Richard PournelleThe pledge drive continues. If you haven’t subscribed, consider doing it now. It won’t take long. This site operates on the public radio model. It is free, but it can only continue if enough of you subscribe and renew . If you haven’t subscribed to ChaosManor™, now would be a good time to do that.
Greetings from Chaos Manor DC.
I’ve been going through years of my dad’s website columns for another project. I don’t need any more reminders of how prolific a writer he was but the volume of work is staggering. Jerry was a one of a kind so I won’t try and copy what he did but I’ll try and write about the kinds of things he cared about.
What I write here reflects my own personal opinion, not my company Nanoracks. Keep in mind I am a shareholder and employee of the company and don’t take anything I write as an endorsement or advice to buy stock in any company.
SpaceX’s Starship
I find that most reporting about SpaceX’s Starship as dramatically underreporting the progress and ambition of the program. Some don’t understand it, others are skeptical, and plenty should be threatened by it.
Elon has said that he plans to build at least 20 prototypes of the vehicle. I think this is a sign the program is serious and a sign that the lesson of X Programs has sunk in. If Starship is successful it could reduce the cost of transportation to space by another order of magnitude.
It’s one thing to recover the first stage. The first stage is your slowest and lower altitude stage. The second stage goes to orbit so getting it back it is harder from a fuel and thermal protection standpoint.
Starship isn’t Single Stage to Orbit but it’s in the spirit of what Max Hunter and Jerry talked about. Current capsules like Cygnus and Dragon are like using a speed boat to resupply an outpost. Starship is more like taking a freighter ship to space. You can get a hundred people at a time or a whole bunch of stuff. New Glenn has the same potential as well. With a 7 meter faring that’s bigger than anything out there right now and if it’s fully reusable, it could make a major dent in price.
Sports and Kobe’s Flying Car
Jerry wasn’t much into sports but he was a Lakers fan. Every city has a team. It doesn’t matter how well the other teams do, that team is always loved first.
I now live in Washington DC. The Nationals just won a world series and the Redskins are a tragic mess. Nonetheless, I know of at least two houses and five cars in this town that are decorated head to toe in Redskins.
Los Angeles fans may not be that rabid but during Kobe’s three-peat years, practically every car in town had a Lakers flag flying from the window. My dad had gotten into the Lakers around that time and would watch them with my mother sitting three feet away from a giant television with the sound so loud you could hear it from the driveway.
Kobe Bryant was known for zipping around Los Angeles on a helicopter. He was on his way to a basketball tournament on a day with typical morning coastal fog. They didn’t want to stop in Burbank and take an Uber to Calabasas. Instead a pilot with over 8,000 hours of experience and a passenger in hurry went flying into a mountain.
It’s 2020 and Kobe was one of the few with a flying car. Kobe was a man in a hurry. He was always full throttle and that’s what made him great, but it also was maddening. I wonder how many more rings he could have had if he hadn’t run Shaq out of town.
The helicopter crash was tragic but not surprising. The combination of a high time pilot and a passenger in a hurry is one of the reasons why general aviation is so dangerous. Apparently, Kobe and his wife had a pact to not ride in the chopper at the same time.
I cried my eyed my eyes out re-watching the short film “Dear Basketball” which Kobe Bryant won an academy award. Michael Jordan became one of the nation’s first black billionaires, it makes you wonder what Kobe could have accomplished.
Richard Pournelle Washington D.C.
(Photos Credit: SpaceX Starship from SpaceX Corp. Empty Chair image from ABC7, Los Angeles.)