From Elon Musk

Advice from Elon Musk, of SpaceX, where I will do a presentation next week.

"Don't tell me what positions you've held, tell me what problems you've solved."

Sounds right to me!

Copenhagen Suborbitals Progress

Update from Copenhagen, where a rocket test tower is being assembled. Headed over in a few months to spend August integrating the space suit with their capsule and its systems, and for a test balloon flight.

"These days the CS crew is working days and nights to prepare the HEAT 2X rocket for its static test. Its been under construction for years, and its liquid propellant engine technology has been tested many times at small scale, and three times at full scale. Now, it finally a complete rocket stage that hits the test stand.
When that happens the whole test structure from the base to the service crane 21 meters up on the gantry will weigh 160 tonnes.
With is 90 sec burn, we can´t even dream of flying passively stable, so this thing only goes up if we can put a computer at the helm and actively control its trajectory.
So what is this in technical terms ? What have wee build, and what can it do if it works ?
Well, to put it shortly, its a very advanced, complex hypersonic flying machine. It lacks only the turbine pump to have all the key components of the big professional space launchers like the Atlas, Delta, Titan, R7, Proton and so on. And that final component is at the testing stage in the experimental department of CS.
--- Peter Madsen"

Two Work Prongs Part 2

Two more! Today's diagram, researched the past week and drawn up today after giving a midterm, colonization of the Caribbean region...and in the PM, installation of both constant-volume elbow joints, the products of many hours of design and construction! Whole weekend, tests scheduled, and some late PM grading. Thanks to Amy W. and Alex K. for their work tonight!

Two Work Prongs!

By day I work on my Atlas of Human Prehistory - today a diagram on the increase of animal tissue consumption in hominin prehistory - and by night, preparing the pressure suit for this summer's test flight up into airliner territory! Tonight, work on the 58 items sewn into each of the two elbow joints; close to done, maybe 10 more hours.

Mistresses of the House of Books

"What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe...'Librarian'...that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word...I would abolish the word entirely and turn back the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly title: Keeper of the Books...the stakes are high. If they fail, the past dies."

-- Miles Harvey, from 'The Island of Lost Maps; A True Story of Cartographic Crime'.

Image shows Medieval librarians at work.

Fully pressurized, and all well in another test! The system works, maintaining pressure and cooling, and now starting to handle our C02 problem. Pressure tests every Sunday for the month of May, and some Saturdays as well, if I can squeeze them in.

Distant Lands Unknown

Monday night I'll do a talk for the Rose City Astronomers, one of America's largest and most active astronomy clubs. I'm honored to have been asked to talk on my subject, "Distant Lands Unknown: Human Biological and Cultural Evolution on Interstellar Voyages". This derives directly from my association with Icarus Interstellar in the last few years.