Selenian Boondocks

guest blogger john hare I received a disturbing email today. John Bossard at http://plasmawind.typepad.com critiqued my cagejet idea at my request. I have been down for various reasons for the past month or so and mentioned that the criticism had disturbed me until a few unrelated issues resolved. He apologised for torpedoing my idea. That’s disturbing, bad [...]

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Reading about the financial meltdown in Dubai prompted me to do some reading on the construction of the famous artificial islands in Dubai that have so greatly increased its shoreline: Wikipedia: Palm Jumeirah Wikipedia: Palm Islands The first of these, the Palm Jumeirah, consists of a trunk, a crown with 16 fronds, and a surrounding [...]

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guest blogger john hare One of the big attractions many advocates see in space development is energy. SPS is the green unlimited power of the future, Lunar helium 3 will power fusion here on the ground, and Lunar platinum is the basis for the fuel cell technology of the future. Technically, any or all of [...]

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guest blogger john hare Many people have a phrase they use about making things happen. ” We need to convince the president that space is crucial.” “We need to make those NASA guys do the right thing.”(Everybody having a different right thing) One from an older generation, “I’ll break them of the habit.” And so [...]

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guest blogger john hare The Lunar Lander Challenge contest has really heated up in the last week. One discussion on arocket has been, “what is the next step?” Among the suggestions are flying both legs of the level two without refueling and an accurate landing contest without GPS. Since everybody already knows that I think [...]

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guest blogger john hare Many of us think about the how to get there, though we may disagree where there should be. Far less often do we discuss why, and then it frequently becomes a series of circular arguments on both sides. First and foremost, the honest answer is, “We want to”. The good reasons for [...]

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guest blogger john hare In the ongoing discussions about NASA’s proper direction for the future, you constantly see the phrase ‘Shuttle derived’. It is an acknowledged requirement to keep as much of the current workforce employed as possible, while forging ahead with hardware with a track record. The current program of record seems a kludge. [...]

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guest blogger john hare I did a resin cast nozzle with embedded string today to observe the effects as an air tank blew down. My intent was to start with a nozzle almost at separation and then add a boot to observe the flow patterns. Since the nozzle was slightly asymmetric and had excessive expansion, it had [...]

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guest blogger john hare  I fail to understand the attraction of the complex nuclear and electric engines for deep space maneuvering when solar thermal promises to be so much simpler and higher performance. A few simple modifications to the normal methods of heating the working fluid and nuclear thermal becomes an under performing, over politicized [...]

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guest blogger john hare The friends I know in the rocket industry are too busy running businesses and fulfilling contracts to work cheap or free on the unproven concepts that I find interesting. It has come to my attention that there are a lot of other groups out there doing rockets that can use even very [...]

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