Somehow, Saudi Arabia was left off the most recent list of allies in our war on terrorism. Is this to send them a message, or is it a final recognition of the reality–that they’re not only not our allies, they’re the enemy?

I mentioned previously that Riordan was not a lock for the Republican nomination. Partly because the “he’s the only Republican who can beat Davis” argument falls kind of flat when Bill Simon is leading Davis by two points in the Field Poll. When an incumbent is behind to a total political unknown, it’s pretty bad news for him.

My money was previously already on Simon for the nomination. With Simon’s surge, particularly against Davis, the only reason that real Republicans might have had to vote for Riordan has evaporated.

Now I think Simon’s got a shot at following in Reagan’s footsteps and beating an incumbent Democratic governor as well. And what a breath of fresh air he’d be–a non-politician.

Reader Mike Stein, another Nevadan, suggests:

How about Afganistan? It is about as inhabitable as the Moon and somewhat closer. Wasn’t there a cave complex that withstood continuous bombing by our best conventional arsenal? Just a thought.

Well, if we can pay them to not grow poppies, why not this? (BTW, I wonder how much I can get paid to not grow poppies? Or corn? I can not grow stuff with the best of them…)

There was a useful political comment from reader John Stotz, of Fallon, NV:

I am frankly a little disappointed in Nevada’s congressional delegation with regards to this issue, although I can understand their position when one considers the historical record. The historical record would reveal that generations of these people living near or downwind from above-ground nuclear testing in the 50’s have suffered severe, life-shortening health problems. There is certainly a legacy of distrust to overcome.

That being said, we have come a long way since above-ground testing. I honestly believe the approach should be based on the idea that Nevada can be the repository, Nevada can become the Nation’s experts in meeting this need, and oh by the way, here is what it will cost you America: completely subsidized education or energy, or a medical plan or what have you, for the citizens of Nevada).

The fact of the matter is that the project will probably happen no matter what Sen Reid does. It will no doubt happen in a crawl/walk/run fashion in order to mitigate hazards and reduce liabilities over many years, based on “sound science”, and it will no doubt improve as technology improves. My point is, it could happen with the support of the Nevada congressional delegation, with an eye to being in it from the ground floor to ensure every possible safeguard and mitigation is in place, deriving every possible benefit from it for the people they represent, while meeting one of the nation’s critical needs. Or it could proceed as it is now, with our leadership emotionally casting Nevada and its environment in the role of potential “victim”, and when the project comes to pass, then having to negotiate any derived benefits from a position of weakness in the form of “reparations”. With the advent and rapid development of Indian gaming, this state desperately needs to diversify and this is a huge opportunity if emotion can be laid to rest and our leadership willing to meet the challenge of doing it right.

He could be right. But I’m still hoping that this, combined with several other ongoing events, could encourage some new thinking about space transport.

I received a plethora of email from the Fox News piece on nuclear waste disposal. I’m going to put up a little FAQ here that responds to the majority of it. Then I’ll let the fray take place in the comments section.

Why is this even an issue? Isn’t Yucca Mountain is a reasonable and safe way to store it?

Yes, but people aren’t rational. We might be able to take advantage of their irrationality to develop space.

Which leads to the other popular and reasonable question:

The watermelon environmentalists went nuts over a little plutonium on Galileo and Cassini. Why do you think they’d let us get away with something like this?

Well, the question is not whether or not they’ll oppose it, but whether or not their opposition will be effective. I’m cautiously optimistic because 1) their credibility as of recent years has been on the wane, 2) people are less likely to put of with such anti-tech nonsense post 911, and 3) there will be a newfound sense that anything we can do to utilize new energy sources that free us from Middle East oil is worth doing.

That is not to say that they can’t stop it–just that there is cause for hope.

This next one was a popular one. Please don’t send me any more, even though each mention of it was hilarious, and had me falling out of my chair with helpless laughter. Anyone who does will be hunted down and killed, painfully:

Remember that show from the ’70s, Space: 1999? And Martin Landau and the bell-bottom uniforms?

Yes.

I’d almost forgotten it.

Now I have to do so again.

Thanks a lot.

Are you trying to destroy the nuclear industry by making it too expensive?

Well, actually, the NRC’s been doing a pretty good job of that for decades, without any assistance from me. Every method proposed to deal with nuclear waste is ridiculously expensive, including Yucca Mountain. I’ve simply selected an expensive means that also provides a useful spinoff–cheap and reliable space access.

Wouldn’t it make the Moon harder to colonize, with all that radioactive waste up there?

Any technology that can handle lunar colonization will consider nuclear waste to be way down the list of environmental problems, after total vacuum, thermal extremes, dust, lack of water and essential nutrients, and the occasional solar flare. This is not to say that lunar colonization will be impossible, or even difficult–just that nuclear waste will not present much of a difficulty relative to the natural ones.

Why would it be more expensive to just drop it into the Sun?

To understand this requires a little basic orbital mechanics.

An object in orbit has a certain velocity needed to keep it from falling toward the thing that it’s orbiting around. In order for it to fall, it has to be slowed down.

For an object going around the sun (like the earth, and anything on it) that velocity is the distance traveled divided by time, or about 600 million miles per year, or about 70,000 miles an hour. That’s roughly how much an object on earth must be slowed down in order for it to fall into the sun.

To get to the Moon, on the other hand, is more like 25,000 miles per hour. Quite a bit easier (particularly when one considers that the propellant required is an exponential function of the velocity change–a factor of three difference in velocity means a factor of 2.7^3 or 20 times as much propellant…)

Waste isn’t a problem if you use breeders. Didn’t you know that, dummy?

Well, actually, I did. I was ignoring breeders for the purpose of that article. When I said it’s a problem independent of design, I was referring to non-breeder design. I think that breeders are a tough sell, politically, for a number of reasons.

I’ve seen pictures of the Shuttle blowing up, over and over and over and over and over. How can we ever build a launch system that won’t blow up and scatter waste all over the place, killing us all?

Well, OK, no one asked it quite like that, but you know that’s what lots of people are going to think, and people are legitimately concerned about reliability and safety. There’s an answer, but I don’t have time to post it right now (kind of like Fermat’s Last Theorem). I’ll get to it a little later today, but I’ve got other stuff to do right now, and I want to at least post what I’ve done so far.

[Update: 1:56 PM PST]

OK, here’s the story.

There are two ways to deal with this:

1) Make the vehicle extremely reliable so it almost never has a catastrophic failure.
2) Package the payload such that if such a failure occurs, no radioactive material can be released.

Both of these are technically and economically achievable. As I said in the column, do not look to any existing launch vehicle as in any way representative of what is achievable in either cost or reliability for space transports.

Expendables are very expensive because we throw the hardware away every time. They’re unreliable because every flight is their first–they suffer from the “infant mortality” phenomenon.

Shuttle is expensive because it’s partly expendable, and because it wasn’t designed for a high flight rate, and it’s not flown at a high flight rate, so there are no economies of scale.

A new, fully-reusable space transport, flown at the high flight rates required would suffer from neither of these problems. In fact, I would expect to see several hundred consecutive successful flights of such a system before we would commit to using it for such a program.

As to the second means, payload canisters can be designed that will survive any conceivable launch accident, or reentry from orbit, without releasing any of the waste. This adds weight, and hence cost, but not so much as to necessarily make it unaffordable. Again, this can be demonstrated, using an inert payload.

And finally of course, the perennial question, probably from a Fox Network (not Fox News) viewer:

DID WE REALLY GO TO THE MOON?

Obviously, the questioner somehow feels that the question has more urgency, and less kookiness, if it’s asked with the shift key locked…

Answer: No. “WE” didn’t. But several American astronauts did. No further comment.

Well, The Little White Rent-a-Car That Could, did. I made it back in one piece. I received a slew of emails on the nuclear-waste disposal proposal on my Fox News column–too many to respond to individually. But there seem to be some common themes, so I’ll try to get an FAQ up tomorrow on the subject.

Posting will be light/nonexistent today. I’m about to get back in the Little White Rent-a-Car That Could and drive back down to LA. I may stop by XCOR in Mojave on the way to see what’s happening with them. If there’s anything exciting that I can talk about, I’ll pass it on this evening. Anyway, if you haven’t read enough of me, my Fox News column should be up shortly. And if you haven’t read Moira’s from yesterday, go read it now before it’s replaced by mine.