Recent content by Aplu

And this at the time His Serene Grace Donald Trump, Duke of Dorksh*t, slashes universities' budgets and clamps down on free speech, thus on freedom to explore blue-sky research!!! How does this Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, expect the US Space Force to...

Dejavu all over again! I read the article "Jets From Black Holes Cause Stars to Explode, Hubble Reveals" on Gizmodo late last year, and thought, magnetic fields would have something to do with that, particularly as they would become braided or twisted along those relativistic jets and would play...

Way back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my parents invested in a science encyclopedia, and it had an intriguing entry on the possible forms life might take on other planets. It mentioned a silicate biology; I've seen others, primarily in works written or inspired by Arthr C. Clarke, that...

I've been suggesting for quite some time now, that the international maritime salvage legal regime be adapted to earth orbit, since there's been quite a bit of talk about equipment for de-orbiting space debris, or more specifically, space junk - satellites that have passed their use-by date and...

As a private individual who has put some thought into what such a treaty should look like, may I here present (Blare of Trumpets, Drumrolls, and Maestro is ushered onto the stage): http://masalai.free.fr/Outer-Space-Neutralization-Treaty.html FWLIW, I wrote it during the SDI phase of the Third...

I was reading said article and I got up to "who would fund it" and I asked myself, who finds salvage in Earth's seas? The answer is, to use the words of one Twoflower, acquaintance of one failed wizard Rincewind, "In-sewer-ants", which indirectly causes the worst fire Ankh-Morpork has yet...

I think the first thing to do is to establish that there is a legal obligation to remove space junk, basing this on the law of maritime salvage that derelict sea vessels are removed from sea lanes to reduce the risk of harm. Financed of course by insurance the way maritime insurance finances...

The Outer Space Treaty, the Registration convention and the Liability Convention cover in part, this. But they don't go nearly far enough. On the high seas, there is a long-standing understanding that derelict vessels must be removed, for the safety of the other vessels using those sea lanes...

Which, pardon my ($language_of_choice_usually_French) this argument is a load of codswallop and Bovine Scatology. The Soviet Union and the United States agreed in a number of negotiations known collectively as the Arms Control Talks of the 60s, 70s, 80s and so on, that "national technical means...

For what very very little it's worth, not being an astrophysicist let alone a cosmologist, I keep wondering, wouldn't gravitational radiation also occur from a black hole? After all, it is gobbling up stars' worth of matter, even if it's not all at once, and wouldn't that cause gravitational...

It's about time, I'd say. The situation with Russia seems quite dire, and they've got several decades' worth of designing the building good working launch vehicles. I think they should take that step, and start launching their own astronauts. And they should ask Elon Musk about getting licenses...

I think one thing that should be done first is to adapt the already existing and working international maritime salvage legal regime to the problem of space debris. The problem with having the military involved, I'm afraid, is that it makes salvage and removal of space debris into a first-class...

I've been rabbiting on for ages about the need for the adaption of the hugely successful international Maritime Salvage legal regime to Earth Orbit, to keep the process above-board and prevent nasty suspicious minds doing what nasty suspicious minds do best (if you can use that word "best" in...

I would advise that they do it, precisely because of the precedent otherwise set if they do nothing. And do it ASAP, with all the evidence of harm done to more than just their own interests.

I would like to suggest that the United States, the European Union, and the like, turn this little gem I found on the Net a while ago, into a Uniting For Peace resolution: http://masalai.free.fr/Outer-Space-Neutralization-Treaty.html Article 19: The hostile acts and threats of hostile acts...