Aerospace

BLUF A momentum-exchange tether in Earth orbit can deliver a payload to the Moon with [] times less fuel than a rocket. The savings multiply when there’s another tether around the Moon to send a payload back, if only for the fact that we do not have to send fuel (mass) for the return trip. I’m developing a simulation tool called Almagest to run tether calculations. Almagest is the foundational piece of software for this tether network, for everything from planning to web-based simulations, even for the embedded systems that will power the tethers themselves. ...

Δv Δv, or delta-v, is what keeps orbital engineers up at night. Simply, delta-v is the change in velocity that is necessary for anything to happen in space. One of the great promises of a momentum-exchange tether is that the system can transfer tremendous amounts of delta-v to a payload without paying exponential costs to do so.1 However, we can’t evaluate these claims in a vacuum (ha). To really get a sense of the unreasonable effectiveness of tethers, let’s first look at the rocket equation more deeply. ...

It was 1999. In my memory, I’m in Mr. Wilson’s chemistry class when I hear about the cause of the crash, but I’m not sure about that. What I am sure about, though, is the feeling: overwhelm at the sheer magnitude of the blunder. $327.6 million spacecraft was lost in seconds. Three years of development. Ten months traveling through space. All because two teams used different units. Could Rust have prevented this disaster? ...