UPDATE - My talks are now available on the Videos page. But if you want to just see the most recent ones, click below. Paraterraforming Hebes Chasma Terraforming a whole planet and transferring an ecosystem is a very high technical and scientific wall.  This is a practical intermediate approach that allows ecosystems to be selected, […]

I recently updated my WordPress version, but apparently my original (third party) theme does not work with the latest version of WordPress, or some other such issue. I'm not sure. For now, that means the images on this site are off. But at least the site loads, which is better than before when the whole […]

While it was an honor to get to the top ten finalists out of one hundred entries, I did not get into the top five winners.    I don't think this is the time or place to get into why the judging took place the way it did, simply because I wasn't there for it. […]

I've entered a design in the Mars Colony Prize from The Mars Society.  This competition focuses not only on the technical aspects of setting up a settlement for 1000 people, but the economic model as well.   See the home page for my entry here. I have some renderings there now, and will post the entry itself next […]

UPDATES (12/9/2018): The basic layout of the ship will remain the same. So most of the speculation below is off.  However, some issues, such as where the solar arrays will be stowed, are still open for interpretation. Material Change to Vehicle The main change is that they are shifting from a very high tech composite […]

Here is the short version. There is a lot of concern about Russia and China working on hypersonic weaponry, primarily for anti-ship activities.  China probably has enough money and technology to make this work, and they have set up a series of artificial islands around the South China Sea that contain military bases.  The US […]

I will be speaking at the August 23-26 Mars Society Conference at the Pasadena Convention Center.   This year will be another wonderful, informative convention with a new emphasis on VR projects we are currently getting ready to deliver for use at MDRS and eventually for Mars itself. We also have another university competition to design […]

Occasionally, I bump into people who are both interesting and who are interested some of the stuff I've described in conversation.  So some of these posts are basically for an audience of one in inspiration, but are probably of enough interest that anyone else who likes this site would enjoy them as well.  So anyway, […]

The future fleet of over a thousand satellites seems to be on track.  The two prototype satellites in orbit are functioning very well. The satellites, named TinTin A and B, are able to communicate at high bandwidth with a latency of 25 ms.  That's fast enough for online video games. The satellite division has 4500 […]

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell recently did a TED talk that included a slide showing three designs for the BFR.  The original from 2016 is on the far right of this image, and is the largest and oldest concept.  In 2017, the design was revised to be smaller and far easier to build.  This version can […]