Armchair engineering

With the successful landing of Chang'e 3, the attention of the world's spaceflight enthusiasts and experts alike once again turns towards the moon. These things spawn up discussions about why we should go to the moon, whether there is economical benefit to it, or about the "new space race", as well as the usual complaining about NASA's lack of productivity or that those damn commies is taking muh spaceflight. And to be honest, when these things happen, I can't help but feel a slight annoyance. Many of these things are based upon false premises, or people who live in the 1960's, or general ignorance of spaceflight that results in xenophobia, anti-americanism, armchair experts (I'm being a little bit of a hypocrite here, I'll admit that) schooling others like it's their job and nationalist slapfights.  Lunar resources Something I've seen so many times lately is that we can use lunar resources to pay off our debt, make fusion attainabl

In previous blogs of mine, I wrote about how I wish NASA would stick with Block 1 instead of continuing development of SLS after EM-1. The reasons for this are simple; development is expensive. If SLS Block 1 was to be NASA's new main launcher, it would save billions in development cost, while at the same time giving a very capable 90 ton launch vehicle that can take whatever we throw at it. However, I changed my mind somewhat. I have given the option of going straight toward Block 2 as our main exploration launcher, instead of sticking with Block 1 or 1A, a chance in my mind. There are many advantages to doing this, and I'll explain myself here. Advantages of Block 2 #1: Block 2 doesn't have to be so expensive to develop. The current path baselined by NASA is expensive, but it doesn't have to be. The current one has the following order of upgrades: 1. Develop new boosters for SLS, either advanced solid or liquid; increases payload to >105 tons.j 2. Dev