This refractory metal-based alloy, in whose discovery Dr. Alexander Kauffmann, now professor at the Ruhr University Bochum, played a major role, features hitherto unparalleled properties. “It is ductile at room temperature, its melting point is as high as about 2,000°C, and—unlike refractory alloys known to date—it oxidizes only slowly, even in the critical temperature range.

“This nurtures the vision of being able to make components suitable for operating temperatures substantially higher than 1,100°C. Thus, the result of our research has the potential to enable a real technological leap,” says Kauffmann.

Other materials:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/what-new-materials-are-there.18181/page-25#post-838299

The last link contains info about odd transfer of heat–

Dr. Hague is not wrong but he misses a key point, namely that the US government had no choice but to look beyond its legacy contractors after the Columbia disaster. Shuttle would be kept limping along for awhile and the initial “official” successor for ISS resupply and crew transfer was supposed to be Ares 1 – aka “the corndog.” COTS was, in essence, a “Plan B” when Ares 1 started running into insuperable engineering issues.

There were hardly any alternative contractors to go too given NASA’s previous penchant for actively killing off potential private-sector competition to Shuttle. But for Columbia, SpaceX might have been just one more of these road-kill start-ups. But Musk had enough money from himself and friends to get started without needing to seek funds from conventional investors whom NASA would have discouraged when they would have come there to perform due diligence.

There was more than a bit of luck involved in the genesis and rise of SpaceX – some of said luck of the very bad variety. As I’ve noted many times before in comments here and elsewhere, the lasting legacy of the seven Columbia dead was SpaceX in particular and NewSpace in general.

Robert Zimmerman,

You are mostly right. The Trump administration was actually trying to sunset the worst aspects of the pre-existing “Program of Record” by winding down SLS-Orion after Artemis 3. It has been Congress, as usual, which doesn’t want to play ball.

But we are now far enough along that the US future in manned spaceflight/exploration/settlement is going to be determined in the private sector and not by NASA or even by the DoW. So, while one can certainly legitimately bemoan the continuing idiocies of Congress and NASA, their consequential influence is rapidly coming to an end. And, as you frequently remind us all, even the almost invincibly statist Europeans seem to be smelling the private-sector space coffee these days.

Richard M: I have argued for decades that the investment should be entirely aimed at encouraging new private companies, with them owning the results of their labor, not the government. This was what was done with NASA’s crew and cargo contracts.

Instead, Congress and even Trump are still pushing for the Soviet way, a big government “space program” aimed at a lunar stunt. It leverages little, and even acts to hinder private development. It is also an approach that we followed for all of the 20th century without any success, or accomplishments of note, after the Apollo landings.

You would think trying the same failed approach over again would seem stupid, but it really is insane, and that is what we have for our leadership these days, when it comes to space.

If NASA shuts down the Juno team, a suggestion: farm it out to volunteers.

You still have to use the Deep Space Network, though, and that not only has a certain cost, but it also uses up scarce DSN bandwidth…

(I like your point, it’s creative, but just pointing out that it would be a little complicated than you grok.)

The original CRS contract for @SpaceX was worth $1.6 billion. That was about 455ppm (less than 0.05%) of total federal spending.

This contract enabled the development of Dragon, Falcon 9, and reusability. One tiny budget item may have given the US a shot at the lightcone.

The lesson is that in this era, when humanity is getting ready to go to the stars, we have enormous leverage. The current ranking of nations is irrelevant – the ranking a century from now will be determined almost entirely by key investments in space (and other emerging tech) that are essentially rounding errors on government budgets, which are mostly devoted to bribing unhappy populations to stay quiet and keep supporting them.

https://x.com/peterrhague/status/1976178243607712006
Some of the best money that the federal government has ever spent, easily.

America is very much a set of ideals and a state of mind rather than a birthplace. Too many born here do not have that state of mind that drives forward. Even with all the baggage though, there are enough productive people to keep things moving at some levels. SLS/Orion illustrate the type of mindset that should have been left behind. Starship* illustrates the type of mindset that should be embraced.

*I am critical of Starship technically and fortunately my approval is not needed. Succeed or fail, it is their decision rather than some government official protecting his election prospects.

Maybe. Even if Amazon shifted 100% of its Kuiper launches to SpaceX, though, it would still be paying retail to launch while Starlinks go uphill at cost. And we haven’t seen much indication of what a consumer end-user monthly bill for Kuiper service would be. Kuiper might wind up like O3B and OneWeb, abandoning any pretense of being a consumer-level service in favor of strictly B2B markets. Starlink has an enormous first-mover advantage in the consumer-level market.

All,

It looks as though Axiom is doing a full-court press to sign MOUs with countries whose names start with ‘S.’ Who will be next? Sierra Leone? Solomon Islands? Serbia? Singapore? Slovenia?