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We're going to need a lot of solar panels
The team at Terraform Industries is now 11 people working towards a near term future where atmospheric CO2, much of it centuries of unpriced industrial waste, becomes the preferred default source o…
Casey Handmer
Space, Travel, Technology, 3D Printing, Energy, Writing
- Popular posts
- 17
- Total points
- 3,817
- HN comments
- 3,758
- Rank
- #341 personal
Visit caseyhandmer.wordpress.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Oct 2019 – Jun 2025
Science & Space 16Infrastructure & DevOps 5Tech Industry & Business 5Society, Policy & Culture 3Systems & Performance 1Networking & Internet 1
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The SpaceX Starship is a big deal
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. SpaceX has been working on some variant of the Big Falcon Rocket for almost a decade, with a publicly an…
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Starship is still not understood
Another entry into my blog series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. I discussed this post on The Space Show on November 5 2021. It has been exactly two years since my initial posts …
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We Can Terraform the American West
Why is there almost nothing on the left hand side of the USA? Water scarcity! We’re missing 300 million Americans. We’re missing 30 global cities west of 100 degrees longitude. We shoul…
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Domes are overrated
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. It is an unwritten rule of space journalism that any article about Moon or Mars bases needs to have a conceptual drawing of habitatio…
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So you want to build a carbon capture company
Would you like to win one hundred million bucks from Elon Musk? Carbon capture (CC) is all the rage these days, with dozens of companies springing up to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and help stab…
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Science upside for Starship
This blog is a direct follow up of Starship Is Still Not Understood, and is part of the series on popular misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. I think it is relatively s…
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Reading Ancient Scrolls
This is an elaboration of my submission for the letter detection prize as part of the Vesuvius Challenge in June. It gets technical and esoteric but the first few paragraphs are of general interest…
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Powering the Lunar Base
NASA’s selection of SpaceX’s Starship within the Human Lander System (HLS) program was both surprising and exciting for space nerds all over. Previously I have written about how Starshi…
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NASA Is Worth Saving
Casey Handmer June 2025 Download a printable PDF. NASA was founded in 1958 in response to Sputnik and the emerging necessity of a robust, government supported space exploration and technology devel…
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“The Martian” + Starship
“The Martian” by Andy Weir, and its film adaptation directed by Ridley Scott, remain some of my all time favorite science fiction works. Way back in the day I wrote a technical commenta…
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The future of electricity is local
I frequently read about proposals for new solar power developments where the resulting power is moved great distances to less sunny places, such as northern Europe from the Sahara, the US North Eas…
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Starlink is a big deal
Part of my series countering misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. Starlink, SpaceX’s plan to serve internet via tens of thousands of satellites, is a staple in the…
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Don’t stage off Starship
Part of my series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. The SpaceX Starship is a game changer for space exploration. It is intended to be far bigger, cheaper, versatile, and available t…
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A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
[Edit May 2024: This concept was republished in Asterisk Magazine.] Just a couple of hours drive east of Los Angeles lies the Imperial Valley, home to Palm Springs, some of the most productive agri…
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Supersonic Electric Flight
This post is inspired by the recent press release about the Rolls Royce Accel, an experimental electric aircraft being built to attempt the electric speed record. Close friends know I’ve been…
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Powering the Mars Base
This post is part of the series on space topics. This post is not the last word on this topic. The usual caveats apply. I’m curious if you have strong opinions on different fuel mixes. A grow…