Grant Bonin is having a debate on the appropriate launch vehicle size for exploration. My attitude is either use what you have, or if you’re going to spend billions of dollars developing new vehicles, focus it on something that actually reduces cost and improves reliability.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Stifling Of Dissent
I…errr…don’t blame John Ashcroft:
To my knowledge, not a single Democratic office-holder, in Minnesota or elsewhere, has disassociated himself from the Minnesota Democratic Party’s position that it is “un-American” to support our government’s policies in Iraq, and that expressions of such support should be banned from the airways.
The Broken Space Program
Wayne Eleazer has an interesting brief history of the US military space program at today’s issue of The Space Review. I was working at the Aerospace Corporation when some of the changes described were occurring in the early eighties. Clearly what they’re doing now isn’t working well, but I’m not sure that just going back to the SPOs is going to help. The problem is, as described, that space hardware (at least as historically developed and procured by the Air Force) is not like airplanes. Until they get some fresh thinking there, and try to make it so, I suspect that their woes will continue.
Yeah, That’ll Work
Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.
Yeah, That’ll Work
Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.
Yeah, That’ll Work
Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.
Hug An Engineer
It’s that week (that few pay attention to) to celebrate the people who do much more to improve our lives than most people realize.
Step Right Up
Thomas James has another Carnival of the Space Moonbats.
[Update in the afternoon]
Oh, this is too weird. One of the people that Thomas links to is Elaine Supkis, but in a posting at his blog she calls herself Elaine Meinel (her maiden name, apparently). As an old L-5er, this made my antenna go up.
A little googling reveals something that I didn’t know (assuming it’s true). She’s Carolyn Meinel‘s sister. I didn’t know Carolyn had a sister. I also didn’t know that Aden worked with the CIA.
Not The Headline I Would Have Chosen
“Man Shot By Cheney Leaving Hospital”
Guess he was just finishing the job.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jane Bernstein points out that they’ve already fixed it.
But this time, I kept a screenshot of the original (though it lost a little quality in the conversion to jpeg to put on my server–I still have the full bitmap).
And They’re Off
Unlike the Chinese versus NASA, this is a space race worth taking seriously:
I do wonder if Virgin Galactic/Spaceship Company will accelerate their vehicle development in response to this project if it looks probable that the Explorer vehicles will start flying next year. I think suborbital space tourism business will grow robustly beyond just those who want to claim that they were the “pioneers” in public space travel. In fact, more people will want to go once there have been lots of flights since this will help to demonstrate safe and reliable operation.