It’s not new to readers here, but my own cost estimate has been republished at IO9.
Category Archives: Mathematics
From Base 10 To 12
Why we should switch.
Maybe space-based societies will switch over.
Obama’s Three Horsemen Of The Ecopocalypse
Sorry, Mr. President
…but it is a spending problem.
It’s Not Just Mathematics
The curious physics of domino chain reactions.
Starships And Wormholes
There’s an interesting new book out on the possibilities for advanced space propulsion. It’s a little pricey, but royalties will be used to allow Professor Woodward to continue his research, managed by the Space Studies Institute. It’s a long shot, with a potentially huge payoff.
Book Bleg
Does anyone know what the plane change would have been between Columbia and the ISS (ballpark, I know it moved during the mission)? I could figure out the RAAN of Columbia from launch time, but I don’t know what it was for the ISS at the time.
[Sunday evening update]
Here’s what I added as a footnote to the chapter, as a result of discussion here:
The difference in orbital planes at the time was about ninety degrees. A sixty-degree plane change requires as much velocity as it takes to get into orbit (ignoring atmospheric drag and gravity losses), and ninety would take about forty percent more than that (or about as much as it would take to escape from earth’s orbit from the earth’s surface, again, ignoring those factors), so even if there had been a full external tank attached to the Columbia in orbit and the main engines could have been restarted, it still wouldn’t have had nearly enough propellant to get to the ISS.
FWIW.
Soulmates
Those who believe in them are much more likely to divorce. It makes sense that a marriage founded on an irrational myth is less likely to survive. There are billions of people in the world. If there’s only one right person for you, what are the odds of finding him?
Escher
Very cool.
Warp Drive
What if NASA could figure out the math?
Well, Alpha Centauri in two weeks is nothing to sneeze at. Of course, this could be a problem:
…other scientists have raised concerns that warp drive could be potentially very dangerous, potentially destroying the destination in its path.
Luddite whiners, standing in the way of progress.