Chris Petty has thoughts about it on his website.
Category Archives: Space
XCOR
It looks to me like Lynx is dead. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, from the company shows up at the suborbital researchers conference in Colorado next week. Fortunately for those laid off, I think that a number of commercial space companies are hiring, including in Texas.
[Update a while later]
I would note that apparently Midland has joined the ranks of spaceports with no spaceships.
BEAM And SpaceX
They’re going to depressurize and repressurize the BEAM tomorrow morning. They seem to think that the material was just stiff from storage.
Meanwhile, less than a half an hour until today’s launch and landing attempt. The ship is on station, despite the growing tropical depression in the area. They don’t really have anything to lose from the attempt, unless the ship itself is at risk from the weather, but it’s not even a storm yet. The live feed is up, unlike yesterday.
[Update a while later]
OK, another perfect mission and landing. We’re rapidly approaching the point at which we’ll be surprised if they don’t recover the stage.
Going To Colorado
I’m attending the suborbital researchers conference in Broomfield next week. I must know people in the Golden/Boulder/West Denver area. Is there anyone could put me up Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (June 1-3) nights?
Jeff Bezos
A more-recent interview with him than Alan Boyle’s in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago, at Florida Today.
Meanwhile, ISS personnel failed to expand the BEAM module today, but SpaceX still plans to launch and land this afternoon.
ISRU
An interesting new concept: “optical” mining of water in orbit.
Light Posting
I’m headed up the Space Tech Expo in Pasadena, so not sure how much blogging I’ll be doing for the next couple days.
Astronaut Suicide Versus Astronaut Wonder
Thoughts from space anthropologist David Valentine on a couple contrasting photoessays.
The #JourneyToMars
Why many are skeptical about it.
Someone made a good point the other day. It’s nonsensical to call Mars a “horizon goal” as the NRC did, because a horizon is something you never reach.
Buzz And SLS
It doesn’t hurt that he is attacking it, but it probably doesn’t help that much, either. Sadly, the congress/space-industrial complex doesn’t pay much attention to him.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the story from Eric Berger.