Ice on the Moon

One More Speculative Futurist Comment

A SHLV, like the shiny, can put a sphere a little over 30 feet in diameter into GEO. Perhaps stacking this on top of a stubby shiny with no payload bay and/or bigger tanks. For the sake of argument, let’s say the interior of the sphere is 26 feet in diameter. Mounted on the outside is a collapsed Hoberman sphere and bladder modeled on these inflatable Max Space designs.

Once in GEO this sphere is docked with another identical sphere and an unspecified number of other lesser payloads. Then the water starts arriving. It could come from a couple different sources other than Earth but let us leave that for now. Eventually, about 6000 tons of water is transferred to the two spheres, 3000 in each, and the Hoberman spheres with their bladders expand to 60 feet in diameter. With larger outer spheres the interior space becomes geometrically larger as the outer sphere stays 5 meters thick. An 80 foot diameter sphere, with a 46 foot inner sphere, would provide about 5 times as much crew space as the 60 foot sphere. Bigger SHLV’s likely needed for that. Water is transparent so a soon-to-be-slowly-rotating-view outside would be available with some clever optical design.

A mile long multi-tether system then unwinds with the two spheres at either end with the lesser masses between them. It is then spun up to one revolution per minute. This would result in a pair of Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity (NSLR1G) crew compartments with about 9200 cubic feet of pressurized space each. With a view and with a long enough tether to eliminate centripetal induced nausea and vertigo.

This is a basic true Space Station. Depending on how much support equipment was required inside the pressure sphere it would likely have three or four astronauts in each sphere. The multi-tether system would allow the various masses and the spheres to change location. To some extent. One sphere or both could travel to the center of the system for microgravity and docking with spacecraft and then return to full gravity when desired.

That is a Space Station. Substitute a Nuclear Electric Propulsion system (maybe available soon) for one of the spheres and this would be a true Spaceship capable of year-long or longer voyages to places like Ceres or possibly farther out…with no dosing or debilitation. Much better with bigger spheres of course. That is the future.

Space Safety Plea

Setting aside the megaconstellation frankenstein being created, which never should have been allowed to happen, the first problem to address is tourism.

There is nothing more counterproductive and corrosive to any progress in Human Space Flight than billionaut joy rides. That these oligarchs are subsidized in their obscene spending displays with tax dollars is poison to public support. NASA should curtail any kind of support for these launches, which would effectively end them.

The second problem is the dual purpose systems on the two American LEO taxis, dragon and starliner. The hypergolic escape systems used are inferior to the traditional escape tower, as used on Orion and others, and are more likely to cause a loss of crew than prevent such an event. That NASA allowed these systems is a red flag that the same flawed thinking that led to two shuttle disasters never left the space agency.

The third problem is the elephant in the room NASA refuses to acknowledge. Dosing and debilitation must be addressed with a requirement for a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity (NSLR1G) environment for any long duration missions. A massive water shield and tether generated artificial gravity system is the basic requirement and is being ignored.

The NASA Space Solar Power report:

Three problems-

It is essentially about profitability and not about the environment.
It ignores any calculations based on industrializing the Moon.
It acknowledges no bias or influence in regard to industry.

Helicity

The video spokesperson said they are a decade away but in reality, this was available a half a century ago. Star Wars directed energy research likely increased the efficiency greatly, but that data is of course, classified. Helicity knows this and the fusion reactor stuff is all fundraising when it is actually going to be used for what works…bombs.
Nuclear Pulse Propulsion by another name. They are trying to make a tiny fusion explosion without using a fission explosion to create fusion.

The original concept of Stanislaw Ulam was pure genius. He did not just think outside the box, he threw the box away. Pulse Propulsion is understood in three different ways.

First, nuclear energy cannot be used efficiently in a rocket type engine because it is difficult enough keeping a chemical rocket from melting. Nuclear energy is, literally, a million times hotter. Like a piston with no cylinder around it, Pulse momentarily hits the piston with plasma from a nuclear reaction. Not long enough to melt it, exactly like an internal combustion engine…an external engine.

Second, a nuclear device can be designed to focus most of the energy in one direction, like a conventional shaped charge. Directed at a slug of material the resulting plasma Pulse pushes the Spaceship.

Third, while a jet fighter is catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier, a pulse driven Spaceship is akin to an aircraft carrier catapulted by the jet fighter. This is accurate as Nuclear Pulse becomes extremely efficient the larger the plate, or piston, becomes. Using a multi-thousand ton plate several hundred feet across uses the same small device an order of magnitude more efficiently.

Helicity is likely going to use nuclear devices and this whole internal fusion design is a facade.

No Starship to Mars

I call it the Parker Dyson Spudis Continuum. All of them died recently. Eugene Parker determined that a 5 meter layer of water is required to shield space travelers from cosmic radiation. Freeman Dyson validated the concept of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion with his work on Project Orion. Paul Spudis discovered the first real evidence for ice on the Moon. The thousands of tons of water lifted from the Moon and Nuclear Pulse Propulsion is the only practical way to push that massive radiation shield around the solar system.

The ocean moons of the gas and ice giants are the places to take submarines to explore. Mars is a rock, and like LEO, a complete dead end.

The big engines are about getting to the Moon to get the water, or rather, getting double-hulled wet workshops (“Fat Workshops”) to the Moon to fill their cosmic ray shields, which is step one.

The Moon was thought to be dry during Apollo and this was one of the reasons a Moonbase was not considered feasible. What my psychopath cyberstalker is forgetting is that there IS ice on the Moon. Estimates have gone up and down over the last decade. Perhaps not enough to build propellant factories but more than enough to support a base…and provide shielding for Space Stations, Lunar Cyclers, and true Spaceships.

Mars, on the other hand, may have ice, but it is far away and at the bottom of a gravity well twice as deep as the Moon. It is not a second home for humankind because we evolved in one gravity. It also has less than half the solar energy resources of the Earth Moon system. It will require massively shielded nuclear propelled (not nuclear thermal) artificial gravity equipped Spaceships to get to Mars. The shiny is not going and we are not going to live there anyway.

With over a hundred thousand satellites in LEO, in various megaconstellations, “conjunctions”-as a certain percentage malfunction, or are commanded to reenter and do not do so precisely, or various other scenarios, are why this whole mess should never have been allowed.

As satellites go up to replace or service this enormous number or come back down they must cross the orbits of the ones in orbit. This means inevitable collisions and an increase in debris as more collisions happen. Not sustainable. Strike one.

Strike two is the militarization of these constellations which will radically increase the likelihood of conflict and escalation and the risk of nuclear war.

Strike three is the amount of contamination from rocket exhaust and reentry byproducts in the upper atmosphere.

The best possible scenario is severe restrictions on the number of satellites in Earth orbit before the situation becomes disastrous. Megaconstellations will go down in history as the worst idea of the early 21st century, from the guy who called Space Solar Power “the stupidest thing ever”, advised not panicking over COVID or Climate Change, and set loose not-seez on Twitter.

More Speculative Futurism

Artificial gravity only solves half of the dosing and debilitation problem. For any progress in Human Space Flight to happen a sea change regarding radiation shielding is required. As we set sail on this new sea we are going to have to take our own little ocean with us. This fundamental change is accepting massive shielding as unavoidable. There is simply no way around the basic physics of heavy nuclei. The “Parker Minimum” is a 5 meter layer of water and this is the starting point for HSF. For a small capsule this equates to about 500 tons of water. This is simply not practical for long duration missions with more than a couple astronauts, not because of the mass, but due to human psychology and the inefficiency of the ratio of shielding thickness to crew space. As the sphere gets larger the inner sphere crew space geometrically increases. Constructs between 60 and 80 feet in diameter, with inner spaces between 26 and 46 feet, with shields massing approximately 3000 to 6000 tons, are likely the lower limit.

Starting with that 5 meters of water several concepts appear as solutions. The first, to deal with microgravity debilitation, is a tether system with roughly equal masses at either end and lesser tuning and dampening masses moving along the multi-tether. A rate of one revolution per minute would prevent the severe difficulties inherent in faster rates and require a 6000 foot long tether system. Second comes the wet workshop, a structure already made to handle one gravity of centripetal acceleration or, since the double-hulled structure will be spherical or ovoid, the “Fat Workshop.” Third, due to their large size, comes a Super or Ultra Heavy Lift Vehicle to loft the workshops. Fourth is some form of Nuclear Propulsion, not nuclear thermal, to move these multi-thousand-ton constructs once they are complete. And fifth comes an off-world source of water shielding. Twenty three tons of water can be lifted from the Moon for every ton from Earth. Using a lunar rail gun it may be possible to economically launch water containers from the Moon, as originally envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill.

To “establish a basic model” of a Moonbase I see two models, based ether on roofing over craters and covering with regolith, or finding a suitable lava tube.

Either model would allow inflatable habitats to provide very spacious accommodations while shielding occupants from radiation and micrometeorites.

The crater model near the ice at the poles would likely be a grid set up, then covered with a suitable material, and then a small earthmover pushing regolith over it. All robotically constructed long before any astronauts land.

My view is that water robotically lifted from the lunar poles into orbit for shielded Space Stations and robotically constructed bases should happen before astronauts ever leave Earth.

Space Posts

Getting that lunar ice up into space as cosmic ray water shielding is the only path to any progress in Human Space Flight. Robot landers and rovers should be a priority.

A 60 foot diameter sphere with a 26 foot sphere inside it would require 2889 tons of water shielding for 9203 cubic feet of crew space (if my math is correct). This is about the same as a olympic swimming pool and three 3-bedroom apartments. As these constructs get larger they become several times more efficient. An 80 foot diameter sphere with a 46 foot inner sphere would need 6037 tons for 50,965 cubic feet of crew space.

In comparison the ISS has a pressurized volume of 35,491 cubic feet, though it only lists 13,696 as living area. I’m assuming equipment fills up the difference.

A pair of 80 foot diameter spheres spinning opposite each other with a tether system would require over 12,000 tons of water alone. Using the ISS as a guide and with half of those 3 bedroom apartments filled with equipment, this Space Station would have a crew of thirty or forty astronauts. This is not so extreme when compared to a 18,750 ton missile sub with a crew of 155.

On the plus side that water, as a medium for a closed loop life support system, would provide air, drinking water, and basic calories for an indefinite number of years with little or no resupply. Dock nuclear electric propulsion modules and off to the outer solar system we go with no dosing or debilitation. I believe that is how we will do it.

Lunar exploration with robots and rovers should have been ongoing and continuous after Apollo. We would have found the ice at the poles by 1980 instead of 2010. We would likely have found lava tubes by 1990. And by 2000 robot landers may have demonstrated ISRU of ice into water and propellants allowing water to be repeatedly lifted off the lunar surface and transferred to water depots in lunar orbit. By 2010 there would have been cislunar Space Stations and by 2020 inflatable habitats inside lava tubes. And right now, we would be seeing larger and larger numbers of people Beyond Earth Orbit. Possibly several hundred.

What we got was the Reagan Revolution and one of the worst designs possible for a Space Transportation System. Leading to NewSpace as the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.

No…. Nuclear Thermal is no good for several reasons… it is a money scam, and it would be better to just spend that mountain of money they will blow on a giant chemical booster. They have all the data from rover so they think it will be easy to charge billions while only spending millions.

There are three paths; the one that will work right now and take us to Ceres is nuclear pulse. But repurposed nuclear weapons are politically problematic. The second is some form of nuclear electric and new TPV cell tech is improving the prospects of that. But it has a way to go. The third is fission fragment propulsion and it appears to be a nearly ideal concept. Unfortunately, the isotope required, Americium 242, would require a new near-trillion-dollar nuclear industry to be built.

They could replace the SLS SRB’s with New Glenn first stages and develop an engine return module for the RS-25’s. That is my best plan. Of course, a certain psychopath fanboy goes apesh#t crazy when I mention that. He even made a graphic to mock me with. Really creeps me out.

Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit HSF-BELO will require, in my view, a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity NSLR1G crew compartment. A cosmic ray water shield well over a thousand tons and a several thousand feet long Tether Generated Artificial Gravity TGAG system. And that means nuclear propulsion and NOT nuclear thermal, which does not have the necessary Isp. It probably means using a wet workshop and getting the water shielding from the Moon. None of this is my idea…it is all from scientists and engineers. And fanboys hate that.

Waiting for China to build some BIG engines and then the west scrambling to match it. If they build a thrust chamber exceeding the 1.8 million pound thrust of the F-1A, let’s say they go 1.9, and then feed two of these chambers with one set of turbopumps, technically making it a 3.8 million pound thrust engine, they will be on their way to a Moon base.

Four such engines, with 8 thrust bells, and a center variable thrust landing engine, would be the reusable version of the original Nova concept entertained before Lunar Orbit Rendezvous made the “smaller” Saturn V the cheaper go-to. If only they had built Nova, where would we be now?

I can see inflatable habitats used inside lava tubes or in craters that have been roofed and covered over with regolith on the Moon…but not in space. Likewise, the plentiful depictions of Moonwalkers bunny hopping fancy free are not reality. Radiation means EVA will be for emergencies only. Astronauts will only suffer exposure when unavoidable such as transit to a shielded conveyance such as a Lunar Cycler, Space Station, or even a lunar water carrying vehicle. Such vehicles could lower themselves over surface features blocking most of the radiation.

Spacesuits will be needed for working in these repurposed craters or lava tubes, however. The main problem, if I am not mistaken, are the gloves, which precludes 1 atmosphere suit. It seems like haptic technology needs some investment.

The logical sequence is to identify and start with an ultimate goal. This was done almost a half a century ago by Gerard K. O’Neill…miles in diameter artificial hollow spinning moons. He also identified the economic engine to enable space colonization and also solve the overheating of Earth: Space Solar Power. The resources for manufacturing both Space Solar components and colonies can be lifted into space from the Moon using 23 times less energy than from Earth.

After initial industrialization of the Moon the need for resources like water and volatiles will grow. There are vast quantities in the asteroid belt with no gravity wells to limit exploitation.

I would bet the Chinese have identified the goal and are working on resources. And wondering if the west is really as greedy and stupid as we seem.

Large human-crewed Space Stations in GEO as repair and recycling stations are the best solution to maintaining a sustainable satellite environment. Megaconstellations are unsustainable. Strict limits on the number of LEO satellites are hopefully on the way.

In my view the ideal system would be Ultra Heavy Lift Vehicles launching to GEO. Part of a typical mission would be to make a stop and collect old satellites from a lower orbit and then carry them to the GEO stations. The second stage engine module would then separate and reenter, leaving the tankage to be repurposed.

This kind of space commerce would, due to economy of scale, result in the minimal mass launching and only engine modules reentering would result in minimal reentry byproducts affecting the upper atmosphere.

LEO crewed platforms will be gone soon enough, and their replacement will be the “true” Space Station, that is, a construct with both a massive cosmic ray water shield and a tether generated artificial gravity system.

A simple capsule would require, at a minimum (the “Parker Minimum”), 500 tons of water. For any practical living space at least double…and for a crew larger than a couple astronauts on a long duration mission double it again. The options are lifting a couple thousand tons of tap water into GEO, which is halfway to anywhere (not LEO), or bringing it up from the surface of the Moon using 23 times less energy.

This water from the Moon is the critical resource upon which any progress in Human Space Flight depends. Getting that water into a double hulled construct stressed for over 1 gravity of centripetal acceleration (a wet workshop) is a goal worthy of adulation. Setting sail on a new sea.

This cheering about spacex pocketing more pork for paddling in a duck pond is fanboy buffoonery.

The shiny is designed to lift tens of thousands of satellites into LEO. It uses engines about 1/3 the size of those used on the Saturn V, because they are cheaper. It uses a single type of stainless steel for both stages, because it is cheaper. The number of engines and structure, along with landing back both, entail a huge payload penalty.

The concept is a VTVL fully reusable SHLV, but much like the Space Shuttle, the design is mismatched with reality and likely destined to fail at whatever mission it undertakes. This is very similar to the gamble another wealthy eccentric took on a giant wooden seaplane.

The need was to fly cargo across the Atlantic if the German submarines succeeded in sinking ships faster than they could be built. The need disappeared. The low latency megaconstellation was never needed to start with.

Great questions! Thank you for asking. So, first, “fully reusable” includes the wet workshop concept. But a wet workshop program is fundamentally opposed to making money with satellites because it changes the whole point into expanding humankind into space instead of turning a profit. This is why it is not part of NewSpace ideology, which is only about profit. Wet Workshop reusability..is the correct match, not returning what is essentially a Shuttle external tank made out of steel.

Second, the shiny is designed to support an LEO internet satellite megaconstellation, one of the truly worst ideas ever. In regard to expanding humankind into space, it is a dead end. Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources, as the solution to Climate Change, as envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill, is the only path to accomplishing the survival imperative. One path leads to Elon becoming god-emperor of cyberspace and the other to an insurance policy for the human species. If you worship wealth and individual greed, then Elon is your choice… not mine.

Space Solar Power is the economic engine enabling a multitrillion dollar multinational energy project on the Moon realizing all the dreams of space enthusiasts. Elon could never own and monopolize such an immense enterprise, so he wants nothing to do with it. As a state sponsored public works project his libertarian whack job fans want nothing to do with it. Fossil fuel interests want nothing to do with it. Defense contractors cashing in on the new satellite cold war want nothing to do with it. If the public understood it as the solution to Climate Change, they would support it, but NewSpace ideology is all they are getting….and that may cost hundreds of millions of lives. All of us end up on the right or wrong side of history. I know which side I am on.

Ironically, the Space Shuttle was going to “make space pay for itself” by launching all commercial satellites cut-rate and using those monopolized profits for “the dream.” The obvious problems were the Shuttle was a great concept but a horrible design and there was no designated goal, no specific dream, to realize. And the third showstopper was the defense industry, and the fossil fuel industry, and congress. Politically, the right did not want taxes spent on anything but defense and what lobbyists for the energy industry wanted, while the left wanted to address social issues and infrastructure.

Enter NewSpace, which could have adopted Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources as the ultimate goal, but a certain entrepreneur realized he could never monopolize such an immense multinational project. Making him the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. The shiny is a new kind of Shuttle with a new set of problems and the new goal is simple greed by way of a contrived satellite market. What a mess.

Seder Roasts Rogan

“Two people with hundreds of millions of dollars, who, everyone they come in contact with…is on the payroll.”

Talking about people not wanting to go back to their really bad jobs. Like they are the bad guys. Really sad. Sam nailed it.

Obscene Wealth

I was immediately branded a Marxist when I cited the following article on a forum. I explained that if it describes the problem, to a certain extent I don’t care who wrote it. This article relates directly to the solution to the biggest problem of our time, Climate Change. A recent NASA report on the most practical solution was likely influenced by obscene wealth.

Richard D. Wolff – A Critique of Obscene Wealth

The first problem with the recent NASA report on Space Solar Power is it ignores Climate Change. Comparing cents per kilowatt hour is not going to matter much after civilization suffers a global catastrophe with inestimable trillions in lost revenue and incalculable human suffering. Fossil fuel interests are human and non-human profit-seeking entities that have gone to great lengths for decades to lie and misinform the public about this to safeguard their investment.

The second problem with the report is it ignores Lunar Manufacture of the components. Providing a western standard of living for a projected population of 10 billion means the industrial activity involved in replacing fossil fuel energy with renewables is a self-defeating feedback loop. Sending rockets (burning hydrogen) to the Moon and building simple antenna farms on Earth is the only way to avoid that loop.

The third problem with the report is the influence of those with Competing Agendas and any acknowledgement of this is ignored. Not only fossil fuel interests but private companies with their own schemes want nothing to do with any legislation phasing out fossil fuels and subsidizing Space Solar. It will hinder their own projects and for those civil servants or others seeking employment with these companies, as many are, it is in their interest and to their credit to work against Space Solar.

While Starship is being mentioned in connection with Space Solar Power by many, this is, in my view, disingenuous. Elon Musk is infamous for having stated in 2012, “Let me tell you one of my pet peeves: space solar power. Okay, the stupidest thing ever. And…-“I wish I could just stab that bloody thing through the heart.” He has never recanted that statement and has a completely different scheme in mind for his company SpaceX.

NewSpace ideology is, at this point, broadly accepted as a for-profit worldview with an LEO megaconstellation lofted by a privately built Super Heavy Lift Vehicle as “the future.” While Elon Musk has spoken much on Climate Change in the past he recently showed his true colors:

ROME, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Oil and gas should not be demonised in the medium-term, Elon Musk, the founder of electric car maker Tesla, said on Saturday, but he also said it was important to reduce carbon emissions to preserve the planet.
Musk, speaking at a right-wing political gathering organized by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party said: “Climate change alarm is exaggerated in the short term,” adding that the environmental movement may have gone too far, causing people to lose faith in the future.”

“The future” is obviously about money. Not averting a slowly unfolding global catastrophe. Having taken part in rescue operations right after a category 5 hurricane I can attest that adding a new category 6 with winds over 192 mph, as is being discussed, is not a good sign. Fires burning around the world, pathogens spreading, the backlash from illegal migration breeding fascism around the world…all this is just the beginning.

Nukes in Space

The solution to nuclear deterrence is to place the nuclear arsenal months in deep space on human-crewed “Space Boomer.” It solves several problems. The first problem is deterrence. The second problem is launch-on-warning, and the third problem is climate change.

From the Slate article: “Maybe it’s because of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but few gasps were heard, no jaws went slack, when the U.S. Air Force announced last month that the price tag for its new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile, called the Sentinel, had suddenly gone up by 37 percent.

That would put the missile program’s total cost at $131 billion. That’s twice as much as what the Air Force had estimated back in 2015, when the program was first introduced.

The new estimate—and it’s just an estimate—includes the cost of developing the missile, buying 634 of them, installing 450 in silos (the rest will be for tests and spares), and connecting their launch-control centers to the command-control network. It does not include the costs of maintaining the missiles over the next 20 years, which would likely raise the total cost to well over $200 billion. Nor does it include the $15.9 billion price tag for the new nuclear warhead, called the W87-1, to be perched on top of the missile.

All of which raises the question: Are these new ICBMs—which will replace the 450 Minuteman IIIs—really necessary? The Minutemen are 50 years old, and while they’ve been modified many times, they will probably need to be mothballed someday. But that raises another question: Are silo-based ICBMs necessary at all? Might the other two “legs” of the nuclear arsenal’s “Triad”—the 970 warheads on submarines and the 500 or so bombs and cruise missiles on bomber aircraft—be sufficient to deter all enemies? And by the way, we’re also building 100 new bombers, called the B-21, at a cost of $750 million per plane, and the first of 12 new Columbia-class nuclear-missile-carrying submarines at a cost of $15 billion per boat.

Few outside the nuclear cognoscenti are asking these questions, but as America’s annual national security budget has passed $1 trillion, and as the demand swells for more conventional weapons (combat planes, warships, air-defense missiles, artillery shells, etc.), it’s time to start asking.

We know about the Sentinel program’s cost overrun only because a law—the Nunn-McCurdy Act, sponsored by Sen. Sam Nunn and Rep. Dave McCurdy back in 1983—requires the Pentagon to notify Congress when a weapon system exceeds its baseline cost by more than 15 percent. If a weapon overruns its cost by 25 percent or exceeds its original cost estimate by 50 percent, it is said to be in “critical” breach of Nunn-McCurdy and must be canceled unless the secretary of defense certifies that the program is vital for national security.

Just after hours on Jan. 18, the Pentagon notified Congress that the Sentinel was in critical breach. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is expected to certify sometime soon that the missile is necessary. But is it?

Among nuclear insiders, the sanctity of the Triad has been an article of faith for decades, as bedrock a belief as the Holy Trinity has been to the Catholic Church. But there’s little substance to the idea. It started as an outgrowth of bureaucratic politics, with each branch of the U.S. armed forces seeking its own piece of the nuclear arsenal—land-based missiles for the Army, bomber aircraft for the Air Force, and submarines for the Navy. (Around 1960, the Air Force beat the Army in the competition for land-based missiles, and separate factions within the Air Force clutched tight to both.)

For a while, the ICBMs did have one unique property: Their guidance systems were accurate enough to destroy discrete military targets, such as blast-hardened missile silos, without doing much damage to the area around the target. Bombers could do that too, but it would take hours for them to reach the target. Submarine-launched missiles weren’t accurate enough.

Then, in 1990, the Navy started putting D5 missiles in their submarines. The D5s are just as accurate as the ICBMs, and because the subs prowl under the ocean’s surface undetected, they are less vulnerable to an enemy attack. By contrast, land-based ICBMs sit fixed in their silos. They are accurate enough to launch a first strike and vulnerable to an enemy’s first strike. Because of that, in a serious crisis, their very existence might compel both sides—all countries with a substantial ICBM force—to launch a preemptive first strike, before any of the other countries launch a first strike. (Strategists call this situation “crisis instability.”)

As a result, several strategists and politicians—and not just doves or arms control advocates—started thinking that ICBMs were possibly more trouble than they were worth and, in any case, redundant. In response, the nuclear wing of the Air Force devised a new rationale for land-based missiles: the “sponge” theory. The idea was this: If we got rid of our ICBMs, there would be only a handful of nuclear targets in the continental United States—a few bomber bases and submarine pens, as well as the commanders in Washington, D.C. An enemy such as Russia might think that, by launching just a few handfuls of nuclear weapons, it could disable much of our ability to retaliate. The Kremlin’s master could then tell the U.S. president: If you do retaliate with your bombers in the air or submarines at sea, I will fire back at your cities. On the other hand, this argument goes, if we kept our 450 ICBMs, a Russian first strike would require them to launch a major attack; the radioactive fallout from such a strike would kill tens of millions of Americans, and a president would have to retaliate. So, we need to keep those ICBMs as a “sponge” to soak up the enemy’s attack—and thus to deter the enemy from launching an attack to begin with.

This is a very bizarre argument. The point of burying ICBMs in silos out in the middle of nowhere has always been to keep them away from cities to minimize the civilian casualties of a nuclear war (if doing so was at all possible). Now the Air Force was turning the concept on its head, saying that deterrence is strengthened by ensuring that millions of Americans die in a nuclear first strike.

But let’s accept the sponge theory as valid. Do we need 450 ICBMs to soak up the attack? Would 100 ICBMs—which would require the Russians or Chinese to launch at least 200 nuclear warheads, which would also kill millions of Americans—be enough? Would 50? Would a dozen?

The case to replace the entire Triad with new weapons began with an act of deception. Back in 2010, when President Barack Obama was trying to get the Senate to ratify New START, the nuclear arms–reduction treaty he’d negotiated with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Republican senators refused to go along unless Obama agreed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new nuclear ICBMs, bombers, submarines, and warheads. Obama wrote a carefully worded letter saying he would request funds to “replace or modernize” all three legs of the Triad. The key words were “or modernize”—that might mean he would simply upgrade the software or the communications system in some weapons. However, the Republicans started regarding “modernize” as a synonym for “replace” and boasted that Obama had agreed to spend $1.3 trillion over the next 30 years to do so. (The number was grabbed out of a hat; Obama hadn’t agreed to any dollar figure, nor had anyone calculated how much these new weapons, which weren’t even sketched on blueprints as yet, would cost.)

When Donald Trump took office in 2017, his defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, thought seriously about dismantling the ICBMs. Mattis had been in the Marines, a service that had never possessed or desired long-range nuclear weapons. But the Republicans were by now referring to the plan of replacing the entire Triad, including ICBMs, as “the Obama program of record.” The idea of proposing something less hawkish than Obama was politically unpalatable. Also some Air Force generals successfully sold Mattis on the sponge theory.

It’s time to revisit all this. True, Russia and China are building new nuclear weapons—though Russia, which has about the same number of weapons as we do, isn’t expanding the size of its arsenal, and China, which is expanding theirs, right now has only about 500 nukes in all, many of them not terribly reliable. (This is a good argument for engaging China in arms control negotiations.) By all but the most fanciful measures, we have more than enough. We don’t need to match everything that the Russian or Chinese nuclear bureaucracies are doing. We don’t need to duplicate their waste—especially if it means proceeding with the critically overpriced mistake of the Sentinel.”

The Fix Is In

NASA report offers pessimistic take on space-based solar power

When the great one says it is “the stupidest idea ever”, those looking for future employment with his company, where several NASA higher-ups have gone, are going to ride that wave.

Terrestrial industry is overheating the planet so setting Space Solar up by way of lunar industry, as advocated by Gerard K. O’Neill, is the path to solving climate change. This makes comparisons to terrestrial economic models meaningless. The goal is to fix climate change, not profit off cheaper electricity.

NASA study: clean, space-based solar power beaming is possible

It would be a dream come true for the environmental movement if Musk were to change his direction on Space Solar Power and support it as the solution to Climate change. He would then actually be the savior that many accuse him of fantasizing himself as. He would go from villain to superhero overnight.