Thoughts from Newt. I would note that Boeing would never do SLS on a fixed-price basis.
[Monday-morning update]
Bob Zubrin’s thoughts (tl;dr: Can SLS and the Gateway). (And yes, the URL is misleading.)
[Monday-afternoon update]
The NASA administrator is openly considering going to the moon with a Falcon Heavy and ICPS.
Dick Shelby was unavailable for comment, though I’m sure he will. I’m also sure he’s regretting confirming Bridenstine.
[Bumped]
Some instruction for millennials, from Bastiat.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Milan Kundera on historical amnesia.
[Afternoon update]
Socialism: The delusional fantasy that always ends in a nightmare.
What is the plausible worst case?
I’m glad to see the rocket starting to take shape, despite penny pinching from the parents, but that sure looks labor intensive.
A long article on the reasons we’re not burning it in reactors, including a lot of comments from Kirk Sorensen.
…has been working on previously undisclosed Space Act Agreements with NASA on a lunar lander. That would seem to be part of the puzzle of what’s been happening over the past several days.
Bob Zimmerman isn’t optimistic that NASA can break out of the status quo.
Mike Pence just gave a speech in Huntsville in which he stated as an administration goal to get back to the moon in not nine years, but in five (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this would be at the end of Trump’s second term). And he doesn’t care how it happens, even if it takes commercial rockets. That’s a shot over Dick Shelby’s bow. And he threw a lot of shade at Boeing over SLS.
That will either require a budget increase, or SLS/Orion cancellation. I imagine that if he’s not already doing so, Elon will put people on 24/7 shifts in Boca Chica.
[Update mid-afternoon]
Here‘s the story from Loren Grush.
In the process of looking for something else, I ended up rereading this essay I wrote a decade ago, as an open letter to the Augustine panel. I have to confess pleasure at how well it’s held up, and how things are proceeding as I foretold, despite Congress. Note that it also presaged my book, which I wrote a few years later.
[Update a few minutes later]
Heh, I just got to this part; I anticipated and advocated for the new Space Development Agency:
Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, man’s future in space is too important to be left to NASA. After President Reagan proposed the creation of a national missile defense system in 1983, it became clear that the U.S. Air Force was not properly organized or motivated — and so a new agency was created to pursue the president’s vision. The new agency, today called the Missile Defense Agency, was very innovative and made great progress because it could focus on its one goal. Along those lines, the Bush administration might have done well to establish an Office of Space Development (with “exploration” being merely a means to an end) that could draw on other federal resources — not just NASA, but the Departments of Defense and Energy — as well as the private sector.
It’s also ironic, in light of criticism of him in the essay, that Mike Griffin is heading it up.
SpaceX claims that it has redesigned the satellites to ensure that they’ll burn up in the atmosphere.
Hopefully at end of life, and not on the way up. Seriously, if true, this is good housekeeping.