Jeff Foust’s take. I’ll be talking about this on The Space Show on Sunday.
9 thoughts on “Trump, And Space”
#7 is a biggie, right? instead of just “let Commercial play in our LEO sandbox”, it sounds more like “hand over the keys to Commercial and let them own/run LEO (including ISS access and ops)”. Am I misinterpreting?
Well, you know my take on this, as I have urged you several times to get as many copies of Safe Is Not An Option into the hands of his people as you can. The horse may or may not drink but it does need to be led to water.
That said, what Robert Walker outlined shows some promise.
For me, the path the USA should be taking in space can be summed up by three things: your book, Jim Bennett’s Space Guard proposal in The New Atlantis, and Jeff Greason’s 2011 ISDC keynote speech.
We just went a full 4 year Presidential term without an US ability to launch a human into space. This isn’t the 21st Century I was promised.
Oh I guess we finally did complete JWST, except it’s still on the ground and won’t fly for another 2 years.
So really low bar to make vast improvements in our space program. If the policy is more than just something to put in a platform document; I think it will easily hurdle the last 8 years of US space policy.
Kudos to private ventures for advancing space in the interim. Between the efforts of commercial space and the US oil and gas industry; we managed to sustain a future for all Americans.
It’s a good set of wishes. Aside that it would be the Trump administration carrying it out, the only one I can see our friends to the left objecting to, is giving more earth sciences stuff to NOAA. That actually makes a lot of sense and doesn’t diminish the work being done.
The comments were interesting to read if you could get through the wall of TDS. Oh, and BOOOSH was responsible for thirty years of lending regulations and government programs lol. It is cool that people can be so knowledgeable about space and engineering but not so much about economics.
Robert Zimmerman says he has talked to some Trump people so that is reassuring. Also, he has a white paper that is supposed to be coming out soon.
7. Hand over access to and operations in low Earth orbit to the commercial sector.
8. Start discussions about including more “private and public partners” in operations and financing of the International Space Station, including extending the station’s lifetime. Walker also left open the possibility of including China as one of those new partners.
People inside and outside of NASA have said that the ISS is probably too expensive for a corporation to run cost effectively. And that knowing what they do now, they could do a better job designing a space station. It is up there so it would suck to see it go to waste or not pillaged for useful items.
A COTS approach to a replacement would be great, especially if there was the goal of enough standardization to construct similar stations in other places of the solar system. It would also be nice if the design of modules allowed for a floor and the stress of being part of a rotating station.
Can’t remember where I heard/read this but NASA has been talking with our space partners on a cislunar spaceship. Anyone heard about this thing? There seems to be a parallel space program run in secret. Obama says ARM and Mars but NASA and our partners have also been working on a lunar village and a new spaceship.
The ISS is kind of a prototype. It’s also rather Byzantine. It’s not something than can be run efficiently. It’s still a useful place to do small scale testing of habitation modules for a commercial space station, or a transit stage, though. Consider it to be a government test facility or national lab at this point. It must be seen like that IMHO.
That’s not a bad way to look at it so long as there’s a fairly common docking method, and room around the dock, that allows you to test various modules.
Also, considering most of the costs were in building ISS, not in keeping it up, the longer it runs the better. I don’t think it will ever be competitive commercially with a private space station. The economics just aren’t there and there is limited real estate in orbit to begin with.
#7 is a biggie, right? instead of just “let Commercial play in our LEO sandbox”, it sounds more like “hand over the keys to Commercial and let them own/run LEO (including ISS access and ops)”. Am I misinterpreting?
Well, you know my take on this, as I have urged you several times to get as many copies of Safe Is Not An Option into the hands of his people as you can. The horse may or may not drink but it does need to be led to water.
That said, what Robert Walker outlined shows some promise.
For me, the path the USA should be taking in space can be summed up by three things: your book, Jim Bennett’s Space Guard proposal in The New Atlantis, and Jeff Greason’s 2011 ISDC keynote speech.
I expanded on that last paragraph on my blog here:
https://goo.gl/2pZoBN
Guess I’m blogging again.
We just went a full 4 year Presidential term without an US ability to launch a human into space. This isn’t the 21st Century I was promised.
Oh I guess we finally did complete JWST, except it’s still on the ground and won’t fly for another 2 years.
So really low bar to make vast improvements in our space program. If the policy is more than just something to put in a platform document; I think it will easily hurdle the last 8 years of US space policy.
Kudos to private ventures for advancing space in the interim. Between the efforts of commercial space and the US oil and gas industry; we managed to sustain a future for all Americans.
It’s a good set of wishes. Aside that it would be the Trump administration carrying it out, the only one I can see our friends to the left objecting to, is giving more earth sciences stuff to NOAA. That actually makes a lot of sense and doesn’t diminish the work being done.
The comments were interesting to read if you could get through the wall of TDS. Oh, and BOOOSH was responsible for thirty years of lending regulations and government programs lol. It is cool that people can be so knowledgeable about space and engineering but not so much about economics.
Robert Zimmerman says he has talked to some Trump people so that is reassuring. Also, he has a white paper that is supposed to be coming out soon.
7. Hand over access to and operations in low Earth orbit to the commercial sector.
8. Start discussions about including more “private and public partners” in operations and financing of the International Space Station, including extending the station’s lifetime. Walker also left open the possibility of including China as one of those new partners.
People inside and outside of NASA have said that the ISS is probably too expensive for a corporation to run cost effectively. And that knowing what they do now, they could do a better job designing a space station. It is up there so it would suck to see it go to waste or not pillaged for useful items.
A COTS approach to a replacement would be great, especially if there was the goal of enough standardization to construct similar stations in other places of the solar system. It would also be nice if the design of modules allowed for a floor and the stress of being part of a rotating station.
Can’t remember where I heard/read this but NASA has been talking with our space partners on a cislunar spaceship. Anyone heard about this thing? There seems to be a parallel space program run in secret. Obama says ARM and Mars but NASA and our partners have also been working on a lunar village and a new spaceship.
The ISS is kind of a prototype. It’s also rather Byzantine. It’s not something than can be run efficiently. It’s still a useful place to do small scale testing of habitation modules for a commercial space station, or a transit stage, though. Consider it to be a government test facility or national lab at this point. It must be seen like that IMHO.
That’s not a bad way to look at it so long as there’s a fairly common docking method, and room around the dock, that allows you to test various modules.
Also, considering most of the costs were in building ISS, not in keeping it up, the longer it runs the better. I don’t think it will ever be competitive commercially with a private space station. The economics just aren’t there and there is limited real estate in orbit to begin with.