Should they be “permissionless”? Marcia Smith reports on an interesting hearing on the Hill last week, which I attended.
Category Archives: Space
Wasteful Spending
Trump is going to order a government-wide review of it.
If Trump really wants to review wasteful government spending, at NASA he can start with SLS/Orion: https://t.co/eR8yiprfgO
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) March 13, 2017
[Update a while later]
Congratulations to Altius Space Machines for their NASA SBIR Phase II win for cryo propellant transfer technology development. If we canceled SLS/Orion, we could found several thousand efforts like this.
A New Cold War With Russia
Michael Totten says to brace yourself.
It’s too bad that Congress doesn’t take human spaceflight seriously, so we remain dependent on them.
RIP, Athena
I think that Kodiak will be hardest hit by this.
Capitalism In Space
Bob Zimmerman has published an interesting and timely paper. I haven’t read it yet, but it can be downloaded from the Center For a New American Security, or from his site.
“We Will Definitely Catch Up”
As I said, I went to the Satellite 2017 conference. Unfortunately, my flight was too early yesterday to catch this panel:
Shotwell also anticipates that using Falcon 9 rockets with pre-flown first stages will enable the company to execute on its backlog, which is currently loaded with customers that expected to have their satellites launched in 2016. SES-10 was one such mission.
“We do anticipate reflying about six vehicles, [with] pre-flown boosters this year, which should take some of the pressure off of production,” Shotwell said.
Let hope. I’ve been saying that the plans for the Apollo 8 re-enactment next year aren’t as unrealistic as some think (I give it about 30%). They have to get flying again, and they have to fly the heavy this year, and they have to get in those qualification flights, but I think those, not the Dragon itself, are the long pole in the tent. Once they have both pads going, they may in fact be able to work of that backlog, and if they’re regularly reflying first stages, that will be historic.
Death, And The Meaning Of Life
I have no idea how I will face my impending end (and I’m doing everything reasonable to put it off as long as possible), but I get meaning from my goal of moving humanity into space, and I’ll continue to do so as long as I’m alive. When I see people who win the lottery have their lives ruined over it, I suspect it’s because they don’t have any real purpose in life other than material pleasure, and have never given any serious thought to what they’d do with the winnings. I’d have no problems at all; if I had a billion dollars, I’d start a serious space venture.
The Far Future Fund
This looks interesting. I wonder what they’re doing in terms of opening up space?
An interesting scale. https://t.co/VKZ42jPZZm
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) March 3, 2017
SpaceX Skepticism
There is a decided visceral dislike among many conservatives for Elon Musk, and this piece over at The Federalist is a veiled example. I may write a rebuttal and see if Mollie or Sean will run it.
Blue Moon
The private sector continues to seize the initiative in space:
Blue Origin could perform the first lunar mission as early as July 2020, Bezos wrote, but stressed that it could “only be done in partnership with NASA. Our liquid hydrogen expertise and experience with precision vertical landing offer the fastest path to a lunar lander mission. I’m excited about this and am ready to invest my own money alongside NASA to make it happen.”
Last year, Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its suborbital rocket, the New Shepard, five times within less than a year, flying just past the 62-mile edge of space and then landing vertically on a landing pad at the company’s West Texas facility.
That same technology could be used to land the Blue Moon vehicle on the lunar surface, the company said. Its white paper shows what looks like a modified New Shepard rocket, standing on the moon with an American flag, a NASA logo and Blue Origin’s feather symbol.
The company said it plans to land its Blue Moon lunar lander at Shackleton Crater on the moon’s south pole. The site has nearly continuous sunlight to provide power through the spacecraft’s solar arrays. The company also chose to land there because of the “water ice in the perpetual shadow of the crater’s deep crevices.”
Water is vital not just for human survival, but also because hydrogen and oxygen in water could be transformed into rocket fuel. The moon, then, is seen as a massive gas station in space.
If this happens, SLS/Orion are dead programs walking. This is the 21st century I’ve been waiting for. We’re finally putting a stake through the heart of the Apollo Cargo Cult.
Note (as usual with such pieces in such venues) the stupidity and ignorance of the comments.
[Update a few minutes later]
Eric Berger thinks this is a big deal. So do I. I think that people are going to be very surprised at how quickly things start happening. And I suspect that 2017 will be viewed as a very important year in space history.
[Update late morning]
Miri Kramer thinks it’s “unhinged sounding.” I think that applies better to NASA sending crew to the moon on the very first flight of SLS. Even in Apollo they had test flights of the launch system.
[Update early afternoon]
Let the space tycoons lead the way. I think the transcontinental railroad analogy is very apt. NASA’s (and the National Research Council’s) “vision,” such as it is, is indeed paltry, as I wrote last year.