…of space travel. The vast majority of it unmanned.
[Via Geek Press]
Category Archives: Space History
Remembering A Rocket Engineer
Not a rocket “scientist.” A eulogy to his late father-in-law, from John Bossard.
The Other Fortieth Anniversary
Bob Werb remembers Gerry O’Neill, and the birth of the alternate space movement.
Two Anniversaries
My piece on Sputnik and the X-Prize is up at PJM.
[Early afternoon update]
Related thoughts from Jeff Foust, over at The Space Review. I agree with him that, despite the five-year gap, we are now close to seeing the industry develop with some rapidity.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Matt Isakowitz at the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
Space Anniversaries
Today, October 4th, is the fifty-second and fifth anniversaries of Sputnik I, and SpaceShipOne’s winning of the Ansari X-prize, respectively. I’ll probably have more thoughts up later today or tomorrow, at Popular Mechanics or Pajamas media.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some thoughts from Michael Belfiore on the X-Prize anniversary.
Five Years Later
It’s hard to believe that it’s been half a decade since the first X-Prize flight. I remember it well because I had moved to Florida only a month before, was still recovering from being hit by two hurricanes within two weeks (Frances and Jeanne), and watching on television, frustrated that I could no longer just get in the car and drive up to Mojave to see it.
Now I’m back in California, and hope I’ll have more opportunities to go up and see the other exciting activities that it spawned. Things haven’t moved along as fast as people hoped, either for Virgin Galactic (due to some poor technical and contracting decisions on their part, in my opinion), or the field in general, but things are starting to pick up. As Arthur Clarke noted, we are often overoptimistic about schedules in the short run, but overpessimistic in the long run. It’s starting to be a longer run from 2004.
Bill Safire, RIP
And remembering the great speech he wrote a little over forty years ago that fortunately never had to be given.
Coming To His Senses
Neil Armstrong has finally wised up to the hoax:
One of the main arguments posited on Coleman’s website—that America could not, in 1969, have realistically possessed the technological capabilities needed to put a man on the moon—was reportedly one of the first things to cause the legendary astronaut a pang of doubt. Despite having spent thousands of hours training for the historic mission under the guidance of the world’s top scientists, technicians, and pilots, Armstrong said he knew the conspiracy theories were true after learning that website author Coleman was “quite the engineering buff.”
“Yes, at the time I thought those thousands of NASA employees were working round the clock for the same incredible goal, but if anyone would know what was really going on, it would be Ralph Coleman,” Armstrong said of the 31-year-old part-time librarian’s assistant. “He knows a lot more about faked moon landings than I ever could. He’s been researching the subject on the Internet for years.”
“Literally years,” he added.
The conspiracy should unravel quickly, now.
[Update]
As noted in comments, will Buzz deck Neil when Neil tells him the awful truth? Or will he fake it, like he did the last time?
A Brief History
…of NASA’s resistance to commercial competition, in a comment (number 31) over at Space Politics by Al Fansome:
For the last 25 years, NASA has had to be brought KICKING & SCREAMING every step of the way — into a partnership with commercial industry. It has been resisted by the NASA iron triangle (NASA + contractors + Center politicians).
* The DOT was given the legal authority by Congress in the 1980s to regulate commercial space transportation over the objections of the traditional status quo space powers.
* Commercial payloads were taken off of the Shuttle after Challenger by the Reagan Administration over the active opposition of the then NASA Administrator (Fletcher).
* The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 — which was the first law mandating that NASA buy commercial space transportation services — was passed by Congress over the objections of NASA.
* Instead of partnering with the American Rocket Company in the late 1980s, NASA MSFC created a competing hybrid rocket R&D program in an attempt to put AMROC out of business. (They succeeded.)
* The Congress passed the Commercial Space Act of 1998 that mandated that NASA should purchase ISS cargo resupply services. NASA resisted that mandate for 6 years — until Columbia happened and the Bush Administration created the Commercial/Crew Cargo services budget as part of the VSE in 2004. In December 2008, over 10 years after CSA98 passed, NASA finally signed an ISS cargo services delivery contract.
* NASA is still resisting doing commercial crew — which was part of the original official VSE plan (it was the CREW/cargo services program in the VSE). It has taken a national commission of space experts — reporting to the White House — to unequivocably recommend (its in all the options) that NASA institute a commercial crew (instead of Ares 1).
* NASA could have instituted “propellant depots” as part of the national strategy years ago. Why were propellant depots so obvious to the Augustine Commission as a key enable for our national goals in space, but ignored by the traditional NASA bureaucracy?
It is not because the NASA bureaucracy is dumb. I assert the reason is that creating a depot based architecture is not in the “bureaucratic interest” of NASA, as it outsources a large portion of the supply chain for exploration to commercial providers.
Prediction — NASA will resist creating propellant depots to the extent it is given the means to do so.
I think it’s a safe prediction. Those means have to be restricted. Though at least, this time, I think that we have top NASA administration on the right side.
[Early afternoon update]
He left out the saga of the Industrial Space Facility.
The Scientists Versus The Astronaut
Paul Spudis has an interesting anecdote from the Apollo days, with a current-day context.