Part of the series on space stuff. It is a good intellectual exercise to create an intuitive diagram to communicate new ideas in a compact, succinct way. Edward Tufte has written the same book several times on the topic, which is a must read for anyone who wants to learn how to effectively communicate knowledge. Some time ago I created a diagram to understand how Mars autarky would progress from local manufacturing of bulk goods to more complex parts. It was not a good diagram and upon revisiting it even I found it confusing. I’m revisiting the topic here to … Continue reading Understanding the make-buy question in a growing Mars city

Aging and death is as inescapable as taxes and leaf blowers, but why? How? Despite millennia of obsession and billions of dollars in research, we’re still far from understanding the biochemical particulars of why we age and, ideally, how to stop it. I’m the opposite of an expert on anything biological but I saw an interesting numerical feature of aging data and will discuss it here. Aging and age-related diseases are responsible for the vast majority of negative impacts on quality of life, and healthcare expenditure. The graph below charts the Gompertz-Makeham law of mortality. Retaining the annual chance of … Continue reading Numerical convergence as a model for senescence

Cheaper hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. terraformindustries.com Executive Summary Terraform Industries is a bet on cheap solar, synthetic hydrocarbon supremacy, and hyperscale. The overarching goal is to zero out the net transport of carbon from the crust to the atmosphere and oceans as quickly as possible by displacing drilled natural gas production with direct atmospheric processing.  As solar power gets cheaper and oil becomes more scarce, at some point this decade it will be cheaper to extract carbon from the air than to drill mile-deep holes in the crust on the other side of the world.  Synthetic … Continue reading Terraform Industries Whitepaper

This blog is a direct follow up of Starship Is Still Not Understood, and is part of the series on popular misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. I think it is relatively straightforward to think of cool … Continue reading Science upside for Starship

This blog is a follow up to So You Want To Start A Carbon Capture Company. In the last five months, the cadence of new entrants in this space, as well as new climate-focused funds, has only increased. This is a marked, though welcome, contrast to the now familiar dithering and lack of unified action at the international political level. Our entire civilization rests on our ability to harness ancient solar energy stored underground as reduced (i.e. not oxidized) carbon and capture the heat unleashed when we bring it into chemical equilibrium with the surface by combusting it in our … Continue reading Scaling Carbon Capture

Another entry into my blog series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. I discussed this post on The Space Show on November 5 2021. It has been exactly two years since my initial posts on Starship and Starlink. While the Starlink post has aged quite well, Starship is still not widely understood despite intervening developments. As usual, this blog represents my own opinions and I do not have any inside information. There is now an audio version of this blog. To catch you up, two years ago SpaceX unveiled their boilerplate full scale mockup of Starship. Starhopper had completed two … Continue reading Starship is Still Not Understood

It was with dawning dread I realized I hadn’t camped overnight in the high Sierras since late 2015. I did attempt a family trip as recently as 2019 but we realized just before sleep time that we were downwind of a major wildfire and hastily retreated. Photos here. I also realized that I had left it too late in the season, with too much to do and too many responsibilities at home, to tackle my long term goal of finding a Class 2 route up Table Mountain. That would be fun but it would probably take a week to do … Continue reading Last minute trip to the Sierras

Having spent a year or so, including the entirety of our youngest child’s life, in COVID-related lockdown, my wife Christine and I wanted to get out of town for a bit while we exhausted the remainder of our parental leave. Read on to discover how this simple objective morphed into a 7700 mile coast to coast (to coast to coast) road trip towing a classic 1960s travel trailer behind a modified Tesla Model 3 family sedan. Complete public photo album. Christine’s grandmother was having a 95th birthday celebration in Ohio, and we wanted to introduce her to her ~40th great … Continue reading Summer 2021 road trip

In previous blogs I’ve talked about how Lunar Starship can save the Artemis program to build a sustainable Lunar base. I’ve discussed how a Lunar Starship can deliver roughly 210 T to the Lunar surface if traveling one way. And … Continue reading Starship Moon Base Design Principles