Briefs: Elon Musk interview; Falcon I report; COTS over Progress

Great NPR interview, but methinks Musk needs to learn how to tailor his detail-level towards a more general audience. ;)

Posted by Neil H. at 10/04/08 13:39:27

I also found it interesting from the interview that apparently SpaceX purchases carbon offsets for all their launches. I wonder how much that ends up costing...

Posted by Neil H. at 10/04/08 13:44:11

Re: Neil H.

Certainly purchasing carbon offsets for 10 tons of kerosene for a falcon 1 launch is down in the noise.

I really fear that once space travel takes off, environmentalists will try to get it outlawed.

But Elon is in a good position to argue against these people since his other startups should win him some good will with rational environmentalists.

Nevertheless we should be prepared for an epic fight with the many irrational environmentalists and the "humans are worthless" crowd.

Posted by anonymous at 10/04/08 13:58:12

anonymous - the 2 are not the same. Most enviromentalists do not fall into the "humans are worthless" crowd, and if you make that assumption, given the number of people who consider themselves enviromentalists, we will lose that battle. We are much better off trying to be as green as we can, as quickly as we can.

Posted by Ferris Valyn at 10/04/08 14:14:29

Re: Ferris Valyn

Maybe there are more rational environmentalists in the US. But here in germany, an incredibly large fraction of environmentalists are part of the "humans are worthless"-crowd.

As an example, here is a discussion thread in the web forum of the renowned german IT magazine C'T about the astronautics congress in glasgow:

http://www.heise.de/newstic...

There is not a _single_ positive comment! They all complain about how it is bad for the environment, how it is unfair that only rich people get to go, how humankind should not "pollute" space with its presence and so on.

And these are supposedly intelligent people working in IT. I do not even read these discussions anymore because they make me so angry. I am working my ass off (doing software development for space operations) so that I can leave this planet before the environmentalists drag us all back into the stone age.

I used to consider myself an environmentalist. I am not particularly fond of cars and really hate it when people unnecessarily cut down trees. I live close to work so I can go there by bike. Even when it rains or snows.

But nowadays all I feel for these people is disgust. There is no basis for rational discussion.

Posted by anonymous at 10/04/08 14:44:05

I consider myself a conservationist so as to avoid the enviro-nuts.

I do more to help the environment before 10:00AM than most of these environmentalist freaks will do in a lifetime.

Posted by Mike Puckett at 10/04/08 19:30:27

Maybe it is European environmentalists, or maybe its conservative environmentalist. When I was at Netroots Nation, I met a good number of environmentalists who supported space development. I tend to suspect the later, since there is a big name European who I would consider an environmentalist, who has invested a good chunk of money into space development.

Posted by Ferris Valyn at 10/04/08 21:15:34

Re: Ferris Valyn

You mean richard branson? You might consider him an environmentalist, but most european environmentalists just consider him a decadent rich guy. You see: if you are rich, you must have stolen it from somebody. That is the prevalent attitude of these people.

Consider yourself lucky if you are surrounded by more rational people.

But back on topic: it might be a good idea for spacex to use kerosene from algae. That way they would be better prepared for the inevitable frontal assault by environmentalists.

Even if it is much more expensive than normal kerosene: filling up a falcon 9 requires just about 110t (the rest is LOX). So even if a kg of algae-based kerosene costs extremely much, like 4USD/kg, the price increase over normal kerosene would still be less than 1% of the launch price.

And it would be a great PR value for both spacex and the producer of the algae-based kerosene.

Posted by anonymous at 10/04/08 23:16:52

It's late so I'll decide in the morning what comments to delete here. Please address comments to the topic of the post. Aggressive comments towards other commenters are going to be deleted.

Also, I'm definitely going to start deleting any comment with the word "fascist" or its derivative unless my posting involves Nazi rockets.
- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 10/04/08 23:30:46

"But back on topic: it might be a good idea for spacex to use kerosene from algae. That way they would be better prepared for the inevitable frontal assault by environmentalists."

Any ideas how much kerosene produced in this fashion would cost versus traditionally processed kerosene? If Elon did make his own biofuels, it's possible he could profit from such an endeavour by selling kerosene to other industries. Just some thoughts.

Posted by MGX645 at 10/05/08 00:40:40

Re: MGX645

Since kerosene from algae is being touted as a replacement for fossil kerosene in airliners, it can't be much more expensive. But as I said, even a factor of 4 or 5 would have almost no impact on the launch costs.

I think a more problematic issue is that the Isp might be a bit lower. For an airplane that is not a big deal, but for a rocket it is of course unacceptable.

But if the Isp is similar, it sure would be nice to use it as a rocket propellant. Elon will probably not do it himself, since he has enough on his plate already. But maybe he can buy it from richard branson.

The kwajalein atoll would definitely make a good place for an algae farm.

Posted by anonymous at 10/05/08 03:55:22

Actually America does have its own share of wacko environmentalists, since its home of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, the ultimate in radical environmentalist viewpoints.
http://www.thespacereview.c...

Posted by WiseSpacer at 10/05/08 22:12:46

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