A reminder, for those who (unlike me) are in or can make it to western Texas this weekend. I hope that perhaps something can be done in the LA area as well at some point.
Category Archives: Space
End Of An Era
Henry Vanderbilt is retiring from putting on the annual Space Access Conference. The good news is that it accomplished a lot of its goals, as we enter a new era of lower-cost launch, and likely destined to continue to see prices fall. I hope that someone else can take up the torch.
Moon Or Mars?
The latest on the issue.
It’s a pointless discussion, because it presumes it’s going to be a government program: Apollo back tot the moon again, or Apollo to Mars. We need to be developing capabilities to go wherever we want, affordably. Then let the people paying for it decide.
Related: Howard Bloom says that NASA needs to get out of the rocket business, and start working on an actual superhighway in space. I’m not sure I want Marshall in charge of that, though. To put it mildly.
The 2017 Launch Market
Bob Zimmerman has some prognostications.
I agree that it’s likely to be a banner year, with an even brighter future.
The SpaceX Failure
The final assessment. I’m selfishly hoping they’ll delay past the 7th, because we get in from London at 2 AM on that date, and won’t be in a mood for a drive up to Vandenberg.
[Update a few minutes later]
Return to flight now scheduled for Sunday night. We’ll try to watch from the beach, if the weather is clear.
The Biggest Space Stories Of The Year
I usually write these sorts of things, but I’m on vacation, and Mike Wall has ten. I think that the Bezos announcement of New Glenn and New Armstrong are as big as Elon’s Mars announcement though. I consider Bezos both more ambitious, and more credible, in the sense that he is spending his own money, and not lobbying the government for it.
The Reactionless Drive
The Chinese are claiming they’ve successfully tested it on orbit.
I remain skeptical.
To The Moon?
Bob Zimmmerman speculates on what the Trump administration might do in civil space policy.
Moon Versus Mars
A (sort of) debate between Paul Spudis and John Grunsfeld. I think that Grunsfeld is far too pessimistic about the moon, but I also think that this debate is irrelevant. Our future in space will be determined by billionaires, not Congress or NASA.
A Useful Experiment
I’ve been watching this Kickstarter project. I was talking to Jon Morse a couple weeks ago, and he didn’t expect it to succeed. He was right; it only raised a third of the million dollars it sought. But it’s a useful market test for private space exploration. Maybe if they shoot for half that. I do think we’re entering a new era of what I call “normal science,” before the Manhattan Project, the Cold War, and Apollo screwed everything up, and things like the big telescopes (the first high-tech astronomy programs) were funded philanthropically.