12 Comments

Not only space travel, but it seems like robotics as well. The right should invest heavily in robotic armies for the defense of our people if the powers that be refuse to do so. I'm not joking.

Expand full comment

I'm proud of you brother for how well you have been navigating conversations on X and representing Christ. You have taught me how to use more nuance and tact on complex issues.

Expand full comment

Welcome to the influence of Confusius Institutes (CCP) and others on campus. Weak people live in envy and oppression models of thinking. It’s what revolutions are made of.

Expand full comment

And why is it always necessary to state “regardless of how you feel about so and so…” every time? Have we become so childish that this is a requirement? I doubt one reader knows any of these people intimately. So…wtf?!

Expand full comment

No, an obsession with “space travel” is neither Right nor Left. It’s Modernist.

Expand full comment

The response to this magnificent achievement from so many “progressives” should come as absolutely no surprise, as “progressives” are not just antihuman, anti-freedom, they are also anti-human progress. Everything about their worldview is sick, twisted and distorted, and it must be rejected by all decent people of Goodwill.

Expand full comment

“ most of us assumed that manned missions to the red planet were well within reach.”. Most of us were wrong. Manned missions were always a dumb idea. Too long and too much radiation

Expand full comment

Too long -- if you rely on chemical rockets. With atomic propulsion the trip is much shorter.

Expand full comment

That would be great if someone could get it done. How long would it take to get to Mars with atomic propulsion? Re-using the atomic power supply would be a benefit. You'd need plenty of juice to run a colony or do any kind of terraforming - something else the romanticists overlook.

Expand full comment

If you get up to 25,000 miles per hour (Earth's escape velocity) and then have enough continuous boost to offset the gravity of the sun, you can get to Mars in about two months --without reaching any outrageous speed with respect to the solar system.

Whether this can be done practically would require more math than I'm up for this morning. If we use our atomic plant to simply heat our reaction mass to the same temperatures we use for conventional rockets, we get three times the delta V, since molecular hydrogen has 1/9 the weight of a water molecule, so you get three times the speed at the same temperature.

Since we are looking at small thrusters running for a long time, it might pay to invest in some tungsten to up the peak temperature. What this buys you is unknown to me. I don't know what materials they are using for conventional engines or how much the hydrogen would react with the white hot tungsten over that period of time.

To get even higher specific impulse, there is the ion drive option...

Expand full comment

I looked up atomic propulsion and the AI internet machine told me 45 days. So 45-60 days, and they would still have to be very careful about shielding the humans from radiation. That’s a long time in space.

Expand full comment

By the way, to offset the gravity of the sun requires .0006g of thrust.

The thrust needed to maintain 25,000 mph while the earth is in range would be more. But this would only be for a few days. By the time you reach the distance to the moon, earth's acceleration drops down to .000256g.

Expand full comment