NASA Defunds Trump Administration Supported Mars Ice Mapper Project.

 

Changes in a project to return Martian soil samples has put back the sample return to 2033 and prompted a shifting of budgets. Apparently, as a result, NASA has decided to "discontinue funding for the International Mars Ice Mapper project," a project originally added to NASA's budget under the Trump administration. NASA cites "budget constraints" as its reason for scrapping the project. Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division said, "Mars Ice Mapper originated from NASA agency-level objectives.....Exploring Mars ice reserves emerged as a focusing requirement and thus a need, not only for the scientific value, but also in preparation for human exploration." 

If Elon Musk plans to find a likely place to land on the Red Planet, it appears he's going to have to find a way to pinpoint a likely ice patch for himself. You have to wonder how much this had to do with NASA priorities has to do with politics as much, if not more than science. There's also Musk in the wings champing at the bit to blast off to Mars ahead of our "progressive" government, which at this point doesn't seem to be making much of all that progress they promised.

 

NASA seems to be content with muddling along doing wildly expensive cost-plus contracts with its aerospace contractor buddies. These traditional contracts build expensive single-use spacecraft like the Orion Artemis rocket which for hardware alone will set taxpayers back 568 million dollars at the lowest current estimates. These estimates do not take into account for Joe Biden's inflationary economy or delays caused by government fiddling along the way.  We're talking more than 2 and a half billion for just the spacecraft and boosters, and not including fuel and technical support to launch just 4 missions. And that's just the lowest "reasonable" guess at the cost - such guesses being notoriously short of actual costs. 

 

 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk's ambitious Starship could cost as little as 10 million a launch or less after just a few initial successful launches since the Starship is a reusable ship. Meanwhile NASA's Artemis is one shot and then space junk technology dating back to the early days of spaceflight.  SpaceX's Falcon 9/Dragon launches meanwhile charges its customers just 62 million dollars per launch because it reuses its launch vehicles, one of which has gone up and been recovered a dozen times (as of March 2022) with several other SpaceX boosters set to tie that record soon. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, already successfully launched, runs 90 million if the launch vehicle is recoverable or 152 million for a deep space launch in which the boosters cannot be recovered.  That's still a whole bunch of buckazoids cheaper that nearly 600 billion for NASA's big old baby.

Perhaps a different, possibly less "progressive" government could let NASA pass the Ice Mapper Project off to Musk or one of the eager competitors trailing along in SpaceX's wake. Could be a lot more affordable, especially when it would help Musk move his Mars colony project along.

 

I had always hoped that one day I might catch a ride to space on a rocket. Not very likely now what with my advancing decrepitude, but at least I've had a glimpse of what's becoming possible for us Earthlings as far as ascending into space.

And if that's possible, what might we see someday in the Earth made new. It does give one hope, even if the science guys scoff at the idea of something beyond this life. It just seems to me that with the gift of eternal life, what dreams might we humans bring to fruition, given the time to work them out.

© 2022 by Tom King

On Oil, Trolleys, Windmills, Spacecraft and Buggy Whips

When the subject of government meddling in the growth and development of industry comes up, people tend to fall into one of two camps — the folk who thought giving almost a billion dollars to Solyndra was a good idea and those who didn't. The pro-government folk inevitably talk about protecting American industry and jobs. Somehow the government is supposed to protect workers when buggy whips go obsolete.

It's always buggy whips. The buggy whip argument doesn't work very well, however. The buggy whip industry didn't die until the automobile developed to a point that the technology was affordable for the majority of us. Buggies gradually disappeared from city streets and with them, buggy whips (although many parents kept the leftover ones in the woodshed for disciplinary activities). 

Along with the buggies disappearing, a lot of jobs went with them. The number of horses declined in cities and with them the guys that ran around town with these little trash cans on wheels scooping up horse poop. Those guys lost their jobs as did buggy builders, buggy whip makers and used horse dealers. It would have been stupid to try and preserve the buggy whip industry and all those other jobs that went along with it.
What happened was that industry adapted to what American's needed. Technology changes were adopted as they become affordable and the market was able to pay for the new technology. We didn't stimulate the auto industry to create jobs. The auto industry created jobs and workers moved from buggy whips to automobile plants gradually as the market for personal transportation shifted.

The government in the 30s famously tried to shift the public transportation industry from electric trolleys to rubber-tired, gas-fueled buses thanks to a deal between House Speaker Sam Rayburn (who wanted more markets for Texas oil) and FDR. We wound up overly reliant on fossil fuels and personal automobiles and systematically dismantled our cheap reliable public transportation system in the process. Look at all the political misery that's caused, not to mention wars. We're still trying to fix a public transit system that wasn't broken until FDR and Sam Rayburn with the help of GM, Goodyear and Standard Oil tried to "fix" it. The old Interurban rail tracks are long buried under layers of asphalt under downtown city streets.

What we're doing wrong now is creating an artificial panic over fossil fuel-based energy before the next technology is ready for prime-time. It will wreck the economy at the worst or at least make us dependent on a more expensive and less convenient energy source.

Politicians worry that without their wise guidance, we'll face a collapse some day when the oil wells all run dry.

What a load of self-important rubbish!

As oil becomes scarce, whenever that happens, capitalists (if there are any left) will find new energy sources and deploy them as they become profitable. By profitable here, I mean self-sustaining. People can always shift to new jobs. It's been done before as old industries die and new ones rise to take their place. New markets replace old ones. Companies shift to new products as old ones lose market share.

Where we get into trouble is when we decide a certain job or a certain type of product should be artificially propped up and preserved in situ as though our economy was some sort of museum for fossilized businesses.  Capitalism is a dynamic process - always shifting, changing and adapting as the realities of technology, consumer needs and tastes inevitably change. Capitalism's willingness to cast aside the old in favor of something better in the name of profit is why capitalism survives where more rigid, centrally planned economic systems keep collapsing under the dead weight of their own out-dated practices.

Where governments, industrial associations and trade unions get into trouble is when they try to anticipate future trends and force them to come early on an artificial timetable. It doesn't work. Change happens when change happens, no matter how much the comrades down at central-planning might wish to slap the process into some type of orderly progression.

Progress is not orderly. It's messy and rowdy and breath-taking. Anal retentive, obsessive control freaks really hate that and they think it's their duty to clean it all up and make it work properly — smoothly. Not a one of them have a clue how to do that. Economists are about as accurate at predicting how to meddle with the economy of a nation as weathermen are at predicting what the weather is going to be anything more than a week from now.


One government agency that is finally doing it sort of right is NASA. By contracting out its space-taxi business, it's stimulating an incredibly rapid new space race. Instead of racing the Russians, who are basically still operating with 70s era technology, we're racing ourselves - private companies innovating, introducing new technologies and taking risks for the prize. Ironically, they all may actually win, even those who don't get NASA contracts. The "losers" may actually wind up selling in other markets. It will be nice to start making things like spaceships in America to sell to other countries. It will certainly help balance our trade deficit if we do. And how many other industries will turn all that innovation into new products and services?  


I'd don't believe American excellence is dead yet by any means. The only thing in the way is a raft of dim-witted politicians who believe they are smarter than all the rest of us put together. Really, the best thing they could do for us all is to get out of the way and let Americans work. 


There's still time to save ourselves.


Just sayin'


© 2014 by Tom King

If the Russians Won't Play Nice, Who Needs Them?

Bigelow/Boeing Space Hotel

Apparently the Russians don't like it that the US has complained about recent Russian imperialism rearing its ugly heat with the annexation of the Crimea and continuing threats to take more territory from the Ukraine. Now they want to ban us from the International Space Station.  I figure, let's just let 'em have it along with the rest of the world who were supposed to love us now that Barak Obama is president, but don't. We should, of course take our junk with us. I figure, since they all keep telling us they don't need us, let's see how they manage on their own. Call it our gift to international development.

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin and suggested we "use trampolines" to get our astronauts to space. So let's do just that for a while. We don't have to be in space all the time. Let's back up and unleash American private industry on the problem. Meanwhile our astronauts can be training for the next "giant leap for mankind" as Neal Armstrong so aptly described it. For instance:

1. The US pays 67 million dollars per astronaut for transportation to the International Space Station. Elon Musk's Dragon X space capsule could deliver 7 astronauts for that figure. Space X already delivers up to 13,228 pounds (6.5 tons) worth of stuff to the ISS on every trip using it's cargo version of the Dragon X. The spacecraft was designed to also be able to be fitted to carry human passengers. Give him the launch money we'd have used to pay the Russians and we'll wind up saving a lot of money in the long run.
2. Why are we messing with the Russians anyway? Why don't we just build our own space station and, like I said, leave the old ISS behind as our gift to the "rest of the world". Our way of giving them a little boost. Bigelow Industries and Boeing have already developed inflatable space station modules. Take our budget for launching astronauts and put it toward designing a giant blow-up US Space Station with lots more room and more modern tech on board. We could even give the Air Force it's own wing to do Air Forcey type things. 
3. Why aren't we going to the moon? Bigelow also has some nifty designs for blow up moon bases. Space X has a Falcon Heavy rocket under development that could get us there. We could always dust off the lunar lander designs from Apollo and update them. We know they work. 
4. What about mining and salvage operations? NASA already has its eyes on harvesting asteroids for materials.Why not the same on the moon?  There are plenty of minerals there and our astronauts could go around picking up all the metal stuff the Russians and Chinese have left scattered all over the lunar surface and either melt them down for scrap or repair them and charge the Russians and Chi-coms for the repairs. 
5. Why aren't we preparing to go to Mars while we're at it? Apparently there are some things on the moon we could make oxygen and water out of so let's set up labs to experiment with that stuff on the moon. If we can learn to get along on the moon we can figure out how to get along on Mars. At least Mars has an atmosphere to work with.
6. Actions speak louder than words. Instead of talking about how much we want to help the world, why don't we just do it. Let's push out toward the final frontier and bring our friends along with us. Countries that want to go along should be welcomed. Our gain is their gain and all you have to do to be a part of the amazing things we will be doing is to quit calling us names and undermining everything we're trying to do. If you want to be part of something big, do like the sign on the recording studio where "We are the World" was taped - "Please check your egos at the door." If we show the rest of the world how to be altruistic in space, others will follow.
7. Reward innovation and keep the cronyism out of it. You want a successful space race, make it a real race. Rewards go to those who do the best work. Cheating should be massively punished. Crony deals that reward shoddy workmanship, kickbacks and poor return on investment should get the perps banished from space. Let the Earth be their prison.
8. Get the media in on it in a big way. If you want people excited about space investment, get it on television and in the theaters. How about IMAX on the moon or Survivor Tranquility Base. Admittedly down the road, but you get the idea. Chris Hadfield had the right idea with his ISS music video of "Ground Control to Major Tom". Find media celebs to recruit as space boosters. How about a reporter in space on the brand new space station. Wouldn't you love to see Meghan Kelly floating around on camera trying to interview the guys on the crew?
9. Get private investors into the business of financing individual for-profit missions. What might an asteroid pulled into lunar orbit be worth?  How about investors putting up a for-profit space hotel. Bigelow's got the modules for it. Space-X has the boosters and soon will have the crew capsules. About 7 other companies aren't far behind.
10. Make the greenies happy and reduce rich peoples' collective guilt. Start a fund-raising drive to support development of more eco-friendly launch vehicles - balloon launches, space elevators, mag lev "rail gun" launchers and such. Publish efforts to create fuels from things found in space rather than having to lift it off the Earth. Advertise our efforts to reduce the cost and environmental impact of spacecraft launches, to harvest and recycle space junk and improve our knowledge of planetary science as "planet-friendly". Do documentaries showing how what we learn about conservation and recycling of food and water for off-world bases can be used to insure better harvests and cleaner water back on Earth.

NASA Scale Mag/Lev Launch System

We just need some leadership over at NASA that's more concerned with space exploration than with making Muslims feel good about their contribution to science. The politics need to be set aside in favor of getting the job done. Right now, as Ronald Reagan pointed out, we're the last best hope of freedom left on the planet. If we go down to totalitarianism, you'd better hope we've got some way to get off this rock.

Me, I'm betting on Jesus dropping by in a big space ship and evacuating the good guys before the bad guys blow themselves up and all the rest of us with them. Ah, but then I'm a bit pessimistic about how long we've got left. But I do think the longer we keep them busy the less twitchy their nuclear trigger fingers will be.

It'll be nice when we inherit the New Earth, not to have to deal with all the self-interested, corrupt and evil folk that feel like they must rain on every parade anybody gets up besides themselves. I like the rail gun launch system myself. It make take me and some buddies of mine a thousand or so years to figure it out and build it, but then, we won't have to worry about time so much then.

© 2014 by Tom King

In Their Own Nest

More Gloom & Doom for the One Percenters From the New York Times.

A Libertarian Friend sent me a link to the New York Times.  Reporter Chrystia Freeland believes the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. are so busy protecting their own piles of wealth that the rest of us can no longer rise in the world and escape our own class. Predictably, she tells us that it’s much better in Europe if you want to rise into a higher class.

The temptation is to abandon ship.

Well, duh? Europe has more classes than Carter has liver pills. The place is a monument to the class system. A 15 cent raise will get you in a more elite social group over there. She goes on to quote champions of free market capitalism like Karl Marx and several of Barak Obama’s advisors and concludes that America’s 1% oligarchy is destroying the very system that created them. Why she should lament that puzzles me as I thought Progressives wanted a classless society. So where's the need to rise from your class unless you're in a hurry to get one of the higher class statuses BEFORE the Progressive Apocalypse freezes everyone in place.

Surprisingly, I agree with Ms. Freeland with regards to the 1% oligarchy protecting it's own butt. That's what I've been saying for years. What I don’t agree with is who she and the pundits of the NY Times see as the saviors of the middle class.

The Dems had every opportunity to do something about the often pitifully low tax rates enjoyed by the super-wealthy, simply by closing loopholes in the tax codes. They don't. They never do. They spout all this crap about the unfairness of it all and then they sell their souls behind closed doors for campaign contributions, weaving elaborate money protection schemes into the tax codes to protect the very people they castigate publicly. Oh, yeah, they’ll bump up the tax rate all right, but it won’t affect the 1%. They will continue to buy protection for their own fat piles of money.

The ones that will get hammered are the working wealthy – the ones trying to break into the upper income brackets. It’s the job creators that will become the actual victims of all the Occupy/Progressive symbolism. The Dems are not trying to end the class system. They’re trying to make it fair!

And the tea party, the group that most opposes the elitist sweetheart deals the giant corporations get from the government and who believe that abusive financial giants should be allowed to come crashing down instead of getting bailed out by the rest of us when their card houses come fluttering down – we are the ones who get castigated as extremists by both the left and the so-called` moderates in our own party. The Libertarians aren’t any better. They offer us legalized marijuana, conspiracy theories and isolationism and not a snowball's chance in hell to win an election.

The heartland is increasingly left with nowhere to go, politically.

I think we may be at the fall of the empire. The mainstream media and academia all believe we should trade the corrupt wealthy elitist manipulated mess we have now for a big bloated elitist government spouting progressive rhetoric while continuing to support the exact same corrupt wealthy elitist manipulated mess we have now.

The only hopeful thing going in American business right now is a burgeoning free market space industry. I think a lot of people would like to get off the planet, go somewhere and start over and leave Earth to stew in the vast swamp of its own corruption.

I think the private space race may be a manifestation of this feeling we all have that we need to get out of here before it all blows up in our faces. Look at the people that are driving it – working wealthy entrepreneurs like Paypal billionaire, Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson working with aerospace cowboys like Burt Rutan and Robert Bigelow. Those are the guys that will get squished by the progressive’s misguided efforts to “make ‘em pay”. I think most Americans are beginning to suspect that all this is going to end badly.

Look at all the dystopian, post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies lately. Hardly anybody thinks things are going to turn out well. I certainly don’t. As a Christian I figure Jesus has already loaded up the bus and is comin’ to get us. All I can do is pray daily, "Even so, come Lord Jesus."
It would be kinda fun, though if He had to pick some of us up off the moon or Mars, though when he does come.

Tom (c) 2012

Little Faces Looking Up - The Urge to Leave the Earth

From: Trader to the Stars

• ....tools settle the possibilities: you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to one planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with all its basic machines of commerce and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.

- Poul Anderson

Upcoming Dragon X rendevouz with the ISS

I admit it, the idea of commercial space travel makes me happy.  Since the turn of the century when it became apparent that NASA was losing its drive (not to mention its funding) for space travel, innovators in the private sector have stepped forward, apparently eager to pour their fortunes into efforts to find new an innovative ways to claw our way off this ragged planet and to make the effort pay. 

With only a stingy bit of encouragement, spaceships began to be built and successfully flown. Burt Rutan reached the edges of space to win the X-Prize and is pressing hard to build a fleet of reliable space planes to carry ordinary people into orbit soon.  Space-X has already successfully flown orbital vehicles of their own design. Others ideas are on the drawing board and even the big guys like Boeing and Lockheed who have already built spacecraft for NASA are looking at joining the commercial space industry on their own hook.

We seem to know that the Earth is too small a place for mankind to remain trapped here much longer - not without very bad things happening. We see the signs of what Poul Anderson predicted in the quote above. Concentrated here on Earth, we tend toward collectivism (socialism, communism, progressivism, call it what you will).

God, in His wisdom, decided to give us free will and let us choose what we did with it. In many instances, we have chosen poorly. In others circumstances, we have chosen bravely and well.  When we lift our eyes to that which is greater than ourselves, we tend to choose unselfishly and it is well for humanity. When we surrender to despair and decide that what we see is all there is, we tend to choose selfishly and humanity finds itself under the thumb of one more would-be god who thinks that by accumulating power over others, he can somehow forestall the death and oblivion beyond which he cannot see.

We are born creatures of an infinite universe and designed for immortality. It is why we hate death and it is why we look to the stars with such longing. We do not like being cooped up in one place. It is why as children we long to run free in fields and woods. It is why we climb trees and mountains and jungle gyms. When our eyes are lifted up we are fearless and free.

But, when we turn our gaze downward, our eyes on our feet, our hearts embracing fear, our vision becomes so constricted we cannot see beyond the walls that hem us in and hold us to the ground. When the Earth and this one life become all there is for us; when we cannot imagine that we will ever move out among the stars; it makes us mean and ill-tempered.  

Tom King