Like me, Eric Berger noticed the irony of last week’s successful spaceflight and NASA’s announcement of regressing to expendable SSMEs.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Gerald Black noticed, too. I disagree that NASA should be funding any new rockets, though, reusable or otherwise. Leave that to private industry.
Thoughts from Wretchard on the recent commercial space bill:
The Dawn of the Space Mining Age probably signals the Twilight of Socialism as much as it does the end of all material poverty. It marks the end of a way of life. We live in a special time; a brief epoch when the human universe has become as small as it will ever be, a moment when no man living is more than a few moments away by text messaging from any other and no home is beyond 48 hours of subsonic jet travel.
If man takes to the Cosmos, then distances will become real again; and goodbyes will be for the first time in a hundred years once more forever.
The price of knowledge and plenty is to leave the Hive. Someday we may regard our stuffy politically correct Earth with more tolerance than is presently the custom. The future does not belong to those poor souls on American campuses who become hysterical at the slightest perceived micro-aggression, but to those with the boldness to take risks. In that context humanity may someday miss such coddled children in nostalgia for a lost Eden, which no sooner found at the start of the 21st century, just as soon slipped away.
A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding this, though:
The 2015 Space Act does more than recognize property rights; it breaks down bureaucracy by exempting the space industry from much regulation until 2023. As with the historical Western frontier when the law remained “back East,” there will be few sheriffs in the far reaches of the void. There, as nowhere else on 21st-century Earth, safety is your own lookout.
As his own blockquote from Eric Stallmer indicates, the only thing that won’t be regulated (that is, continue to not be regulated, as it never has been in the past) will be the safety of spaceflight participants. Everyone will still need to get launch licenses from the FAA, and continue to satisfy it that the public is not at risk, and that the launch isn’t contrary to the national interest.
As for treaty compliance, I actually had a beer with Ram and Steven Freeland (from Australia, a signatory to the Moon Treaty) on this topic a few years ago in Lincoln, and we politely agreed to disagree on the issue. The bill is not in conflict with the OST, though it clearly is with the Moon Treaty. But the latter, contra this foolish piece, is not “customary international law.” The US has no obligation to it, never having ratified it.
[Late-morning update]
Related thoughts from a well-known professor of space law, over at USA Today.
Thoughts on Monday’s flight from Instapundit, with an appreciated plug for the book.
…flaunts his ignorance (again) of both the history of exploration and the economics of spaceflight.
I do agree with him about the Apollo delusion, though.
Everyone’s been paying attention to the “race” between Virgin Galactic and XCOR (a story that got more complicated yesterday), but Blue Origin apparently had the first successful private flight to a hundred kilometers since the X-Prize was won, over eleven years ago. It will be interesting to see when their next one is, to see what kind of turnaround capability they have. It’s now clearly possible that they’ll be offering passenger flights sooner than either of the horizontal approaches.
[Update a few minutes later]
As someone over at Arocket points out, this wasn’t just the first trip to space since 2004, but the first-ever vertical landing of a ship that had been to space (even if SpaceX lands a Falcon 9 first stage, I’m not sure what its apogee is). It was a big milestone.
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, on rereading, it’s not clear that the booster went all the way to space, just the capsule, so maybe that hasn’t happened yet.
[Update a while later]
Jeff Bezos issues his first tweet ever.
[Late-morning update]
Jeff Foust has the story now, including the Q&A with Bezos.
[Update a few minutes later]
And here’s Chris Bergin’s story.
[Early-afternoon update]
I think it's safe to say that this was the first fully reusable vehicle to go into space under its own power and land vertically on earth.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 24, 2015
Also worth noting that many of these space "firsts" were "first non-government entity." This one was a first, period.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 24, 2015
And if SpaceX hadn't had their launch failure in June, it's very likely that they'd have beaten Blue Origin for that first.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 24, 2015
[Update a while later]
Ashlee Vance has an amusing take on the pissing contest between Musk and Bezos.
BTW, it seems to be confirmed that there was only a 120-meter difference in apogee between booster and capsule, so it definitely made it into space.
[Update a few more minutes later]
For those new to the topic, I wrote an explainer about orbits and suborbits a little over a year ago.
Lori Garver said last week that it’s time for the agency to shed it.
To be fair, it’s not all their fault. There are too few opportunities for graft on the Hill if it were take take a more competitive approach. Too hard to predict which zip codes the money will go to.
Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong are out (though Jeff remains on the board). I’d been hearing rumors about this for a few weeks.
My question is: What does this mean for orbital plans? Does XCOR retain the IP for them, or can Jeff pursue independently? Does he have a non-compete?
A new documentary is coming out. Should be interesting, whatever you think about the feasibility.
This is interesting. I can see a lot of benefits to rocket-engine design from these kinds of improvements as well, particularly for staged combustion. I wonder if Blue Origin is aware of this kind of thing? Also, it doesn’t say anything about improved performance and reduced cost and parts count from 3-D printing, but I think that will be significant as well.