pdf; passed by Robet Wiblin through to the HBDChick). Medicaid's mental-health system keeps young men out of prison. To me, that means it "works". As administered through Medicaid, anyway; which is a state-level system.

Hanania's "con" tweet follows in the CRT matrix, however. This implies mental-health as administered through the school system. This is county-driven, not state-. Such mental-health programmes as contribute to the skyrocketing percentages of youth identifying as "LGBT", where we can focus on B and T, are no more or less than grooming programmes. Some parents are brave enough to say as much.

On the other hand: there is much good that a sensitive counselor can do, not least to stop the slide before it hits bottom. Inasmuch as that's his/her job, yeah: no substitute for an actual, you know, friend. But we can consider that the triage stage. Then you get to other options: is this kid really a proto-schizophrenic, or is he having other problems like (foremost) bullies.

To sum up, the solution to most "mental health" is to remove the unhappy children from their county-jails entirely. Although some of it remains real and requires treatment.

Pascal Koiran's wormhole

One Pascal Koiran poasted something to the arXiv 9 October - a banner time for Stuff Bagestan Missed. We're hearing about it on the Drudge Report so, it is everywhere now.

The notion is to travel between two spaces in spacetime without reference to the speed of light. Einstein (and one Nathan Rosen) proposed that, yeah, relativity allows for the exit from this universe - black holes, and such. The trick is to reënter this place - the fabled "wormhole". Karl Schwarzschild noted that when you enter an event horizon, your time slows down outside the horizon such that you're not getting back into this universe ever. To reënter is, then, equivalent to the existence of such "exotic matter" as has negative mass, negative entropy, "tachyons" - whatever. It doesn't exist, therefore it's nonsense.

Ah maybe the Exotic can exist if only it be buhleeted out of existence, before you can catch it, by quantum physics! Sure, this field does allow for (and demand) particles to flicker in and out of reality. Like those W and Z bosons mediating the Weak Force. But it says nothing of "exotic" particles rather by definition - or they wouldn't be exotic, would they?

Anyway, it seems Schwarzschild isn't the last word on the topic of how to enter a (VERY THEORETICAL) wormhole. The time variable can be rethought in some "Eddington-Finkelstein metric". I don't understand it; maybe you can understand it. I assume it's still only good for data-transfer.

Leaving the universe and coming back to it would also violate causality. For some DUST episodes relevant here we could look to "Atropa", "Hyperlight", "Alone" especially and (lately) "Recoil". Overall I do not recommend the process although those stories are pretty good.

Liao

I've seen Robbeets knocking around for about a week now. I didn't really want to mention it.

The notion is that the Altaic family is real: that Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Mongol, and Turkic form the same family. Branching from the Liao basin 7000 BC or so. Note: long before Old Indo-European including Tocharian; more like same with the Anatolians added in.

Except that there's no analog for the Hittites who'd given us that Bronze Age checkpoint. It would be nice if Shimao had a literature but it didn't. We don't know what the Tarim spoke either, before the Tocharoi and then the Sogdians showed up from, you know, way out West. I'd long thought we knew but we didn't.

My thought is that the steppe languages comprise a Sprachbund: nomads learnt just enough of the farmers' languages to converse across the steppe. Even if their languages adopted a lot of their neighbours' vocabulary and even sentence structure, like Coptic with Iranian and then Greek, or like Etruscan with Italo-Celtic; still, these remained recognisably not Indo-European to the end. Pending a Shimao archive that remains my thought on "Altaic".

TOLJASO 6/14/22: It's bunk, time to dunk it... into the junk.

STL4 is cursed

So is the Sol / Terra Libration 5, for that matter.

This blog has noted a theory that Theia came into an Earth-crossing trajectory from outside. I find an earlier theory: that it was our very own Dopple World. Theia had come in from a libration point - a stable one. In theory (well, per Sean Raymond theory) libration-haloes may own a mass up to the mass of what they're librating against, and stay stable. If greater than Earth then I suppose Earth would be the librant, not the librator, if those be words (need 24.96 times difference for stability). Certainly Jupiter got plenty of "Greek" and "Trojan" asteroids fore and aft. Down here at 1 AU, eventually something moved Theia and Earth out of mutual stability.

The overall theory came from Edward Belbruno and Richard Gott, who came up with Theia in the first place; the Lagrange side of their theory - their Just So Story - was their best idea at the time for "okay buddies, how did Theia get there in the first place". They didn't make a big deal of it, since it was hard to explain and it existed alongside obvious other options like "it got whacked from outside". They figured Venus and Jupiter, also forming at the time, as the perturbers. UPDATE 6/19/22 - Not calculating inter-Dopple tides.

Amarante, Winter, and Tsuchida in 2013 couldn't find how Theia could even form 1 AU from our Sun, such as not simply to enter Earth at the time. That killed the sub-hypothesis such that "outside" was the last one standing. The libration-formation notion accordingly has been forgotten about; but it's important for the history of the thesis, which central thesis is as solid as early-system dynamics get.

One major issue with the libration theory, I think, is that it was falsifiable. We should be seeing more planetesimals in STL4 and L5 [ed. that don't raise tides] than we do - which, as far as ProjectRho will tell me, consist of "Kordylewski clouds", which I cannot even enunciate let alone describe. The closest we get are these weird pseudomoons like Cruithne and this fragment "Kamo'oalewa". Which fragment is Lunar anyway, a "tectite" as we call them when they land upon us. As I suppose we should expect, because the Sun's pull down here makes difficult for asteroids to get captured directly into such haloes.

So: why aren't STL4 and L5 even homes for capture by tectites? Well: Belbruno and Gott have that answer. Venus has settled in 13:8 resonance with us. It follows that, even now, there doesn't seem room in Earth's orbit for a stable satellite in its haloes. tl;dr - Earth has no haloes and, like Ganymede, isn't Lagrangian.

Which is not to say we can't have a short-term floater around Lagrange's points, but long-term they will need station-keeping just like John Norman's antichthon.

As for Venus' Lagrange-points, I dunno if they be libration-foci. On the one hand, Earth might have even more of an effect; on the other hand - the sun might enforce more stability. Venus might not have rubble in its haloes simply because there's no moon there for rubble to be placed into a convenient trajectory. Asteroids as fly by Venus tend to fly faster even than they fly by Earth.

Axiom: a proposal

h/t Cerno, Axiom Station. It's a commercial station in orbit: nearly double the useable volume of the International Space Station.

My only suggestion is that they run this thing not in LEO but between the Van Allens, like 2.5 R_e. Per Baker 2014 I'd strongly suggest not scraping the inner edge of that second belt at 3 R_e.

Starship allows for freight-transfer direct to a station between the belts, where LEO was somewhat stuck taking whatever it could get. Also: less space junk; and what junk there is, goes slower. And that orbit is closer (delta-V-wise) to everywhere; and you've already cleared the inner belt's rads.

The website is looking at 2 years, 41 days for Hub One [CORRECTION 11/18: the earlier poast had "98 days", that's for the Ax-1 to the ISS]. Seems like it's to beat out Northrup's HALO, which last I looked was selling to Gateway, which ain't gonna happen.

Hot shot

Since I'm coming up to booster time I am checking the vaccine adverse event reports, aided by @AetherCzar's tutorial. First EWD153, then EL9264; both Pfizer/BioNTech.

EWD153 turns up very few events: "all doses" come up to three (3), and if you only had one dose then that's just one event - ever. EL9264 by contrast looks ... hot: 713 events. Of the latter events, fourteen people who took that jab died soon-enough afterward their survivors reported it to the system.

I take it that "events" does not mean "jabs"; the report includes as percentage the event-count against 713. It's confusing and unhelpful. I mean, unless you want to terrify such normies as get a little under-the-weather and think "OMG I HAVE A 2% CHANCE OF CROSSING THE STYX". In general the "Caveats" section exists for a reason.

On the other hand, it may be that EWD153's lowball is an artifact of it being early thus usually followed by another jab only four-six weeks later. If followed up by whatever lot, any adverse-event (from whatever source) will be blamed on the second shot.

Still: EL9264 was better than ER8727 which came with 2291 events with thirty toe tags.

Ganymede protective service

As in mythology, so in planetary physics: Ganymede is abused by Jupiter, and needs to be protected. This project does that.

I got the germ of the idea Monday when I ran across the proposal to shield Mars, from our Sun. The next day, I plotted out the skeleton of the project and scampered around for references and data; in so doing, I critiqued the gaps in the Mars project. Wednesday was my day for starting on the mathematics, mainly for the microteslae; and for fixing the MANY errors of my initial draught. Thursday, the Armistice, proved not as productive as I'd hoped, since I'd spent the morning at church and then doing some (paid) work I'd had assigned to me Wednesday night; although, I did get the volume of the coil we need. Yesterday I was like, why not sketch out how to get that mass over to that iceball, which the original (Martian) project had not done (because on rock-cratered Mars they didn't need to).

Blogger (and Wunderground) being blocked from me over the most-relevant three days did NOT help; although this resolved itself as of this morning.

Meantime, I note that my Academia page had not got around to some early April fixes to the cycler projects, both the errata to the Earth/Mars tables and the "2L4" Venus-STL1 cycler. I reckon by then I'd just gotten burned out. So those fixes are in, belatedly.

LANDING 12/9/22: there's chatter that Europa may have sites as don't get Jovian radiation; which means Ganymede has such sites as well. Still: I'm here to talk about the whole globe. For instance getting on/off any airless and tidally-locked world at the Hohmann implies the antijovian or projovian points.

Henry VII in Newfie

This coin was minted in the middle AD 1490s. Within the half-decade of Columbus' landfall in the Caribbean. John Caboto only got to that coast in 1497 - under, yes, Tudor colours-with-a-u.

It is not in scope of this blog if the New Found Land alias Markland be "Canada" but, this blog does count all the coast with the Brave New World, across the icy Atlantic.

The actual colony would be founded in 1610. What were they doing with a coin over a century older than that? The Mail notes an AD 1561 coin at the same site so - an English patriot and coin-collector (or more than one) staking his claim upon History, one might conclude.

It may be, though, that there was already a trade in British silver with the natives, for furs, which furs were well worth their proverbial weight in silver back home. So, when the colony was established, those natives might have traded some of that older silver back to them, for more-perishable commodities, like 1600s-era rifles. (1500s-era guns being famously inferior to a good stone-tipped arrow.)

Eggshell

From last Tuesday, the eggshell planet. That's a planet with a small lithosphere, defined as the nonviscous (brittle) crust plus outer-mantle.

As having smaller lithospheres I am interested (lately) into how they factor into the mantle rocks we see in defunct A and F systems. Planets as are not in A and F systems (on up) could be old; too old for an eggshell. If far from the star, also - no shell. And small Marslikes won't have a shell either. I don't see how any of these "pollute" the inevitable white dwarf.

So I take further away that the A and F pollutants were mostly eggshells, potentially anyway. That is: we do not see lithosphere in those pollutants, only asthenosphere. Of course it's all too late now for them.

The study is "The Effects of Planetary and Stellar Parameters on Brittle Lithospheric Thickness", doi 10.1029/2021JE006952. The various pressers tease that three not-dead-yet exoplanets are candidates. Implicitly our own good Earth is NOT an eggshell: our crust is famously shallow although I am less sure about our mantle.

Dustposting, III

Up this afternoon/evening:

"R'ha" was a decent man[nish]/machine tale, "Thalamos" was bad. "Good Business" was almost good, ruined by a male actor faking a good-ol'-boy Southern accent badly. "ARK" was... let's just say, well done; basically a stage play. "Merv", postapocalyptic meh. "FLOATERS" was funny but a timewaster. "Traveler" was timecrap. Or whatever; had a Buckaroo Banzai vibe which I also never liked.

"ALONE" wins the night as a damned gut punch.

UPDATE 7:00 PM MST - "State Zero" is a passable vampire / zombie postapoc like I Am Legend. "The Leap" turned out to be good.

Dustposting, II

Armistice Day, day off. Used to be that only veterans got a day off but, now, they don't matter as much as Protected Groups, so - day off for my civilian self too. Carry on, citizen!

Following up on watching these, I've now seen some of the longer ones: "Atropa" three/two nights back, which was basic-bitch timeloop Trek; and "The Big Nothing" last night, which was more Outland (but better, if possible).

I suppose that timeloop dodge was how "Atropa" got away with the Magick Gravity Floor. I won't allow that excuse for "TBN" which is set in Saturn's rings that is, supposedly Hard SF. The rings also look ... pretty near to the ship. I don't think they are this close together normally but, maybe that's the vein of (neodynium) ore they picked.

Also on deck that 9 November night were some Biblical expies: "Pulsar" (Jonah) and "Anomaly" (Matthew / Luke). Both were inept and bad. "CARONTE" was arguably not sci-fi at all being a Terabithia expy although, it was good, so I don't regret watching that one. "Outpost" was a passable love story; "Beachworld" was a passable adaptation of Stephen King's not-so-classic short.

Yeah I have to say, my second night's selections weren't nearly up to the par of my first night where I went 4/4 (unless you count two eps of "Atropa").

With one major exception: "Happy Hunting", a sendup of Youtube Influencer / gamer chic. "Sky Fighter" might be a minor exception as a mindf0rq (thought it was going to be an Ender's Game at first; maybe that's the aesthetic it was going for).

Last night, besides "TBN": "Eden" was just terrible, "Zoe" was stupid and maudlin, and "Origin" was incomplete. "New Mars" isn't good enough for me not to spoil it: pandemic-Karen parable with "All Summer In A Day" in its DNA. "The Looking Planet" is a passable Magrathean creation-story. "Star Dogs" is hit-or-miss Red Dwarf Firefly.

"Final Offer", also channelling Hitchhiker's Guide, is hilarious.

"The Leap" looks promising [UPDATE PM: so I watched it this day].

Project Babylon

From 22 October, da man Zim points to SpinLaunch. This is Jules Verne's notion to defeat Tsiolkovsky: blast the cargo from Earth's surface (or maybe from a balloon; single-use highflying ramjet is never going to be a thing) on a ballistic trajectory toward something higher-up which can catch it. Also a notion of, er... Saddam Hussein.

That's 981 km/s² at the surface, 200 kg at a time, to be fired up at 2235 m/s. That is not full Escape Velocity as I recall exploring here a couple years ago, but it is good enough for LEO.

Of course most organics and, for that matter, electronics won't survive a 981 km/s² pounding; Rocket Lab (e.g.) ain't dead yet. And I'd be leery of nuclear material near the critical-mass. But SpinLaunch claim some <200 kg satellites can handle this. If from a balloon, SpinLaunch can hire Rocket Lab to retrieve said balloon and the launcher.

For the future, as Zim points out, initial "jerk" won't matter for nonfragile material like chemical fuel if said fuel is sequestered from anything as might react with it. As for nuclear, we're only sending HALEU from our gravity-well.

I could envision, also, stations in orbit rocketing supplies 200 kg at a time into higher orbital tiers. The issue is in how to dispose of the lowest tier.

UH OH 12/3: It's run by the Yaney brothers.

Did we find Planet Nine in 1983?

No we haven't capital-F "Found" Planet Nine. But. Michael Rowan-Robinson of Imperial College (London) has an idea where to look: in the IRAS Point Source Catalog 1983. h/t the Turtle.

MRR is the real deal. He was one of the original "Planet X" skeptics, before Neptune's orbit was decisively fixed. In fact he was the d00d who compiled IRAS in the first place! So if he thinks he has found something, this should be taken seriously.

MRR's search is for such objects as move slower than Eris but not as slow as, say, Proxima Centauri. He finds nothing in PSCz nor RIIFSCz. His candidate is a triplet R20593+6413, R20592+6411, R20562+6408 in single hours-confirmed (1HCon) sources. Those would be in the Reject File of 1983, thankfully undeleted since.

If they be the same moving target then, surmiseth MMR, they should count as a triple confirmation.

This - if legit - would be a ∼3-5 M_E planet at ∼210-240 AU ... at very high ecliptic latitude and at low Galactic latitude. So, in the middle of the Milky Way and not easily detectable from the 1980s; and off-zodiac so ignored by Moonbeam from Sedona. And by whoever in Flagstaff was out for that phantom Neptune-disturber, of which MRR at the time was one.

The manuscript is unpolished and any editor could suggest plenty of readability improvements. Against that, I suggest that the news cannot wait. The arxiv exists for a reason and among those reasons is to get followup research done A.S.A.F'n.P.

All I can say is... happy hunting.

Blooger

Blogger (not Blogspot) has been squirrely today both on its own side and as linked on any blogspot.com site. Blogger's header works on my gmail account ... elsewhere; and it seems fine so far on this laptop. It is doing less well on my PC.

If I were being QANON, I'd wonder about that. Back in that storied year 2018, Blogger didn't let me search mine own history before about 2016 or so. At the time I figured, hey, there's some server restriction.

Now I dunno. I like to think I've been behaving myself but, goalposts shift. Just ask Dennis Prager.

It might be the Visual Studio install (which I coupled with an uninstall of 2015 and 2019).

RESOLVED 11/13 AM: Passive-voice because I, personally, did nothing but check up on it. Three annoying days including a Bank Holiday.

Vox Day was right

About Dennis Prager: During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users...had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are? But it would've been inconceivable

As frequently noted, Prager didn't just classify actively-homosexual men and IV drug users as sinners or "disordered" or what have you. I do not dispute that correct classification. He downplayed the research itself.

This despite that there were real reasons for normies to fear the GRID before... the research was done; this despite that virus research is good for its own sake, lest some other virus show up with similar characteristics. Also it turned out the specific (retro-)virus has been useful for understanding how genes are edited; there's your CRISPR.

And of course men like Prager did much work to make these sinners, to be judged in the next world, fit for judgement in this one. So this can you imagine doesn't have to be imagined for those of us, like me, able to read during the 1980s. Prager is not yet so old he can be unaware of those times; I expect he remembers them clearer than I remember.

I conclude that Prager, like the Republicans in our Senate, has taken the L and moved on. We won't be seeing that marriage-definition Amendment soon, barring a new religious reaction.

Vox Day warned us about men like Prager - and so, before him, did Christ. Prager is a fake. He just plays to his audience. To put it in other terms: shande.

Carthago Sardiniam delevit

Here we have evidence from Sardinia, of Carthage deeming the locals' culture as worthy of obliteration.

(I admit: I had to look up the perfect-tense. I had the notion it was "deluit" for some reason. Maybe in the vulgate.)

That agrees with such genetic evidence as shows a thorough demic replacement of Sardinia's gene-pool with a heavy Levantine infusion. In simpler terms those guys did a Puerto Rico on the island. Not so different from what they'd do in Spain, when the Romans started paying attention.

All I can say is... the balls on those guys. Seriously: Carthage were the people whose main contributions to Western civilisation were a book on how best to handle slaves and the word tophet. And they dared treat the Sardinians as savages.

Rome committed many wrongs, over its long and violent history; but not to Carthage.