Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Dissing Virgin Galactic

3 Comments

You can find a NASA astronaut to come up with any opinion you want, but Andy Thomas isn’t impressed with SpaceShipTwo. I share the criticisms (which were made by me and others when the SpaceShipOne concept was first revealed), but I don’t think it’s doomed to failure. It offers a different experience than New Shepard, and will have its own market. I continue to find it ironic that the systems Burt added for “safety” probably added hazards instead.

Health, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Reproduction On Mars

14 Comments

Nadia Drake has the latest. We continue to not have a gravity lab to study this.

[Update after reading the whole thing]

They seem to be proposing a gravity lab (still unfunded), but they want to put it in lunar orbit. I see no reason to do this, other than to give the Gateway something to do; LEO (and probably in the ISS orbit) makes a lot more sense to me.

Business, Philosophy, Space, Technology and Society

Jeff Bezos

4 Comments

An interesting space-related profile from Princeton, his alma mater.

I did an interview a few months ago for the upcoming documentary, even though I didn’t really know O’Neill (I met him once). He had a large indirect influence on my life. The last question I was asked was what single word came to mind when I thought about him. My answer: “Hope.”

[Afternoon update]

It’s important to understand that The High Frontier came out in the mid-70s, a time of doom and gloom. Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were always banging on about overpopulation and running out of resources, and instead of global warming, we were supposed to be worried about a return of the glaciers. In addition to O’Neill’s book, Peter Vajk (himself inspired by O’Neill) came out with a book meant to be a palliative, titled Doomsday Has Been Canceled. Anyway, that’s the context in which I said that he brought hope.

Philosophy, Space, Technology and Society

Human Extinction

30 Comments

Would it be a tragedy?

Note that he doesn’t consider the possibility of homes for both humanity and other terrestrial life off planet.

FWIW, if I had to choose between saving a few lives and all of the art in the Louvre, it’s not at all obvious that the lives have higher value. I can certainly imagine some people willing to sacrifice themselves for it, but that issue isn’t in his question.

Business, History, Space, Technology and Society

115 Years Of Powered, Controlled Flight

10 Comments

Fifteen years ago, on the centennial anniversary of the Wright’s first flight, I wrote three separate essays on it. One was at National Review, a second was at Fox News (though I can’t find it; the original blog post can be found here), I think, and a third was at what was then TechCentralStation, but that one seems to have succumbed to link rot. If anyone can find it, I’d appreciate it (I think the title was “Airplane Scientists”).

It’s also the fifteenth anniversary of the first time that SpaceShipOne went supersonic. Burt liked to do things on anniversaries.

[Afternoon update]

John Breen found it.

[Update a while later]

Business, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Back To Space

8 Comments

Virgin Galactic just completed the first flight of SpaceShipTwo to space, if one considers the boundary to be 80 kilometers (it reportedly got to 82). At the Galloway Symposium last week, Jonathan McDowell made a good case that this, not the traditional Karman line of 100 km, is the right altitude. If one accepts that, it is the first flight of humans to space from American soil since the Shuttle retired over seven years ago. Here’s hoping that Blue Origin does the same thing next year (except they’re designed to get to 100 km).

[Update a few minutes later]

Here‘s Emilee Speck’s story.

[Update a while later]

Link to the McDowell paper should be working now, sorry.

[Update a while later]

Tim Fernholz has a story up now.

[Update a few minutes later]

And here’s a story from CNN‘s Jackie Wattles.