I’ve uploaded the Powerpoint to the site.
It’s an outgrowth of my “SLS Roadblock” project, which I’m figuring out how to either wrap up or extend.
[Update a while later]
Erratum: At the time I originally created these charts, for the FISO telecon at the end of January, Dana had proposed the Space Settlement bill. He has since actually introduced it.
Eric Berger writes that Congress is forcing NASA to eat its seed corn for the #JourneyToMars.
Yes.
#ProTip: If SLS made any sense at all, Congress wouldn't have to make it illegal for NASA to not build it. https://t.co/lK4mnV3ugO
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) April 22, 2016
[Update a while later]
This is a key point:
Since Tuesday, I have been asking communications officials in NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate for clarification on what this extra funding will be used for and whether it’s needed. I haven’t received a response.
Because they don’t have a response. It is programmatic insanity to just throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a manager and expect them to spend it sensibly in a single year.
Wonder if there was a problem in McGregor?
Well, that’s why they have test sites, and do tests.
A defense of the SLS over at an Alabama news outlet. Let the fisking commence: Continue reading The Latest In Apolloism
Eric Berger has the story, including the fact that we’ve done absolutely no research in partial gravity, which will be necessary if people want to procreate on Mars.
I’d note that while it’s never officially been confirmed, it seems unlikely, given the nature of astronauts, that no one has ever done it in space.
Shuttle had very sensitive accelerometers. It's likely that Houston was aware of any rhythmic orbital exertions. https://t.co/RNnYSfnCyi
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) April 21, 2016
Here are the proceedings of the symposium in the Netherlands. Haven’t read through them, but I expect to see a lot of support for Moon Treaty-like “solutions.”
…is coming to commercial aviation.
It’s hard to overstate what a technological revolution this is going to be.
According to the pictures sent back from a high-resolution camera, the 600 embryos, which were put under the camera, developed from the 2-cell stage, an early-on embryonic cleavage stage, to blastocyst, the stage where noticeable cell differentiation occurs, around 72 hours after SJ-10’s launch. The timing was largely in line with embryonic development on Earth, according to CAS.
But we still have no idea what happens in partial gravity. And they didn’t bring them to term.
Jon Goff has a blog post on a recent FISO telecon. One of the implications for all of these options, of course, is that SLS makes no sense.
I’ve had my differences with him over the years, but he has a piece in the WSJ with which I basically agree. I’d say the only thing he gets wrong was that it was Apollo itself that set us on the wrong path. The Shuttle was just a symptom of Apolloism.
[Behind the paywall, but do a Google search for “Mission to Nowhere” and it should come up]