A colony on Mars is no longer just a silly fantasy. It is now in the range of maybe actually possible.
SpaceX announced the outline of their plans for shuttle runs to Mars in order to populate a self-sustaining colony.
Drawing of launch pad ready for launch. Credit: Flickr, SpaceX has placed this in public domain.
My summary of the concept
Here is my simple summary:
A booster rocket, standing 254 feet tall, will have 42 Raptor engines. The Falcon 9 in testing now is powered by 9 Merlin engines. The Raptor engine is three times as powerful as the Merlin. The booster will have thrust twice that of a Saturn V with ability to lift 300 tons into low-earth orbit.
In terms of space flight, that photo shows the old-style rocket science. Image of JCSAT-16 is in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX at Flickr.
There is a reason the phrase “rocket science” is the standard reference point for something that is overwhelmingly difficult and deadly dangerous.
First article describes SpaceX’s loss of a rocket and payload. Second article describes the huge financial reward for that huge risk.
That photo shows the brand new stage of rocket science, successfully recovering the first stage booster. Image of Falcon 9 from JCSAT-16 launch is in public domain, courtesy of SpaceX at Flickr.
Imagine one of those providing enough bandwidth to allow merchant ships to sail the world without any crew. Imagine scaling that down to show-box size to allow a company to sell daily images of every spot on the earth. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Technology is advancing at mind-boggling speed:
New rules for small drones allow commercial use of drones
Drones as bold security guards
Cubesats that can count all the cars in all the parking lots of a retailer
Research underway for merchant ships that can travel the world without any crew members on board
8/30 – Wall Street Journal – Business-Drone Rules to Take Effect – New rules governing business use of drones up to 55 pounds go into effect this day. Previously, rules required all drone operators to merely register with the feds. New rules allow business use of drones, by licensed pilots, within line-of-site, during the day, with drones under 55 pounds.
Expect more rules to address flight beyond line-of-site, and how to operate when people are underneath the drone.
Recovery of Falcon 9 after CRS-9 launch. Photo courtesy of SpaceX via Flickr in public domain.
Yet more jaw dropping news from the open frontier of private space exploration.
SpaceX describes their efforts to put a colony on Mars.
Their fifth successful recovery of the first stage booster, a Falcon 9, tells me they are making progress on their overarching plan. Oh, and making the effort pay for itself along the way.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they closed their doors.
The massive volumes of change you see surrounding you everywhere you look isn’t going to stop. In fact the pace of change is going to increase.
Each of us have a choice. Either figure out how to cope with and embrace the change or ignore it.
The cost of ignoring massive change is that you and your organization will get left behind. That doesn’t just mean you will be a laggard as you continue doing next month what you did last year. Instead that means your organization will radically shrink and before you know it, will disappear.
The downsides are serious. There is an upside and it is exciting.
Four articles I’ve seen lately focus the mind. While these articles are written in either the accounting or church context, they also fully apply in the church and accounting context. They also apply to every individual and organization.
This article will be posted across all my blogs because it applies to all of them.
The odds are really high that tax preparation will be completely automated in the next two decades. Estimated odds are almost as high that both accounting and auditing will be fully automated.
Consider my business and my core tasks of auditing charities. There is a real possibility those types of audits could be heavily automated in 10 or 15 or 20 years. I am not old enough to bank on retiring before that massive change starts eating away the entire audit profession.
Automation will take over an increasing number of tasks. The world of tax, accounting, and audit will be affected. Mr. Sheridan explains the shelf life of education and experience we have is shrinking.
As the Maryland Association of CPAs routinely points out our learning needs to be greater than the rate of change; L>C is their formula.
Here are three more stories in just the last week proving yet again the foolish of Malthusian thinking. The experts in a field have no clue, absolutely no clue, of the total amount of any resource available on this amazing planet. Whether it is water, crude oil, or helium, the experts don’t know what previously unknown field they will find next.
The new field, called Liza, likely has somewhere between 800M and 1.4B oil-equivalent barrels. Yeah, that’s somewhere in the range of one and a half billion barrels of oil. That nobody knew about. Until now.
To put this in context, there have been only five brand-new discoveries in the last four years with recoverable amounts of over 500M barrels. Only five? ONLY? To my little brain that is astounding.
You can carry around hundreds upon hundreds of books inside that little device. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
I have long been amused by the way class-action lawsuits are settled. The members of the group receive very little and often it is a credit for your next purchase of the same item. At the same time, the attorneys involved get a huge payout.
One settlement I recall gave members of the class a coupon worth a few hundred dollars off their next purchase of a brand-new automobile. Since very few people will run right out and buy a new car that means very few of those coupons will ever be redeemed. In the meantime the attorney lucky enough to claim credit for the lawsuit walks off with millions upon millions of dollars.
Whether a boom time or slow down, all the oil activity has disrupted life in North Dakota. Photo by James Ulvog.
Two reports on the issue of whether transitory housing will remain in Williston: one court case closed with one remaining; city allows another year and a half to remove the camps.
Young guys who moved to North Dakota and decided to stay have brought their wifes to the area and guess what? Lots of them are having babies. By the way, our son is in that category, our daughter-in-law is someone who moved as well, and our grandson is one of the following statistics.
Finally, an indicator why people in North Dakota don’t like all the changes. I get it. Really, I get it: there are ugly sides to economic expansion.
6/8 – Amy Dalrymple at Oil Patch Dispatch – Williston Wins One Crew Camp Court Case, Another Looms – There are two cases and process against the city’s plan to shut down all crew camps. The case in state court has ended with the judge refusing to issue an injunction.
Amazing news on the open frontier of private space exploration:
SpaceX recovers another two boosters at sea.
What to do with all those warehoused ICBM boosters?
Another investment in mining asteroids.
5/6 – NPR – SpaceX Lands Falcon 9 on a Barge at Sea (Again)– This is the second successful recovery of a Falcon 9 booster at sea. Another successful recovery was on land. After several failed efforts to recover on a floating barge, SpaceX has two successes in a row. Very cool.
4/14 – Behind the Black – The history of Falcon 9’s recoverable first stage – Check out this cool video showing the less-than-four-year history of going from the first tiny test by Grasshopper to successful recovery of the Falcon 9 booster at sea:
Amazing things happening in the use of drones. Maybe only major powers have the capacity to conduct extensive drone operations. Think about bee-sized drones and drone swarms.
First, a small tangent.4/13 – Wall Street Journal – What Children Learned From the Shared Family Phone – What I learned from the article is that almost half of households in the US do not have a landline.
That is up from around 27% back five years. For the 25-34 age group, only around one-third have a landline.
4/22 – Press Enterprise – Inland agencies deputize drones for crime, rescues – Four specific city police agencies in the Inland Empire (the area in San Bernardino county that is east of LA) are planning to start using drones in operations.
A few fun things I’ve seen lately. Amazon announces it will soon open its 9th fulfillment center in California. Astounding video quality on a GIF presentation is close to photo quality.
3/15 – Behind the Black – Check out this animated video. Consider the question raised by Behind the Black – with this quality of animation, how soon until human actors aren’t needed because an apparently live action movie can be 100% animated?
[youtube=https://youtu.be/nPrWo5pEvyk]
As I mention the following two articles, ponder that I ordered something from Amazon early in the evening yesterday. It shipped this morning and will be delivered today.
Update: I ordered the items after 5 and they were delivered by 10 the next morning. Evening order, next morning delivery. Very cool.
4/7 – Wall Street Journal – SpaceX Lands Portion of Spent Rocket on Floating Platform – SpaceX nailed the landing of its booster on a floating platform. They have had four failures to recover at sea and one successful recovery back on land (which required a lot of extra fuel). Was just a matter of time until they nailed it.
I do hope it will now become the norm to recover the lift stage.
Behind the Black provided the best link to video I’ve seen yet:
[youtube=https://youtu.be/sYmQQn_ZSys]
Oh, this launch also successfully delivered a load of cargo to the ISS. Delivery of cargo to space by private companies is old news. Still extremely cool.
Ponder the implications for how you look at the world:
When you have developed a perspective or opinion or conclusion on some issue after having thought through all the relevant factors, there is a serious danger that reaching such a conclusion leaves you thinking that anyone with a different perspective is incorrect.
If your carefully drawn, considered opinion is reasonable, then the inference is that other opinions aren’t reasonable.
A few fun things I’ve seen lately. Amazon opens its 7th fulfillment center in California. Animated short that is close to photo quality. GIF showing how applications have displace everything on a circa 1990 work station.
3/15 – Behind the Black– Check out this animated video. Consider the question raised by Behind the Black – with this quality of animation, how soon until human actors aren’t needed because an apparently live action movie can be 100% animated?
