Ozan Bellik's Blog

 I've been trying to avoid rant posts, but this speech from a widely respected source (former NASA Admin Michael Griffin) is so full of bad takes that I've given in to the urge to address it. --- Griffin starts by saying we're further from returning to the Moon now than in 2007. Let that sink in for a moment. In 2007, we had two new LVs to develop, a crew vehicle to develop and a lander to develop, and nowhere near enough budget to do all that at projected spending levels. And even the most optimistic plans put a landing 13 years out, with an OSTP review just 2 years later finding it would likely take a decade longer than planned. In 2023, SLS and Orion have flown, we have multiple landers contracted and under development, with a crewed landing notionally 2-3 years / realistically probably 5-6 years from now. In other words, not only are we much closer than we were then, we haven't even really lost the time in between! We're still tracking towards a late 20s return...

 A lot of people brought up specific advantages of the ISS and limitations of Mir in this response to this tweet  by @deltaIV9250  questioning ISS architectural choices and wondering about a more Mir-like station. But a modular space station does not have to look like Mir or have the same limitations as Mir. Imagine for a second a 8.4m long x 4.2m diameter module (~Destiny-sized). Its barrel section will have a surface area of ~110m2. Say it has a 100m2[1] solar panel wrapped most of the way around it and deployed in orbit off to one side. At a modest 15% panel efficiency it'd have a peak power of >20kW, and even w/ single-axis tracking[2] and factoring in degradation over time and losses from battery roundtrip, it could average >5kW. [1]This is slightly less than the solar panel area of a single Starlink mini v2 satellite, btw -- it's not going to be super heavy -- less than half a ton. [2]One option is vehicle roll w/ panels showing slim profile in flight directio...