I am about to start another two hour appearance with David Livingston on The Space Show. The subject of Trump’s NASA policy is sure to come up.
I am now in Santa Barbara, California. Tomorrow I drive up to Vandenberg Air Force to give a lecture for the local chapter of the AIAA. This is why posting today and tomorrow will be light. I might get some posts in later tonight, but don’t expect a lot. When I return I plan on an essay on the subject of squealing pigs.
I will let my readers guess as to the subject matter. I suspect many of you will be able to.
Since one of my readers asked about my future speaking appearances, I thought I’d note them here, on the main page. I will be speaking at three different venues in the next month, as follows:
The first is open to the public, but there is a $10 admission fee to the park. While the last two are free and also open to the public, I do not know what the public must do to gain access to the middle event at Vandenberg Air Force Base, as the location I think will be inside the base.
As always, all my appearances, including these, are listed in the right column below.
My posting this week has been somewhat slack, mostly because I am trying to finish up a caving monograph for a survey project that has been on-going for the past five years. I have also been swamped with the very last changes to my policy paper for the Center for New American Security, which now has the title Capitalism in Space: Private Enterprise and Competition reshape the Global Aerospace Launch Industry. (I am hoping that title causes a few liberal heads to explode when the paper is released in the coming days.) I am also off on another cave project this weekend, so I will not be posting again until Sunday night.
Hopefully, things will ease up next week. In the meantime, enjoy your weekends and do not get too depressed over the insanity and madness that appears to be taking over our society.
I am presently in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois to give a lecture tomorrow, Tuesday, to the local AIAA chapter. This is why posting was light today, as I spent the day on airplanes getting from Tucson to Illinois.
For those that want to listen to me discuss Elon Musk’s speech as well as other space matters for two hours, you can download the podcast at The Space Show website. David Livingston also provides at this link a short summary of some of the topics we covered during last night’s show.
For those who like to listen to the longer of my appearances I will be appearing on The Space Show on Tuesday at 7 pm (Pacific) for what is supposed to be a 90 minute interview, but which has never lasted less than 2 hours in the almost forty times I have been on the show. As always, it should be fun.
For those of my readers who happen to live in Illinois, I will be giving a lecture on Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 6:00 pm in Urbana, Illinois to the University of Illinois at Urbana student chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
My topic: Predicting the future of space travel, based on the past.
Abstract:
What shall the future of space exploration be like? Will the United States continue to dominate? Or will other nations move to the forefront and eclipse the present generation of American and Russian pioneers? Moreover, will the next travelers to other worlds go to the Moon or the asteroids? Or will they head straight to Mars, as some passionately advocate?
Predicting the precise chronology of these future events, ALL of which are inevitable, is certainly impossible. However, human history does repeat itself, and a close and objective look at history can give us a fairly good idea of what will happen in the future. This is especially important in the context of the federal government’s present budget problems and how they will influence future events.
In his lecture, Robert Zimmerman will outline a few examples of past exploration — both famous as well as obscure — and use these stories to show that the path we are on today is actually heading in a direction that few expected or predicted only a few years ago.
The actual location will be in the Talbot Laboratory, 104 S Wright St, Urbana, IL 61801.
On Sunday evening I will be doing another long appearance on Coast to Coast with George Noory. I expect the first hour will talk about SpaceX and commercial space, and the second on some of the more recent planetary missions, both on-going and forthcoming.
After a week of intense and amazing caving, I will be leaving Belize tomorrow. I will not get home until Saturday, however, as my flight ends in El Paso at about 11 pm. I will drive home on Saturday.
I intend to post several essays about my trip, one describing the caving and why it is happening, one describing the ruins and my impressions (with photos), and maybe a third with my overall thoughts about the experience. Since I have a lot of other work that needs to be done, some with deadlines, it might take a few days to pump all this out. Stay tuned.
Embedded below the fold. Topics: Belize, Congress, SpaceX, and Texas cows, among other things.
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I will be doing my Tuesday night podcast on John Batchelor, live Tuesday at 11:00 pm Eastern. We did a test phone call tonight and confirmed that the connection is good. I expect I will talk a bit about what I am doing here in Belize, as well as some of the space stuff going on the last few days and posted on Behind the Black.
I will also post the podcast link once John Batchelor gets it uploaded.
Still alive! We spent Saturday and Sunday surveying in Mountain Cow Cave, located on the Hummingbird Highway in a national park. Quite amazingly beautiful. Gigantic rooms filled with big towers and formations everywhere. The size makes surveying and sketching the rooms challenging, as I am sometimes staning in plsces far from any walls. To sketch a cave passage it helps to be able to see the walls.
No pictures, for the moment, as it is hard to upload large files here.
We go to a different cave tomorrow (Monday) while on Tuesday we will take a day off to go sightseeing at the Tikal ruins in Guatamala.
One more thing: there is a chance I will still do my Tuesday appearance with John Batchelor. If we find the phone connection acceptable, I will go on live at 11 pm eastern. I will know for sure by tomorrow night.
This Friday morning I am leaving for Belize for a week long cave expedition. I do not know if I will have the time or internet access to post as normal. Moreover, the days will be spent underground surveying and pushing new cave passages, so if I do any posting it will be in the evenings. In addition, some of us will also be heading to Guatemala for a day to visit the ruins at Tikal.
I have never been to Belize before. If I can’t post there I will definitely post my impressions of my travels upon my return.
Posted from El Paso, Texas.
On Friday afternoon I spent 90 minutes with Robert Pratt on his radio show, Pratt on Texas. Unlike most radio hosts, Robert wanted to hear my thoughts not just on the state of the aerospace industry, but also on today’s politics. The conversation thus ranged beyond space during the last half hour. If anyone wants to hear this conversation, the podcast be found here.
Note: The podcast now works at this link.
Embedded below the fold. We talked about SpaceX’s new spaceport in Texas, its upcoming launch schedule, the prepwork on its recovered first stage. We also talked about dinosaurs, and how the theory that they were killed by an asteroid is decidedly uncertain.
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Even as I am appearing on Coast to Coast, John Batchelor has just posted the podcast for my appearance tonight on his show, embedded below the fold.
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I probably should have noted this earlier, but I am about to begin another two hour stint on Coast to Coast with George Noory. Should, as always, be a lot of fun.
Podcast embedded below the fold. Tonight we talked prime numbers, among other things.
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Embed below the fold. Entitled “The Wear and Tear of Zero Gravity” by John Batchelor.
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The embed is below the fold. I especially like John’s description for this podcast: “Space X Scrubbing. China Space Thieving. Russian Space Failing.”
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Below the fold is my podcast with John Batchelor tonight. Subjects: India in space and on the ground, SpaceX, the writing on the walls of the Apollo 11 capsule, Philae, SuperEarths, gravitational waves, and Pluto.
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The podcast for my appearance with John Batchelor tonight, Thursday, is below the fold. The main two topics discussed were the discovery of gravitational waves by LIGO and on how there is absolutely no chance NASA will reach Mars in the near future, no matter what the agency claims.
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Below the fold is the podcast of my appearance Tuesday on the John Batchelor Show. Some topics: The next SpaceX launch, North Korea, the unrealistic NASA claims of a mission to Mars, and NASA’s new desire to censor religion (coming from an agency whose astronauts have read from the Old Testament while orbiting the Moon).
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I think John Batchelor’s own description of what I talked about on this podcast, which is embedded below the fold, says it all: “Commercial space lifts off while big space stalls.” Plus I outlined some good stuff about the various planetary missions that are presently ongoing.
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Below the fold is Tuesday’s podcast of my appearance on the John Batchelor show. In addition to discussing Falcon Heavy, Ariane 6, and the question of rocket re-usability, I also lambasted the glacially slow pace of NASA’s Orion project, producing four capsules for a mere $17 billion in only 19 years! And speaking of glaciers, I also noted in the science segment the stonewalling at NOAA that prevents scientists from analyzing the rational behind their “adjustments” to their climate data, all of which cool the past and warm the present.
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Below the fold is the podcast of my appearance on last night’s John Batchelor show. We talked about the Blue Origin flight last week, as well as the progress being made by SpaceX. I also discussed the lack of progress of Orion, while costing the taxpayers a lot of money.
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Below the fold is Thursday’s Batchelor podcast. This time the focus was mostly on science, including a discussion of the data tampering of climate data that I think is going on in NOAA and NASA.
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Below the fold is the podcast of my appearance on the John Batchelor Show today, Tuesday. It was fun comparing the recent successes of private space compared to the big space programs of the U.S., Russia, and China. I also made reference to this essay I wrote after watching Elon Musk first announce in 2011 his plans to vertically land the first stage of his Falcon 9 rocket. Took him only five years to do it.
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Below the fold is the podcast for my appearance tonight on the John Batchelor Show. Among a number of topics, we discussed the new contract awards by NASA to various commercial companies, the lack of any missions for SLS, and the approach towards space exploration by several Presidential candidates.
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