Business, Space, Technology and Society

Space Access

12 Comments

I’ve arrived at the conference. Looks like a great turnout, and a lot of familiar faces. A lot of seem to be getting older. Will Pomerantz gave an overview of future plans for Virgin Galactic, and took a lot of questions at the end. Still unclear what the future of propulsion is for SS1, though he said he thinks that they’re going back to rubber. Follow Doug Messier (@spacecom) for more details. Many of the questions were his.

12 thoughts on “Space Access”

  1. I’ve noticed that ageing phenomenon whenever I’m able to get to SAS. Say “hi” to everyone there from me!

  2. Young folks migrate. It’s a leading indicator. The industry will not be truly healthy until you see them migrate back.

  3. Figures. They could hardly spend more time and money doing a complete vehicle redesign just to switch to liquid propellants. It was a big design mistake going hybrid.

  4. This is my first time here. It’s been a long time. Back in the ’80’s was the last time I attended an event like this.

    My house was L5 South Bay Chapter HQ in the day. Many lived there from time to time. I can pitch script ideas to TBBT based on those times. Tim Kyger was ‘Lenard’. He’s short enough.

    Great to see him here!

  5. Anyone from NASA there? They’ve opened up a can of worms with the EM drive – apparently conservation of momentum has a loophole.

    1. Not many. Dennis Stone from JSC, and Kubendran, from the Flight Opportunities Office at HQ. I doubt either of them know anything about it.

        1. EM Drive produces more than 100 lbs/kW according to your link. A 300 kW thorium reactor the size of your fist would then be 15 tons of continuous thrust for a couple of decades on 8 oz of thorium.

          That would make the family RV quite the space ship! It would make both mars and space a no brainer.

          1. Los Angeles class sub.
            26 MW, 6000 -7000 tons.

            EMDrive thrust: 1300 tons, gonna need help to orbit or a diet.

          2. If it works. The law of conservation of momentum says it shouldn’t work. If it does work (lets see it change the orbit of a spacecraft) then it means that we don’t understand momentum. It’s kind of a huge deal. Everything else in physics is based on the conservation laws, and if one of them is incorrect we’ve got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.

          3. People are risking their reputation by saying it is working. That doesn’t mean it’s violating anything, just that it is doing something that is not understood.

            It seems to me they should try measuring where the exhaust should be and determine if something can be measured there? In vacuum of course.

            OTOH, why do they need to first understand it? What’s the risk difference in studying it vs. implementing it?

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