MarsBlog.net

Dirt: the bleeding obvious radiation barrier:

The best way to protect astronauts living and working on the Moon from harmful solar radiation is being debated by lunar scientists.

Burying a habitat module under lunar dirt is one option currently being discussed by scientists on a lunar discussion group. Another option, to protect astronauts from solar flares when working away from their base, might be to set off explosives to create an emergency trench as a shield.

Well, I guess when your alternative is getting irradiated by a solar flare and possibly dying a nasty death, the risks from being sandblasted by flying regolith and pelted by falling debris might seem at least a little bit appealing.

Using a bulldozer or other robot to push soil over a habitat module would not be easy. If the bulldozer’s weight is reduced to one-sixth its Earth weight on the Moon, the force it is able to push with is also reduced by one-sixth.

“That means it gets stuck much easier,” explains Edward McCullough, principal scientist in advanced aero analysis at Boeing Phantom Works in Huntington Beach, California, US.

One hopes that the Boeing guys considered the obvious fix for that: piling regolith or rocks on the bulldozer itself to add weight.

Posted on May 31st, 2006 under Space Technology. Comments: 6

Looks like tee-time for Pavel has been indefinitely postponed.

Posted on May 31st, 2006 under Luddism. Comments Off

Yet another instance of unexpected Memorial Day weirdness in Texas:

This is becoming a trend.

Posted on May 31st, 2006 under Miscellaneous. Comments: 1

It seems my LPR classmate Jory Taylor had a run-in last week with a Code Pink wacko Holtzman intern.

The Holtzman campaign later “apologized” for the incident, saying “We’re sorry the girls in our campaign beat up the boys in their campaign”. I predict there will be no end of the ribbing at our next meeting…heh.

Posted on May 23rd, 2006 under Miscellaneous. Comments Off

Oh now, this looks like fun: Inside Two ‘Star Wars’ Projects. Looks like ABL might be obsolete (in that it uses a chemical laser) before it ever flies.

What’s really interesting in this article, though, is not so much the technology as it is the approach that’s being used to develop it. By pursuing reasonable milestones at a measured pace instead of trying to jump to an all-up weapons system from a blank sheet of paper, the Pentagon is having much more success than they did the first time around, and for significantly less money. Granted, the new technology builds on what was developed in the original incarnation of “Star Wars”, and technology in general has progressed dramatically in the past fifteen years, but the development strategy is no less sensible for that — look at what happened with Shuttle, for instance, where a huge all-at-once leap was taken with immature technologies.

And as for applications, it looks like the FEL is already finding potential uses in the chip industry:

The free-electron laser is a special kind of laser with the advantage that its beam can be tuned through a wide range of frequencies in much the same way that you can dial up different frequencies on a radio.

Because the silicon/hydrogen system has been intensively studied, the researchers knew the strength of the bond between the silicon and hydrogen atoms. The bonds between atoms act something like an atomic spring. Like tiny springs, they tend to vibrate at certain frequencies and are most likely to absorb light photons that vibrate at these frequencies. As a result, light tuned to these “resonant” frequencies can force the bond to break.

…and possibly the always-on-the-horizon fusion power industry:

They also tested the system on silicon surfaces covered with a mixture of hydrogen and deuterium. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen: Instead of the single proton that hydrogen has as a nucleus, deuterium has a proton and a neutron. It has the same chemical characteristics as hydrogen but it weighs about twice as much. This weight difference means that the silicon-deuterium bond vibrates more slowly than the silicon-hydrogen bond, so the resonant wavelength is very different than for hydrogen-silicon.

Posted on May 21st, 2006 under Space Technology. Comments: 1

Oh joy. New Orleans reelected Mayor Wonka.

And this in particular just boggles my mind:

The former business executive dismissed threats by some business people who said they would leave if Nagin remained in office.

“Business people are predators, and if the economic opportunities are here, they’re going to stay. If not, they’re going to leave,” said Nagin, in his now famous vernacular style. “I don’t worry about that stuff. I think there’s enough interest around the country that we’re going to attract top businesses. …God bless them. I hope they stay, but if they don’t, I’ll send them a postcard.”

Yeah, great attitude, Ray. Those businesses from around the country are just going to…er…flood in, knowing they’re considered parasites and that the mayor won’t lift a finger to encourage them or to improve the lousy-even-before-Katrina business climate of the city. Nice. I guess he expects the city to be able to suck off the fedgov’s teat indefinitely.

Amusingly, given his attitude towards businesspeople, Nagin actually ran as…the guy with a business background:

But during the run-off campaign, Nagin actively courted conservative white voters by emphasizing his business background in contrast to Landrieu, a longtime politician and a member of Louisiana’s equivalent to the Kennedy family.

(There’s a Chappaquiddick joke there, but I’m not going to make it.)

This is really disappointing, if not unexpected.

UPDATE: Will Collier pretty well sums up my own thinking on this.

Posted on May 21st, 2006 under Miscellaneous. Comments Off

Saw this at the local grocery store this morning:

This, in Colorado…home of Jay Bennish and Ward Churchill. The arrogance would be breathtaking, if the assertion weren’t so laughable.

Posted on May 10th, 2006 under Luddism. Comments: 4

Sorry about the unannounced lack of a Pillory last week — I was busy painting, and there just wasn’t much material to lampoon. In the future the Pillory will be posted on alternate Sundays, unless I find some other reliable sources of space and science moonbattery to mine.

• You know you’re down in the dumps when Bruce Gagnon’s “I hate myself and all the world” cri de coeur actually gives you hope — and you’re not one of his critics;
• Everybody’s got their shtick. For Bruce, everything bad in the world ultimately comes back around to the military, which apparently rivals the “International Joooooish Conspiracy” (booga! booga!) in its ubiquitous and nefarious influence. For Elaine, even a semi-coherent rant about NASA’s workforce demographics comes back around to a call to “Arrest Bush!”.
• You never know what to expect when shopping on Amazon for science fiction DVDs [mildly work-unsafe];
• Let’s hope nobody gets ideas about putting this and this together…The Matrix is about the last art life needs to be imitating. Assuming of course that we’re not already soaking in it…
• Yet another suppressed technology coverup. Yawn. (And what’s that about seeing “the guy’s hand move across”? Huh?) [hat tip: Eric C.]
• At least someone involved has finally fessed up that this was a hoax…and how enjoyably bizarre that it is the original model maker revealing the truth in the context of making a duplicate of the “real” dummy for a new movie about the original film.

Posted on May 7th, 2006 under Luddism. Comments: 2

Must be some tooling I wasn’t aware of:

Life-cycle cost also drove selection of the Rocketdyne RS-68 as the CaLV’s main engine, rather than the RS-25e. However, this led to an increase in CaLV core structure diameter from 8.38m, the same as the Shuttle’s external tank, to 10m. The wider core was needed to enlarge the fuel tanks to provide the extra propellant required to allow the RS-68 to burn long enough to deliver RS-25e-like performance.

Hecker says the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility, near New Orleans, can manufacture a 10m structure because “the tooling already exists so the increase in cost is negligible”. Michoud, a NASA centre managed by Lockheed Martin, is already designated to be the manufacturing and assembly facility for the CLV upper stage and EDS.

He might be right about the new friction-stir weld tools for ET barrel sections, which have some amount of diameter flexibility as I recall, but the dome weld tools and assembly fixtures and the LH2 major weld tools are pretty well wedded to the ET’s 27.6ft diameter.

If their diameter could be enlarged at all, it would certainly be a non-trivial expense, as would the alternative of replacing the dome weld tools with simpler and less-expensive multi-axis FSW fixtures. And while some of MAF’s VAB and checkout facilities were built for the larger-diameter Saturn V, they would still have to be modified to some extent, as would the ET-specific work platforms, carriers and test cells.

Either Hecker is flat out wrong in thinking the diameter growth would cause a “negligible” increase in cost…or else, he knows exactly the kind of cost impact it would have, but sees it as a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the CaLV program overall. Either of which should give one pause.

Posted on May 5th, 2006 under Uncategorized. Comments: 1