Thanks for the birthday wishes. Here is what I wrote in 2010 about Challenger.
[Update a while later]
On the thirtieth anniversary, there were still lessons to be learned. In fact, many remain to be learned today, on the thirty-seventh.
Category Archives: Space History
After Ten Years
Wayne Hale has been reposting his remembrances of the loss of Columbia.
Walt Cunningham
RIP.
He did a great service to the nation in Apollo 7, but less so in his opposition to commercial spaceflight.
[Update a while later]
Speaking of commercial spaceflight, John Krauss has some great photos of the Polaris Dawn crew at JSC.
Brian Binnie
The family has announced a memorial service at Arlington next month.
The Solar Power Satellite Game
A weird and potentially wonderful new website.
[Monday-morning update]
Per a comment from Robert Smith, if you want to keep the site up, click on the choice buttons.
[Bumped]
Loss Of A Pioneer
“The Road To The Stars Is Now Open”
That was Korolev’s quote from sixty-five years ago, when Sputnik launched.
[Afternoon update]
It’s also the eighteenth anniversary of the flight that won the X-Prize. I missed this at the time, but I’m greatly saddened to learn that my friend (and office mate at Rotary Rocket in the 90s), Brian Binnie, died a couple weeks ago.
I hadn’t realized that he finally published his book. I read and offered to publish a draft of it years ago, but at that time, he wasn’t able to publish it due to constraints from Northrop Grumman. I wonder what changed?
The Rice Speech
Today is the sixtieth anniversary. I wrote this on the fortieth anniversary, and it holds up pretty well, I think. “Because it is hard” is a dumb reason to do something.
What Was Old Is New Again
Whoever had the brilliant idea of building a rocket out of 1970s technology apparently was unaware, or had amnesia about all the problems caused by hydrogen with the Shuttle.
[Thursday-afternoon update]
“I would simply say to you that space is hard,” he said at an August 27 briefing when asked what lessons NASA could take from the extended delays in SLS’s development. “We are developing new systems and new technologies, and it takes money and it takes time.”
Yes, space is hard. It’s even harder when you make terrible design choices in order to provide a jobs program for existing workers and contractors. There is little new about either these systems or technologies.
[Bumped]
The Value Of Space Exploration
For its part, Webb suffered repeated delays and cost overruns even before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed work on a number of projects in both the public and private sectors. Initially meant to launch in 2010 at a cost of $3 billion, Webb eventually launched last December at a final cost of more than $10 billion. Similarly, the enormous Space Launch System rocket has cost more and taken far longer to lift off from Kennedy Space Center than originally planned – though NASA now expects to finally launch the rocket that will take astronauts back to the Moon at the end of August or beginning of September.
All the same, criticisms focused on excessive delays and busted budgets tend to fall by the wayside when we see the results of America’s space exploration programs. That’s certainly been the case with Webb, whose first images have received a rapturous reception by the media and public alike. But few people would say that this sense of wonder and inspiration is the reason America invests as much of its national resources as it does in space exploration, and even fewer would say it’s worth the financial costs involved.
One of these things is not like the others. I’m confident that history will record that SLS/Orion played a trivial, if not non-existent role in actual space exploration. And (as always) I would reiterate that out exploration of space will be much more effective when it is rightly viewed as not an end, but a means to a grander goal: the development and settlement of a new frontier, and the expansion of life and consciousness into the universe.