Laura Montgomery explains the legal situation with the lunar voyage. It’s a reminder that the regulatory moratorium expires in 2023. I continue to believe that it should have no expiration date, and should remain in place indefinitely, at least until there is a political consensus that regulation is required.
Category Archives: Space
Elon’s Announcement
I didn’t see it, and I couldn’t view it on my notebook because Firefox can’t handle HTML5 (WTF?).
But from what I can glean from my Twitter feed, the plan to send a bunch of artists into space excited a lot of people on Twitter not normally excited about what SpaceX has been doing (we saw a similar effect with the FH launch of the Tesla and rocket man, though some who didn’t like that love this). Anyway, I’ve been saying all weekend, and told people at the conference today that I’d be very surprised if someone booked an entire BFR flight and didn’t take friends along. The other thing that seems clear is that the schedule is slipping (Commercial Crew has slipped from November to December for test flight, and from next April to “second quarter” for first crewed launch).
Only about 5% of SpaceX resources are going to BFR currently, but once development is done on Commercial Crew, that will increase dramatically, but a 2023 lunar mission means no Mars prior to that. His flight, given the amount of the down payment, will be the highest BFR priority. Here’s a link from Business Insider.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Here‘s Eric Berger’s take.
Earth-Departure Orbital Mechanics
An interesting post over at Selenian Boondocks.
I’m heading to the airport in a while to head back to Florida, but this time to Orlando for the annual AIAA space conference (which it looks like will not be wiped out by a hurricane as it was by Irma a year ago).
Delta II
It’s about to make its last flight. Most of the media won’t realize how historical this event, or that rocket is. Somewhere, Max Hunter is smiling.
“The First”
Apparently the Hulu feature series about a mission to Mars fails to lift off. I’ve never been a Sean Penn fan.
BFR News
Among other things, its fins are growing. This happened with X-33, too. Hope BFR has a better fate.
In terms of the passenger announcement, it’s worth noting how different this trip will be from Apollo 8 (whose fiftieth anniversary comes in December), in terms of how spacious the accommodations will be. This is not your grandfather’s moon voyage.
[Update a while later]
Tim Fernholz has some questions. I have one for him: What does “certifying the Falcon Heavy to carry people” mean? Or look like?
[Update late morning]
Scott Manley analyzes.
Branding In Space
There seems to be a lot of concern in the science journalism community about Bridenstine’s potential proposal to allow sponsorship of missions:
Bridenstine’s proposal would set a dangerous precedent for NASA’s future. By suggesting that commercial partnerships could help fund NASA’s missions, it implies that the agency is not worth funding through the usual means—annual budgets carefully negotiated and ironed out by lawmakers. And their constituents believe that the space program is important; according to a study from the Pew Research Center in June, 72 percent of Americans say it’s essential for the United States to continue to be a world leader in space exploration. If Nike is ready and willing to drop millions of dollars to sponsor the next mission to Mars, why should lawmakers bother spending any taxpayer money on it? The world’s premier space agency shouldn’t have to resort to brand sponsorships in the absence of political will. And even if brands could float the first few years of a mission, they might not have the stomach for the years, or even decades it sometimes takes for NASA’s most ambitious missions to come to fruition. [Emphasis added]
There is a false assumption here that a) the purpose of NASA spending is “space exploration,” and that the negotiations and “ironing out” have much to do with “space exploration” as opposed to zip-code engineering. The sooner that we recognize that there is in fact an absence of political will, and accept that space exploration should be privatized, the way it was until the end of WW II, the sooner we’ll start to make more progress.
[Update a few minutes later]
More from Ken Chang.
The Need For A Space Force
It’s a 19th-century solution for a 21st-century problem. Most of the takes on this have been idiotic, but this is a good one. I’d note though, per the end, it’s not a choice between a Space Corps/Force or Space Guard. We need both.
Suborbital In Japan
Everyone is getting into the act. Seems like a weird propulsion concept, but I guess you can make an airbreather work for suborbital.
Space Force
That was then, this is now:
Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson asserted on Wednesday that the service is not pushing back on President Trump’s idea to create a Space Force. She offered no new details on how the process of forming a new service might unfold but insisted that this “has to be done the right way.”
I’m old enough to remember when she opposed Space Corps, let alone Space Force.
And are people really talking (again) about a Department of Space? Please, no.