Lifeboat Foundation

Based on the Bloomberg TV program “The Next Space Race” and other reliable sources, I determine the realistic payload costs goals for the next generation of private space companies.

I review NASA’s Space Shuttle Program costs and compare these with SpaceX costs, and then extrapolate to Planetary Resources, Inc.‘s cost structure.

Three important conclusions are derived. And for those viewing this video at my blog postings, the link to the Excel Spreadsheet is here (.xlsx file).

Yesterday’s program, The Next Space Race, on Bloomberg TV was an excellent introduction to the commercial aerospace companies, SpaceX, the Sierra Nevada Company (SNC), and Boeing. The following are important points, at the stated times, in the program:

0.33 mins: The cost of space travel has clipped our wings.
5:18 mins: How many people knew Google before they started?
7:40 mins: SpaceX costs, full compliment, 4x per year at $20 million per astronaut.
11:59 mins: Noisy rocket launch, notice also the length of the hot exhaust is several times the length of the rocket.
12:31 mins: One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
12:37 mins: Noisy shuttle launch, notice also the length of the hot exhaust is several times the length of the rocket.
13:47 mins: OPF-3, at one time the largest building in the world at 129 million cubic feet.
16:04 mins: States are luring private companies to start up in their states.
16:32 mins: NASA should be spending its money on exploration and missions and not maintenance and operations.
17:12 mins: The fair market value of OPF-3 is about $13.5 million.
17:19 mins: Maintenance cost is $100,000 per month
17:47 mins: Why Florida?
18:55 mins: International Space Station (ISS) cost $60B and if including the Shuttle program, it cost $150B.
19:17 mins: The size of the commercial space launch business.
21:04 mins: Elon Musk has put $100 million of his own money into SpaceX.
21:23 mins: The goals of NASA and private space do not conflict.

Summary:
1. Cost of ISS is $60B, total cost including the Shuttle program is $150B.

2. SpaceX cost is $20M per astronaut (for 7 astronauts) or a launch cost of $140 million per launch at $560 million per year for 4 launches per year.

Continue reading “The Next Space Race” »

In April 2012 I met Lisa Randall while book signing at the National Space Symposium, held every April at the Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, Colorado. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University.

She autograph my copy of her book “Warped Passages” and I showed her the proof copy of my book “An Introduction to Gravity Modification, 2nd Edition” with the g=tau.c^2 massless formula for gravitational acceleration, solving the gravity modification physics.

More in the video …

The future propulsion community are those who believe in or are actively researching rocketry, gravity modification & interstellar propulsion engineering & physics.

In this video I discuss the 3 groups within the future propulsion community. These groups are the Nay Sayers — they don’t believe that it is in the near future, Advanced Rocket — that only rockets can do this, & New Physics — that a new physics will solve this soon.

I also discuss briefly the European/French and Chinese interest in my work.

I am so glad to have the new video for my Kick Starter project, Ground Zero of Interstellar Propulsion and covers briefly Gravity Modification aka Anti-Gravity, Interstellar Propulsion, UFOs, Laithwaite, Crisis In Physics

From CLUBOF.INFO

#YEStoIndependence? According to much of the negative commentary in the Scottish independence debate, scientific research in Scotland will be negatively affected by independence. However, Scottish contributions to science will in the long term receive more recognition if Scotland is an independent state.

Continue reading “Scotland to see more scientific progress if independent” »

From CLUBOF.INFO

The Human Race to the Future (2014 Edition) is the scientific Lifeboat Foundation think tank’s publication first made available in 2013, covering a number of dilemmas fundamental to the human future and of great interest to all readers. Daniel Berleant’s approach to popularizing science is more entertaining than a lot of other science writers, and this book contains many surprises and useful knowledge.

Some of the science covered in The Human Race to the Future, such as future ice ages and predictions of where natural evolution will take us next, is not immediately relevant in our lives and politics, but it is still presented to make fascinating reading. The rest of the science in the book is very linked to society’s immediate future, and deserves great consideration by commentators, activists and policymakers because it is only going to get more important as the world moves forward.

The book makes many warnings and calls for caution, but also makes an optimistic forecast about how society might look in the future. For example, It is “economically possible” to have a society where all the basics are free and all work is essentially optional (a way for people to turn their hobbies into a way of earning more possessions) (p. 6–7).

Continue reading “Book Review: The Human Race to the Future by Daniel Berleant (2013) (A Lifeboat Foundation publication)” »

Amy Shira Teitel — Motherboard

One night in the spring of 1914, what appeared to be an impossibly large comet whizzed through the skies over Innsbruck, the capital city of Tyrol in western Austria. It terrified the locals; it was too big and too low in the sky to be something as innocent and ordinary as an actual comet or a planet. It turned out to be something equally innocuous, however alien: a rocket-powered model airplane. Nineteen-year-old high school student Max Valier had launched his model with a firecracker as its engine. It was the first in a series of rocket-powered vehicles he would test in his short lifetime, all in the hope of eventually seeing rockets carry men into space.

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Private Space exploration is gaining a lot of attention in the media today. It is expected to be the next big thing after social media, technology, and probably bio fuels . Can we take this further? With DARPA sponsoring the formation of the 100 Year Starship Study (100YSS) in 2011, can we do interstellar propulsion in our life times?

The Xodus One Foundation thinks this is feasible. To that end the Foundation has started the KickStarter project Ground Zero of Interstellar Propulsion to fund and accelerate this research. This project ends Fri, May 9 2014 7:39 AM MDT.

The community of interstellar propulsion researchers can be categorized into three groups, those who believe it cannot be done (Nay Sayers Group – NSG), those who believe that it requires some advanced form of conventional rockets (Advanced Rocket Group – ARG), and those who believe that it needs new physics (New Physics Group – NPG).

The Foundation belongs to the third group, the New Physics Group. The discovery in 2007 of the new massless formula for gravitational acceleration g=τc^2 , where τ is the change in time dilation over a specific height divided by that height, led to the inference that there is a new physics for interstellar propulsion that is waiting to be discovered.

Continue reading “Ground Zero of Interstellar Propulsion” »