Showing posts with label Mars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mars. Show all posts

Friday, April 29, 2022

Lost In Space

Your tax dollars at work. 

Image by nini kvaratskhelia from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  
Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?" -Steven Wright


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

Remember NASA? Well, they're in the news again and trying to get the most powerful rocket ever built off the ground so personkind can once again walk on the moon, perhaps even Mars... eventually.  

{The people that invented Tang, right?}

Those of us, well, many of us of a certain age (there were, and are, no shortage of Citizens of the Republic opposed to spending money on space exploration) fondly remember watching Neil Armstrong taking "one small step for (a?) man, one giant leap for mankind" on the surface of the moon. However, nobody has walked on the moon since 1972.  

{What's that (a?) about?}

Long story. Anyway, NASA — for those of you too old to remember, too young to care, or too busy to notice, NASA, a.k.a. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration — is the government entity that managed to get Mr. Armstrong to the moon. On 5/25/61 President John F. Kennedy asked Congress for the money to put Americans on the moon before the end of the decade. Neil Armstrong went for a walk on 7/20/69. 

{What was the hurry?}

The "space race" was one of the battles of the Cold War 1. America used to be able to get at least some things done relatively quickly. Compare that to California's effort, with a bunch o' billions tossed in by The Fedrl Gummit, to build a high-speed rail line from L.A. to San Francisco. They've been at it since 2008; a radically dumb downed version is (currently) scheduled to be completed by 2033.

NASA is still very much with us, but like the old gray mare, it ain't what it used to be. 


Until Tony Stark (Elon Musk) built his rocket ship we were completely dependent on the Russians to shuttle our astronauts/scientists to and from the International Space Station. The tickets are even more expensive than those for a Strolling Bones concert.

NASA's been building the most powerful rocket ever built — to return personkind to the moon, and theoretically, take a stroll on Mars — since 2011. 

The ship was supposed to be ready by 2016. It's currently being tested and NASA hopes to launch a return trip to the Moon in June but without any spoons. It will be an unpersoned flight that orbits the Moon, but doesn't land, and then returns home. 

{Doesn't that make it the ultimate drone? Now that's a kit I'd buy.}

Better start saving up then. The original estimate of $2,000,000,000 per flight is now $4,000,000,000 per flight for a rocket that can only be used once. NASA's spent about $23,000,000,000 on this project, so far, and will probably be looking to recover some of its investment, like any well-run government agency.   

And it doesn't come with a lunar module, the part that will actually land on the moon. Building that has been handed off to SpaceX, Mr. Musk's company. Or not.

Although SpaceX got the contract by beating out the likes of Boeing and Blue Origin, NASA recently announced that it will be seeking bids for someone to build a second lander, while simultaneously expanding Tony Stark's contract.

{This is a goof, right? You made that last part up.}   

Nuh-uh. Follow the link or do your own research. 

The good(?) news is that NASA hopes that someone will be walking on the Moon as early as 2025, the culmination of a 13-year-long project. However, please note it only took them eight years, half a century ago, using computers that were less powerful than the phone in your pocket.

Which brings us to Bill Nelson. 

{It does?}   


Clarence William Nelson, who will be 80 years old next September, has been running NASA for the last year or so. Mr. Nelson, a professional politician since the last time someone walked on the Moon, is highly qualified for the job. 

He grew up near Cape Canaveral and was the second sitting member of Congress to fly in space on the space shuttle Columbia, 35 years ago. Before getting his current job, he served on the NASA Advisory Council for a couple of years, one of 12 committees that meets 3 times a year and offers advice to NASA.

Former Senator Nelson was confirmed by unanimous consent (without a vote) by his former colleagues. 

In other news, Elon Musk, asked if he is worried about NASA getting to Mars before he does while eating lunch, started laughing, and choked on a sandwich. An unknown hero administered the Heimlich maneuver and tragedy was averted. 

{Now I know you made all that up!}

Only the part about Tony Stark Elon Musk's close encounter with a sandwich.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

P.S. 4/19/22, "NASA’s huge 'Mega Moon rocket' is being removed from its launchpad and sent for repairs after failing three fuel tests in two weeks. Following the failures, NASA has said that the rocket’s slated June launch window will be 'challenging' to meet."



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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Marvin the Martian

Recently, Holman Jenkins, in his Business World column in the Wall Street Journal, wrote a piece entitled "Tesla is a Compliance Company." His point was that Elon Musk's electric car company is not based on an entrepreneur identifying or creating a market for a product or service and then getting rich, or at least make a living, by supplying that product or service (the traditional free-market route).

He maintains that Tesla generates cash flow by exploiting the system of Gubmint subsidies (carrots) and mandates (the club stick) designed to get us to buy electric cars and save the world from the alleged menace of global warming, and I agree. But that's not what I want to talk about.

I went looking for Mr. Musk's incentives and motivations. Is he in it for the money? Mr. Musk made his first fortune when he and his brother put together a web software company called Zip2 (that no longer exists) and when it was sold off he pocketed $22,000,000.  Personally, I would've retired at this point and assumed the lifestyle I was born for: rich dilettante.

You see, regression therapy has enabled me to discover that I was kidnaped by gypsies as an infant from my wealthy but dissolute family that ultimately refused to pay my ransom (it's complicated) and I was eventually won by my "father" in a poker game in the Gem Saloon in Deadwood, SD.

When he sobered up the next day he realized his mistake. Being a house painter with a large family and a modest income, the last thing he needed was another kid to feed. But his wife (my "mother") and some of his other kids thought I was cute and convinced him to keep me. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Mr. Musk, now a nouveau riche techie, spent about half of his first fortune to become a co-founder of what eventually became PayPal. When the smoke cleared this time he walked away, at the ripe old age of 32, with $165,000,000. But that's not what I want to talk about.

A few years later Mr. Musk invested in, and eventually gained control of, Tesla Motors. To stay busy during the interim, he created SpaceX, a company that delivers supplies to the International Space Station via SpaceX designed and built rockets. But that's not what I want to talk about.

What I want to talk about is why Mr. Musk started SpaceX. It wasn't because he's one of those moguls that can't ever make enough money. It was to fulfill a dream. He believes, as do I, that to survive man needs to find a way to colonize other planets.

 This is not original to him, and certainly not to me -- any number of other dreamers have come to the same conclusion by varied paths for various reasons. Mr. Musk, however, decided to do something about it. The purpose of SpaceX is to lower the cost of, and advance the technology needed to, eventually, colonize Mars. How cool is that!

A theoretical reader erupts. "COLONIZE MARS! Have you lost your mind Pufendorf! (a former nom de plume...). We're up to our ass in alligators because someone forgot to drain the swamp and you want to... ."

"HEY, hey! settle down," replies the Pufenator, in a forceful but nevertheless gentlemanly tone.

Let me explain.

I believe that individuals (as well as personkind for that matter) function best, are more alive, more -- human -- when they are striving for goals, large and small. I also believe that having shared goals takes some of the edge off of our endless struggle to get along with others. This applies to our relationships with snifficant others as well as to all the other kids on the playground.

Mr. Musk wants to go to Mars (and beyond) because, as the Discovery channel never seems to tire of pointing out, there are no shortage of potential catastrophes capable of providing us with the same fate as our late lamented friends, the dinosaurs.

Also, what if the reason we've yet to be contacted by another race, in a universe large enough to make even a Super Sized WallyWorld look small, is because it's common for a given species to be obliterated before they can spread to another planet?

I want to go to Mars and beyond because there's something in it for almost all the kids on the playground and any goal that can pull people together in these fragmented times is certainly worth consideration.

Gaia worshiping climate warriors, cricket eaters, and tree huggers would welcome a chance for Mother Earth to rid herself of some of her ungrateful parasites.

Far right, freedom obsessed wingnuts could live on a planet that features limited gubmint, where the locals get to create all the rules not specifically mentioned in the Cosmic Constitution (crazy huh?). When Texas was a country people from the US in need of a geographical cure could paint GTT, gone to Texas, on their houses and discretely vacate the neighborhood. GTT could now mean gone to Tralfamadore.

There's never a shortage of people who want to get out of Dodge.

And if you elect to stay you could help tear down all the abandoned houses in your neighborhood and fill the empty lots with gardens, already a popular pastime in certain areas of Flyoverland.

Have an OK day.


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©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

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