Random thoughts on politics, current events, popular culture, and whatever else interests me.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Friday, May 29, 2020
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Update: It looks like Charles Bolden and Bill Nelson are advising Team Biden on space policy.
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Monday, May 25, 2020
The easy way to answer this question is that Biden’s space policy could be Obamaspace 2.0. The Artemis return to the moon program would be cancelled, or at least delayed for so long as to be rendered meaningless. The Space Force would be disbanded and folded back into the Air Force. Many Democrats, especially those who hope to serve in a Biden administration, tend to be against anything that President Trump proposes just because Trump proposed it.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Friday, May 22, 2020
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Once carbon emission neutrality and other sustainability goals have been achieved, a widespread assumption is that economic growth at current rates can be sustained beyond the 21st century. However, even if we achieve these goals, this article shows that the overall size of Earth's global economy is facing an upper limit purely due to energy and thermodynamic factors. For that, we break down global warming into two components: the greenhouse gas effect and heat dissipation from energy consumption related to economic activities. For the temperature increase due to greenhouse gas emissions, we take 2 °C and 5 °C as our lower and upper bounds. For the warming effect of heat dissipation related to energy consumption, we use a simplified model for global warming and an extrapolation of the historical correlation between global gross domestic product (GDP) and primary energy production. Combining the two effects, we set the acceptable global warming temperature limit to 7 °C above pre-industrial levels. We develop four scenarios, based on the viability of large-scale deployment of carbon-neutral energy sources. Our results indicate that for a 2% annual GDP growth, the upper limit will be reached at best within a few centuries, even in favorable scenarios where new energy sources such as fusion power are deployed on a massive scale. We conclude that unless GDP can be largely decoupled from energy consumption, thermodynamics will put a hard cap on the size of Earth's economy. Further economic growth would necessarily require expanding economic activities into space.
Monday, May 18, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
The X-37B, the secretive uncrewed reusable space plane, has lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft is loaded with a variety of experiments, some from NASA, some from the United States Space Force. One experiment, testing the microwave transmission of solar energy captured from space, has the potential to change the world.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Friday, May 15, 2020
Thursday, May 14, 2020
One takeaway is that in 2008 Biden was in favor of making China a "full partner" in space exploration. He might want to walk that one back.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Monday, May 11, 2020
China has successfully launched its Long March 5B rocket, putting a prototype of its new crewed spacecraft into low Earth orbit. As Ars Technica suggests, China has advanced its space effort considerably, allowing it to perform a variety of space missions that promise to match and even exceed anything that NASA has achieved. The launch presents a problem for the space agency but also an opportunity.
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Friday, May 08, 2020
Thursday, May 07, 2020
Recently, NASA selected three commercial partners to build lunar landers that will deliver the “first woman and the next man” to the lunar surface by 2024. The companies are Dynetics, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The contracts are designed along the lines of the Commercial Crew program, in which the companies will own the lunar landers, and NASA would fly on them to the moon’s surface as a customer.
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
Tuesday, May 05, 2020
Monday, May 04, 2020
NASA has announced the three commercial teams that have been slated to build machines that will return human beings to the moon in four years. They are Dynetics, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Of the three, the proposal by SpaceX has the most potential to land that next man and first woman on the moon by 2024.<.P>