Samizdata

SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket has been test fired at Kwajalein as the last step in preparation for a July launch. This will be the first flight of the new regen engine which does not require an ablative coating on the nozzle. It is also the same technology as the engines for the larger Falcon-9 slated for launch at Cape Canaveral next year.

Protestations to the contrary, I would consider this to still be a developmental flight, even though it is carrying a customer payload. I wish them the best but it is still early days for their family of boosters. They are going to revolutionize the launch industry but revolutions require hard work and determination in the face of adversity.

That is why they call it rocket science.

This is very cool.. I reckon 007 should get Q to make him one with all those lovely “additional features”.

‘The Caballeros’ of the National Space Security Office were awarded the National Space Society’s prestigious ‘Space Pioneer Award’ this evening for their work in bringing the possibilities of Space Based Solar power to the attention of the powers that be and pretty much every one else.

Although these ideas have been known ‘forever’ amongst my circles, they have been out of the limelight for decades due to a Carter-era hatchet job.

So, congrats to our friends in DOD, and new found drinking buddy Coyote Smith!

The Caballeros receive their just rewards for saving the planet. Coyote is second from right. I’ll add other names later.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved

Speaking of drinking… there is a party in the suite down the hall, so that is me away!

Under the title ‘Physicists raise questions on EMR capabilities’ Janes, (a subscription only publisher) reports:

Two US physicists have claimed that the European Mid-course Radar (EMR), due to be installed in the Czech Republic in a planned expansion of the US ballistic missile defence system, is substantially underpowered, and will form part of “a defence system that is unable to provide any discrimination services against missiles launched from Iran to the eastern half of the continental United States”. George Lewis, associate director of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University, and Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are both opponents of US missile defence plans.

Anyone who has followed military space systems should be quite familiar with the consistently negative and consistently incorrect claims of Dr. Postel. If one were to believe his writings in Scientific American and other publications in the 1980’s we should never have tried to build anti-missile systems because they are impossible.

One must wonder if Dr Postel is sullying the good name of Physics in defense of his political preference for a global OK Corral gunfight, a world seemingly frozen in a timeless instant before the first gunfighter makes a false move. With only two gunfighters that standoff might well last a very long time and thankfully did. With more players the chance of a miscalculation ending in a free for all grows exponentially.

Thankfully, the good doctor was wrong in his eighties predictions about what would be possible now, so we are rapidly moving away from his MAD dream world.

The first decades of the age of nuclear weapons were an historical anomaly, Our newly operational systems will mature rapidly over the next two decades and in so doing will re-instate the natural balance between offense and defense.