14 thoughts on “Ending Apolloism”

1. there might even be fueling stations halfway to Mars, reducing
   needed vehicle size even further

   I did not understand this. How would such a depot orbit the sun so that it could be an intermediate destination? Even then, wouldn’t it add at least two extra burns to reach mars?

   The other issue is the understandable focus on govt. While mentioning frontiersman, nothing was mentioned about their motivation or the fact that going to Oregon (SSTO, great one!) didn’t mean they all were involved in import/export (only a tiny fraction of them would be.)

   All in all, a great document.

   1. I did not understand this. How would such a depot orbit the sun so that it could be an intermediate destination? Even then, wouldn’t it add at least two extra burns to reach mars?

      I’m sorry I wasn’t clear enough in what I wrote. Yes, it is an intermediate destination. It was thoroughly discussed at the linked blog post.

      1. Somehow I missed the link.

         a synodic period with earth of about three and a half years, and with Mars of about five and a half years. But with the savings, you could afford to put a dozen stations in that orbit, which would give you an opportunity every month

         Now I understand.

2. Here’s some feedback. Not sure it will be as interesting as you anticipated…

   1. Ok, so I watched that and it was entertaining but YouTube recommended this one and it’s pretty good too. Totally unrelated to Rand’s post, or is it?

3. There is a spelling mistake at the bottom of page 22. The phrase “downgraded frp, that performance” should be “downgraded from that performance”.

   1. Fixed, thanks.

4. Rand, I’ve only had time to skim the paper but I noticed that while you were trashing heavy lift in general and SLS in particular you made no mention of the fact that Musk plans to develop his MCT/BFS/BFR which is larger than SLS to carry out his Mars plans.

   You might want to point out why heavy lift is appropriate for Musk but not NASA or, if you don’t in fact think it appropriate, explain why you think Musk is taking the wrong path as well.

   1. I’m not trashing heavy lift in general; I’m trashing heavy lift that rarely flies and costs billions of taxpayer dollars per flight. If Elon wants to spend his own money on a huge rocket, and fly it a lot, (literally) more power to him.

      1. You might want to explicitly state this, nevertheless.

         I would also advise making this available on Amazon in Kindle format at an appropriate price. There’s no lower limit on an eBook.

         1. I guess I could add something like that. I don’t want to formally publish it until I get more feedback. It hasn’t been edited by anyone except me.

5. A serious document like this will require some serious time to go over. Rand I appreciate the effort. I’ve only been able to skim it, but thanks for publishing what you have so far.

   Hopefully I’ll have further comment for you after I’ve had a chance to read it in-depth.

6. Re: Growable Spacecraft for Artificial Gravity research.

   Yes, faster please. I’ll settle for *any* LEO gravity lab. The sooner we can get one up the better. We need this data. Badly.

   …and it will have to come from the private sector.

   It’s becoming clear that we cannot count on NASA for anything that is not directly SLS/Orion related. It is sucking away all other crewed resources @NASA short of station keeping at ISS. As was predicted years ago.

7. Rand,

   I’ve read it all the way through once so far, and it is an outstanding work. I do have some comments on my mind, but they are pretty trivial. I’ll go through the monograph again and send them to you, if you are still accepting them before formal publishing.

   All in all, I don’t think any of the investors should be anything but pleased with your efforts.

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