A good overview of the problem, from Marina Koren.
Category Archives: Space
A Purpose-Driven Space Program
Bob Zubrin’s take on the stagnation in NASA human spaceflight.
As I’ve often said, if we don’t know why we’re doing something, it’s not possible to come up with a sensible way to do it.
Seventeen Years
Ian Kluft remembers seeing Columbia breaking up, from California.
[Sunday-morning update]
Here are my thoughts from that day. If you click on “Next Post” you’ll read a lot more from the hours and days that came after.
Starship Production
…may be coming back to California.
SLS
Nothing new to readers of this web site, but Eli Dourado has a good history of the mess.
Axiom
I got up at O Dark Thirty this morning to catch a flight to DC for the Space Transportation conference tomorrow, and haven’t had a lot of time to catch up on news, But Bob Zimmerman has thoughts on the announcement.
One of the reasons I left Rockwell over a quarter of a century ago was that it had become clear to me that they were never going to do anything commercial in space. It annoyed management when I told them this, but they knew it was true; they weren’t in the space business, they were in the government-contracting business. We’ll see how this goes.
A New Spaceplane Company
Good luck with this.
The House NASA Authorization Bill
It was just released, and at first glance, it appears to be a disaster. More anon.
[Saturday-morning update]
No moon in 2024, must use SLS to get to the moon, not allowed to do anything on the moon that would help with Mars, not allowed to purchase commercial landing services, not allowed to do any exploration at the South Pole for ice.
Saturday-afternoon update]
Here‘s Jeff’s story.
[Monday-morning update]
It’s the greatest hits of terrible space policy.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
[Late-morning update]
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation has weighed in.
The Planetary Society isn’t happy, either.
Starliner
I said post mission that I saw no need for another uncrewed demonstration prior to a crewed flight, but this story is changing my mind on that. Just how many ways can Boeing screw up?
Tomorrow’s Abort Test
Here’s the story from Emilee Speck.
There’s no instantaneous launch window, and while launch weather looks good, recovery weather looks maybe iffy for the beginning of the window. I think the odds of it actually launching at the beginning of the window are sufficiently low that I’m not going to drag myself out of bed at 0430 on a Saturday morning to view it.
[Saturday-morning update]
I made the right choice; scrubbed for weather.
[Sunday noon update]
Looks like it went off without a hitch. Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts.
[Bumped]