Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Planting The American Flag On The Moon

42 Comments

Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed with the Armstrong movie.

[Update late evening, before I drive up to West Palm Beach to pick up Patricia]

Some (sadly) hilarious thoughts and links from Jim Treacher.

[Sunday update]

OK, I see that Bob Zimmerman has had second thoughts.

I’m going to reserve judgment until I see the film. I think that the proximate cause of the uproar wasn’t the decision to leave out the flag planting, but the Canadian actor’s idiotic explanation of it. As I note in comments, the movie is a biopick of Neil Armstrong, not a history of Apollo, and his great achievement was not in planting a flag on the moon, but in simply being present on its surface.

Business, Economics, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

Paul Spudis

9 Comments

This is terrible, and a huge loss to the lunar development community. I just saw him in January at the lunar landing science workshop at Ames. He had finally come around to oppose SLS. Condolences to his family and other friends, RIP, and ad astra.

[Update a few minutes later]

More from Leonard David, who was as shocked by the news as I am. I hadn’t been aware that he had lung cancer.

[Update on June 8, 2021]

Paul’s widow, Anne, asked me to update this post to note that, contra a comment here, Paul had quit smoking in 1988, and was informed by his doctors that it was not the cause of his cancer.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Crew Dragon

25 Comments

Almost ready to fly.

And NASA is now saying that the first crewed flight, scheduled for spring of next year, may be operational. And no more Soyuz flights after that. Should have happened long ago, though.

Business, Economics, Law, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Property Rights On Mars

5 Comments

I don’t know if it will be webcast, but I’m going to be giving a talk tomorrow morning in Pasadena, as part of the final plenary of the Mars Society meeting.

[Update Sunday afternoon]

I think the talk went OK. The crowd was smaller than I expected; I think that the Mars conference in DC has pulled a lot of the audience that Bob used to get for his Mars Society meetings. I called people in the audience “mutant weirdos,” and made a lawyer joke.

[Bumped]