4733

That’s often the hardest part. Lots of people have ideas, but turning ideas into reality is frequently where the real challenge is.

4734

But it’s also the big thing that seems to get missed re: Musk. Dude can execute. Private rocketry is an idea as old as H.G. Wells, but he did it. Electric cars have been tried and tried again for what, a century now? But he did it. Solar, eh, he hasn’t cracked that nut entirely yet, but still it’s a net good-for-humanity effort. That’s kinda why I would like to see him or someone like him tackle the nuclear power industry. I’m sure the regulations are proper and good, but at no point would I suggest they are efficient.

4735

I think the new nuclear stuff is going to have to come from China. An authoritarian regime which is happy to drop highly toxic spent rockets on inhabited areas is a natural for working the kinks out of new reactor technologies.

4736

Seems like they’ve already done the thorium salt reactor, but also I’ve read a decent article saying it isn’t quite the bee’s knee’s that other articles would suggest. But my thought wasn’t around new technologies, we understand the tech of reactors very well, it’s about getting them built safely and quickly. We do one, but not the other, and we need a whole lot of the other.

4737

It’ll be interesting if Starship re-entry is a problem like landing on a boat, or a problem like a real self-driving car whch really requires some scientific breakthroughs. The market for a successful Starship is massive satellite constellations (10s of thousansds instead of the thousands they have now) and of course the Moon landing (which they already have the contract for) and Musk’s dream of Mars. If they can get Starship to work, I think the in-orbit refueling will be a very straightforward problem to solve. That gets you to Mars and also to the asteroids pretty easily, and then you see if in situ automated manufacturing can really take off.

4738

Reactor technology is already a known thing. China knows it, we know it. If you think reactor research is like the early atomic testing you need to get up to speed.

4739

I think you are right, and as much I’ve been a supporter of nuclear power over the years. It is pretty clear the political and economic costs of doing it in the US aren’t competitive to alternate energy production. If China can replace their coal plants with nuclear plants, and at the end of the day that’s good for the planet.

The US can get by with Solar in the day, wind, plus storage, at night, with Nat Gas as backups. Eventually, transitioning to space-based solar energy for base power.

The one thing, I do know after watching Moore’s law for 40 years, is predicting the impact of 100x improvement is pretty much impossible.

4740

Perhaps, but if so, the least net good for humanity solar panel effort that didn’t involve coerced labour.

4741

Absolutely. However, what’s really interesting from my PoV is that I think Starship can probably win the market and undercut everyone reasonably without 2nd stage reusability if they can just get the launch and 1st stage reuse to be reliable. If they do, they can launch hundreds of Starlinks at once, huge 3rd party payloads, even the Artemis human landings and still generate good revenue, all while practicing to get the 2nd stage to reenter and be reusable. This is how they got ahead on landing Falcon 9s to begin with, and they could repeat it.

4742

On the one hand, I can see this being a problem. It seems like the short-term plan is to be their own best customer with launching 30k Starlink satellites. Long term, I have to think that much cheaper access to space at scale will find it’s own applications, much like the laser started out as “a solution seeking a problem”.

4743

Yeah, completely agreed. Suddenly having the ability to move massive cargoes to orbit for an order of magnitude lower costs per kg than we had 10 years ago is a massive infrastructure improvement in my book. Once it exists, industries WILL spring up that utilizes it. Whether it’s a sudden proliferation of cheap satellites or asteroid mining or a completely unforeseen industry, something will end up wanting to use that capability. Infrastructure is handy like that.

4744

Between this, Boeing, Amazon and whoever else decides to jump on the pile, the Firefly theme song was wrong. You can take the sky from me.

4745

NASA needs kerbonauts!

4746

That’s no moon…or maybe just a piece.

4747

It’s also got an insanely interesting orbit, as it “seems” to orbit around the earth, but really orbits around the sun:

Orbital mechanics are fun!

4748

Seems like it must have an elliptical orbit with the same semi major axis as the Earth’s, but is more eccentric and with the same mean anomaly at epoch. That would make it behave like that. It’s far enough away (approx 30-50x the moon’s orbit) that lunar/earth gravity probably doesn’t upset its orbit that much.

4749

As if space wasn’t dangerous enough already. Thanks Russia.

During a daily briefing today, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the test had created more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of un-trackable debris.

“The Russian Federation recklessly conducted a destructive satellite test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile against one of its own satellites,” Price said. “This test will significantly increase the risk to astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station as well as to other human spaceflight activities. Russia’s dangerous and irresponsible behavior jeopardizes the long-term sustainability of outer space.”

4750

Isn’t that the plot of Gravity?

4751

Yeah, though that movie took some liberties with how orbital mechanics work, given where the space station sits compared to satellites.

4752

We need some good sci-fi implosion warheads