Administrative, General

On The Road Again

5 Comments

We’re flying to Denver this afternoon, and driving up to Wyoming on Monday, returning to CA the following Monday. I’ll have a laptop with me, but blogging may be light. Consider this an open thread, but be good in comments.

5 thoughts on “On The Road Again”

  1. I said: “It seems Mars will be the next superpower- but maybe not this century.”
    And said NASA should build artificial gravity station and fuel depot
    in Venus orbit, in comments here:
    http://www.transterrestrial.com/2021/05/13/elons-new-rocket/#comments

    Venus orbit would be a good place to make rocket fuel, if you can import water. Venus is better hub of our solar system as compared Earth. Whenever we get Martians, they will use the gravity well of Venus. Living in Venus sky, has same problem as living on Earth surface. Venus sky and Earth surface will be less problem, when rocket fuel is made in Space. One could make rocket fuel in the Venus sky, and one imagine Venus and Earth exporting rocket fuel to Space even after rocket fuel is first made in space.
    I have “always” thought of Lunar rocket fuel as a step to making rocket fuel in space. Or Moon would a place to begin the rocket fuel in space. Or Moon seem the best place to sell relatively small amount of water and rocket fuel- small being less 50,000 tons of water and/or rocket fuel. And other aspect of Moon is it would lower cost of electrical power in space. The cost of electrical power on Mars has always seemed like a problem to me.
    One could use solar power on Mars, and it seems Mars is better place to use solar energy than Earth surface. So didn’t think Mars would export rocket fuel- it seemed better for Moon rocket fuel to Mars orbit. Or it seemed better to ship Mars water to Mars orbit, and make rocket fuel in Mars orbit.
    But now, I am thinking one could ship Mars water to Venus orbit.
    The Moon could ship million of tons of water to Venus orbit, though Mars could ship billion of tons to Venus orbit. But in terms of trillion of tons of water, probably from somewhere other than from Mars [or Moon].
    I thought that once lunar power could be $1 per kw hour, that things would “start happening” pretty quickly. As in getting SPS for Earth surface, but maybe metric instead is when Venus orbit gets to $1 per Kw hour. Or which will happen sooner?
    The Parker Solar probe, using about 1 gallon of water {recycles it} to allow it get solar energy when close to Sun{though it also tilts solar panels so less solar energy reaches the panels}. And seems to me you want to keep Venus solar panels below 70 C, by using water as coolant. And one also would want cool solar panels at 1 AU distance from the Sun- or you want to do this on Lunar surface also.

  2. Can anyone design a Blue Origin lander using BO engines that would be sized to launch to the Moon on a refueled New Glenn? Due to the Moon’s proximity, one could do about 70 round trips compared to only one round trip to Mars in the same period of time.

    1. The first name that came to mind was Blue Origin but it looks like they are having some issues. Maybe ULA could make one for them, oh wait…

  3. Firefly Aerospace picks SpaceX rocket to launch Blue Ghost moon lander in 2023
    By Rahul Rao 1 day ago
    “Firefly’s robotic Blue Ghost lander will carry 10 experiments and technology demonstrations.
    The space launch company Firefly Aerospace announced this week that when its Blue Ghost lander launches to the moon in 2023, it will do so on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.”
    https://www.space.com/firefly-aerospace-spacex-blue-ghost-moon-lander-2023
    Linked from:
    https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

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