Space yays

[dubsartur]

Israel and Jordan are planning a massive geoengineering project: the Red Sea - Dead Sea Project.  The plan is to dump waste brine from a planned desalination plant at Aqaba into the north basin of the Dead Sea which is drying up because of water diverted from the Sea of Galilee to Israel (and the turning of the southern part of the Dead Sea into shallow evaporation ponds to be mined for minerals).  The problem is that Red Sea water is chemically distinct, and adding all this slightly less salty water with sulphites will have unpredictable effects.

The population of Jordan increased 11-fold before 1960 and 2010, and then the wars in Syria came.

[Jubal]

[dubsartur]

Blank post by Jubal

[Jubal]

Oops! It wasn't empty, but I messed up the image code on a recent bit of photography I did. Now fixed

[Jubal]

Possibly the opposite of a yay but today I learned of the existence of MOOSE, a 1980s plan to have people drop out of space with a metal sheet and some foam to protect them in case of emergencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

[dubsartur]

Maciej Ceglowski has broken his silence with a series trying to argue against manned space travel without being an asshole https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm

Its kind of journalistic and rhetorical more than scientific but it has fun footnotes

[dubsartur]

I published a blog post last summer about two pieces of rocket engineering which have not reached pop culture and especially science fiction: Whipple shields and radiators.

[Jubal]

I wonder how much of the Whipple shield not capturing the science fiction imagination is just the name. It unfortunately sounds like a specially designed cup lid for messy drinkers of cream topped coffee, more than a piece of brilliantly conceived space engineering.

[dubsartur]

I wonder how much of the Whipple shield not capturing the science fiction imagination is just the name. It unfortunately sounds like a specially designed cup lid for messy drinkers of cream topped coffee, more than a piece of brilliantly conceived space engineering.

It could be worse, an early sexologist was named Dr. Beverly Whipple.  I don't know if the story that the "Whipple tickle" almost became a piece of official scientific nomenclature is true, but it should be.

[Jubal]

...good heavens.

(An old BBC Article quotes Whipple herself as giving the "Whipple Tickle" story, noting that she rejected the idea - but how seriously anyone suggested it may be another matter, so it perhaps depends on your definition of almost).

[Jubal]

India got a lander to the moon's south pole!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66601996

[dubsartur]

Definitely a nice contrast to the failed Russian mission and the indecision on what to do after the ISS is deorbited.  We can do so many amazing things in space with robots when its not limited by military Keynesianism!  Indian space agency, Chinese, NASA, all do cool things with modest budgets when they are not obliged to spend a lot of money in the right districts or keep Russian engineers from moonlighting with North Korea.

[Jubal]

Yes, indeed. Though I don't know much about the politics of the space programme internally in India - I do wonder how achievements like this play in the world of heavily religious-nationalist rule the country is now in. It's an exciting scientific achievement though, regardless.

[dubsartur]

On one hand its odd that a country has a Moon program while allowing schools to skip evolution in biology class, on the other hand both of Werner von Braun's employers had some issues with the scientific worldview.

One of the problems with Ceglowski's arguments is that its not obvious that cuts to manned spaceflight would produce greater federal spending on natural science or engineering.  And NASA seems better at manned spaceflight than at other important things like 'getting the cost of putting a kilo into orbit close to the cost of the energy.'  (The prices claimed or promised by SpaceX have been getting a closer look over the past few years).

But building another big space station does seem a questionable goal, and a manned mission to Mars around 2040 seems very optimistic.

[Jubal]

Ceglowski? I don't think I'm familiar/