"Slapdash" Proposal Contest...?

Be your thing collapse contingencies, what you plan to do as the world as it will be (is) in Revelation gets weirder and weirder, or just all things space travel and exploration and colonization, I doubt the general public has had much time to ponder what has undoubtedly already been put to the usual suspects by the military-industrial complex: What would yours look like -- hasty, self-sufficient spore/seed colonies for Homo sapiens sapiens?

Using OTS tech and emerging launch platforms (I'd say Reaction Engines, Limited's Skylon could count), who wants to design an orbital or outer space colony that once completed is sustainable without further imports from Earth's surface?

UPDATE: I am planning out this coming year, coordinating my med and psych appointments, trying to grow veggies, maybe get more work, and continuing my education, but on the side, I'll try to gin up my own slapdash, self-sustaining extraterrestrial colony proposal...

My Bang-On Lotto Fantasy

What would I do if I won the Super Jackpot? I've pondered this question since childhood, when my family would play the California State Lottery. If I answered it today, the first thing to come to mind is simple: retain a wealth management company's services - Transamerica's or Charles Schwab's.  And then go from there...

...Really, though, the two-acre residential/whatever-you-do-with-em lots along the road I live on are surrounded by thousands of acres of leased cattle run that's for sale. I would buy them; then I would begin attracting other investors, and such visionaries as Richard Branson to Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, to my proposal to build a spaceport and a startup payload-and-passenger launch company. Skylon space planes, modified to launch off of rails, would fly Eastward (?) and upward to orbit three times a day on average, and there would be launch pads for Blue Origin and SpaceX, as well as a necessarily healthy-sized airport. A tiny, five by two-kilometer city, as well as a couple of agrarian hamlets, would round out the scene (there's already one reservoir, and another on the way, just over the Eastern range of mountains towards Sacramento Valley and the Interstate 5.) There should be ample room, of course, for factories that refurbish and repair and build, as well as those that refine hydrogen, and power plants... Much of the remainder of the old pasture land could still be let out as cattle run...

Reaction Engines, Ltd. (REL), Skylon Space Plane - due out in the next few years!

The rest of my outrageous fortune would be invested in a charitable trust in my name that gave to my favorite American and global social services and social justice causes, a scholarship fund, and such; I would also do my best to secure a legacy for future generations of those who carry on our last name Way...

Whew. So there you have it - I ruined any chance I have of seeing my fantasy come true!

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As ever, if you'd be so darling, there are gofundme, venmo and paypal links to the right in the sidebar under "William R. Way." Ta-ta, cheerio and all that!

中文

As dawn comes to the little American town of Stonyford, California, I'm hard at work learning the Chinese language, promoting international comity and goodwill (I've had some practice at that as a former Rotary exchange student to Japan), and campaigning for the American space program and the nascent worldwide space industry.

It costs me nothing to do all this, and I'll keep doing it (mostly on Twitter, but also on Facebook, and as many loyal readers know, on Google+ and Blogger... As well as on Ello.co and Tumblr...), but it would be great if I could get some support. I'd like to raise money to aid me in my studies and my mission:

paypal.me/WilliamRobertWay

I appreciate any support for my studies that you can give!

我感谢您对我的学习的支持！

Big Ideas? Why Don't You Make Money, You Bombed-Out Miscreant?

I've said it on facebook, but I'd love to know if Lena Headey could pull off a REAL Joan Crawford experience. If I've communed with Miss Crawford, her overall effect, the essence I glean, is one that is light and airy, yet uncommonly substantial. She's spry, bright, bird-like - economy, efficiency in carriage - but not scattered... Disciplined, rather, and pleasant. Dominating, but unobtrusive until she must obtrude.

What a woman! She's the protagonist in a story any one of us should want to be. I would be head over heels with Amazon or Netflix producing a short movie in which, say, she finds herself with a personally involving "do the right thing problem" - a dear friend, she finds, is blacklisted (not necessarily an anti-commie phenomenon, that), and must surmount not only her friend's usual idiosyncratic hurdles and (her?) darkening defeatism, but must rally all her social clout to beat back petty barbarism in a heroic uphill battle....  Still protean, this pitch....

+++

Tiangong, the Chinese manned space platform, is due to crash back to Earth early next year, and it seems like everyone's said its demise is a matter of course. But how daunting is the goal of launching, in cooperation with all parties, a robot tug - fuel, thrusters, and a remote-controlled drone, one that could accelerate Tiangong into a higher, more stable orbit, and increase its longevity?

The International Space Station is pretty much booked and scheduled through its expected retirement, and wouldn't it be great if the Chinese government in cahoots with, say Bigelow Aerospace, provide more manned orbital platform for India's space program, or Morocco's?

I Don't Like Mondays...

"Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment" - Lao Tzu

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www.twitter.com/williamrway...

(Project Timorous, info about Phobos).

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We ask only to be reassured
about the noises in the cellar -

and the window that should
not have been left open...

- T.S. Eliot

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Albania (photo credit: Paul King)

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Congrats to Vincent Escareno on his successes in the art world...

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Power Lines, October 2017

Random Thursdayness

Twitter hashtags in Chinese for space enthusiasts:

#星际殖民化
(Interplanetary colonization)

#火星
(Mars)

#航天
(Space flight)

#国际空间站
(ISS)

#小行星
(Asteroid)

#天宫
(Heavenly palace)

#卫星
(Satellite)

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Black plums to blackberries; Meyer lemons to Bing cherries... From 19th Street to Roosevelt and back: has any other had my childhood haunts? Dogshit and ghost poop, then crabgrass, juniper, and kingsfoil through the fern-framed North gate... In the front, on the sidewalk, bottlebrush to stick to your shoes blossoms - little and red... (Apologies to Alanis for being another to call her on list-like writing...)

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Please help with housing:

Gofundme.com

Multipurpose Surveillance Contractors ... OF THE GODS???

Approximately 0545 PST to the East: A great burning wheel in the sky, as written of in Ezekiel... Or some paranoid anti-government screed.

Later, it's barely visible, but there... KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES! THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE! I WANT TO BELIEVE!

"I would be, like, you know, if like, Erich von Däniken and Thor Heyerdahl had, so, um, like, bareback butt babies that lived -- nigga wha? Dang, I don't know who's the top and who's the bottom, so get off me! Callate!" Ancient Astronauts Expert Ariana Grande (hella outta shit)

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Begging for assistance with housing... Especially because we're over the County line -- a trip with the Glenn programs that offer assistance; also, much of the ask going to demolition and removal costs...

BREAKING: NASA Feeling Pressure for Rapid-Return Mars Regolith Sample Mission

I've recently touched on the whole Mars thing, as I've always been an advocate for colonization, and it has been brought up by the likes of Elon Musk (SpaceX and Dragon... And of HyperLoop fame.)

Currently, NASA is considering rapid-return sample retrieval missions to Mars (most recent in my twitter profile, after the pinned post)... Keep up the good work, planet Earth!

(I personally recommend a mission architecture that includes the International Space Station as the final destination of any returning regolith samples...)

...APROPOS OF WHICH [UPDATE 1442 PST): My twitter activity is always something to behold, considering I have 1100 followers...

[UPDATE II 0214 30-08-2017]: Okay, word from the horse's mouth is, NASA's druthers are that its next Mars mission will be about the planet's interior... What can Mars enthusiasts kickstart, or pressure the likes of Elon Musk, when it comes to getting quick regolith samples returned for analysis at the ISS or on Earth? (And what is Zuckerberg's deal IN RE private space exploration, tangentially? Is it like the thing with him and philanthropy/charitable giving... Too rich too soon, with the added hurdle of being among other things somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum, and so it's like pulling teeth to get him to get along with the rest of us now...?)

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Still asking for any donations at all... Any bit helps...

PROJECT CODENAME: "Timorous"

Phobos and Deimos...

...surveyed, prepared for exploitation...

...And used to make habitats...

...Solar power generated, ores refined...

...And this could be done for decades, centuries, in gravity lower than that of Mars....

Meanwhile, on the surface of Mars:

Minimal facilities: habitation, refinery, spaceport - many more heavy metals on surface of Mars...?

Whatever in the regolith that makes terraforming problematic is still exploitable and desirable, but maybe Mars is for the birds, and any interplanetary colony ought to focus on taking advantage of Phobos and Deimos...

Dr. Spaceman! DR. SPAAAAACEMAAAAAAAN!!!

I know these things seem routine, but they are not. Today is a great day during which inshallah three souls (who - yes! - are old hands at this kind of mission) will approach the International Space Station in a Soyuz capsule around 1500 [ed. corrected from "1600," brain fart] Beale/Vandenberg. Pray to your god(s) to hold them safe, keep your fingers crossed, whatever. The future of the species is intimately tied to what the men and women of NASA and the space program are doing...

I'm very into various space programs and corporations, and have devoted virtually all of my twitter feed to it: twitter.com/williamrway - be sure to check me out!

...

So my thoughts on colonizing Mars: really, using Phobos and Deimos as raw materials for orbiting habitats (in situ resource usage/utilization; @ Planetary Resources) makes much more sense, and that's where the greatest population of people would be... Sure enough, the Mars regolith is far too toxic to use as a growth medium or to sustain life -- terraforming with carefully aimed fragments Kuiper Belt objects or icy asteroid belt bodies is an idea, but really... Still, the heavy metals in the regolith are still useful, and people will need to be on the surface to extract and refine them, and to use them for sciency, interstellary stuff....

...

https://t.co/V4YqfD9oHV