For those people who foolishly thought that the Republican debate was more important than my conversation with Alan Boyle tonight, the podcast is up now.
[Update]
It’s all ME, ME, ME, over at Cosmic Log tonight.
So if you’ve had enough of me, don’t go there.
[Thursday morning update]
Related thoughts from Rick Tumlinson.
[Update a few minutes later]
Man, many of the comments over at Cosmic Log are typical, in their rampant ignorance and straw men.
I thought SBIR proposal writing was more important than either…….
not you http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/110decision-time-america-future-space.html
Yup. What a brown noser. Whadya pay ’em?
Hopefully it’ll bring in a new class of trolls.
Rand, you sounded like a space tragic giving about 90% of the time on the show to why we’re on the wrong road and very little to what we can do instead on the right road.
SpaceX is offering seats to well-heeled NASA to fly astronauts to the space station at 12 million a head. They’ve published cargo prices of Falcon Heavy at a hair over $1000/lb if you are willing to send 59 tons.
What value for the money can we get now that we almost have a US commercial option that costs 1/5 what the Russians charge to get astronauts to an orbital space station and cargo at less than 1/30 the cost of the space shuttle? What should we be asking for?
Selling a negative value proposition that we’re getting nothing for the money is a straightforward case to close NASA.
I want one-way trips to the Moon for settlement. If 1/3 of NASA’s budget was spent on getting stuff to the Moon, we could send 1 million pounds of cargo to the Moon each year (without the additional gains from propellant depots and high flight rates). The ISS only masses 920,000 pounds.
Help add to the menu of what value we can get for the money.
Sam, pointing out the anchors holding us back is important to getting the ship sailing. It’s not like Rand doesn’t point out those adding to the wind.
As I read the comments I kept waiting for the pathological liar, Mark Whittington, to chime in on “massive subsidies”. I was rewarded for the time I spent wading through the comments.
I also learned that Rand is from a far right wing think tank with secret liberal left wing leanings and a love for President Obama.
There is no such thing as a middle position on anything or cherry picking this or that policy from a politician. It is all or nothing with everything.