Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Friday, August 05, 2005

  Bullsh--

Since when is losing your temper over politics grounds for suspension of a columnist?
 
Wednesday, August 03, 2005

  Neofuel

A little neofuel for your daydreams... and a paper written in 1992 that should be updated...

 
Tuesday, August 02, 2005

  new rocket designs

I was writing feverishly this past weekend trying to get past the doom and gloom around the shuttle problems and get some of the lesser known alternatives out there to be discussed... I talked about how the mecury-redstone capsule escape system (and the later Apollo variant)was probably the best we'd ever come up with, why shuttle-C was a bad idea, questioning why we needed a 100 metric ton lifter... and I didn't finish the piece.

This morning, none other than the NY Times quotes Michael Griffin: As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff all day long." - and the rocket concept looks good (left). A two stage design with a minimal number of motors. There's issues, of course - as the SRB has to support 250k lbs it wasn't supporting before - and I'd be slightly happier if we modified an existing stack from another rocket, rather than shuttle parts... but the engineering does look promising, and politically feasible.



A more comprehensive survey of new/old shuttle replacement concepts is
here. I was really quite surprised by the proposal for a single solid stage for the replacement. I guess I was just raised on liquid fuels. I thought that the SRBs weren't steerable, either... anyway, in a month or so, we'll know.

I'm not as down on NASA as Jerry Pournelle, but he's worth reading...
 
David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


Resume,Songs,
My new blog, NeX-6, My facebook page
Orgs I like
The EFF - keeping free speech in the world
Musical stuff I like
Jeff, Rick, Ardour, Jack
Prior Rants - New song: Log Off Now Sharing your home network better in a time of covi... Designing for the disconnect Email lists going down the memory hole Instituting saner, professional source code manage... Wireless and Wifi in 2015 - not what I dreamed of Saving wifi! Fixing Bufferbloat! Fighting the vend... Virgin Media - Fixing the epidemic of bufferbloat ... 49... and trying to find my navel Wheels down on mars!
Best of the blog:
Uncle Bill's Helicopter - A speech I gave to ITT Tech - Chicken soup for engineers
Beating the Brand - A pathological exploration of how branding makes it hard to think straight
Inside the Internet Mind - trying to map the weather within the global supercomputer that consists of humans and google
Sex In Politics - If politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it, it would be a better world
Getting resources from space - An alternative to blowing money on mars using NEAs.
On the Columbia - Why I care about space
Authors I like:
Doc Searls
Where's Cherie?
UrbanAgora
Jerry Pournelle
The Cubic Dog
Evan Hunt
The Bay Area is talking
Brizzled
Zimnoiac Emanations
Eric Raymond
Unlocking The Air
Bob Mage
BroadBand & Me
SpaceCraft
Selenian Boondocks
My Pencil
Transterrestial Musings
Bear Waller Hollar
Callahans
Pajamas Media BlogRoll Member

If you really want to, you can poke through the below links as well.

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