Doug Messier has an open letter to them.
I have a bad feeling about this. But I don’t think that the fate of the industry rides on either their success, or failure.
Category Archives: Business
The Climate Debate
Over at First Things, John Murdock has some thoughts (including a discussion of me, Mark and the Mann suit), but there is also a howler:
Big decisions, whether in the life of a person or a nation often boil down to trust. America has been hemming and hawing for a while now, trying to decide if the 97 percent or so of climate scientists who say we have a big manmade problem are looking out for our best interest or are self-serving quacks.
Sorry, but this number has been debunked multiple times. It is simply false that 97% of scientists say that we have a “big manmade problem.” You can only get to such a ridiculous number by watering down what the “consensus” is about. Most scientists (including me) believe that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Period. Once you get beyond that, to whether or not we are causing a significant change in the climate with emissions, let alone whether or not the results will be catastrophic, and need to be addressed with immediate public policy, the “consensus” falls completely apart. Anyone who believes in that nonsensus needs to go read this.
Ending Our Dependence On Moscow
Defense News has a hit and a miss. First, the hit:
…And after SpaceX unveils the manned version of its previously unmanned Dragon spacecraft this week, NASA should accelerate development of the project
Yes, though unlike me, they don’t actually propose how to do that.
Here’s the miss, and it’s a big one:
and revive the Space Launch System to put super heavy payloads into orbit.
What does “revive” the SLS mean? I thought it was ahead of schedule? That’s what its proponents keep telling me.
And what “super heavy payloads” are there that need to be put into orbit? What does this have to do with dependence on the Russians? This recommendation seems to be a complete non sequitur.
Climate, And Time Scales
The science of climate change on decadal to century timescales most definitely is not settled, in spite of the IPCC’s highly confident proclamations. There are so many interesting and unsolved issues in climate dynamics. At this point, climate science seems relatively irrelevant for energy policies – the goals of carbon mitigation are in place, and whether anything meaningful can be achieved in the near term is doubtful. However, climate scientists are (in the words of Pointman) in a hurry towards some finishing line only they could see, and acted accordingly. I suspect that the IPCC becoming less and less relevant to the UNFCCC agenda.
I’m hoping that at some point soon, climate scientists will get fed up with trying to play politics with their science and get back to researching and debating these fundamentally interesting and unsolved issues in climate science, rather than attacking their colleagues for suggesting that there are other ways of thinking about climate change.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Isolated In Space
Who is? The Russians, or NASA?
Eric Cantor
I’m pretty unimpressed with House leadership in general, with the exception of McCarthy. I’d like to seem him take over.
Which would be a bonus in terms of space policy, because he gets commercial space.
The Problem With Software
It’s quite the depressing read.
Purchasers Of GM Shares
Did the Obama administration defraud them?
Sure looks like it to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
The Gloves Are Off
Elon is accusing ULA of bribing an Air Force general with a job, in return for the no-bid contract.
He’s probably right, but those things are always hard to prove.
Meanwhile, Paul Brinkmann at the Orlando Sentinel seems to mistakenly believe that the new engine development has something to do with NASA and SLS.
The Mitchell Study
I just looked over the preliminary briefing on the RD-180 mess. A couple things stuck out at me. First, let’s compare the policy dictates on launch between the DoD and NASA:
“Secretary of Defense, as the launch agent for national security space missions, shall:
– Ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the availability of at least two US space transportation vehicle families capable of reliably launching national security payloads”“Administrator, NASA, as the launch agent for civil space missions, shall:
– Develop, in support of US space exploration goals, the transportation-related capabilities necessary to support human and robotic exploration to multiple destinations beyond low-earth orbit, including an asteroid and Mars.”
Emphasis mine.
First, note that the DoD is tasked with a resilient launch capability. No such requirement exists for NASA. Which is why we went through two periods of over two-and-a-half years when we couldn’t get astronauts to orbit during the Shuttle program. Note also what else is missing from the NASA mission: no mention of heavy lift. Some, of course, believe that it is implicit in “transportation-related capabilities necessary to support human and robotic exploration…beyond earth orbit,” but many studies indicate otherwise. And the two omissions are related. If heavy lift is necessary, and if resilience were necessary for human exploration then, as with the DoD mission, the wording would be “Develop, to the maximum extent available, at least two of the transportation-related capabilities necessary to support human and robotic exploration…beyond low-earth orbit.”
Of course, they can’t even afford one, so they know that if they make that a requirement, it would make it utterly hopeless. But it does demonstrate the dramatic difference in importance between national security and “space exploration” “beyond low-earth orbit.”
Also note, later on in the briefing, that they say that there will be a “heavy-lift” requirement for military payloads. But they don’t define that explicitly, instead pointing out potential examples of such a capability (e.g., growth Delta and Falcon Heavy). That is, the DoD has a different definition for “heavy lift” than NASA does.
Given that the two of them, together are supposed to (among other things):
Work with each other and other departments and agencies, and with the private sector, as appropriate, to pursue research and development activities regarding alternative launch capabilities to improve responsiveness, resiliency, and cost effectiveness for future space launch alternatives,
it would be nice if they could resolve these disparities. Particularly since serious use of the EELV (and Falcon) families for exploration could drive down the costs of those vehicles for everyone. Instead, NASA is wasting billions on a non-redundant rocket that no one needs, except those working on it, who depend on it for their salaries.