The Harsh Reality Of The Senate Launch System

Bob Zimmmerman has a piece at The National Interest: So, what should President Trump do? Does he continue to fund Ares/SLS/Orion, which is taking almost TWO DECADES and more than forty billion dollars to design, build, and fly a SINGLE manned capsule, or does he instead shut it down and have NASA buy the products … Continue reading The Harsh Reality Of The Senate Launch System

Selling The Senate Launch System

One of the many problems with SLS has been that there were no missions defined for it. One of its contractors, Boeing, has accordingly decided to define some lunar exploration architectures that utilize it. Of course, they don’t have any comparisons with the much cheaper alternatives that don’t. If I were SpaceX (or ULA, though … Continue reading Selling The Senate Launch System

Billionaires And Grandiose Dreams

A nice piece on modern technological philanthropy at The Economist: History is full of examples of rich men with big ideas. The merchant princes who founded enterprises such as the London Company in the 17th century wanted to build bustling empires across the seas. Howard Hughes spent the 1930s testing innovative aircraft and setting aeronautical … Continue reading Billionaires And Grandiose Dreams

Screw Dick Shelby

“…and the lobbyists he road in on.” An epic rant (IMHO) over at my underfunded Kickstarter project. [Friday-morning update] I’ll re-run the rant here: I’ve been writing all week, in various venues, about the mess that we’ve gotten ourselves into with Russia, whose space systems seem to be having reliability issues, despite the successful landing … Continue reading Screw Dick Shelby