Viewing profile — HopDavid

Tyson has pretty low standards for rigor and accuracy. Take everything he says with a grain of salt.

Tyson's an entertaining bull shitter. It's easier to be entertaining when you have no need for rigor and accuracy. See biologist PZ Myers comment on Tyson: https://scienceblogs.com…

Much of Murphy's math and physics are wrong. For example to get delta V to go to Mars he adds earth's 11 km/s escape velocity to the 3.6 km/s Mars injection velocity. A freshman ae…

I would call Tyson a good spokesman for science if he had a high regard for rigor and accuracy. But he does not. http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/01/fact-checking-neil-...

Altitude of EML1 is about 320,000 kilometers. An ordinary 320,000 x 300 km earth orbit would be moving 10.81 km/s at perigee. As an object falls towards earth it will surge ahead o…

A.K.A. Coriolis force. Something that needs to be looked at in space elevators and orbital tetehrs as ascending (or descending) payloads exert a sideways push (or pull) on the teth…

http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/04/liftport-lunar-teth...

There has actually been a lunar elevator proposed, the most massive part lying at Earth Moon Lagrange 1. In my opinion, not practical. I took a look using Xylon: http://hopsblog-ho…

XKCD is usually accurate as well. Tyson on the other hand...

An elevator anchored to the earth and extending past geosynchronous orbit is wildly implausible. However orbital vertical tethers are doable with Zylon. A series of 3 orbital tethe…

When mass parameter is big, use of WSBs is interesting. But mass parameters for sun-earth or sun-Mars are tiny. I've expressed my skepticism for ITN between earth and Mars: http://…

Tom Murphy has an ax to grind. He fancies himself a modern day Paul Revere shouting the urgent message "Peak Oil is coming! Peak Oil is coming!". Anything that might lead us to com…