I have to admit that I am ambivalent on the subject of this week's blog. I would prefer that state government stay out of promoting private businesses. However, I am a great fan of private space ventures.
I have blogged in the past about India's space program. They are a minor player in the international space race but they have made impressive progress including sending a satellite to Mars. They are also working on a reusable space launch vehicle.
I have blogged in the past about the U.S. shortage of plutonium-238. Plutonium-238 is an radioactive isotope of plutonium which is very useful in the construction of space probes for the exploration of space. It has a half-life of eighty eight years which means that its production of heat will take that long to fall to half its original output.
Several weeks ago, I blogged about how Jeff Bezos has managed to get his New Shepard launch system to take off and then land vertically back on the launch pad. The ability to recover and reuse a rocket is a major breakthrough in human exploration and exploitation of space. The lower cost of launch and the ability to relaunch rapidly will be a boon to the space industry.
I have covered a lot of different propulsion systems in this blog for launching payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. These either carried all their fuel or carried fuel and relied on oxygen in the atmosphere for the first part of the launch. However, there are a lot of other systems for launching space missions in which the actual power for the launch is external to the launch vehicle.
Solving two problems with one action is an attractive prospect. There is an old folk saying that covers this idea. "Kill two birds with one stone." It often save money, time and effort over solving two problems independently. The junk in Earth orbit consisting of debris from launches and dead satellites is building up to the point where it may become more difficult to launch space missions. It is estimated that there are over half a million pieces of debris in Earth orbit.
One of the big challenged confronting the exploitation of space resources such as asteroids is a legal one. The international treaty that space faring powers are operating under prohibits countries, businesses and/or individuals from staking a claim of ownership over a celestial body.
It is expensive to launch a satellite or spacecraft. One of the biggest expenses is the one-time use of the engine and the fuel tanks.
It is expensive to launch a satellite. If there is a problem with a satellite, it would be better to be able to repair it in orbit than to send up another satellite to replace it.
Working in space is difficult and complicated.
