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What Do You Get When You Cross IRVE With a Shuttle-Era P/A Module?

ULA’s Vulcan recovery concept:

ULA CEO Outlines BE-4 Engine Reuse Economic Case

It amounts to severing the engines from the stage, post-separation, and bringing them down via IRVE-derived inflatable heatshields.

An interesting method, but AvWeek’s description makes it sound a bit crude compared to going all the way to a single P/A-module-like unit. It may […]

Inflatables Moving Closer to Use

Bigelow’s already demonstrated that inflatables can be deployed and operated in space. Now they’re moving closer to demonstrating an inflatable habitat with actual people in it: On the BEAM: Headed for the Space Station.

In its packed configuration tucked aboard SpaceX’s Dragon resupply spacecraft, BEAM will measure approximately 8 feet in diameter.

Once BEAM is […]

Rose Eveleth is a Parody

Rose Eveleth: plumbing the important issues in science!

FWIW, I’ve worked in the space industry since 1997, around the time our favorite Twitter-based science expert and fashion critic was in junior high. Most of that work has been on projects involving vehicles for carrying people. I don’t recall a project or a period from then […]

Martian Cube-Copters

This is the Drone Helicopter NASA Scientists Want to Send to Mars

Amusing. If lift is the limiting factor rather than volume or mass, that suggests to me that a bunch of these things could be sent on a single entry vehicle. Not unlike a certain NIAC proposal we put in last year, as it […]

[facepalm]

In This Week’s Episode of #Science With @NeilTyson ….

Aliens, seeing Humans kill over land, politics, religion, & skin color, would surely ask, “What the f*%k is wrong with you?”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 6, 2014

And my non-STEM friends wonder that I consider this guy an overhyped midwit and second-rate Carl Sagan […]

More on #Shirtstorm

Sarah Hoyt tackles #Shirtstorm feminism (and a commenter attempting to deploy the standard Progressive argument tactics of snark, strawmanning, and faux-victimhood): No Space for Sewing Circles. John Hayward at Breitbart discusses the controversy as an example of thoughtcrime and compares it to #GamerGate: Comet Guy and the social-justice black hole Rose Eveleth and her […]

Buy Matt Taylor Something Nice

…To make up for Rose Eveleth, Chris Plante, and Arielle Duhaime-Ross tarnishing his big day with a petty and indecent snit over his shirt.

I chipped in $20.

ETA: Glenn Reynolds gives a short summary of the aforementioned petty and indecent snit, and makes this point:

It seems to me that if you care about […]

The Space Applications are Obvious

New Nanomaterial Takes the Stink Out of Submarine Air

Unlike amine, which is a liquid, the new material looks like sand. In fact, it is sand, except it is covered with tiny pores, each filled with molecules that selectively pull CO2 out of the airstream. Together, sand grain and molecule are called Self Assembled Monolayers […]

NRL Invents CubeSat Release Mechanism

I like the simplicity of this, and the inventor mindset the exercise represents: NRL Invents CubeSat Release Mechanism To Deploy Solar Panels, Tethers

It’s a good motivation to me to do more monkeying around with ideas like this.

 

Raspberry Pi Goes Social Justice Wanker

I guess that Pi Camera I picked up yesterday will be going back to MicroCenter:

Let us be clear, you few loud angry folks. We’re not under/misinformed or blinkered: we think you’re WRONG. End of. #StopGamerGate2014

— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) October 15, 2014

I’m not a gamer, so until now the #GamerGate thing didn’t […]