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selenianboondocks.com
Personal blog · selenianboondocks.comscience
selenianboondocks.com is a personal blog at selenianboondocks.com about science. Since 2014, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Selenian Boondocks for its archive of space-settlement ideas, especially its series on using Venus's atmosphere as a resource for floating habitats and in-situ resource use.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /2013/12/venus-isru-condenseables/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-02-02
What Hacker News says?
https://selenianboondocks.com/2020/06/adding-an-earth-sized-...
Comment linking /2020/06/adding-an-earth-sized-magnetic-field-to-mars/
on “Room-Temperature Superconductivity Achieved for the First Time”Submitted Mars surface shielding from radiation as a story · 11 points
HN discussionAt 50 km up only 7 ppm https://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-... Which as far as I can tell isn't terrible if you don't breath it in and if you do the official allowed exposure time is 10 minutes for 5 ppm. I would recommend you wear goggles in addition to breathing equipment, though.
Comment linking /2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-have-to-work-with/
on “Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indicator of possible life?”Submitted Colonies on Mars require more than engineering as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAnd why wouldn't a Mars base be dependent on outside supplies? Mars is still a hostile environment. So one thing that makes Venus attractive is the atmosphere contains everything needed to make breathable air, water, fuel, and plastics[0]. On Mars, water is hard to obtain as one has to extract it from dirt. One of the issues with systems that process granular materials is that they don't work very well. They are ove…
Comment linking /2013/11/venus-isru-benefits-of-atmospheric-feedstocks/
on “Making Human Settlement of Space a Reality”Submitted How Relevant Is New Shepard to Orbital Launch? as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> reentry into an atmosphere in a deep gravity well and rendezvousing with an aerostat. What about rendezvous of a rotating tether with a hypersonic craft? We can make cables now that are strong enough to support a "rotorvator" rotating tether at the lengths required. What about very large, very long, aerostat facilities that are mostly huge electromagnetic cannon for launching robot hypersonic craft? These could be…
Comment linking /2013/12/venus-isru-condenseables/
on “Why We Should Build Cloud Cities on Venus”Submitted Wild Data-Free Speculation on the SpaceX Landing Attempt as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAt 50km where the temperature and pressure are nearly Earthlike you've got about 25 ppm of water. Which is rather dry but not so much that it would be unprecedented on Earth. The concentration of sulfuric acid is around half that so it makes more sense to extract the water directly like so: http://selenianboondocks.com/2013/12/venus-isru-condenseable...
Comment linking /2013/12/venus-isru-condenseables/
on “Electronics robust enough for Venus”Submitted SpaceX Mars Plans: Jon’s First Take as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGonathan Goff wrote bunch on what you have to work with in terms of what you can extract from Venus's atmosphere. While metals would need to be imported if you're going to pick some place in outer space to live its hard to do much better. https://selenianboondocks.com/category/venus/page/2/
Comment linking /category/venus/page/2/
on “Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?”Submitted An Insane, but Interesting Idea: Fleet Launched Orbital Craft as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is not true. Batteries are MUCH cheaper to operate and we have capability to make 500 mile battery electric semis: https://selenianboondocks.com/2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/
Comment linking /2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/
on “Volvo and Daimler bet on hydrogen truck boom this decade”Submitted Modeling Covid-19 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThat’s not true. 500 mile range semi trucks are feasible with careful engineering. That’s long enough where drivers have to stop for regulator rest anyway. See: https://selenianboondocks.com/2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/ More for lithium sulfur.
Comment linking /2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/
on “Volvo and Daimler bet on hydrogen truck boom this decade”Submitted Random Thoughts: First Pass Analysis of a White Dragon/Xeus Lunar Sortie Mission as a story · 1 points
HN discussion"...at 50km, the abundance [of H2SO4] works out to ~14mg/m^3 or about 7ppm. So, between sulfuric acid and water vapor, you have about half as much mass per cubic meter as water vapor in the air near the ALMA observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Bone dry by terrestrial standards, but sopping wet compared to say the Moon." [0] That plus higher-than-earth solar radiation to electrolyze it into H2 and O2 and you'…
Comment linking /2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-have-to-work-with/
on “NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities for Venus Exploration”That makes me remember some interesting things I read that explains how much of the space race went: In the immediate post-WWII era, the US had lots of experience with long-range heavy bombers, and plenty of air bases close-ish to the USSR. So the US focused on delivering nukes via aircraft and neglected rockets at first. The Soviets weren't real into long-range heavy bombers, and didn't have many air bases near the…
Comment linking /2019/05/amistics-of-human-spaceflight-or-how-autonomy-and-miniaturization-can-be-the-enemies-of-human-spaceflight-part-1/
on “Debugging a Live Saturn V”Selenian Boondocks had a great series of posts on living on Venus a while ago. The short of it is that there's lots of useful stuff in the Venusian atmosphere, and it's much easier to harvest things from the medium you're floating in than to mine it. I'm not going to speculate on terraforming since that takes so long but there's plenty of reason to go to Venus. http://selenianboondocks.com/category/venus/
Comment linking /category/venus/
on “AKATSUKI preparing for orbital insertion around Venus”There are advantages to each and solid ground can be pretty useful. But Selenian Boondocks did an excellent series on how use Venus's resources a while back which I really have to share. http://selenianboondocks.com/category/venus/page/2/
Comment linking /category/venus/page/2/
on “Missions could see NASA spacecraft heading to Uranus and Neptune”> https://selenianboondocks.com Wow, this site is really nice, thanks for sharing.
Comment linking /
on “Venus’ Ocean of Air and Clouds”I highly recommend reading the Selenian Boondocks series on Venus ISRU. There's a lot of useful stuff there, it's relatively easy to extract in gas phase processing, but you're still missing a few things. Also, at the right altitude Venus is one of the more pleasant locations in the solar system. Like, wander around outside with goggles and a breathing mask pleasant. But the Venusian surface is death and it really i…
Comment linking /category/venus/
on “Venus’ Ocean of Air and Clouds”Here are a couple of relevant articles that people may find interesting: An overview of a 2008 ULA proposal for mid-air recovery of first stage rocket engines: http://selenianboondocks.com/2008/09/partial-rocket-reuse-us... An article about Hiller's 1965 proposal for using a giant helicopter to recover an entire Saturn V first stage: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1045/1
Comment linking /2008/09/partial-rocket-reuse-using-mid-air-recovery-a-review/
on “Rocket Will Be Recaptured in Midair with a Helicopter”Selenian Boondocks[1] has a great archive of cool ideas (eg [2]) and some of the authors are also founders. [1] https://selenianboondocks.com/ [2] https://selenianboondocks.com/2022/04/geo-orbital-debris-mit...
Comment linking /2022/04/geo-orbital-debris-mitigation-paper-excerpts/
on “Ask HN: I want my next startup to be in space tech. Where do I start?”11,000pounds for a battery implies 170Wh/kg. High end lithium ion cells can do about 300Wh/kg, and even with some overhead for the battery, we’re talking 250Wh/kg.. So… That’s beatable, & we can’t back out the weight directly from the energy of the pack as we know Tesla has been working on improving chemistry and specific energy and pack efficiency. Anyway, the claim by Musk that they can achieve 1.5kWh/mile is reas…
Comment linking /2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/
on “Tesla Semi’s Enormous Battery Might Weigh 11,000 Pounds on Its Own”Selenian Boondocks did a whole series on Venus and what could be usefully extracted from the atmosphere a decade back. https://selenianboondocks.com/category/venus/
Comment linking /category/venus/
on “Why Not Venus?”
