Ways to save the world... and more Rockets

Saving the World
Any long time blog reader reader has already heard my rant about the only way to really spread an American standard of living to the entire population of the world requires that we find new resources, not just recycle our soda cans. I believe that off planet resources will be a significant part of the solution for things like rare earth metals, platinum group metals, expanding humans into the solar system etc.... The other half of this is a cost effective green energy source. I'm still very skeptical about the ability of space based solar power to solve the energy issues here on earth. I think its much more likely that small modular fisssion reactors and hopefully fusion will solve the energy problems.

A few weeks ago I posted about LPP. since that time I have visited their facility. I went through the lab and got to watch several "fusion" shots. They have multiple different ways to detect neutrons and are clearly generating neutrons via D-D fusion. They have obviously spent a fair bit in building their lab, but none of it was wasted in any way. They have good instrumentation and a well setup shielded room, but the rest of the lab space itself could be generously described as spartan. Its obvious that the people working on the project are passionate about what they are doing and believe they have a pretty good shot at making it all work. As a result I've decided to personally invest some $ in their business. If you are an accredited investor give them a call.

Back to Rockets....
I've started in earnest to work on a plan for winning the Nano Sat contest. There was a big meeting to kickoff the contest last week and in my mind the only significant questions left about the contest will be

• How do they resolve the no government funding rule,
• Who will be the allied organization.

The overall goal of centennial challenges is to encourage innovation from individuals and companies that are not part of the traditional aerospace environment. The goal of the specific Nanosat prize is to try and kick start a low cost nanosat launcher. At some level the two goals are in conflict. There are many small SBIR sized companies that have received government funding to work in this area, and so excluding government contractors from the contest will limit the pool of people that might succeed, at the same time including people receiving significant government funding really violates the spirit of the centennial challenges.
Personally I would like to see the same no government $ rules that were part of every previous centennial challenge.


On the technical and regulatory side of the house many many questions remain.

This weekend I hope to finally fire my stainless printed motor.
Building more real hardware really requires that I get more details of my notional launcher nailed down.