The Christian Church in the United States is in Trouble

In the last 20 years, I have regularly attended six different churches. That's not a large count, but it is a fair number. The church is changing. Some of those churches have been healthy and stable, but a couple of them have been hanging on by threads. I'm not talking about actual Christianity, because as a believer, I believe that God has got it all taken care of. I'm talking about the human organization side of the Christian Church, the various congregations and denominations all over the country. They are struggling.

My wife and I are Christian, but when we go through the list of the friends we spend the most time with, only a few, maybe 15% of them, are Christian enough to regularly attend church. The ideology of the church has turned off many millennials, who see public figures that are not accepting of the poor or sinners. The church doesn't really appear to be a loving and caring place when viewed through their most vocal public figures. When public church figures are actively campaigning for a person that seems to have no values, and certainly not strong Christian values, people get turned off to any thought of moral aspiration coming from that group. As the saying goes, it takes years to build trust, and seconds to lose it. Of course, when you get into a church congregation, they are typically very caring, but it takes time and effort to get into that group. Many churches have somewhat stale congregations, where the same people have gone for 10+ years, and they all know each other, and aren't necessarily looking to add new people, so they don't feel especially welcoming. 

To give a specific example, I once went to a church that had a declining membership, and the people were worried about the church finances. Just down the street was a Hispanic church start up that was meeting in an old hardware store, and I suggested, why not share the church with them, let them use it Sunday afternoons? That's was actually scoffed at as something the congregation would never go for. Yet, that's one way that the Christian Church in this country has a chance at survival is to show that we're more united than we are divided. 

Right now baby boomers are keeping a lot of congregations alive. When they pass away, a lot of churches are going to close. To some extent I do think retirees for decades have filled a lot of roles at churches because they often have more time for volunteering than the younger working population has. Another challenge is that there is a shortage of pastors. Here is an occupation where often it takes several years of additional schooling, and then the pay is often very low, it's a degree without a positive return on investment. I've also seen a few churches where they essentially push the pastor out because they didn't like something that he or she did. Not that the actions were a fireable offense, simply that church leaders didn't like the pastor's words or actions. Church politics can be tough. Every time a pastor is pushed out of a church, people get upset, and some leave, because it's an unloving act by the congregation.

I don't know what the future holds for the Christian Church in the United States. I hope it's good, and membership is strong, but I don't know, it's hard to see that in the next decade or two.

Humans aren't going to Mars anytime soon.

For a very long time I wanted to go to Mars. Yes, I wanted to take that three year long lonesome trip through space with a small crew and a communication delay. It's the adventure of a lifetime! The adventure of a generation. It's hard to really conceptualize how far away Mars is, and while that is part of the appeal, I now realize just how significant the challenges are. The last 1.5 years I've been working on a lunar lander, which I viewed as a great step into seeing what it takes to send a lander to another body in the solar system. I've learned a tremendous amount about travel beyond Earth in the last 1.5 years. None of this is really proprietary, in fact, most of the learnings are from the Apollo days in the 1960s and 1970s, with only a few from the recent Mars rovers.

When you read the news articles, one of the recurring themes of a human trip to Mars is that we don't have the technology to do it. I would see that statement and not truly understand what that means. So let me give a few examples of the technology that we don't have ready yet:

• We don't have a spacesuit to be used on Mars. This is modestly significant. Mars has a lot of advantages, it has a thin atmosphere, the temperature is more temperate than the Moon or even the International Space Station, so the suit will likely be slimmer than the bulky in space suits that are currently used for spacewalks, and were used on Apollo on the Moon. So while it should be easier to design and manufacturer the suit, as far as I know there has been no serious work on a Mars suit yet, and it's the kind of thing that really will need a few years of dedicated work before it's ready to be used by humans on Mars.
• It's not clear how to launch a vehicle from the surface of Mars back into Mars orbit. There are a couple sub points here. 
• First, the baseline architecture for the Mars Sample Return mission costs around $11 billion, and that's to get back about 15 kilograms (34 lbs.) of samples from the surface of Mars. One astronaut weights a lot more than 15 kilograms. Now, Rocketlab proposes they can do it in house for only $2 billion... but remember this is for low tens of pounds of payload from the surface of Mars back to Earth. This first point being it's very expensive, and we've never done any launch from the surface of Mars. 
• Second, a human lander will likely be significantly different than the small sample return rocket. SpaceX is proposing using Starships, which definitely work on paper, but there is a question about how exactly to fully fuel those Starships. Mars has a lot of CO2, so just bring along a big garden and turn that into a lot of oxygen, which you can cool and condense into liquid oxygen. However, to get the hydrogen for the sabatier process, I'm not clear on exactly how to get that. The baseline is to harvest water, and then do hydrolysis to get hydrogen and oxygen, but we've never harvested water on Mars. However, you're going to need likely at least a hundred metric tons of water, maybe 1000 metric tons of water, and that's a lot. We haven't even harvested 1 kilogram of water, let along the possible 1,000,000 kilograms that could be needed to launch a large rocket off the surface of Mars. Now it's possible to take all of the return trip fuel with you, say bring five ships, one with the people, and four with fuel, and just refuel the human ship on the surface and/or in Mars orbit, and leave the four tankers behind. But the point of this is that exactly how we are going to launch a human crew sized vehicle off the surface of Mars is not clear and will require a few years of engineering to make sure we can actually do it.
• My assumption is that almost everything on a short Hohmann transfer orbit to and from Mars with an astronaut crew of say four people will essentially use expendable consumables. What I mean by consumables:
• Oxygen for breathing and water for drinking, they will essentially take a whole lot of each and then CO2 and urine and excrement will essentially be dumped overboard. Some amount may be recycled, but in the event the recycler fails, you'll need to have a lot of spare.
• Clothing will maybe be washed by hand on Mars, but for a fifteen month stay it has to be expected that clothing, boots, gloves, and likely whole spacesuits will wear out. So does each astronaut need to bring one Mars suit and some spare parts like o-rings, or four whole spacesuits? Again, we don't have a good baseline for how we will wear out clothing on Mars. 
• You're going to have to take a lot of food for the three year trip. We probably can't grow potatoes fast enough like in the book and movie The Martian. It may sound super minor, but the 33 month trip will need roughly half of the time in microgravity, and half the trip at 1/3 Earth gravity on Mars, and the systems for food and living will need to work in both gravity environments. Again, sounds trivial but I'm not sure we really know it will be that easy.
• We're going to need a lot of solar panels, a whole lot. I don't even know how many. Let's say that one human for habitation and some driving around the lunar surface needs 10 kilowatt hours per day, and four people land on Mars, that's 40 kilowatt hours per day. Given that solar panels are less efficient on Mars, you're going to need a lot of solar panels. And honestly, depending on the amount of driving that is baselined, as well as electricity needed for food production experiments or rocket fuel production, 10 kilowatt hours per person per day could be far too little. Again, this is an area where presumably we can modify already existing solar panels, and batteries for use on Mars, and we don't really have to worry about clouds on Mars, just the changing of the seasons, but it's going to take some work to make a mass efficient system.
• All of the pressure vessels, engines, heat shields, and human habitations, assuming that they are the only one of their kind, will need to be repairable. The risks of a crack or accident leading to higher than expected pressure loss will necessitate the ability to repair these pressure vessels. Repairs have been done on the International Space Station, and Apollo 13 is a famous case study in making do with what you have.  The items for for heat shields, engines, pressure vessels will need to be repairable, because a tiny micrometeoroid could render most pieces of equipment inoperable. Will people need to weld on Mars? Will people need to repair wire harnesses on Mars when a pin gets bent? Will people need to patch holes on their habitation walls? How many o-rings and seals will we need to replace because Martian dust cuts the seals? This is all pretty basic stuff, but a single cut o-ring could mean mission failure. 
• Rover wheels for a human sized rover on Mars is a big problem. The Curiosity rover shredded it's wheels faster than than expected, and traveled not that far of a distance. A human rover will probably go something like 1000+ kilometers in 15 months, compared to the 33.5 kilometers for Curiosity rover in 12 years. In other words, we're going to need better Mars rover wheels, and we're going to need spare tires. Again, this is not trivial and will take years of development here on Earth. While there are full size prototypes that NASA has developed, the whole logistics of a rover and spare wheels is a really big deal. The rover itself would be much more useful if it's a pressurized rover and could make multiday trips farther away from the landing site. This adds a fair amount of complexity and mass to the rover, something that we really should be seeing qualification prototypes of say two years before launch so that we can make sure to work out the details.
• People will get sick and hurt. I've thought about it a lot over the years and I am pretty confident that the single most important person on a mission to Mars, would be a doctor. There are so many different ways that people could get sick or hurt, and it's very possible that we discover ways we hadn't even thought of, such as what Mars dust does to lungs when it gets into the habitation. I'm not actually that worried about radiation, it's a relatively known phenomena and while clearly dangerous, would again be rather known for a three year trip. While this bullet point isn't stopping us from going to Mars, we're going to have to take a small emergency room worth of medical supplies and hope that we brought the right stuff. If a person gets cancer on the outbound trip to Mars, orbital mechanics dictates that you have to stick out the whole mission, because the fuel required to do a direct abort and get back to Earth is not part of the plan. Similarly, there is a psychological component to leaving Earth, and barely being able to even see it in the sky that is a whole new challenge we don't really know how to handle. Presumably the people on the trip will be highly qualified and highly trained and have very strong emotional fortitude, but when you can't see Earth, and there is a five minute communication delay, and your parent died, and the X-band antenna broke so you only have S-band text messages, that's a lot of stress
• Last point, it's going to take a lot of launches from Earth in 2028 in order to land humans and the equipment on Mars, with the capability to launch off Mars and come back to Earth in 2031. In round numbers, if we say one Mars landing ship will carry people, and four ships will carry equipment and fuel, and each of those five ships will require 10 refueling flights, we're talking 55 rocket launches in the second half of 2028, all for this one mission. That's simply a lot of coordination for launches, rendezvous and docking maneuvers, even if 50 of those are short 24 hour long refueling flights. This is certainly not impossible, in fact it's probably even easy. However, rendezvous and docking is actually still not a trivial activity despite the fact we have been doing it for nearly 60 years. So 55 events mean that we need pretty high reliability of all the sensors and mechanisms to make this happen.

I do think that humans can in fact launch to Mars in 2028, all of these technology issues can be solved in the next four years, but in order to do that, we need to work on it as soon as possible. More likely is a 2030s human trip to Mars. 

A final note on the rover, when studying the Apollo missions, the first three landing missions, Apollo 11, 12, and 14 did not have a rover and only covered a few miles walking on foot. Apollo 15, 16, and 17 covered 10s of miles of ground and did excellent science while on the surface of the Moon. Going to Mars without a rover is foolish. And going with only an open buggy style rover is slightly better, but still short sighted. A human can only do a space walk for in the neighborhood of 8 hours, and then there are issues like eating, getting tired, having a bowel movement, and even sleeping. The oxygen and carbon dioxide part is the easy part to solve. If we assume that a Mars space suit is very flexible and an astronaut will be able to do 2 miles per hour, that's a maximum radius of 8 miles that a person could walk. That's wildly optimistic, on Apollo 14 the astronauts struggled to walk about one mile away from the LEM before struggling with navigation and not being able to see the LEM. Similarly on an open buggy with a top speed of 20 kilometers per hour (12 miles per hour) would be able to cover more ground, but that has to be traded with the possibility that the buggy breaks down and the astronauts have to walk back to the habitat. On Apollo 17 the furthest that the two astronauts drove the lunar buggy was about 5 miles away from the LEM, so that worst case they could hike back to the lander. Two buggies would provide redundancy, but also add quite a bit of mass. Also, for people that have not done much off roading, there isn't much point in going a lot faster than those speeds, you're going to be bouncing all over the place even at those slow speeds. The point of all this is to say, without a pressurized rover, you would essentially be stuck on a deserted island without the capability to explore much more than maybe 10 miles in any direction, which over 15 months is somewhat limiting.

Back to racing Ultramarathons!

 It's been a long time. The last time I raced an ultramarathon was September 2018, the IAU 100 km world championships in Croatia. I had a pulmonary embolism at the time, and didn't know it, so I basically ran 10:00 pace, had an average heart rate of 180 beats per minute, and after 4.5 hours, called it quits as I was getting lapped on the 10 km circuit. Then in the spring of 2019 I broke my ankle in two places and partially tore two ligaments. While I started to recover from that injury, and did a couple 40 mile trail runs, ultimately my ankle wasn't really healing, and in the winter of 2021-2022 it got to the point I could not run 3-4 miles without ankle pain. I didn't know if I would ever run long distances again. So in April 2022 I had a stem cell procedure where bone marrow was taken out of my hips, centrifuged to get the step cells, and they were injected into my ankle bones and ligaments. The recovery was hard, and it really took about 8 months before I started to feel actually better from it, but I did start to feel better.

2023 I gradually felt better and on a trip to Seattle in September I went for a 12 mile run, the first that long in over a year. It felt good, so when I stumbled into free entry for the Boulderthon half marathon in October 2023, I thought, 'hey, why not go run a half marathon and see what happens?' I ran 1:37, which while not fast by any means, it was a huge improvement from where I had been the past few years. I've never ran the Boston Marathon, and it's one of the things that still motivates me, so I decided to try and go qualify for it. I registered for the Napa Valley Marathon in March, and while I was on 3:00 pace for about 16 miles, I fell off and hit the wall, coming in at like 3:24. So I registered for another marathon, the Revel Rockies downhill marathon in June, and managed to run 3:01:00, getting 4:00 under my qualifying time, however the criteria to get in to Boston in 2025 was to be 6:52 under your qualifying time, so I didn't get into Boston. But it gave me a lot of confidence.

So I registered for the Fat Ox 24 hour USATF national championship in November this year. If I won, and ran 145 miles, I would get entry to the 2025 world championships. The two times I've gone to the world championships, once I had a stress fracture and then had whole body cramps, and the other time I had the pulmonary embolism. I'm a good runner, I have this talent that God gave me, and I don't feel that I've really had the chance to show that on a big stage. 

The Fat Ox 24 went really well! I set a speed limit for myself of 8:30 per mile, and only had a few laps faster than that. I drank a lot of Maurten, gatorade and electrolyte drink, and didn't hit the wall until 110 miles. I did slow down in the heat of the afternoon, and fell off my goal pace of 150 miles, but I was doing well. After my 2:30 AM hitting the wall, I was able to get back out there and keep going to ultimately get 125 miles, and 3rd place for the men, and 6th place overall. While not the top end goal I had for the race, it was really exciting to be back, and run something like that with essentially no pain. Or at least, not the ankle pain that I battled for several years after my skiing accident in 2019. 

What's next? I already put my name in the Leadville 100 lottery, and I'd like to take another crack at making the 2025 24 hour world championship team, but for now I'm still in recovery mode. I went on my first run after the race, 12 days later and only 3 miles, and it went well, but I am clearly still tired. 

What just happened in November 2024?

It's a few days after the 2024 US presidential election, and I'm distraught. Instead of a well qualified candidate who aimed to make life better for all people by expanding healthcare and fighting climate change, we elected a narcissistic self centered person who will sow chaos and suffering.

Of course, I've read a lot in the last few days, and this particular article stuck out to me: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga

Let's go through the issues...

Deporting 10 million people is logistically incredibly difficult. Simply finding all of those people, physically transporting them to another country, and processing them through the legal system are three very difficult activities that will require a huge amount of money that us US citizens will have to come up with. Mexico is not going to pay us take take a million people into it's country. And who is going to do this work? I do realize that there are a number of younger men that look forward to doing this work, but we're probably talking 100,000 people that need to be active full time participants in this for there to be a remote chance of deporting so many people. Will that be active duty military people going door to door asking to search homes? This is an area where I fully expect the new administration to put a lot of effort, and likely separate many families in the process. Plus, as a downstream effect, this is going to definitely increase grocery prices. First generation immigrants play a big role in food production, and who is going to replace them? See this infographic: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/essential-role-immigrants-us-food-supply-chain

Stopping the wars in Ukraine and the middle east will not happen in 24 hours. I presume that he will take whatever current deal Russia offers, and try to force Ukraine to agree to it, and I'm sure the deal will be so bad that Ukraine won't accept it. In the middle east, I presume that he will simply send Israel more weapons to kill more people, and do nothing to actual sign any peace treaty. Which likely means that Israel will bully it's enemies until one of them strikes back in a show of modest force, and the whole thing will escalate again. Then there is China and Taiwan, I don't think that will be a quiet part of the world for the next four years. Let's not forget the whole continent of Africa, although unfortunately, we will as a country essentially ignore the whole range of challenges they are sure to face the next four years.

He ran on rolling back EPA regulations, and as 2024 is expected to be the hottest year on record, with several hurricanes that wrecked destruction across Florida and North Carolina, I can only expect the next four hurricane seasons to be worse. I expect wild fires to be bad as well. 2020 and 2021 were bad years but the last three were not so bad here in Colorado. I expect that in the next four years there will definitely be some very large very destructive wild fires. Global warming is real. Sea level rise is real. Trying to roll back the already inadequate incentives to mitigate climate change is a recipe for further destruction. A category 5 hurricane is going to hit Miami (and Mar-a-Lago) some day. There will be 20 foot above sea level storm surges, maybe 25 feet or more like we saw with Hurricane Katrina. There will be tornados, crops will die, people will get asthma. Honestly, this issue is becoming what I view as potentially the single most important issue since the most lives and the most money is at stake. No one is really pushing for this, but I think we need to start a Climate Corp. in this country like the Peace Corp or Ameri Corp to do climate change prevention and mitigation actives, as well as go into destroyed areas after natural disasters and help clean up. It's something that we could use a lot of strong people for since it's going to be hard work. 

Women's healthcare is under attack. More mothers will die from sepsis in preventable miscarriage care. Contraception will be under attack, and women will go into poverty raising children, which doesn't help most children to grow up in poverty. Couples that want to use IVF to have children, will not be able to do that in some places. We need to trust women to make the decisions that are best for them. Thinking that a bunch of politicians and business people can make the best decisions for women's health is ridiculous! I used to be a solidly pro-life anti-abortion white male, but I now realize that's ridiculous. I'm still very pro-life, but a law about abortion being illegal doesn't make the world more welcoming for unborn babies, policies that give women all the resources that they need for their health and the health of babies does make the world more welcoming for fetuses. I'll give an example, when a women wants to have a baby, gets pregnant, has a miscarriage, and the doctors don't operate until it's too late and she has to have her uterus removed, she can no longer have a baby. You have just stopped that woman from having the baby she wants.

Tariffs are an interesting one, because we do actually have a number of existing tariffs, mostly started by the President around 2018, which Biden kept during his administration, and contributed to inflation the last few years. In other words, there is actually a small price win here by removing some tariffs, but in all likelihood there will be more tariffs, which will lead to more price increases, one estimate I saw was expected to increase costs for the average household $2,500 per year. But I suppose this is what people voted for, so we'll just get to wait and see what happens.

Taxes are another interesting area, the Tax Cuts and Jobs act of 2017 lowered taxes quite a bit, and they expire in 2025... hahahaha. I'll explain, this seemed to be a change election, people weren't happy with the party in control of the White House or the legislative branch because of prices and perceived safety, so they voted for change. However, when it comes to taxes, the last four years we have actually been living with taxes that I think are already too low that expire soon and revert to their higher levels. So there will be a small battle to simply keep these current taxation levels, and a larger battle to reduce taxes. In other words, I think it's unlikely to see dramatic change where taxes are concerned, and it's possible, although very unlikely that they actually go up if legislation cannot be passed to keep the current taxation levels.

The national deficit and national debt are interesting ones too. One particular campaigner for the winning party seemed to be excited to cut national spending by $2 Trillion a year, and I don't see how that happens without at least touching Social Security. Infographic here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727 In other words, I do think we need to do something to get closer to a balanced budget, and I like taxing the rich as a start, like adding a "high" tax bracket for incomes over $10 million per year of like 49% where there are no deductions or lower tax rates for capital gains. It would apply to a tiny portion of people and generate a fair amount of revenue. Another item to address is Social Security taxes and benefits, and while the fixes are pretty easy actually, I doubt that they will be implemented the next four years, which makes them a little more difficult to implement in 2029 to 2032.

So where does that leave us? In something of a wait and see mode. Will Project 2025 come to fruition? What policies will actually be enacted remain to be seen. Will new higher tariffs, government spending cuts, and mass deportation make the stock market go up? I think it's probably fair to say, 'okay, make America great, here is your chance.' I'll try to have an open mind and hope I am surprised by the shared prosperity that we enjoy in the years to come.

As a Christian I take a lot of comfort in my faith in God, and yet, Christians carried out parts of the Holocaust and owned slaves for centuries. There is no guarantee of an easy life in the Bible, on the contrary, there can be a lot of hardship that is foreshadowed.

The Orbital Space Launch Industry Waiting Game

I've been working in the space industry now for six years, after a bit of a fight to get into it. The industry has changed in that time, and is in an interesting place, that I feel other commentators have not really addressed it. Six years ago the race was on for new orbital space launch vehicles. Mostly small launch vehicles. However that market has contracted with perceived winners like Virgin Orbit, as well as companies like Vector, going out of business. A large part of the reason for the small launch competitors going out of business is that SpaceX rideshares can cost only $5 million dollars for 800 kg to a 500 km orbit, at a price of $6,250/kg (and that's rounding up from $4.8 million to $5 million). Now, there is a lot of advantage to a rocket taking a spacecraft to exactly the orbit it wants to be in, that's worth a lot, but I don't know that it's worth 3-5 times as much for every customer. Specifically because for those extra million or millions of dollars you can take a propulsion system and extra fuel to get where you want to go.

With all of that being said, the space industry seems to be in a waiting game to see what the next generation of launch vehicles in development can deliver. Those include the Blue Origin New Glenn, Rocket Lab Neutron, United Launch Alliance Vulcan, and of course, the most interesting, first fully reusable orbital rocket, SpaceX Starship. To cut to the chase, my personal opinion is that it will cut the cost to orbit for payloads around half to three quarters. There are predictions of Starship cutting the cost by 90% or even more. Falcon 9 can take 22,800 kg to orbit for roughly $60 million at roughly $2,600/kg, and Starship is predicted to take 100,000 to 150,000 kg to orbit and again be fully reusable.  A recent Payload report suggested that current SpaceX costs for a Falcon 9 are under $20 million for each Starlink launch. 

Some differences, a Falcon 9 has a total of 10 main engines, and a Starship has a total of 39 main engines. Engines are the largest subsystem cost in most launch vehicles. So having four times as many engines means four times as many inspections. Plus, the Merlin engine is very simple as far as rockets go, while the Raptor is a more complicated cycle (a full flow staged combustion versus a fuel rich gas generator). This suggested to me, that the engines are going to need a lot of work. That's not necessarily true, but the Raptor has more moving parts and operates at higher pressures which can create a lot of wear and tear. Additionally, Starship has a large number of thermal tiles on the upper stage for reentry, and at least initially, those are going to need a lot of inspection and likely refurbishment between flights, like the Space Shuttle had. 

To estimate that Falcon 9 $20 million dollar launch cost estimate breakdown on paper here are my estimates:

• Launch Fees (insurance, FAA fees, etc.) - $1 million
• Expending upper stage hardware - $5 million
• Inspections between flights - $1 million
• Amortized cost of the reusable first stage hardware - $4 million
• Fuel - $500,000
• Mission Operations cost (people, ground support equipment, communications, ground transportation, launch pad, etc.) - $3.5 million
• Research and Development recouped costs to make it possible - $5 million

Of course these could be wildly off. Specifically the mission operations cost, it's probably a lot less than that, but then again, I don't know. I know that for the airlines those operations costs are substantial, and a lot more goes into a rocket launch than an individual commercial flight from Denver to Chicago.

The reason I don't think that Starship will bring down costs 90% from the existing Falcon 9 costs, is that to do that you have to quintuple the payload to orbit, and half the cost to do so. Using the above numbers, I don't think the launch fees, inspections, fuel, or mission operations costs are going to budge, in fact, in the short term for the first 100 flights them are probably going to go up. In the long term, my estimate is they are about the same, which due to inflation will be less than they are today, but a small percentage lower, not half the price. That leaves the $10 million to come out of difference between expending the second stage, the amortized cost of the first stage hardware, and R&D. Taking $4 million out of the second stage cost, halving the cost of the first stage amortization, and halving the cost of the R&D only takes out $8.5 million, and based on the complexity of reusing an orbital vehicle (which we learned on the Space Shuttle program) that is likely a very optimistic estimate for the second stage costs and R&D. 

One glaring oversight in this analysis is that I looked at SpaceX's estimated costs, and not the current estimated customer costs. Which is to say, instead of charging roughly $60 million for 22,800 kg, SpaceX needs to charge roughly $30 million for 110,000 kg to orbit. While that may be possible, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to actually do that when charging $100 million for such a launch would still be a 2/3rds reduction in cost, and leave presumably a large profit margin and get the cost to orbit under $1,000/kg. That would be well under any of the current competitors, and it remains to be seen where that would put it in relation to the next generation of launch vehicles.

So we seem to be in a waiting game as these test flights and engine tests are conducted. The entire industry is waiting to see where the costs end up in 2026, 2028 and beyond because it radically changes how things are designed and what sort of missions make sense. It would be great to send an orbiter to both Uranus and Neptune but with current launch prices it's still very cost prohibitive to do that. Similarly, mining in space will likely become an industry in the future, in particular mining water on the moon, but it's wildly easier at $260/kg than $1,000/kg to orbit, and at current prices around $3,000/kg, the industry doesn't actually exist. NASA struggled to drill a three foot deep hole on Mars just to measure the temperature.

A risk of this whole article is that I basically just talked about one launch company, since they already have the cost per kilogram lead and look to reduce that cost even further. SpaceX has been landing orbital rockets since December 2015 and still no one else has been able to fully replicate that feat. Looking ahead another nine years, I do expect at least two other companies to replicate that feat, and probably more, but then again I would have expected someone else to do it by now. Which is to say again, we're in a waiting game this year and probably all of next year to see where launch costs shake out and what new space missions become economically feasible.

Learning to Love Trees

I haven't blogged in months and I miss it. I like taking the time to write, to get a bunch of scatter brained thoughts into an organized set of sentences and paragraphs that convey a point. The world is crazy, and I want a rest. As summer ticks by and I feel like I'm spending more time on planes and in cars than under trees running, bicycling and hiking I feel sad. Plus, getting a sickness on vacation that was probably Covid doesn't help.

My wife and I have gotten into trees. There are many dimensions to this, it's not one particular type of tree or one particular place, there are many different trees and tree places that inspire us. 

Pacific Bonsai Museum - Nearly 50 Year Old Forest

Eating Lunch in Front of a Western Red Cedar

Something like 25 years ago I watched the Karate Kid and saw bonsai trees for the first time. I'm not sure why little trees seem to connect with humans, but they do, and this experience isn't limited to just me. So two years ago when we were outfitting my apartment in Oakland with a few plants, my wife decided to buy me a $12 juniper seedling, and I had my first bonsai. Two winters later it's still growing! I'm not even sure exactly how many little bonsai trees my wife and I now own, something like 15, but one looks like it just died when we were on vacation and I bought three more not start on another project or two.

On the other end of the size spectrum, while driving up the northern California coast almost two years ago we went to visit a number of coastal redwood parks, and loved it. Seeing huge trees like that is magical. They are incredibly tall, so thick at the base, and thanks to science fiction movies like Star Wars, feel like we are on a different planet. Since then we've traveled to see giant sequoia trees, huge western red cedars and douglas fir trees all around the west coast of North America. 

It's easy to take trees for granted when you have a lot of them. But as we have gotten more and more into learning about trees and forests we've come to see stumps from clear cuts that are dozens of years, maybe over a hundred years old. We see them in the middle of forests that look healthy as well as in fields without trees. After seeing thousands of stumps it hits home how limited these really big 300+ year old trees are. One take away is how delicate the opportunity to see these trees is. What I mean by that is, you can kill a bonsai by forgetting to water it for two weeks in a heat wave. You can also cut down an 8 foot diameter tree in a matter of hours. Yet that bonsai could be two hundred years old, or that giant tree could be four hundred years old. Decades or even centuries can go into growing a tree and in a matter of even hours that tree's story can be over. 

Life and death for humans and animals is the same, but sometimes that can feel like a really heavy item to address. We are all survivors of the last four years, as the Covid pandemic forever changed the world. With artificial intelligence, social media, and the modern world it can feel like the world is flying by, changing at such a rapid pace that we can't keep up. Then we see a tree. A tree that has lived in the same place for hundreds of years. A tree that has seen droughts, fires and floods, disease and flourishing bumper crops, and is still there. There is a strength and permanence to a 1000+ year old tree that just doesn't feel replicated in anything else I know. 

I'm sharing this today because there is a lot of peace and comfort in trees so if you are looking for some, and can't find it in your usual place, look for a tree.

Rivian R1S Review After Six Months and 12,000 Miles

I haven't blogged much the past few years. I don't really expect that to change. I like writing, and I do write sometimes, but I publish a lot less than I used to. At some point I'll probably write a book. However, today, while I am on day four of a covid quarantine is as good as any to write a blog post about my switch to an electric vehicle. If you are looking for the quick answer of do I like it, yes, thumbs up! But like anything, the full feeling is more complex.

First Time Plugging It In

For starters, I had a reservation for two years before my number came up in June 2023 and I have something like vin number 11,XYZ so it's one of the first 12,000 R1S vehicles made. From an initial quality perspective it's been great! No rattles, nothing that bothered me about the early quality of the vehicle. I did take it into the service shop once, because sometimes when my wife would sit in the passenger seat the passenger airbags would be turned off, but turns out that it takes 125 lbs. of direct weight on the seat to activate the sensor, for people below that weight it's deemed more safe to not activate the air bag sensor. I had no idea but I guess that's US standard in 2023. 

Another feature I really like is not creating exhaust and emissions while I am sitting in traffic. I never really thought about it before, but I really like the feeling when stuck in traffic of not belching out a little smoke for all of the people stuck in traffic around me to breathe. Sure, somewhere there are emissions at a power plant that charges my car, but it's nice when it's not 12 feet away from me. It's a very satisfying feeling. I think many of us have gotten a heavy whiff of exhaust in our lives and coughed in reaction, and now I don't have that problem when I'm loading the car, like I did on my 4Runner occasionally.

As for general driving, 800 horsepower is seriously too much. I've only floored it a hand full of times maybe 12-15 and 0-60 in 3 seconds is about as fast as my brain can handle. It's a different world, by the time you realize you are moving, you're going 40 mph. It's changed how I drive, when I see an opening in traffic and I'm trying to change lanes it's easy to speed up and get over then let off the accelerator and let the regenerative braking slow me down. I can slide into a lane change so easily. 

One pedal driving is great! However, in stop and go traffic, like going from Denver up I70 in traffic there is a bit of jerky start and stop that will make my wife get car sick after enough time. Some software updates have made it a little better. The first two months of ownership July and August 2023 we drove in towing mode, but then the modes were changed in a software update and we drive in all purpose or snow mode. I wish low regenerative braking was available in all purpose, that might help with my wife's car sickness. Even by myself I normally drive in standard regen because it brakes so fast I rarely have to use the brake pedal and it's not as jerky as high regenerative braking. One software thought is that it would be cool is there was a deadband on the pedal between the accelerating and regeneration, like a comfort mode where the car could cruise without a lot of acceleration or braking, the way a gas car coasts when you let off the accelerator and before you press on the brake. In other words, the drive modes of Rivian are not quite caught up to Tesla. 

We've camped in the Rivian three times, and once was below freezing. It's a delight to camp in compared to the 2007 4Runner we used before, it's wider and longer so sleeping in the back is easier. Camp mode for leveling the SUV is really nice, it makes the bed quite flat, which again makes it easier to sleep.

Camping

I only have maybe 15 miles of four wheel drive road miles on it, it didn't get to Colorado until the end of August. But so far it works great. I haven't tried to push it's capabilities yet and with the 21 inch road tires that I have I don't plan to push it. It's very easy to drive off road and one pedal driving allows you to stop just where you want, there is no wheel rolling when you get off the gas and get onto the brake like there is in traditional gas car off roading. It's a smooth off road experience, although the air suspension does make it feel like a boat going up and down and rocking back and forth. I expect I'll put a lot more trail miles on next summer. I did not get the 20 inch all terrain tires for two reasons, they were like $1800 more expensive, and get about 10% less range, and I figured, correctly, that I would spend a lot more time on roads than on trails and a longer range would be a benefit. I might get the all terrain wheels in the future, when I'm more confident in my charging routines around the state of Colorado, but for now the 21 inch road tires is the right choice for me.

The cruise control with the car detection ahead is really nice, I use it most days on my commute to work. I don't use the lane keeping very often, I still have my doubts about that. 

The cameras are great! The overhead view when parking makes parking so easy. I like the rear doors, I think they are the perfect configuration of half fold up, and half fold down. Cup holders are mediocre, the 4Runner cup holders that can fit a Nalgene are probably my favorite. There aren't that many cup holders either. 

The front trunk is great! I use it to store the charging cable and camping gear and some towels and pillows. It's great for those "dirty" items that you don't want rolling around in the back. 

Pet Comfort Mode is great, it has made it so that the Rivian is our default vehicle all the time, because we can bring the dog along, heat or snow, from little errands to going skiing the temperature usually remains constant.

The Dog in the Rivian

I don't actually have the spare tire yet. I left it off to have a lower base price and have not purchased it yet. So that's a risk. I did have a tire chunk come out, so I went to Discount Tire and had them replace it, ouch $450! But they did then warranty all the tires from that happening again in the future. I have not rotated the tires yet either, I need to do that this month. I'm hoping that they will last a full year and since I generally don't drive the vehicle hard, I expect that will happen. I've never had a car less than 11 years old before, so I was unfamiliar with the fact that when you drive it off the lot, the tires don't fall under any kind of warranty.

Tire Gouge

Charging

Charging is a common question I get and I have a lot of thoughts on it. While charging is more about electric vehicles overall than Rivian specifically, I think it's the single biggest part of the switch to EVs to solve. So I'll break it up by charging level.

Level 1 Charging

Level 1 charging is 120 volt alternating current single phase, 12-16 amp changing. For the R1S I get 2-3 miles of range per hour when charging with a standard 120 volt plug. While it's low value, there is value there. In fact, I think more employers should simply add 120 volt outlets on the outside of their walls, where a lot of employees park because for many people, 8-10 hours of 1-1.5kw of power is enough to cover their daily commute. Plus, it's very cheap to install maybe $500-1000, and it will only cost the company $1-3 per day per employee, but it goes a long way toward supporting the EV adoption. 

I think level 1 charging is a huge overlooked way to support the transition to EVs. Canada and the north is a step ahead of most of us, because there are often outlets for block heaters on diesel trucks at hotels and public parking.

Level 2 Charging

Level 2 is 240 volt alternating current single phase, 15-80 amp charging. In my mind there is level 2A and level 2B, 2B being 6 kw (24 amps) and below, and 2A being 8 kw (32 amps) and above. Why do I say that? 6 kw is a pretty common level 2 charging speed, for the Rivian that's around 12 miles of range added per hour. For smaller sedans that's probably more like 20 miles of range per hour. While that's nice, that speed is almost useless for less than three hours of charging. It's useful at home and at work, maybe at a trailhead, but it's more or less useless at restaurants, coffee shops, convenience stores, grocery shopping, or any place you would run an errand. Plus, for such a big battery as the Rivian, at 6 kw speed we're talking roughly 20 hours to fully recharge the vehicle from say 10% to 100%.  

That's why in my mind level 2A charging of 8 kw (32 amps) or 11.5 kw (48 amps) is a lot different. I have a home charger installed that gives the 11.5 kw, which is about 26 miles of range per hour. When I was in California I had 8 kw speed charging at my apartment, by unplugging my oven and plugging in my car. 11.5 kw is fast enough that I can charge the vehicle from 10% to 100% in about 10 hours. Which, in a hypothetical situation is deciding at 8 PM on Friday night that I want to ski Saturday morning, and for some reason the vehicle is nearly empty, I would still be able to leave at 6 AM. That gets to a big difference of EV ownership, you do have to plan ahead. You can't literally just go and figure out where to charge later. 

I'm very fortunate that I currently have EV charging at work, and during the week I have just enough charge left over from my commute that I basically only have to use my home charger on the weekends for various trips that I do, like going into the mountains. 

Most public level 2 chargers are 6 kw speed and again this really only makes sense if you are charging for multiple hours. While nice at a grocery store or restaurant, it's like putting 1/4 of a gallon of gas in your car, it's almost not worth the effort to open the gas tank, unless it's at a place like a ski resort, a hotel, or an apartment complex where you would park all day, or all night. 

A note on electrical usage. Most devices are designed to use 80% of the available power. So on a 60 amp circuit the charger will deliver 48 amps to the car. 48 amp chargers are the typical maximum hard wired level 2 speed. However, 80 amp and 100 amp circuits do exist, so there are a few third party 19 kw level 2 chargers, out there. I've never used one, it's kind of a mythical beast that would charge my car at about 44 miles of range per hour, now that would be cool at a restaurant! However, I've never actually used one.

Final note on level 2 charging, instead of installing $500-$1000 hardwired EV chargers, making a 240 volt 40 or 60 amp dedicated circuit with a NEMA 14-50 outlet is ideal if you want to future proof a garage, or have friends visit often with an EV. Sure you can't really charge people to use it, but it's very adaptable to all types of EVs and for residences and businesses is a small fraction of the overall new building electrical cost. Plus the outlet is "dumb" with no added software or hardware needed for EV owners. It can't really break, except to trip the breaker and would save $500-$1000. In other words, it's the simpler and cheaper solution than adding an actual level 2 charger, and accomplishes the same goal more reliably. 

Level 3 Charging

Level 3 charging is direct current fast charging typically 400 volts, but 800 volts is gaining traction, And 150-400+ amps. So when I moved back to Colorado from California we road tripped in the Rivian, pulling my old Honda Insight, and made 13 charging stops in 1,220 miles. Most EV charging is not at all designed for towing. Spots where you can pull through (like a gas station) are few and far between, maybe 5% of fast chargers. We probably could have done a few fewer stops, but towing really saps the range and we didn't want to be stranded. Here again I think of level 3 charging in level 3A 120kw+ and level 3B below 100 kw. There are a fair number of 50 and 62.6 kw chargers level 3B size, that make a lot of sense for restaurants or slow stops, when you will be there for an hour. But at those speeds, charging the Rivian from 10% to 100% will take a little under two hours. 

Georgetown ChargePoint

People out there reviewing chargers often make a big deal out of 300 kw speeds or some new 400 kw speeds, and while the Rivian does charge at up to something like 225 kw speeds, practically speaking, when I'm actually getting 150 kw, I'm happy. So often fast chargers are de-rated that you plug into a 350 kw charger with 30% battery and get 80 kw speed... it's super frustrating. The infrastructure of the US is just not ready for everyone to drive an EV yet. To give a specific example, the Electrify America level 3 charger at Walmart in Frisco, Colorado almost always has issues. It's a super high traffic spot, and that charger being broken will actively hinder EV adoption in Colorado. Just down the road the ChargePoint level 3 charger at the Target in Silverthorne is better, and often full, but the location is a little more out of the way. Another example, there is a 62 kw level 3 fast charger in Leadville with a single charging stall. We used it once and it was a good experience, but twice we've driven past and see someone towing using it... it's a nightmare location to try to get a trailer into, but it's a key location for a lot of adventures with the next nearest fast chargers all being 30 miles away, and usually crowded or broken. 

Another thing that's different with EVs is that you don't use 100% of the range. The lowest I have gotten was 13%, and I've only been that low once. I think we have gotten down to 18% three times I think. I would like to get down to 10% actually, as it's more efficient from the time spent and paid at fast chargers. Similarly, it's rare to charge above 80% at a fast charger, even charging above 60% will significantly slow down how fast it gives out electrons. In other words, on a road trip, charging from 10% to 60% is the best to minimize the length of the charging stop in a Rivian while still having a little buffer, and at a 150 kw fast charger or faster that is only about 25 minutes. 

I've started to think about fast charging stops as two different types, first is a bathroom break, and given that my wife and I usually have a dog with us, it takes us about 15 minutes to walk the dog and go to the bathroom. This is where 150kw+ is necessary, and second as a meal, a stop of 40-80 minutes where we do the walking the dog, and bathroom, and also get food. Unfortunately most of the fast chargers are not within a block or two of a restaurant. There are a few exceptions, the Rivian Chargers in Truckee, CA and Montrose, CO are great examples, the Chargepoint charger in Aspen is another good example.

Towing Rivians in Glenwood Springs

To get specific about my situation in Colorado, roughly the farthest spot in Colorado away from me is Telluride, which is 375 miles with a lot of ups and downs going over passes, per the Rivian app it suggests I drive a little over three hours to charge in Rifle for 23 minutes, and then again two hours later in Montrose for 14 minutes and then finish the last hour and 15 minutes for a total travel time of 7 hours and 9 minutes. The problem is, 23 minute stops only really work if there is fast casual dining within walking distance. I think a more realistic cadence is drive for two hours, take a 10-15 minute bathroom break, drive for another two hours, eat a meal for a half hour, drive for another two hours and another 10-15 minute bathroom break, another two hours and hopefully you are at the destination. From Denver, the normal outdoors destinations in Colorado are all within about 7 hours of driving and 400 miles. So with a 300 mile range, it should only take one fast charge on the road for 15 minutes to arrive at the furthest reaches. This of course gets more complicated going to places like Moab because highway speeds of 80 mph really eat into the range more than going 60 mph through the mountains. 

I'm still not explaining this well. It's common to see Tesla drivers at super chargers just sitting in their cars,  on their phones while their cars charge. Despite what people say, no one wants to do that. We essentially want the public interstate or state sponsored rest stop, where we can plug in a car to fast charge, and then use the bathroom and get a drink of water and talk a three minute walk. Then we want to also be able to charge the car while we eat a meal. The problem is the infrastructure is not at all set up for either one of those options to be convenient. Rest stops that gas cars use all the time are great, but due to how public utilities work it's unlikely that they will add EV charging because then the state would profit off selling electricity and the electricity companies do not like that, even though that's the perfect location for drivers.  And restaurants are not always a good place for fast chargers because it's not common to have 480 volt three phase electricity at restaurants. I used to think that Starbucks was missing out for not having EV charging, but then I found a few Starbucks that do have EV charging, and I learned how charging works and it makes less sense. You can assume that everyone with an EV wakes up with a full tank of electrons, so in the morning, on the way to the adventure, people don't need to charge, their batteries are probably at 80% or something, it's in the afternoons on the way back from the adventure, when they are getting a late lunch or eating dinner that they need to charge. 

I think they are a few possible solutions. 

• One is to use large, battery banks, supplied by continuous 240V to fast charge cars. This would be easier from an infrastructure point of view. For example a 500 kWh or 1 Mw of batteries, basically a half semi trailer of batteries that could be supplied by a 240 volt circuit to continuously be charged, but would have enough to fast charge 10-20 people in a day, and in Colorado Saturday and Sunday have got to be the busy charging days. These could be at relatively remote locations.
• Another solution is more level 2 charging at destinations. To my surprise there is a place I go near Grand Junction often that is 275 miles away from my house, but it requires going up and over three passes which all drain the battery. I think I could make it on a single charge without charging, but it would be close, and when I get there there is only 120v level 1 charging, so arriving with 8% battery would not be good, because sleeping over night I would wake up with something like 15% battery. This isn't a fear when I'm driving home, that's where I am not afraid to push the range a little bit because I know when I pull into the garage I have 11.5 kw power ready to charge the car at about 9% of battery per hour. If every parking lot and garage had level 2 chargers, especially 8 kw or 11.5 kw speed, a lot of Colorado road trips would not need a fast charger. 
• Gas stations adding EV fast chargers. One option is to add the chargers along the side of the building, as most gas stations have a side lot. A second interesting option is to add the EV chargers on the gas pump islands, but further outboard from the gas pumps, so the pumps could be used, or the EV chargers.
• Highway rest stops adding EV charging, preferably level 3, but honestly even level 2 would be nice. 

I realize that's a lot to say about charging, but frankly I think that's going to impact people's experience of owning an electric vehicle, and a Rivian in particular a lot more than the adjustability of the seats. In Colorado owning an EV is not an issue, I can drive from my house, up to Copper Mountain, go skiing, eat lunch and dinner in the mountains with the vehicle in pet comfort mode the whole time, and then drive back home without charging. There are fast chargers basically even 50 miles on the major roads, and yet it still takes a fair amount of planning, because there isn't excellent destination charging yet. 

To wrap up the review, it's an awesome vehicle and it works for me. I realize I'm a bit of an early adopter and frankly, a lot of people aren't ready for electric vehicles. I hope to have this thing for the next decade, and in 10 years when it's time to get a new vehicle, I hope that I can get the same capabilities or even longer range in a package that weighs 1000 lbs less.