Open Space
David Ariosto . 2026 . BeavLib 338.4791 ARI . 372p w/ Notes and Index
p011 Ch01 Launch Day
p011 . Dr. Kam Ghaffarian . Steve Altemus . Intuitive Machines
p011 . Odysseus lunar lander "Odie"
- p015 . Kam: "Imagine we have weekly trips to Mars"
No, I can't imagine. The synodic period between Earth-Mars conjunctions is around 780 days, more than 110 weeks. I can imagine weekly (perhaps daily) launches to an Earth-orbiting "Mars training academy", where potential Mars travelers spend months training in 0.38 gee centrifugal gravity. The top performing graduates are selected for the far more expensive trip to Mars (also in a 0.38 gee centrifugal gravity Aldrin Cycler spacecraft), up to 110 weeks later.
- Hundreds of different skills will be required on Mars; some skills can be learned quickly, other skills may require 100 or more weeks to train. Early washouts from the 100 week training courses may still do well on a shorter training course for a simpler skill.
p017 Ch02 Building Landers
p017 . 2750K-melting "Columbium" actually Niobium since 1950 says IUPAC
I used John Clarke's sputter magnetron deposition system to make Josephson junctions
p019 . vague "hydrogen and CO₂ reaction" Sabatier methanization reaction
p22 Ch03 The View from China
p022 . China Aerospace CAS Moon map by Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2
- p022 . proposed Chinese lunar station network 100km radius from lander engine blast
p023 . "LaGrande Points" (sic)
p023 . Long Lehao chief designer of Long March 3A
- 2600 kg to GTO, 1600 kg to Heliocentric HCO, 27 launches 1994-2018
p025 . East Asian Observatory 1987-2015 UK Canada Netherlands funding, 2015-present PRC Japan Korea Taiwan funding
p026 . 2013 Chang'e 3 lander
p026 . and 5cm Ultraviolet Telescope 245-340 nm
p028 Ch04 Problem in Houston
p029 . Lingkong Tianxing Mach 4 SST
p030 . Vikram Lander 2023
p033 Ch05 A New Silk Road
p037 . BeiDou Chinese tracking stations
p037 . Zijin Mining
p037 . Argentina Neo Lithium
- p037 . Rare earth extraction polluting Mongolia
p038 . Bayan Obo mines
- p039 . Venus surface atmosphere density 65 kg/m³ (Earth 1.2 kg/m³) "you don't need a parachute" ... b.s.
Venera 7 500kg, 1 meter diameter 22 m/s, 50 mph
p040 . libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei "no longer work with communist systems", but still reliant on Chinese income
p042 Ch06 The Path to Interplanetary Space
- p043 . Argentina debt and financial crisis, China makes loans and builds satellite ground station
p045 . China inter-satellite links with free-space optics
- difficult to intercept
p047 Ch07 Artemis
p048 . end of 2025, new lunar lander contracts to compete with lagging(??) spaceX Reuters
p050 . Atlas V ValveTech valve failure, launch scrub and rollback
p052 Ch08 Selling the Moon
p052 . RedWire 3D printing
3D printing in space making spares as needed rather than stocking or shipping them (slow and costly with rockets)
- p055 . Trump says space is not a global commons, but a "legally and physically unique domain of human activity"
- like the old Cold War, but without agreed standard guides
p057 Ch09 Echos of China's Rise
p058 . Zheng 1371-1435 explorer -> Ming treasure voyages
p064 . Moon is Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands , Mars is [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal | Huangyan Island or Scarborough Shoal
p064 . Hong Kong Aerospace Technology Group (many name changes)???
p065 . Tiangong Kaiwu plan
- p066 . 2021 newspaper report of special economic zone between Earth and Moon, $10T by 2050
p067 Ch10 First Taikonaut
p069 . 1996 Long March 3B veers sideways, destroys Intelsat 708 and Mayelin village
p074 Ch11 Science in the Haunted 1950s
p074 . tensor calculus Gregorio Ricci and student Tullio Levi-Civita
p076 . before Trump, Chinese PhDs left permanently to US, now they stay
p082 Ch12 The Pentagon's New Ride
p086 Ch13 Moon Rush
p092 Ch14 Red Star and Clover
p096 Ch15 Peregrine
p096 . Astrobiotic . WP . Perigrine lunar lander . CEO John Thornton
p098 . Lunar Landers 24 successes, 29 failures
- p098 . Author says: One of the most difficult landing zones in solar system
- Mars is 10 successes and 11 failures
p099 Ch16 Final Descent - Columbia
- p102 .Loss of Challenger 1986 January, Loss of Columbia 28th flight 2003 January, Shuttle cancellation 2011
p107 Ch17 Moon Mountain
p110 Ch18 The Making of China's Commercial Rockets
p114 Ch19 Imagining Tomorrow
p122 Ch20 The Night Before Blastoff
p124 . Stephen Altemus I.M. cofounder
- graduated Embry Riddle 1987, 6 years after STS-1 April 1981 when I visited ERAU
p127 . I.M. Propulsion Lead Rob Morehead p126 network problems, "outside actors
p129 Ch21 Launch from the East
p129 . Orienspace 2024 Jan 11 launch Gravity-1 400 tonnes solid fuel 6500 kg to LEO, 4200 kg to 500km SSO
p129 . Yizhuang 20 launch companies
p130 . SpaceX Starshield Golden Dome
p134 Ch22 Countdown
- p137 . IM-1 Odie star tracker rejected good data because software rejected acceptable errors
p139 Ch23 Lunar Payload
p141 . Eric Schmidt Relativity Space
p142 . China SSPS article 2025 paywall [[ https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/another-three-gorges-dam-above-earth-china-plans-to-build-an-enormous-1-kilometer-wide-solar-power-
station-in-space-that-will-beam-continuous-energy-back-to-earth/articleshow/117309277.cms?from=mdr | indiatimes ]]
- p142 . "new designs and polymeric matricies" bafflegab
p143 . Dennis Wingo Skycorp web server for ISS
p143 . "Skynet-like satellite constellation" ... "more than 600 million cameras", no 3 satellites Tianwang two active
p144 . Nonsense: "lunar dust and drastic temperature fluctuations can cause molecules within the electronics to radically (and destructively) expand and contract"
p145 Ch24 Huntsville
p145 . Ernst Stuhlinger 1913-2008 Paperclip -> US Army -> NASA, ion thrusters
p148 . Altair 8080 "lacked a keyboard"
- customers could purchase a serial interface board and a teletype, but many tasks did not require user interaction
p149 . "something called C programming"
- author seems computer illiterate, in the same way most drivers can't change a spark plug
p151 Ch25 En Route to the Moon
p152 . Apollo 11 Bruce McCandless capcom, role not described in book
p152 . far side of Moon "extreme blackness" ... no, sunlight half the month, but no 0.15W/m² (110ppm) Earthlight
- full sunshine can still launch lunar dust onto optics.
- A lunar surface landing is 6 km/s high impulse from LEO, while a zero gee observatory at Earth-Sun L2 is less than 5km/s gradual low impulse from LEO.
- Telescopes on the lunar far side is silly
- p153 . Odie misfired thrusters wasted 21% of total helium supply
- p154 . Odie LOS after engine burn ... expected, but author presents it as exciting anomaly
p156 Ch26 Lunar Descent
p164 Ch27 The SpaceX Effect
- p164 . Falcon 9 "three other launch sites" ... no, 3 total, 2 other launch sites
p165 . Lee Rosen and Musk discuss landing first stages at Vandenburg launch in 2010. "parachutes don't work on Mars"
Propulsive Delta V from LEO to Lunar surface 6 km/s high gee landing
- Propulsive Delta V from LEO to Mars surface 11 km/s
Propulsive Delta V from LEO to Phobos 7 to 7.5 km/s
- microgee (12m/s) landing, so practically all the Delta V can be high ISP ion engine
- I can imagine TWO Phobos landers tethered with a 30 km electrical/data cable for almost continuous power. Perhaps the cable itself can assist with the 11 m/s Mars landing.
p166 . Richard Boltz
p166 . Frank Tybor
p166 . Relativity Space COO -> Distinguished Engineer Zach Dunn
p166 . Ricky Lim
p167 . Supersonic retropropulsion for RTLS Return To Launch Site
- p169 . first SpaceX RTLS "work with a company that was very drunk"
- p171 . "itinerant effect"??
- p171 . X-raying a satellite from 10 km distance, for example imaging a hidden niclear weapon
p172 Ch28 The Art of War
p173 . Kongming lantern flame-heated air paper balloon
- p175 . challenging when technology moves faster than human processes and policies
p176 . Russian Oreshnik missile Mach 10
- p177 . measuring gravitational fields from small objects?
p179 Ch29 Turning Point
p179 . US Space Force general B. Chance Saltzman
p182 Ch30 Starfish Prime
p182 . 1962 1.4 MT Starfish Prime
- p182 . 6+ satellites failed including Telstar 1, 1/3 of satellites in orbit
- p183 . "widespread GPS outage" ... implying no damage to competitor systems?
p185 Ch31 Space Junk
p185 . ESA Zero Debris Charter
p187 . 2009 collision between Iridium 33 and 1995 derelict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_2251
p189 . Japanese Astroscale space debris removal startup
- p193 . FAA told SpaceX to review itself after March 2025 Starship explosioj
p197 Ch32 Italian Entrepreneurs in the Red Desert
p198 . Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, SE Utah
p200 . Feeding One Million People on Mars paywall
p202 Ch33 Governing Mars
p204 . Space Law and Policy Solutions founder Michael J. Listner
p208 Ch34 Where is Everybody?
p210 . Laser Interferometer Space Antenna LISA planned for 2035
p213 Ch35 The Search
p217 Ch36 Defending Earth
p221 Ch37 Impact
- p220 Andy Cheng Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
- p223 . 6 km/s impact velocity
- p224 . Dimorphos period from 11.92 to 11.37 hours, eccentricity from 0 to 0.02, and changed shape of asteroid
p229 Ch38 Alpha Centauri Awaits
p236 Ch39 Interstellar Voyagers
p240 Ch40 Party in the Valley
p249 Ch41 Nuclear Rockets
p255 Ch42 Harnessing the Power of the Sun
p262 Ch43 Ask a Fish About Water -- A Visit to CERN
p266 Ch44 The Antimatter Factory
p271 Ch45 Warp Drives
p277 Ch46 Casimir
p287 Ch47 Adaptation
p290 Epilogue