Since there's no particular order to what to write about, there's no particular reason to say odds and ends rather than ends and odds.
About Liberty's Torch blog
The first one is a bit of administrative trivia. Recently, and I'm thinking two weeks ago, I went to Liberty's Torch, the domain of Francis W. Porretto, and my browser couldn't connect. I tried a couple of times during the day, then a couple of days, and it couldn't connect. Then it acted normally. For a day or maybe two. I was going to post a comment over there asking what's up but figured there wasn't much of a chance there'd be something going on that they didn't know about ("they" = Francis and whoever else helps run the place). Then it disappeared again.
This Wednesday, I did a search (Duck Duck Go is the search engine I use most) to see if there was any news in the last week about Liberty's Torch. That was when I found that Francis and all seem to have moved to an old Blogger (Google) site, Bastion of Liberty. I've changed the link to the blog in the right sidebar. It looks rather low key or low interest; there are posts on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (as in yesterday: 8/8).
Yes, Francis is a writer and advertises his various books, none of which I've ever bought, but he's a good guy, and a good writer. He's also a fellow technogeek, although I'm all but positive he's in completely different fields than mine. I don't recall a single time he wrote on the tech topics I regularly do, but I read him regularly. Unless it's just not an interesting subject to me.
More About "Nukes on the Moon!"
The day after my post talking about the news on building a nuclear reactor power source on the moon, in which my main point was that nuclear power for planetary exploration has been in the "to do list" for a long, long time, the daily email from Payload added to the story with something I didn't have a link to in my own blog but fit the idea perfectly. In "NASA Wants To Hit the Accelerator On Lunar Atomics" they talk about a current program that's under half the size of what NASA is asking for now.
NASA was pursuing a plan to put nuclear power on the Moon long before Trump took office. In 2022, NASA hired contractors Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, and IX—a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-energy—to design 40kw reactors for the Moon. A plan to solicit final designs was expected this year, but now energy will turn toward the new reactor concept.
“We’re really glad to see that this directive came out,” Lockheed VP Kevin Au, who leads the company’s lunar business, told Payload. “The United States has been investing in and working on nuclear space capabilities since the 50s, [but] we haven’t flown anything since 1965.”
Note that this 2022 contract was for a 40kW reactor while the one being talked about now is 100 kW. That means more than twice as much heat being created in the reactor and heat is the big engineering problem. Most of the nuclear power here on the surface is water cooled - built on rivers, or with access to the oceans or other large water sources. How do we cool computers? Fans, moving air, but sometimes circulating refrigerants (like Freon). The temperature exchange with the air, coolant or whatever is critical. I wonder if compressed air could create a good cooling medium on the moon?
Lockheed VP Kevin Au, who leads the company’s lunar business, has a good observation:
“We’re really glad to see that this directive came out,” ... Au told Payload. “The United States has been investing in and working on nuclear space capabilities since the 50s, [but] we haven’t flown anything since 1965.”
Remember the Firefly Aerospace IPO?
It went well for them. Shares in Firefly (FLY) began trading at $70 on the NASDAQ stock exchange midday Thursday, jumping from their offering price of $45, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company sold more than 19 million shares in the listing, raising $868 million.
Edit 8/10/25 at 8:00 PM: Earlier in the day an anonymous commenter posted a link to Francis Porretto's blog on Cold Fury. After checking it, I decided to correct the new link in the right side bar to the Cold Fury site.
I'm a longtime, though sporadic, reader of Fran. I note that on Tuesday, he posted, "However, any new work I produce will appear first at Cold Fury...". Cool, and all, except that I've sampled there, but never even bookmarked it. I don't see the fit. I also note that, this morning, Cold Fury is returning a blank page - no HTML source at all. Say what you will about Google, but Blogger will at least always serve up something. I suppose that's part of the appeal. I do have some experience in maintaining a web presence, and it's work, no doubt about it.
ReplyDeleteFran is one of those writers whom I think I should check regularly, but his output has been so voluminous that it's difficult to keep up - I simply am not a fast reader. Reminds me of Sarah Hoyt. But, as some of my go-to sites are moving in the direction of less writing, and more embedding of TikTok and pointing to Xitter (without supplying any description letting me know whether I'm interested in clicking over there), it is time to revisit my list. I was hoping that I could find an author-specific link to Fran, at Cold Fury, but clearly that's not happening, at least not right this moment.
- jed
I guess my skimming or visiting missed the one about moving to Cold Fury. He seems to be building a little business of his own - Western Rifle Shooters Association moved over to Cold Fury a while back and is still there. There's someone else that did the same thing that I read on occasion or talked about. Can't think of the name right now.
DeleteFran seemed to imply in the first 2025 post at Bastion of Liberty that he didn't intend to keep on blogging, when he said, "This blogging schtick is a hard habit to break!" I expect that he's going to taper off as he gets that "I've written on this before" feeling more and more.
For the nukes on the moon, I suspect the lunar environment is so completely different from earth that current earth centric nuclear designs will be impractical on the moon. So we wil send some KRUSTY's as an interim solution until the lunar engineers have more experience with the ambient temperatures and how materials act on the moon, the miniscule gravity, the lack of atmosphere and lack of water. Then they will build massive powerplants that make our current best technologies look primitive. And it would happen quickly due to need.
ReplyDeleteExcept for the much weaker gravity, the other differences can be tested out in a thermal vacuum chamber. Those are more expensive than just thermal, but they're still around in lots of places. A large number of Krustys (-ies?) to get visitors going seems like a reasonable idea. Plus, they can always be used for something - backup or something unexpectedly fails, that kind of use.
DeleteWhat do you think the watermelons will do if this starts to look likely?
DeleteDo you think they will complain at all about China?
I think you know the answer to that...
This link seems to work:
ReplyDeletehttps://coldfury.com/wp/author/francisporretto/
Interesting that the Blogspot link I posted doesn't include those. Looks like some more editing to do.
DeleteIt's easier to update this way, temporarily.
Deletehttps://coldfury.com/wp/author/francisporretto/
Nukes on the Moon? Sure. Let's get a coherent plan, though.
ReplyDelete