We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Pete Worden, who once served various roles in BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense), began his directorship of NASA Ames a few days ago. He joked that after this talk he might be looking for a new job.
The reason for going into space is settlement he said. Since the National Space Society’s primary goal is settlement of space, this went down rather well as you might guess, as in ‘standing ovation’.
He talked about some of the reasons why the Moon is a very useful place for permanent habitation. There are a number of potentially dangerous technologies which could be developed there first before being applied on Earth. Things like replicators, real AI’s that evolve a million times faster than humans, sample returns from Mars, research on Zero Point Energy and others. As Pete said, “There is no EPA and damn few lawyers” on the moon.
Pete believes private ownership of land on the moon is of almost overriding importance. If we can get the international law unambiguously settled, there could be a land rush.
He laid out a way to solve global warming using the market and private ventures. A mass equal to about 30 super tankers placed at the Sun-Earth libration point is enough to build a sun-shade capable of blocking 1% of the solar radiation falling on Earth. It would put a planetary thermostat into human hands. Since he is talking about a large number of ‘small’ parasols rather than one large one, it allows the project to proceed in commercial sized, independant, competing chunks. How does it get funded? You identify equivalent carbon credit for the amount of solar radiation blocked and price your shade accordingly. At rates of dollars/ton of carbon emissions, 1% of irradiation represents trillions of dollars.
One of my Australian drinking buddies (who works on microsats) asked for Pete’s opinion on data purchase. Peter is for it and would be quite happy to buy data or offer anchor tenancies to private ventures that put rovers on the moon. There are several companies who are rather far along in this regard and I would say even his positive public statement will be of enormous assistance to them. He went even further and said he is interested in working with any privately provided space services.
I do not know if Pete Worden can pull this off or not, but I do know he is saying things he really believes. We know him and he knows us.
Before Worden, we had a short talk by California congressman Dana Rohrabacher who is pushing a “Zero G, Zero Tax” bill. He does not think there will be much resistance because it is creating business and investment that would not otherwise be there.
For those who do not know Dana, he was involved with the LP back in the early days but joined the Republicans and became, along with Ron Paul, one of our two ‘Libertarians in Republican clothing’.
Peter Diamandes of X-Prize fame (who I have know since he was an MIT student) gave the first public announcement of an idea he is working on at the Saturday night banquet. Peter, like many others at our conference, has little faith in NASA. Specifically he does not believe they will even get to Mars any time soon, let alone settle it. Peter is creative and has proven his ability to make things happen, so his idea on a funding strategy has more likelihood of crossing the dream bridge than the hot air of many sources.
It will cost billions to settle Mars, even if the known financial incompetency of the State is replaced by private, market based operations. Peter will be looking for persons of ‘supercredibility’ to do the kick off to raising funds by signing up 100,100 persons for the Mars settlement project. There will be different levels within that group; some will put in $100 thousand or even $1 million; the majority will put up perhaps $10 thousand or so each. I did not write fast enough to get the exact split, but it adds up to $2 billion. At 15% interest from investment it will not take very long to turn this into the $8 billion needed to make it happen. By the time he is ready to go, there will be a lot of private hardware for hire so he does not have to pay for the special multi-billion dollar hardware development projects which NASA always has to paste on the side. Once the project is ready to go, the 100,100 members will each have their name placed into a lottery where each has an equal chance, 1 in 1001, of winning. These will be ‘The First Hundred’ as in Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Red Mars’ novel. Unlike in the novel they will not go in one big international spaceship, but rather in small groups.
This is a risky mission and people will probably die. Peter asked for a show of hands and asked how many people in the room would volunteer at even outrageously high risk levels of 1 in 3 or even 1 in 2. Over half, yours truly included, raised their hands. Pioneering ain’t dead in my circle of friends.
Oh. By the way. I forgot to mention… It is a one way trip.
Rusty Schweikert, a member of the Apollo 9 crew, spoke at the Saturday International Space Development Conference luncheon. Rusty founded the B612 Foundation to make people aware of the risk of asteroid impacts to our planet and to make sure something is done about it.
As it turns out, we are at this moment facing a slight risk on April 13, 2036 from 99942 Apophis if it threads a tiny keyhole in space on an earlier pass. The track of the possible impact points touches down in Siberia, winds parallel to the Pacific coasts of Canada, the United States and Mexico; passes over a few South American cities and crosses the South Atlantic before rising above the Earth’s surface near Africa. A Pacific hit would cause a tsunami many times larger than the one which hit Indonesia. It would cause an estimated $400 billion dollars damage and a large death toll on the US West Coast.
He told us an acceleration of a mere micron per second squared, applied over 200 days, could move the asteroid out of the keyhole. This would require international agreement because moving the impact point changes it from an act of God to an act of man as the possible impact point slowly crosses multiple national borders before leaving the Earth’s surface.
There is a very small chance Apophis will thread the needle and thus a large chance we will ‘get away’ with doing nothing. It does represent a wake up call because there WILL be a damaging asteroid strike within a relatively short time frame. If the the Tunguska strike had happened 6 hours later it would have struck in Central Europe. Next time we may not be so lucky.
And yes, Apophis was named for the baddie in Stargate who was in turn named for an Eqyptian snake god, the enemy of Ra, who personified darkness, evil and chaos.
I have been writing madly while cruising at 40,000 some feet on my way back to New York. The entire midwest is clear and I can see towns and cities laid out from horizon to horizon, orange grids and cloudy distant nebula sprinkled in the pitch black under the stars.
After my last post during the ISDC I was too deep into sleep deprivation and too swamped with work to attempt coherent discourse. Other than meals I hardly saw any of the other sessions. I did at least get in much late night party time with old and new friends from various rocket companies and organizations. Despite or perhaps because of our large numbers in the hotel, our somewhat noisy parties kept getting shut down. The volume level of a large number of engineers, activists and artists packed into a suite discussing their life’s passion, when mixed with copious alcohol, is impressive. This led to a series of ‘floating parties’, moving goodies from one part of the hotel to another to stay one step ahead of the security staff. The only ones who got mildly burned was one of the small rocket companies which had $500 of refreshments impounded over night. That is another story, of the sort best held for late night hanger talk — “Do you remember the time?” — amongst the insiders. All in all it was great fun.
Now for the news on this and future ISDC’s. The LA conference this year, the 25th ISDC, broke all records. We had over 1300 warm bodies at the event, a number which comfortably exceeds what we believe to have been the previous largest attendence. The profitability of the event was…. pleasing 😉
I am currently shepherding teams for several future years. Next year the ISDC is in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. If the organization of their party this year is any example, it will be well organized and a great deal of fun, Texas style.
The board approved a bid from a DC team for 2008. We had a couple pre-bid year parties thrown by the Australian led Canadian Toronto in 2009 team. They go through the bid and approval process next year. I also now have potential team leaders considering bids for 2010.
It was an altogether great experience. I will now and over the ensuing weeks pass on more about it.
I finally managed to herd my Conference Coordinating Committee together to review a 2008 conference proposal and am somewhat less pushed for time the rest of the day. I am of course deep into sleep deprivation but that is a normal part of life at an ISDC, something I have learned to deal with over the 20 or so of the 25 I have attended.
Our collaboration with Planetary Society has been wildly successful and a pleasure to both parties.
Buzz Aldrin had a lively luncheon, including an hysterical fighter jock type joke which I will not quote in order to save his historical reputation. Buzz has been down to the Titanic and up to the North Pole and is now trying to get a hydrogen fueled Hummer drive at the South Pole. When Hugh Downs got up to leave he called to Buzz at the podium to count him in.
There is simply so much going on here I wish I had time to tell you more, process raw images, give more anecdotes. I feel like I am cheating you of the wondrousness of the week and the people and exhibits and talks. A full time live blogger could not cover it enough, let alone someone who is tied up in Society managment, committee and board meetings, organizational shmoozing and such.
Also, please forgive errors in spelling, punctuation and whatever else I manage to screw up while racing to get information on line during stolen moments
Shana Dale, the NASA Deputy Administrator (and also a rather nice looking southern gal), announced a set of Challenge prizes for lunar lander technology. Not dry as lunar dust stuff, but real flying hardware to compete at the Las Cruces Race for Space this coming October.
There are two levels of prize with different rewards. The competition will be held again next year if any awards are not made this year. The first level has a first prize of $350,000 and a second prize of $150,000 for a vehicle to make a vertical take off, climb to 50 meters; stay in hover for at least 90 seconds; translate 300 meters and land on a designated landing point. They may then optionally refuel before taking off again and doing the same in reverse. If more than one contestant manages the flights, placement is based on how close they landed to the designated point. If there is a tie, there will be a shoot out… the vehicle to do the most trips in an alloted time will be the winner.
Level Two is a bit harder and the prizes are $1,250,000 first; $500,000 second and $250,000 third place. For this money the must take off vertically take off, go up 50 feet; hover for 180 seconds; translate 300 meters and land in a wild bit of terrain in which remote pilotage is allowed.
This is the first NASA competition with a prize over a million dollars. They appear to be doing this right. They are working with people who handled the successful Anseri X-Prize with Burt Rutan won; it will be a great spectacle for the watching crowds at the rocket races; and it will as a side effect also boost earth based private launch technology.
With some luck I will be there to watch and record the competition this fall.
Personally, I would put my bet down on Jon Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace.
Day 3 of sleep deprivation… I am off to see a session this morning and then to hunt down my commitee to review a proposal for the 2008 ISDC.
Lots of familiar faces around. Rand Simberg is in for a few days but is not lugging his lap top around. Perhaps he will post something later on when he gets bored on his next airplane flight. Also around is Taylor Dinerman, a journalist and regular commentator here.
Now… off to work again.
To say everyone was there is no exageration. Well, truthfully a few people were not: Richard Branson appeared on a video tape to accept his award. But amongst those honoured were Dennis Tito, the first space tourist. He also handed out awards. Bob Bigelow the space hotel magnate; Rich Searfoss astronaut and rocket racer pilot; Greg Olson, the latest space tourist; Eric Anderson; The Anseri family…
One of the highlights was when Hugh Downs gave Buzz Aldrin a lifetime achievement award.
I bid you good night. I am not doing it justice by a long shot, but I can hear the cans calling from two floors below…
It has been a busy afternoon and I am ready to go off to consume mass quantities. But I will give you a taste of the events.
I listened to the presentation by the Virgin Galactic crew in late afternoon. They are giving Burt Rutan whatever time he needs to develop a safe vehicle. Branson is going to take the first flight when Virgin takes over their SpaceShipTwo, and he is going to take his kids on the flight.
The pilots will all be from Virgin’s aviation companies and the first four, all highly experienced UK pilots, have already been selected.
There are 100 ‘founders’ fully paid up for the first flights of the vehicle. Victoria Principal is among them. The first honeymoon couple will be George Whitesides and Loretta Hidalgo of our own Society. George is our executive director. Another is Trevor Beatty. He may have worked for Tony Blair, but I took an instant liking to him from his enthusiasm for flying in space. He looked out at the huge crowd and said we knew more about it than he ever would… but… “I am going to Space!!!” he said in a voice tinged with awe.
He showed a video of high jumpers of years ago when they used to do the straddle to get over the bar. Then along came a new guy who went over backwards and changed everything. He said the same is happening in space but… “NASA… you are still straddling!”
Also, what can you say about a guy who took his childhood Buzz Lightyear along on his Mig25 flight to 90,000 feet so he could let it fly in the zero G?”
He said he wanted to be Buzz Aldrin when he was a kid. Then he grew up. And he still wants to be Buzz Aldrin. He noted with disdain that basketball players get called heroes and footballers genuises. He pointed to Buzz Aldrin in the front row and Burt Rutan elsewhere in the room as examples of a real hero and a real genuius.
Will Whitehorn finished up the session and I waited around until I got a chance to chat with him and impart important information I knew a good Scotsman like he needed: where the party is tonight! There is an old story there, involving a bunch of rocket scientists, killing the case and a certain Virgin Galactic CEO in a kilt…
Burt Rutan spoke in his usual plain-speaking no-holds barred way. He is doing this because he wants to go to the moon before he dies and he figures that at 62 he has another 40 years or so; when he said this he was able to look down at people who have been there and one that: Buzz Aldrin and Rusty Schweickert seated in the audience just in front of his podium.
He took on NASA, the FAA, rocket racing, you name it. NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) got a scathing commentary. He said he talked to Mike Griffin about it and did have to agree with Mike that if he, Burt, were in Mike’s seat, he would have to do the same thing. Burt says he thought about it and decided he would do one thing different. Early in the program he would call a press conference, request all the major aerospace publications be there, walk out to the podium and scream at the top of his lungs “THIS IS CRAZY!” and walk out.
What does Burt have against CEV? Pretty much the same thing everyone else does. It is an aerospace archaeology project, not a way to open the solar system. I am sure Rand Simberg will post more on this subject as he was at another table and also happens to work on CEV.
Burt does not like the regulatory environment. Most of the other companies wanted things to be done the way they are; basically do whatever you want, blow your own arse and customers up, but just do not kill anyone on the ground when your body parts hit. Burt would prefer regular FAA airplane certification.
A large contingent were there from Virgin Galactic; there were also quite a few of the people who have already paid for their flights. It was announced awhile back that Burt is building Space Ship II for the tourist business.
Burt says he is not looking at orbital. He does not have the solutions needed to make it cheap and safe, but is certain someone will come up with those solutions. For this reason he was down on the rocket racing idea because he feels it does not make people push the envelope out there where it needs to be pushed.
He also commented that in two years since he flew, none of the other X-Prize contestants has gone outside the atmosphere. He wishes they would get the finger out because unless lots of people do, he will not make his own goal of getting to the moon during his lifetime.
I do not have time to process photos right now, but I promise that sometime in the ensuing days or weeks I will put a few up. Now it is time to go hunt for my own committee so we can discuss the conference bid for 2008…
I have been running about madly all day and of course with too little sleep since I met up at the bar with the Aussie contingent last night. just a warm up; the nightly parties do not start until tonight: the Toronto 2009 bid team has the first.
The sea of people in the plenary session was a pleasing spectacle and we had quite a good set of kick off speakers, the most important of which were Elon Musk on SpaceX and Lou Friedman on the future of the Planetary Society’s solar sail project. Lou is talking more about this private project later in the day, so I will try to cover that story seperately.
Elon’s plans are big. Phase I is to dominate the satellite business; Phase II to handle human traffic to low orbit; and Phase III is to provide transportation to the Moon and Mars. He is not in this to just put up comsats more cheaply or to assist NASA in going around and around and around… he wants a space faring civilization.
The Kwajalein fault was wholly a process error and they have made changes to procedures to provide more human cross checking. They have added all the sensors in the health monitoring systems to the abort on alarm status rather than just the critical set. This will lead to more aborts for burned out lights and other false positive trivia but will give more reliability. They have modified some of the section where the tubing was messed up by the final test to make it less possible to bung something up. Ironically, it was the leak test check which caused the leak that caused the shutdown.
Everything worked well other than that. All other systems were 100%; trajectory was within .2 degrees of nominal; virtually all the systems except the upper stage got a good shakedown. Perhaps because of this, his sales are still expanding. They have 11 flights manifested already and because of that are already profitable.
He showed photos of the Falcon-9 testbed. That is one big mutha of a rocket.
I am in the ops room in the midst of the last minute activities before the conference proper gets going. Before we open the gate we have over 1100 persons expected. With walk-ins tomorrow we will very possibly pass 1200 or even more.
I will attempt to post stories live from the event when I have the chance.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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