21 thoughts on “Neil DeGrasse Tyson”

  1. Ignorance of the economics of spaceflight? Hell, with Degrasse Tyson’s “enthusiasm”; Cessna, Piper, Cirrus, etc. would not be economically feasible in aviation.

  2. He’s not the only one. I follow a fair number of astronomers and planetary scientists on Twitter and they share NdGT’s unwavering belief that spaceflight, particularly human spaceflight, is the purview of NASA and NASA alone. They’re otherwise very intelligent people, but they refuse to acknowledge the damage SLS is doing to our presence, human and robotic, in space. I don’t understand it.

  3. In another current article, Tyson “debunks” the new Pixar film, “The Good Dinosaur.” Which, as most people know, is a cartoon.

    In the past, he repeated the urban legend about Walt Disney being cryonically frozen after death.

    Tyson is more entertainer than educator. Unfortunately, many people who know nothing about science think he’s “one of the world’s top scientists” because they see his face in the media so much.

    1. Which, as most people know, is a cartoon.

      Uh, spoiler alert, Ed. 😉 By the way, congratulations on the campaign with Starbase Operations. Have a pleasant Thanksgiving.

    2. And the Good Dinosaur makes no pretense at scientific accuracy, it’s an unabashed fantasy.

      On the other hand Neil’s trailer for The Martian is supposed to portray something scientifically plausible. At 1:15 of Tyson’s trailer he has Hermes departing from Low Earth Orbit. 124 days later the Hermes arrives at mars orbit (2:20 in Tyson’s Trailer).

      The Hermes is an ion driven craft capable of 2 mm/s^2 acceleration. With this sort of acceleration it would take about 40 days to spiral from LEO to C3 = 0. See Guidelines for modeling a low thrust ion spiral

      That leaves less than 90 days for the Hermes to go from a 1 A.U. heliocentric orbit to Mars orbit. Which isn’t doable if acceleration is 2 mm/s^2.

      Besides an impossible trajectory, Tyson also has the crew slowly spiraling through the Van Allen belts.

      I wouldn’t mind NGT’s movie critiques so much if he lived up to his own standards.

      1. Next from Tyson: a “debunking” of “Ratatouille, based on the numerous scientific inaccuracies in the film (rats communicating directly with humans, rats controlling humans by pulling on their hair, etc.)

  4. I wrote about Tyson, Needless to say, I don’t care for the man.

    I do have some reservations about Musk colonizing Mars though. Even if Musk establishes his constellation of LEO com sats and becomes a Carlos Slim on steroids, he still wouldn’t have enough to colonize Mars. The Mars Colonial Transporters are a fantasy in my opinion.

    Government/private partnerships might establish cislunar infrastructure and/or start mining of asteroids. Dennis Wingo’s book Moonrush gives several examples of past government/private partnerships that have established extensive transportation and communication infrastructure. I believe guys like Bezos or Musk will be in prominent players should this come to pass (in spite of Musk’s Mars monomania).

    1. Colonizing Mars will require cutting the cost of getting there way down, which is what Musk is working on right now at SpaceX.

      1. Colonizing Mars will require cutting the cost of getting there way down…

        Sure, but let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that colonizing Mars is mainly a transportation problem.

      2. It requires a a bit more than that. Cities don’t pop up on the frontier at random. They get built in places where people have a reason to gather and settle in large numbers. That reason is sometimes military — count the number of US cities with names like “Fort something-or-other” — but usually, it’s industrial.

        So far, Elon hasn’t identified any industry he hopes to establish on Mars (at least, not publicly). The only customer for his Mars Colony that he’s publicly identified is NASA. That might be sufficient to support a *small* settlement, but it’s clearly insufficient for the one million settlers Elon talks about.

        I believe there will be large cities on Mars someday, but it won’t happen until large-scale industry is established in the solar system.

        1. A common trap would be colonizers fall into is the Home Depot syndrome. Need PVC pipe? Home Depot. Grow Lights? Home Depot. Etc., etc.

          It’s so easy to get this diverse stuff that we forget it comes from an extensive planet-wide mining, manufacturing and transportation infrastructure.

      3. I give Musk better than even odds at a reusable booster. And it looks like Bezos is well on his way towards a reusable booster.

        But a reusable upper stage? An 8 km/s delta V budget means around 5 or 6% can be devoted to dry mass, about as tenuous as an aluminum Coke can. To survive the extreme conditions of an 8 km/s re-entry, an upper stage will need stronger structure and thermal protection.

        I don’t give Musk even odds for a reusable upper stage unless there is some way to shed re-entry velocity besides aerobraking. This might be momentum exchange tethers and/or propellent from the moon or near earth asteroids.

        1. Possibly transpiration cooling with space-derived coolant (probably much more mass efficient than propulsive deceleration).

        2. 8km/s delta V? That’s about what you need for the upper stage to make orbit if the first stage does not much more that a shot-put to orbital altitude, leaving the upper stage to cover most of the horizontal velocity without gravity or drag losses of consequence.

          Ever see a demonstration of an empty soda can holding the weight of a grown man? A mass produced item with an impressive feat of mass ratio and structural margin to make a rocket engineer envious.

          I’ve seen pictures of stainless steel tanks that have survived reentry with not much more than some oxidation and getting banged up hitting the ground.

          1. The SpaceX attampts at reusable boosters are following a more vertical ascent profile than normal. The booster’s horizontal velocity must be killed and a counter burn done for Return To Launch Site (RTLS). Landing on a barge entails less boost back delta V but still some.

            So yes, a shot put to orbital altitude is a good description of a reusable booster.

            (Stepping on an empty soda can…) Nope, didn’t hold up my weight. And the empty soda can has one atmosphere of pressure within. Is the pressure I’m putting on it comparable to reentry? If I remember right Max Q for ascent is often around 35 kilo pascals dynamic pressure. Not sure what it is for re-entry.

    1. Tyson is not an observatory director, he’s a planetarium director.

      Here’s the biggest irony. Tyson denigrates suborbital “tourism.” He sees no value in private citizens wanting to see space for themselves, from “only” 100 kilometers. But sitting in a dark room and looking at pictures of space — that’s infinitely more exciting, right?

  6. I guess it should be no surprise that a person whose enthusiasm for space came from Star Trek would think space travel would require something like the federation. But I think Neil identified his own weakness. Even watching Star Trek with portable handheld communicators and tricorders, he still didn’t predict iPhones? Heck, when I was a kid, I would make origami handheld “communicators”, and I’m still waiting for my childhood imagination when those “communicators” also handled driving the car. James Bond already showed the idea, and we are not far from that reality, but the concept, not only for me, predates the iPhone. How could NdGT miss it?

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