MarsBlog.net

Good riddance.

Unfortunately, it was late in coming, and in the  form of fifth-column movements, former client-state kleptocracies in the third world, the mainstreaming of thinly-disguised Marxist ideas, a defense arrangement which has infantilized Europe, etc., we are still living with the USSR’s ugly and destructive legacy.

On the bright side, at least NASA is finally starting to shake off the institutional structure and outlook it developed as a result of the early space race with the now-defunct USSR (ironically, while temporarily relying on USSR-heritage equipment).

Trivially, I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t find the news video of Yeltsin and Gorbachev signing the final documents of dissolution late on December 31st just before the flags were changed over the Kremlin – that’s my main memory of the event, highlighting just how surprisingly uneventful the end really was. (My second memory was of how ironic it was that I completed my poli-sci degree less than two weeks before…the end of the USSR pretty much rendered a lot of the acquired knowledge no longer relevant.)

Posted on December 31st, 2011 under Miscellaneous, politics, Russian Space. Comments Off

Know someone who owns (or will be getting) an e-reader? Send them a copy of In the Shadow of Ares as a gift!

Over at AresProject.com, I explain how to do it via both Amazon and Barnes & Noble — it’s as easy as can be.

Over the regolith and through the catenas to Grandmother's house we go...

Posted on December 18th, 2011 under Entertainment, In the Shadow of Ares, Science Fiction, Writing. Tags: e-book, e-reader, In the Shadow of Ares, kindle, Nook. Comments Off

This is sad. But predictable with Hollywood, unfortunately – FIVE-O CREW DISGRACEFUL TO WWII PEARL HARBOR SURVIVORS:

The TGGF program had brought 24 red roses to place at the gravesites on the opposite side of the Punchbowl.  The program crew actually had one of their men wearing a backpack and earplug walk through – infiltrate – our rose-laying ceremony hushing everyone.

It was a disgrace.

He ruined the somber mood and my blood was now beyond boiling.  Thankfully most of our vets were so focused on placing their roses they didn’t catch what was going on.  This moron laughed as he communicated with some other crewmember on the other side of the cemetery via his cell phone headset.  About this time, a caterer walked over grass and flat headstones, through our vets gathering, with a plate of blackberries and salmon for the actors to snack on.

Remember this the next time you hear some actor or director or other worthless but self-important celebrity whining about how they or their personal cause celebre doesn’t get the respect they think is due.

Posted on December 10th, 2011 under Entertainment, Miscellaneous, PPC. Tags: Hawaii Five-O, Hollywood, Pearl Harbor, television, WWII. Comments: 1

Good news – NASA clears SpaceX for trial run to space station:

To encourage commercial cargo runs, NASA has hired SpaceX and a second company, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to fly cargo to the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 countries, which orbits about 240 miles above Earth.

A successful test flight by SpaceX — as well as a similar run by Orbital scheduled for next year — would begin restoring U.S. access to the station, which is expected to remain operational until at least 2020.

As others have pointed out, space policy is the one area where the Obama administration seems to be getting things more or less right – and that’s all the more amazing for it involving commercial endeavors. (It’s early, of course – if and when these commercial startups hit their stride, that will be when the federal government starts taxing and regulating them out of business like every other successful industry.)

Posted on December 10th, 2011 under Economics, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Tags: commercial cargo, COTS, nasa, Orbital Sciences, spacex. Comments Off

…to Lockheed Martin. Saw this in the company news clippings today – Lockheed Martin Selected By U.S. Air Force for Reusable Booster System Flight Demonstrator Program:

Lockheed Martin [NYSE:LMT] has been selected by the U.S. Air Force for a contract award to support the Reusable Booster System (RBS) Flight and Ground Experiments program. The value of the first task order is $2 million, with a contract ordering value of up to $250 million over the five-year indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract period. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center are developing the RBS as the next generation launch vehicle that will significantly improve the affordability, operability, and responsiveness of future spacelift capabilities over current expendable launchers.

Initial RBS Flight and Ground Experiments task orders will provide for an RBS flight demonstration vehicle called RBS Pathfinder scheduled to launch in 2015. The RBS Pathfinder is an innovative reusable, winged, rocket-powered flight test vehicle that will demonstrate the Reusable Booster Systems’ “rocketback” maneuver capabilities and validate the system requirements that will drive refinements in the design of the operational RBS.

I have no knowledge of this program, but whether it’s a first stage or even just a strap-on akin to what was proposed numerous times to replace the Shuttle’s SRBs, it’s one promising step towards increased reusability, and thus affordable access to space.

Hmm…sorta makes one wonder why USAF is doing this and not NASA…

ADDED: the concept picture here suggests that it isn’t a first stage. Which makes sense: start with a small vehicle as a replacement for (say) EELV strap-ons, work out the kinks, and then progress to larger and more complex versions.

Posted on December 6th, 2011 under Economics, Space Technology, Useful Technology. Tags: affordability, affordable access, flyback booster, reusability, Reusable Booster System. Comments Off

Maybe the Russians should just cut their losses and focus on another planet or the Moon – ESA Abandons Effort To Contact Russia’s Stranded Mars Probe:

NASA had also lent its tracking assets to the Phobos-Grunt salvage effort but was unable to pick up any signals from the spacecraft, which was launched Nov. 8 on a mission intended to land on the martian moon Phobos and return samples to Earth. The spacecraft also carries a small Chinese satellite intended for Mars orbit.

“The mission is no longer feasible,” said Manfred Warhaut, head of operations at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. In a conference call with journalists, Warhaut and ESOC operations engineer Wolfgang Hell, who had been in regular contact with Lavochkin, said Russia is unlikely to give up on Phobos-Grunt.

“We are not in a position to continue, but they definitely will not give up,” Warhaut said. “They will continue to try to send thruster commands” to get Phobos-Grunt’s engines to function.

It seems the more ambitious their Mars missions, the more quickly they fail. Which is too bad – the more Mars missions, the better, but also because the Phobos sample return on this mission would have been really interesting.

Posted on December 4th, 2011 under European Space, Russian Space, Space Science, Space Technology. Tags: ESA, Phobos-Grunt, Russia. Comments Off

…all those German classes weren’t wasted after all – The Rise of the Fifth Reich? (Did I miss the fourth one?)

Corn’s sensitivity to the possibility that actions Americans do not anticipate based on the very different priorities of policy makers in other parts of the world could radically reshape the global picture animates his article on Germany.  He begins provocatively:

“If Clausewitz is right that “war is the continuation of policy by other means”, then Germany is again at war with Europe, at least in the sense that German policy is trying to achieve in Europe the characteristic objectives of war: the redrawing of international boundaries and the subjugation of foreign peoples….

Germany’s goal?

A constitutionalization of the EU treaties, which would irreversibly institutionalize the current “correlation of forces,” and allow German hegemony in the 27-member European Union to approximate Prussian hegemony in the 27-member Bismarckian Reich.

This is much more exciting than the usual bland pap about European politics one reads in the US, and Corn’s analysis is deeply grounded in what serious people are thinking and writing in Paris, London and Berlin.

Exciting indeed, but I’m not sure if that comment at the end about “serious people” is meant to be irony or not…

As Mead notes, Corn may just be getting over-excited, but it’s still worth considering as a thought experiment. And in my case, it’s interesting as fodder for a future history — if a resurgent Germany dominated the EU like the Zollverein and succeeded in bringing a demographically cratering Russia to heel in exchange for help shoring up its eastern border defenses, etc., what would that world look like in fiction?

Posted on December 3rd, 2011 under Entertainment, politics, Science Fiction. Tags: China, future history, Germany, Russia, Science Fiction, Walter Russell Mead. Comments Off