They’ve figured out how they avoid radiation damage, and humans may be able to do it, too.
Category Archives: Space
Mark Whittington
His latest nonsense:
The problem, from the perspective of commercial space supporters, is that Shank represents an institutional, NASA-centric viewpoint where it comes to space exploration. While at the space agency he supported the Bush-era Constellation program which was subsequently canceled by President Obama. In Congress, Shank helped support the Orion spacecraft and the heavy lift Space Launch System. Many commercial space advocates find these views abhorrent, believing that NASA should simply outsource its space exploration plans to the private sector, to companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
I don’t know any commercial space advocates who believe that. What we believe is that there is no need for NASA to be in the launch business.
Shank’s association with Mike Griffin has also raised some hackles. Griffin has been blamed, unfairly for the most part, for the troubles that beset Constellation before it was cancelled. In fact many of these problems, including the fact that the project was underfunded, occurred above his paygrade.
There is nothing unfair about blaming Mike Griffin for choosing a terrible rocket design that was certain to cost more than was allocated for it in the budget sandpile, in the belief that he could somehow talk Congress into increasing his budget.
Russia’s Rockets
“The Russian space sector is short of funding, and may be having difficulties maintaining its quality control standards,” said John Logsdon, a Planetary Society board member and professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
Additionally, Russia’s workforce is shrinking. Since the 1990s, the country’s population has steadily declined, despite an influx of more than 9 million immigrants. Those migrants have filled some of the country’s job vacancies, but the overall effect, according to the Brookings Institute, is that Russia faces a sharp decline in labor quality.
Worse yet, due to larger economic pressures, the country isn’t able to make large-scale education investments, said David Belcher, an analysis manager at the Washington, D.C.-based Avascent consulting group.
“The effect of that is that they have a skills mismatch in certain industrial sectors, that appears to include the launch industry,” he told me. “The fact that we’ve seen several instances of Russian rockets not working as designed the past few years seems to support that thesis.”
And yet we’re relying on them to get our astronauts to the ISS, because “safety is the highest priority.”
[Mid-afternoon update]
Looks like the stage went kablooey. Which is kind of bad, because it’s the same one they use for crew. Wonder if it would have been abortable?
[Update a few minutes later]
A reminder that Jim Oberg warned about this over a year ago.
Life In The Solar System
The top eight places to look for it. Not including earth, of course.
I think that Carolyn Porco thinks that Enceladus is a better candidate than Europa, but it’s a lot harder to get to.
Trump Space Policy
Lee Billings has a good piece on the current state of play.
Fortunately, given the vision being displayed by wealthy entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, we are approaching a day in which NASA and its budget will be largely irrelevant to humanity’s move into space.
Nuclear Batteries
OK, so how soon could this be available for a planetary mission? What’s the power/mass ratio, and cost, compared to an RTG?
Orbital ATK
This is interesting. The company is getting into the orbital assembly business:
Phase one of CIRAS began in September 2016 and will last a total of two years. During this period, Orbital ATK will lead the team in maturing technologies necessary for robotic assembly of large space structures, such as next-generation telescopes or solar-powered structures for transport or communications. These capabilities include methods to connect or disconnect joints on a structure and address precision measuring and alignment through a 15-meter robotic arm and a precision robot. The team will also develop the technology needed to conduct in-orbit modular assembly of structures, allowing parts to be brought to space as needed via multiple launches, which simplifies the design of spacecraft and reduces cost. [Emphasis mine]
They must realize that this increases the risk to SLS, and their SRB production. Have they decided that this new business focus is a better bet?
A Good Space “First”
Thanks to SpaceX and ULA, the US is set to outlaunch Russia this year, for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, in Huntsville, NASA is trying to figure out just how low a flight rate they can get to.
[Update a few minutes later]
Unsurprisingly, the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration’s “roadmap” includes the dead ends of SLS and Orion.
Elon Musk And “Space Exploration”
Here‘s kind of a typically dumb piece, which reeks of Apolloism:
I am a big fan of space exploration and I think that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is a visionary company that is trying to conduct meaningful space exploration. Yet, Congress might want to take a hard look at the ticket price for Musk’s latest endeavor before spending $10 billion to populate Mars.
First, SpaceX is not “trying to conduct meaningful space exploration.” It is trying to establish human settlements on Mars. And if it could really be done for as little as $10B, that would be an incredible bargain to the taxpayer, compared to (say) spending that same amount on SLS/Orion in the next three years, as NASA currently proposes.
I am a limited government conservative, yet I fully support government funded space travel. But it must be smart and it can’t fund risky adventures. The one concern I have about SpaceX’s plan to travel to Mars is that, on its face, the plan seems more like a for-profit enterprise than true space exploration. I would support pure exploration of Mars and a project that has a stated goal of forwarding humanity. Musk’s idea seems like he is more in it for profit than science.
#ProTip: “Limited-government conservatives” do not spurn profit. And even if making a profit on “science” was really a bad thing, settling Mars has nothing to do with “science.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Musk has received about $4.9 billion already in government subsidies for his three companies. Now he comes to the federal government wanting more. And he has been the beneficiary of many contracts to put satellites into space that run in the billions.
#ProTip: Tesla and Solar City get subsidies. SpaceX gets contracts. One is nothing like the other two, other than federal dollars are involved.
This is a laudable idea and Elon Musk should be celebrated as one of the great innovators of our time, yet the taxpayers should not be funding for profit space exploration and may want to find another contractor who wants to go to space for purely scientific space exploration.
This is a perfect example of the mental confusion that occurs when (as many ignorantly did with Apollo) we conflate “exploration” with “science” with space development and settlement. Mr. Woodson needs to go read my recent screed.
[Update a couple minutes later]
As usual, the comments over there are idiotic, including a couple appearances of the ignorant “NASA’s Muslim outreach.”
Starship Troopers
…is the new Art of War.
And in that vein, it’s worth noting all the amusing butthurt among moron fans of the original Verhoeven dreck at the news that someone is going to do it right.
[Update a few minutes later[
Speaking of classic science fiction, an ode to Harlan Ellison, who is still with us.
And from occasional commenter Laura Montgomery, “How John Varley Broke My Heart But Other Science Fiction Writers Shouldn’t Have To“: some thoughts on space regulations.
[Late-evening update]
Link to Laura Montgomery’s blog was broken. Fixed now. Sorry!