– a website dedicated to space exploration, climate change and other topics
– maintained by Dr. Donald Rapp (drdrapp@earthlink.net)
Alternate Theory of Global Warming – Describes 20th century Arctic climate change in three steps: 1900-1940 warming, 1940-1975 cooling, and 1975-2005 warming. The first step was undoubtedly due to black carbon. Potential causes for steps 2 and 3 are discussed.
Personalities of climatologists - Why climatologists derive a dolalr's worth of conclusions from a penny's worth of data.
Alarmism vs. Denialism - Rebuttal to extremist viewpoint
The golden rule of climatology - Government funding for alarmists far out weighs corporate funding for denialists
Ancient Climates
Ancient Climates - A review of the various studies of the relationship between CO2 concentration and global climate from paleo data. This includes studies of the Last Glacial Maximum, data over hundreds of thousands and millions of years, dating back as far as 500 million years. Attempts to derive climate sensitivity are obstructed by lack of reliable critical data.
Financial Bubbles
Economics 2011 - The source of our economic plight
Presentations:
Ice Ages and Interglacials - Part I - Data 50 slides.
Ice Ages and Interglacials - Part II - Theories of ice ages and comparison with data 34 slides.
Global Warming (2009) – Describes 20th century Arctic climate change in three steps: 1900-1940 warming, 1940-1975 cooling, and 1975-2005 warming. The first step was undoubtedly due to black carbon. Potential cuases for steps 2 and 3 are discussed. 39 slides.
Energy and Climate (2008) – Discusses the related issues of providing the world with energy in the 21st century and global warming. 40 slides.
Human missions to Mars (2006) – Discusses challenges involved in a human mission to Mars based on my book. 42 slides.
Life and Water on Mars (2006) – Deals with two topics: The crazy NASA emphasis on the search for life on Mars that is almost certainly going to end in failure; and the distribution of water on Mars. 36 slides.
In-situ resource utilization on Mars (2006) – Summarizes the potential impact of using ISRU for human missions to Mars. 16 slides.
Human Missions to Mars: Enabling Technologies for Exploring the Red Planet
by Donald Rapp, hardback, 520 pages, October, 2007 ISBN: 978-3-540-72938-9; two 8-page color sections
A human mission to Mars would be the pinnacle of Solar System exploration, representing not only an inspiring engineering achievement, but also the creation of a new era of expansion of humanity into space. Although NASA and others have developed scenarios for how such a mission might be carried out, many of the assumptions were optimistic and many details were left out. Because once embarked to Mars, there is no return to Earth for about 2.7 years, every system must be exquisitely reliable.
This book takes a critical view of the requirements for human missions to Mars from an engineering perspective. It discusses in detail all the technologies that need to be developed and demonstrated and examines the full range of elements critical to such missions, including recycling of life support consumables, radiation effects and shielding, aero-assisted orbit insertion and entry descent and landing amongst much else. The initial mass in low Earth orbit is used as a guide for Mission feasibility.
Lavishly illustrated, Human Missions to Mars is a highly readable yet realistic view of the possible future of the exploration of the Red Planet. For the first time it brings together a wide range of material currently fragmented in the literature, and presents a cogent argument against the overly-optimistic forecasts promulgated by NASA, the Mars Society and others. At the same time, it presents a plan to establish the technical basis for a credible human mission to Mars.
Assessing Climate Change – Temperatures, Solar Radiation and Heat Balance
Series: Springer Praxis Books – Environmental Sciences
by Donald Rapp, hardback, 410 pages, March 2008 ISBN: 978-3-540-76586-8; two 8-page color sections
In ASSESSING CLIMATE CHANGE Donald Rapp has investigated a large body of scientific data relevant to climate change, approaching each element with necessary (but neutral) scientific skepticism. The chapters of the book attempt to answer a number of essential questions in relation to global warming and climate change. He begins by showing how the earth’s climate has varied in the past, discussing ice ages, the Holocene period since the end of the last ice age, particularly during the past 1000 years. He investigates the reliability of "proxies" for historical temperatures and assesses the hockey stick version of global temperatures for the past millennium. To do this effectively he looks carefully at how well near surface temperatures of land and ocean on earth have been monitored during the past 100 years or more, and looks at the utility and significance of a single global average temperature.
Topics such as the variability of the Sun and the Earth’s heat balance are discussed in considerable detail. The author also investigates how the current global warming trend compares with past fluctuations in earth’s climate and what is the likelihood that the warming trend we are experiencing now is primarily just another in a series of natural climate fluctuations as opposed to a direct result of human activities. A key factor in understanding what may happen in the future is to examine the credibility of the global climate models which claim that greenhouse gasses produce most of the temperature rise of the 20th Century, and forecast much greater impacts in the century ahead.
Finally, the book considers future global energy requirements, fossil fuel usage and carbon dioxide production, public policy relating to global warming, and agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol.
2nd edition (2010):
Updates the first edition with addition of 180 new references,60 new or revised figures, and adds considerably to the discussion of impacts of global warming, humidity in climate models, past climate fluctuations, latest global temperature data, and the "hockey stick".
by Donald Rapp, 266 pages
This book studies the history and gives an analysis of extreme climate change on Earth. In order to provide a long-term perspective, the first chapter briefly reviews some of the wild gyrations that occurred in the Earth’s climate hundreds of millions of years ago: snowball Earth and hothouse Earth. Coming closer to modern times, the effects of continental drift, particularly the closing of the Isthmus of Panama are believed to have contributed to the advent of ice ages in the past three million years. This first chapter sets the stage for a discussion of ice ages in the geological recent past (i.e. within the last three million years, with an emphasis on the last few hundred thousand years).
The second chapter discusses geological evidence for ice ages – how geologists surmised their existence prior to actual subsurface data that proved the theory. The following two chapters look at ice cores (primarily from Greenland and Antarctica). Chapter 3 discusses how ice core data is processed and Chapter 4 summarizes data obtained from ice cores. Chapter 5 discusses the processing of data obtained from ocean sediments, and summarizes the results, while the following chapter discusses data from other sources, such as "Devil’s Cave."
Chapter 7 summarizes the experimental results from Chapters 4, 5, and 6. It provides the foundation for comparison with theories in later chapters. In a perfect world, this data would be totally separate and disconnected from theory. Unfortunately, as the author shows, dating of much of the data was accomplished by "tuning" to the astronomical theory, which introduces circular reasoning.
Chapter 8 provides a brief overview of the various theories that have been devised to "explain" the patterns of alternating ice ages and interglacials that have occurred over the past three million years. This serves as an introduction to the following three chapters which presents the astronomical theory in its various manifestations, compare the astronomical theory with data, and then compare other theories with data. Finally, Chapter 12 summarizes what we think we know about ice ages and, more importantly, what we don’t know.
Published by Praxis Publishing, April 27, 2009
by Donald Rapp, about 300 pages, to be published June 7, 2009 by Springer-Verlag/Copernicus Books
This book builds upon previous discussions of booms and busts, particularly those of John Kenneth Galbraith. The first part of the book describes that stages of buildup and collapse of financial manias in terms of human element. These are divided into speculations, bootstraps and swindles. Discussions are provided on the distribution of wealth in the US, the nature of inflation, the role of the Federal Reserve in promoting bubbles, tax history and policies, debt (federal, state, municipal and personal), banks and banking, pension plans, and valuation of common stock.
The book then goes on to describe specific boom/bubble/bust cycles with many examples including the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the bull market of the late 1920s, the depression of the 1930s, the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, the great bull stock market of 1982 to 1995, the crash of 1987, the dot.com mania, the sub-prime fiasco of 2002-2007, and a number of other bubbles and swindles.
C-60 as a propellant for electric propulsion
The current propellant of choice for ion thrusters is Xe. The purpose of this report is to present results of analyses that estimate the potential advantages of using C60 ("Buckminsterfullerene") as a replacement for Xe.
Initial mass in LEO for human Mars missions (2007)
All of the NASA preliminary plans for human missions to Mars involve transfer of some assets to Mars orbit, and some assets to the Mars surface. A widely accepted surrogate for estimating mission cost for future human missions to Mars is the required initial mass in low Earth orbit (IMLEO). This, in turn can be calculated for any specific mission design by estimating how much mass must be delivered to Mars orbit (MMO) and how much mass must be delivered to the Mars surface (MMS), and multiplying each figure by its appropriate "gear ratio:" mass required in LEO to deliver one mass unit to Mars orbit or the Mars surface.
In Situ Resource Utilization – Lunar and Mars (2008)
In situ resource utilization (ISRU) on the Moon or Mars is an approach for converting indigenous resources into various products (primarily propellants and life support consumables) that are needed for a space mission. Unfortunately, several years ago, NASA stopped funding Mars ISRU (which is practical) and is presently funding lunar ISRU (which appears to be impractical). Furthermore, NASA’s Mars Program does not seem to have any intention of exploiting these water resources for leveraging Mars surface missions.
Life support for human Mars missions (2007)
The requirements for life support for the lengthy excursions involved in Mars missions require further study. This paper makes rough estimates of macro requirements for a crew of six over Mars mission segments.
Lunar ISRU (2006)
It's all just a dream babe, a vacuum, a scheme babe, ... - Bob Dylan – If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea long enough, it will eventually adopt it because of all the work they put into it. - K. Kruickshank
Mars Life Support (2006)
Reviews JSC's optimistic estimates for life support for a human mission to Mars and brings them down to Earth (and Mars).
NASA Technology Blueprint (2003)
An official NASA document that provides a prioritized plan to develop technology for NASA missions. The purpose of this Blueprint was to document the technologies required to implement the future missions of the NASA Space Science Enterprise (SSE).
Precision Segmented Reflectors for Sub-Millimeter Astronomy (1992)
Describes how NASA spent $22 million from 1988 to 1992 in an attempt to develop technology for a so-called "large deploy(r)able reflector" - a submm telescope of 10-20 m diameter, and ended up with exactly nothing, and how I nearly got fired for criticizing it.
Propellant Depots in Space (2006)
A discussion of Griffin's proposal to establish propellant depots for space missions.
Radiation effects for human Mars missions (2007)
Describes challenges involved in coping with radiation in human missions to Mars. Radiation in space poses a threat to humans embarked on missions to the Moon or Mars.
Solar Energy on Mars (2005)
Everything you wanted to know about solar energy on Mars.
Solar Power Systems on the Moon (2007)
Everything you wanted to know about solar availability on the Moon and lunar power systems.
Space Solar Power (2007)
Astropolitics journal article on beamed solar power from space.
Space Solar Power, He-3 from the Moon for fusion, and Lunar ISRU (2007)
A report with three separate sections on beamed solar power from space (more detailed than Astropolitics paper), He-3 as a resource for fusion, and lunar ISRU.
Staging and Propellant Depots in Space (2006)
Analysis of proposal to use staging and propellant depots to enable a short-stay mission to Mars. It is shown that the short-stay mission remains impractical, despite claims made in theliterature.
Transporting Hydrogen in Space (2007)
Everything I knew in 2007 about space transportation and storage of hydrogen.
Everything I knew in 2006 about water on Mars. Includes temperatures and solar energy onMars, theoretical models of ice stability on Mars, experimental data on detection of water on Mars, and requirements for liquid water on Mars.
Quantum Mechanics (1971)
Statistical Mechanics (1972)
Solar Energy (1981)
Human Missions to Mars (2007)
Assessing Climate Change (2008); 2nd edition (2010)
Ice Ages and Interglacials (2009)
Bubbles, Booms and Busts (2009)
by Donald Rapp 1971
Hardcover, 672 pages, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ISBN 0030812941 (0-03-081294-1)
out of print; used copies available at:
Statistical Mechanics
by Donald Rapp 1972
Hardcover, 330 pages, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ISBN 0030856531 (0-03-085653-1) out of print; used copies available at:
Solar Energy
by Donald Rapp 1981
Hardcover, 516 pages, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0138222134 (0-13-822213-4)
out of print; used copies available at: