Are there any limitations on the federal government under the Constitution?

[Update a while later]

I don’t know if Radley’ site is still down, but meanwhile, via Paul Hsieh at Facebook, the nation’s political history in two lines:

Our political history in two lines:
“The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.” – G. Washington
“The Constitution? Are you serious?” – N. Pelosi

I don’t think she was serious when she took her oath of office. Then again, neither was George Bush, in that regard.

Jon Goff attended an interesting meeting at SwRI last week.

While a dual-Orion mission may be doable for a two-person crew, I still think that it’s more of a stunt than a serious mission, and I actually question the value of sending people to a NEO early, other than to demonstrate and practice deep-space capability. I’d also send an “armada” of two. I’m not sure you get sufficient redundancy from a single dual-Orion mission, due to potential common cause for the two docked vehicles. With two separate “ships” flying in a loose formation, you’d have a lot more depth in safety.

Of course, Orions won’t be cheap. Maybe Dragons instead. Then you’d get the bonus of having an asteroid map with the words, “Here be Dragons…” 🙂

But as Bigelow said, what you really want is an expandable habitat, and just take the capsule along for the entry, as (I suggested to Keith Reiley at Boeing yesterday on the phone) a motor home drags a car along for short excursions. Also, I can’t speak to what Boeing plans, but if I were them, I’d be scarring CST for deep space.

[Update a while later]

Now that I think about it, if you really want to eliminate common cause (other than a major solar flare), your armada would consist of a CST-based craft, an Orion-based craft (if you could afford it) and a Dragon-based craft.