An Engineer's Joke

 I saw this bike recently at the racks outside the mall. 

What is wrong with this picture? No, it has nothing to do with the helmet.

A New Moon Landing : “Just a few years away”

I am amazed at the mountain of hype around space travel while the actual thing just seems to be a big series of non-events.

What we get is an endless series of grand looking plans with CGI pictures that are always Just a few years away. 

I have been waiting for any humans to land on the moon (again?)  since 1969.
I won’t argue here that they didn’t do it then, you should decide that for yourself.
But here’s a hint. Look at the footage. Where is the crater underneath the lander where the rocket motor blew away the loose material during landing? I mentioned that at the time but was told to shut up. Nobody likes a smart kid spoiling their illusions.
No, don’t say there was no dust on the moon around the lander because we can all see the footprints very clearly in the footage right from the bottom of the ladder.
But enough, plenty of other people have made books and vids on this subject.

Doesn’t it seem odd that no crewed mission has even gone around the moon in the 50 years since then  if the technology and budget are really there? Shouldn’t it be cheaper and easier now with all of our technical advances since the 70’s?

Oh- and just as an aside, has anyone seen the results of the NASA Long Duration Exposure Facility (I think they changed the exact name ) where they orbited a batch of samples on the surface of a satellite to see what materials would best survive outer space over time? I’m curious what the results were, what actually lasted the distance.  The Rebel Space Alliance needs the information :D

Supposedly the Chinese will be landing on the moon soon – well, I wish them all the best.
Maybe they will broadcast live video on global networks. It could make the US a bit embarrassed: maybe then they will get off of their asses and do something real in space exploration again. You know, just the usual movie type stuff, like land on Mars in a G-Drive ship in ten days or something  - but I’m not holding my breath, it looks like the people who have the G-Drive technology are not letting us have it for another century or two. or three or four. Yeah, that sounds about right. By that time they hope to completely control the population and we won’t be human any more as a result. No more Rebel Space Alliance by then anyway.
But I digress.

Right now we have the Boeing Starliner Capsule at the ISS and its return to Earth with two astronauts is getting put off again due to technical problems. (Why does everything have to be called “Star- something”?)  The ISS is going to be “de-orbited” soon too btw.
I have seen footage reputedly from the ISS that seems to show strings holding up astronauts that weren’t quite edited out. You can probably find that bit yourself too.  
I just can’t figure out why they would do that. The ISS is up there, you can see with the naked eye when it goes past.
Why fake footage from inside it? I don’t get it.
My trust in NASA has only decreased with time.

SpaceX is not much better but they really do put on a show. Right now they are still unable to put a lander on the moon because apparently Starship needs to be refuelled once it reaches orbit, and nobody has even tried that yet.
Except that doesn’t quite make sense to me either.
Starship was intended to carry 100 tons payload into orbit but so far has only reached 50 tons capacity according to SpaceX.
 
Could we make a passable moon lander mission with 50 tons from orbit?  

Well . . . . .
According to Wikipedia the weight of the Apollo CSM (command and Service modules) and LEM (lander) totalled 45.4 tons fully fuelled.
If those figures are correct, Starship could already carry a new version of the Moon mission with improved equipment and superior technology into orbit, deploy it and then return to Earth for a landing. 

 Moon Mission good to go, right now. 

Yes, we will need to modify the launch vehicle to allow the orbiter/Lander combo to exit it but that’s not such a big deal is it?
What’s wrong with this picture? 

Ooooooooooh, so the numbers aren’t *quite* right and we really need 100 tons of payload to do the moon landing, well fine, just wait for the next version of Starship.
Whoops! How did that happen? We’re back in that “Just around the corner” thing again.
 
Oh - and remember that NASA has decided that nobody can go to the landing sites of the previous missions because “they have historic significance.” Even if Elon or (snigger) Jeff Bezos wanted to land on the moon they can’t check out what is really in the ocean of storms or the other Apollo landing sites because NASA says NO.

Other companies have lander designs on offer that look pretty damn good and there is also the Dream Chaser shuttle but somehow NASA doesn’t seem to want them to get launched either . . . .

It’s almost as if they don’t want anyone going out there.  

A bad CGI version of the LEM

ELECTRIC POWER

For generating Base Load Power (that’s power that does not stop just because the wind does not blow or the sun doesn’t shine) we have several options:

 

1. Coal – has been working well for decades and they even have exhaust filters on the stacks that make a byproduct used to make bricks . . . except that everyone is supposed to say it is dirty and produces CO2 which is EVIL!!!!! You can guess my opinion of that idea.

 

2. Hydro – works well but needs a river to dam and that alone can change the local conditions. Here in the dry continent of OZ we don’t have much chance of putting more dams in as there aren’t any rivers worth damming now.

 

3. Nuclear Fission – suddenly our opposition leader is pushing this. WTF? Never mind the cost of building the plants you also have hidden costs of mining, refining and disposing of the radioactive waste after use. Better find a big hole. Then of course there is the small matter of Plutonium. Pretty much all of the fission reactors in the world produce plutonium which can be used to make nuclear weapons. Why the hell do we want to increase the potential for nukes anywhere, let alone here?

 

4. Nuclear Fusion – This is the uncatchable piece of the sun in a bottle. I say Uncatchable because so far despite truly astronomical amounts of money going into multiple projects we still don’t have a single fusion reactor that generates more power than it consumes.

Take a look at the news from companies working on this and they always say something like “ten years away”. I have been waiting since the seventies for this. 

I think it is all based on fundamentally flawed physics ideas and it will never work the way they are trying.

5. Geothermal – This has always been a quiet but promising idea in my opinion: what you do is drill down a ways just like they do in the oil industry (proven technology) and you will find that underground 2-4 Km down is HOT. Heat we can use. Then you create an array of pipes underground that you then pump water into one end and hey presto, very hot water comes out the other end. This then used to generate electricity in well know ways. There is now a Canadian based company called EAVOR that are building these plants in Europe after their test site in Canada proved that it all works as advertised. I have no connection or financial interest in this company, my only question is “why has it taken so long to get to operational?

No dangerous expensive materials, no waste water, no gaseous fumes at all and all of the tech is pretty much off the shelf. Why is this not getting more airtime?

 

The underground portion of an Eavor system (credit: Eavor)