31–40 of 40 posts
I expect 95% of these projects will never reach orbit. Here's something tangentially related. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuGSTn_F0FE
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble. Most of those smallsat companies are financially viable on the expectation that they capture a meaningful fraction of the smallsat market - like 1/5th or more. They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. SpaceX seems to be planning to own the rideshare market [0], and so unless a customer really cares about having a particular orbit that's going to b…
> Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble. The dotcom bubble was the start of a cambrian explosion. Those two events are part of the same process, not wholly separate entities in which case one is bad and the other is good. They require eachother and cannot be unlinked. The dotcom bubble was not a bad thing, it was a necessary process of chaotic, sometimes idiotic, experimentation. It was an extraordinar…
Most of the funding raised by smallsat and small launch companies is a rounding error compared to the amount of money tossed at bullshit companies useless crap.
What I'm waiting for is orbital unlauch vehicles. That is, spacecraft that methodically collect and comoactify space debris. As we launch more and more cheaply and frequently, the few thousand miles above Earth become littered more and more, even with all deorbiting or parking provisions.
Most satellites are on orbits that will eventually decay due to atmospheric drag.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ehhh, everyone (relevant) already knows the general process for making highly enriched uranium or Pu-239, and how to make a bomb with it once they get it. The issue is that actually implementing those things takes a ton of infrastructure, and until relatively recently that infrastructure was extremely visible. As gas centrifuges have replaced gaseous diffusion as the primary method of enrichment, though, the amount o…
You need a nuclear reactor to supply the neutrons for transmutation into plutonium, so this isn't something you can do at home. That video just shows the preliminary step of making neptunium slugs to be irradiated. The processes are all difficult from a chemical engineering standpoint. Most of the materials involved are toxic or radioactive or corrosive or flammable or several of the above. Enrichment plants are smal…
Sure, but a simple graphite reactor for Pu production, like what most current nuclear weapons states have used, isn't particularly complex.
As you mention, the difficult and expensive part is apparently separating the Pu from the rest (PUREX). In the West, those plants go for $20 billion a pop, or about, although a would-be-proliferant could probably make do with something substantially cheaper.
AFAICS the current thinking is that thanks to centrifuges, nowadays the easiest path for a rogue state to develop it's own weapon is to use enriched uranium.
And yes, there's a lot of DU around. Except for kinetic warheads, counterweights in aircrafts, and such, there's not much use for it. Waiting for breeder reactors to be deployed on a large scale is the plan in practice, I suppose.
What I'm waiting for is orbital unlauch vehicles. That is, spacecraft that methodically collect and comoactify space debris. As we launch more and more cheaply and frequently, the few thousand miles above Earth become littered more and more, even with all deorbiting or parking provisions.
Most satellites are on orbits that will eventually decay due to atmospheric drag.
I think this link was posted here sometime ago:
Could we be at the very beginning of a Cambrian explosion for space exploration? Exciting times.
Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble. Most of those smallsat companies are financially viable on the expectation that they capture a meaningful fraction of the smallsat market - like 1/5th or more. They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. SpaceX seems to be planning to own the rideshare market [0], and so unless a customer really cares about having a particular orbit that's going to b…
And there are lots of companies doing this! Two looking at 100+ constellations local to me, and I'm in Adelaide, Australia.
It's possible that the bubble is in the companies and the rocket companies are spades. Or maybe there is no bubble and this is airmail and airplanes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need a nuclear reactor to supply the neutrons for transmutation into plutonium, so this isn't something you can do at home. That video just shows the preliminary step of making neptunium slugs to be irradiated. The processes are all difficult from a chemical engineering standpoint. Most of the materials involved are toxic or radioactive or corrosive or flammable or several of the above. Enrichment plants are smal…
> You need a nuclear reactor to supply the neutrons for transmutation into plutonium, so this isn't something you can do at home. Sure, but a simple graphite reactor for Pu production, like what most current nuclear weapons states have used, isn't particularly complex. As you mention, the difficult and expensive part is apparently separating the Pu from the rest (PUREX). In the West, those plants go for $20 billion a…
Maybe. South Africa used electromagnetic separation. Slow, but it works for a small number of weapons. Pakistan has both a plutonium and a uranium program, and they've been plugging away at it since the 1970s. North Korea seems to have taken the plutonium route first. So did Israel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the distribution of the time scale of these orbits though? If 90% of these things take a couple months (or weeks or days or whatever) to decay and burn up it seems like a non-issue - or one that can be planned around. If the fat tail sits further out in time that seems like it could actually become an issue.
One of the junkiest places in orbit right now is around 800-1000km (mostly thanks to the Chinese ASAT weapon test 12 years ago and an unrelated collision between two satellites in 2009. There's also tens thousands of droplets of irradiated coolant that was ejected from Soviet nuclear reactors in 70s-80s). At 1000km it can take around 100 years for something to deorbit from drag (can vary a bit depending on unpredicta…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the junkiest places in orbit right now is around 800-1000km (mostly thanks to the Chinese ASAT weapon test 12 years ago and an unrelated collision between two satellites in 2009. There's also tens thousands of droplets of irradiated coolant that was ejected from Soviet nuclear reactors in 70s-80s). At 1000km it can take around 100 years for something to deorbit from drag (can vary a bit depending on unpredicta…
Thanks for the detailed response. Fascinating. Where do you come across this information? I’d also love to learn more about this nuclear event from Soviet spacecraft.
The Soviet spacecraft were the slightly confusingly named US-A series, also called RORSAT in English. The Wikipedia article[1] is a good start, but you can find some more technical info if you search around for papers on "NaK droplets"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either that or the beginning of a new dot-com bubble. Most of those smallsat companies are financially viable on the expectation that they capture a meaningful fraction of the smallsat market - like 1/5th or more. They can't all win - and that's assuming any of them win. SpaceX seems to be planning to own the rideshare market [0], and so unless a customer really cares about having a particular orbit that's going to b…
Most of the companies looking at launching satellite constellations need lots of odd orbits. And there are lots of companies doing this! Two looking at 100+ constellations local to me, and I'm in Adelaide, Australia. It's possible that the bubble is in the companies and the rocket companies are spades. Or maybe there is no bubble and this is airmail and airplanes.