Clearing up some misconceptions among the enthusiasts. Spaceflight isn’t “safe.” It’s also not “unsafe.” That any activity is either of those things in any absolute sense is a myth. It is all relative.
I’m assuming that Ed Wright wrote this, but it’s not clear.
Some free-market lessons. It is key that we decouple health insurance from employment. It has really screwed things up for decades. If there’s going to be a tax deduction for it, it should go to the individual, not the employer.
Seem to be entirely self afflicted. As a brilliant commenter notes, ironically, they failed to have a backup plan.
I’m glad I’m not a stockholder, and I’m unlikely to be until they change out their idiotic management.
The high cost of “clean” energy.
That’s what happens when you have scientific and economic illiterates making decisions about how to spend other peoples’ money.
…has an interesting press announcement, over at Clark Lindsey’s place.
Doug Messier has a report on the rampant idiocy on display yesterday in the space hearings on both sides of the Hill.
An interesting profile in The Economist, including a mention (but unsurprisingly, little info) of Blue Origin.
This is going to be fodder for some devastating campaign ads this fall. As I’ve said before, they should end with the tag line: “Obama got what he wanted. Did you?”
Via VDH, who has a lot more thoughts.
[Update a while later]
Sorry, link was missing originally. It’s there now.
Still more ambitious is Musk’s goal to reach Mars within 20 years – ten if he can. He firmly believes that it will be as natural a step for life to become multi-planetary as it was for it to evolve from single-celled creatures, move out of the sea and develop consciousness.
Musk says he wants to put 10,000 people on Mars, perhaps many more, and believes that will become a business proposition if the cost of a ticket can be brought down to the price of a decent house in California. Musk believes he will need $2 billion to $5 billion to reach the Red Planet which he sees as readily achievable.
Unlike Congress, Elon is serious about human spaceflight. And settlement.
I just got an interesting email:
A fully-operational communications satellite is available for purchase for only a short time (days). If you know an organization that might be interested, please have them contact Richard Van Allen of Microcosm at 310-219-2700 ASAP.
The F2 satellite has been in orbit for about 11 years, during which time it used about 6 kg of propellant. It cost in the multi-hundreds of millions of dollars, and the launch cost was $105M in 1994 dollars. All systems on board the spacecraft are functioning normally, and it has both S-Band and C-Band communications capabilities. Also important, there is a current RF license in place to use the frequencies allocated to it. The current owner has decided it does not want to continue paying about $133K/month to keep it functioning and has been intentionally burning propellant over the last several weeks to deplete the remaining propellant. Currently there is about 30 kg remaining, more than enough for the satellite to last for many years. However, by the end of this week, the remaining propellant will have been used up, and the satellite will be dead.
Info on the satellite can be found here.