I have finished digesting Chapter 3 of The Deficit Myth, and I still don’t agree with its premise that the national debt is not a big problem. This follows up from a prior article of mine. The Deficit Myth I would argue, yes to a degree. It's all about keeping a countries credibility, when your are a monetary sovereign…www.goodreads.com I believe the debt is a big problem, but this lacks relativism, so let…

Taking a break from my history reading, I wish to once again wear the hat of the armchair macroeconomist. This will dive deeper into thoughts that originate from a Hacker News comment thread. You comments have prompted me to start reading the book The Deficit Myth. I am ... | Hacker News I fully agree that we can, and should, step on the inflation pedal more. If our deficit were fully paid for by printing…news.ycombinator.com

I mentioned this topic on this blog a few times: https://medium.com/@AlanSE/interlocking-crescent-orbital-catchers-97805d0bb0cd https://medium.com/@AlanSE/why-is-everyone-so-consistently-wrong-about-launch-assist-systems-d21288084421 Looking back at it, I might have neglected to properly link my primary posting I left on the subject, which was https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35648.20

I am a fan of space guns as a means of lifting material off a planet and into space. …

This a futurology piece, the study of the future. I will return to my theme here that most predictions are worthless. However, in the case of General Artificial Intelligence, and its corollary Superintelligence, the public discussion has large blindspots in this subject matter, in spite of a handful of very…

In the book Artemis by Andy Weir, people are ferried between the Earth and moon aboard space liners that follow “cycler” trajectories. Weir puts lots of effort into worldbuilding research, and the lunar cycler is one example. …

This post expands on the space-elevator-alternative launch system that uses an orbital electromagnetic track to catch a suborbital payload. A major shortcoming of the idea is the lack of an obvious momentum source for the track to regain the momentum it loses when picking up its payload. For a while…

The mathematically optimal solution for the lowest-fuel trajectory to drive a rocket from one point on a planetary body to another (in vacuum) is a question that is easily settled. …

In 2003, I had just started in an engineering program. The pivotal technical core classes were still several semesters in the future, but I wasted no time enrolling in a single-credit (1/3rd to 1/4th of full credit) intro class, ENG 101. …