Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

More Lunar Base Thoughts

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Over at Open Market, where I also discuss the Romney advisers.

[Update late afternoon]

More from Doug Messier.

Newt needs to make an issue of this before Tuesday: “Governor Romney, you said that you’d fire someone who came up with a costly plan for lunar activities, and yet you just hired someone as a space adviser who was already fired for doing just that…”

Also, here’s Marcia Smith’s report on the Romney non-event today.

[Saturday morning update]

On the 26th anniversary of the Challenger loss, Byron York has a report on the two candidates’ space policies.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Mitt Romney would have fired Mike Griffin.” I’m guessing that Jim Muncy had some input into this, and that it may become a Gingrich talking point in the next couple days. I just fed Jake Tapper some questions to ask him tomorrow morning on This Week.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Gingrich’s Space Plan

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Is it science fiction?

Ummmmm…no.

By the way, did anyone else wonder why he asked about Atlas at the Cape, when Falcon 9 is already designed to human-rating specifications? Surely he’s aware of SpaceX.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is the most depressing thing I’ve seen all day, at least in terms of space policy:

ROMNEY WILL RESTORE AMERICA’S SPACE PROGRAM

Scott Pace, Chair of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group
Director, Space Policy Institute, The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University
Former Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Mark Albrecht
Chairman of the Board, USSpace
Former Executive Secretary, National Space Council

Eric Anderson
Chairman and CEO, Space Adventures
Chairman, Commercial Spaceflight Federation

Gene Cernan
Commander, Apollo XVII

Bob Crippen
Pilot, First Space Shuttle Mission
Former Director, NASA Space Shuttle Program

Michael Griffin
Former NASA Administrator
Former Head of the Space Department, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Peter Marquez
Former Director of Space Policy, National Security Council
Former Director of Special Programs, Department of Defense

William Martel
Associate Professor of International Security Studies, The Fletcher School at Tufts University
Former Alan B. Shepard Chair of Space Technology and Policy Studies, Naval War College

This is the first thing that I’ve seen that makes me want to see Obama reelected. It almost certainly implies that a Romney presidency means a resurrection of Constellation.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’m both surprised and disappointed that Eric Anderson has signed on to this.

This is potentially a perfect storm of space policy disaster.

[Afternoon update]

It is very frightening to see the name of the once (and future?) NASA administrator there. Top. Men.

[Update a few minutes later]

Heh: “So Mitt Romney is looking to Mike Griffin for space advice? I thought Mitt didn’t like impractical $200 billion lunar projects.”

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space

NASA’s Irrational Approach To Risk

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Bob Zubrin asks how much an astronaut is worth. I don’t think that this is historically accurate, though:

The attempted Hubble desertion demonstrates how a refusal to accept human risk has led to irresponsible conduct on the part of NASA’s leadership. The affair was such a wild dereliction of duty, in fact, that O’Keefe was eventually forced out and the shuttle mission completed by his replacement.

That’s not how I remember it. I recall at the time that I thought, and even advocated, that O’Keefe step down, because he had demonstrated himself unable to do the job, being traumatized by having to tell the Columbia families and friends on the tarmac at KSC that their loved ones weren’t coming home, which is probably what caused his timidity about Hubble. But I’m aware of no evidence that he was “forced out” over the decision. I thought that he simply wanted out of the job and took the best offer that came along. The administration would have been loath to remove an administrator, knowing how hard it is to find a good one. Someone should write a letter to the Reason editor on this. Bob either needs to substantiate this with a credible citation, or the magazine should run a correction. Because I think it’s wishful thinking on his part.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bad link, it’s fixed now, sorry.

[Mid-afternoon update]

While I criticized O’Keefe at the time, I didn’t actually disagree with the Hubble decision at the time. The problem that I saw with it was that it was based on irrational criteria. All the focus was on astronaut safety, and no one seemed to be considering how disastrous it would be if we lost another orbiter. NASA had no shortage of astronauts, but there were only three birds left in the fleet, and we would have had to complete ISS with only two, if the program survived at all. Add to that the fact that we probably could have launched an improved Hubble replacement for the cost of the repair mission, and the decision to do it was irrational in its own way, driven by an emotional attachment to the telescope that had shown so many wonders over the past decade.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

A Twinkle Of Hope

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My lead article in the special Reason February issue on space is on line now. This paragraph is somewhat pertinent to today’s events:

Can space policy be fixed? Not without the national will to do so. It would take either real visionaries making policy decisions or some sort of existential crisis (e.g., an asteroid with our number on it) to break out of the policy logjam. But the chances of the former are not as low as one might think. Had Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) not switched parties seven years ago while being allowed to keep his seniority, the 88-year-old defender of the status quo would not be the current chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Instead the chairmanship would have fallen to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has defended the administration’s space policy. Rohrabacher will almost certainly take over when Hall retires or is term-limited out in five years. If Newt Gingrich by some miracle wins the GOP presidential nomination and the White House, he would be the most space-conversant commander in chief in American history. So the stars might yet align.

But I still think it’s an uphill battle for Gingrich to win, even if he wins Florida.