How do we survive it?
Category Archives: Space
Starliner Woes
It continues to look worse and worse for Boeing. I’m almost starting to wonder if it will ever fly. SpaceX can do the job for less money, and it may not be that long before either Dreamchaser or Starship is flying (though it’s not clear that the latter will be capable of docking with the ISS).
[Update a few minutes later]
Comments over there are (deservedly, IMO) brutal.
[Update Monday afternoon]
“We don’t know how many software errors we have.”
[Bumped]
Satellite Internet And Astronomy
A good overview of the problem, from Marina Koren.
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.