id Software’s upcoming game Rage uses asteroid Apophis as the scene setter for a post apocalyptic world. (id is part of Zenimax now, which also owns Bethesda, who did Fallout, a similar scene but done with nuclear weapons…)
Is this even close to being realistic? No, because of multiple reasons.
You can check out the list of [...]
Archive for the ‘Models’ Category
Asteroid Threats in Context
Posted in Journalism, Models, Motivation, NASA, tagged Apocalypse, Apophis, Asteroid, id Software, Impact, Rage on Friday 2009.09.18 | Leave a Comment »
Economics and the Price of Nature
Posted in Climate, Demotivation, Energy, Global, Journalism, Models, Nature, Science, idiocracy, tagged climate change, Valuation, Nature, Economics, Sagoff, Costanza, Cost on Thursday 2009.09.10 | Leave a Comment »
Assume a glacier that provides summer water for a billion people. What is its value, if it is destroyed by global warming? Since it currently provides services for free, it could be calculated as zero, according to some. Hence, a hypothetical economic activity by those people that gave them one dollar in total while destroying the glacier [...]
First big thing
Posted in Architecture, Models, NASA, RLV:s, Science, Spacecraft, industry, tagged Augustine on Wednesday 2009.06.17 | Leave a Comment »
I think it’s Doug Cooke, presenting NASA things to the panel:
Key exploration objectives slide:
2. To ensure sustainability, development and operations costs must be minimized
Oh my.
Next thing: [these things] “drives you to heavy lift”. Excuse me?
EDIT:
Of all these goals in the slide, Ares I goes directly AGAINST each, except maybe for point 6, separate crew from [...]
Augustine Panel First Hearing
Posted in Architecture, Depot, Models, NASA, RLV:s, Science, Spacecraft, Suborbital on Wednesday 2009.06.17 | Leave a Comment »
Ongoing.
Norm Augustine
You can stream NASA TV with VLC, just paste this link into it:
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
Air France Flight 447
Posted in Models, Science, Transportation, industry, tagged 447, Air France, Airbus, EADS, Turbulence on Wednesday 2009.06.03 | Leave a Comment »
2009-06-01 Air France flight 447 crashed with over 200 passengers on board in the Central Atlantic.
At this early point it seems the failure was initiated by severe turbulence. Wings have been known to snap off because of very strong up- and downdrafts. In this case it might not have been so severe, but a failure [...]
FLEX – Flexible Exploration Architecture
Posted in Architecture, Depot, ISRU, Lunar, Models, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged Architecture, Ares V, ESAS, exploration, FLEX, Griffin, liquid oxygen, NASA, propellant depot, VSE on Friday 2008.11.21 | 17 Comments »
I wrote this architecture proposal, FLEX, a few years ago. It analyzes NASA’s approach that the ESAS study picked and notices how most of the mass in a lunar exploration stack in LEO is actually liquid oxygen. By using a propellant depot, the LOX can be lifted with tankers and any launchers imaginable (I wouldn’t [...]
Pump Power
Posted in Models, Motivation, Science, Uncategorized, tagged pumps, SI on Monday 2008.11.10 | Leave a Comment »
There’s been some discussion of pump power. It is extremely easy to calculate it when using SI units.
A flow front in a tube has a power:
W power, F force, v speed.
The force is
Where A is cross sectional area and P the pressure.
Also,
Where V is volume so its time derivative is the volume flow.
Thus we can [...]
Suborbital is Next to Useless for Point to Point Travel
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, Models, Motivation, Science, Spacecraft, Suborbital, tagged ballistic, narrow surborbital ballistic corridor, point to point, Suborbital, transatlantic on Tuesday 2008.11.04 | 3 Comments »
Spacetransportnews has a link to another in the long list of nontechnical space dreams.
Earth’s radius is about 7000 km. The Van Allen belts start somewhat above 500 km from Earth’s surface. Hence, ballistic arcs have to be either very short or then very shallow. And shallow arcs mean high speed. Close to orbital. New York [...]
