Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SLS

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Let the fisking commence: Continue reading SLS →

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX’s Path To Reliability

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Doug Messier has a long but useful piece on the current state of affairs.

We’ve been trapped in a moribund, high-cost space-transportation industry for decades because the cost of each flight is so high that it doesn’t allow for anything resembling real flight test. That has traditionally meant that much verification of design is by analysis, rather than test, and design changes are careful and rare. Working on more of a software model with frequent upgrades, SpaceX has broken that mold, with probably every vehicle slightly different, continuously improving the system, but walking a fine line with risk of failure from something new and untested. But a software change rarely has unrecoverable catastrophic consequences, as a rocket launch can. I suspect that ultimately the finding will be that such a change had an unanticipated effect that caused the recent loss.

ULA can’t (or at least traditionally hasn’t been able to follow) the same philosophy because of the conservatism of its customer, which values reliability above all else for its expensive, critical payloads. This makes it difficult to quickly evolve its own designs (one of the reasons, no doubt, that Tory Bruno wants a new rocket, rather than a re-engined Atlas that he knows won’t be competitive with SpaceX). One of the challenges they will have is how to break out of that mode.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

All But Dissertation

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…and happy with it:

Grad school became a financial burden after I took my full-time job in industry. Although my salary tripled and I’m a frugal and financially responsible person, my school expenses became too much for me to handle without taking on student loans, something I hadn’t done since undergrad. I managed to avoid student loans by depleting my savings.

After I left my university department’s employment as a graduate research assistant, I was responsible for my tuition payments. I was only enrolled in 3 credits per semester for a doctoral research course, basically, a symbolic class for the privilege of calling myself a doctoral student. Unfortunately, once I left my department’s protection, the university saw me as a dollar sign instead of a person. They used a loophole to unfairly charge me over triple the tuition rate, and even my protest to the university president landed on deaf ears because universities are all about profit (and I attended a public university!).

Had I been charged a fair tuition rate, I would have been able to afford to stay enrolled in grad school indefinitely and may have eventually finished. The greed of the university forced me to make my decision to quit when I did, which may have been a good thing in the long run because I didn’t drag it out too long. To this day, I regret paying that last semester’s tuition, as that money would have served me much better in my savings account.

The current higher-educational system, fueled by the student-loan system, has become, with exceptions, a massive scam.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX (Et Al) Update

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An update on the ISS situation from the Space Access Society. Singing my long-time tune:

NASA should develop contingency plans to accelerate readiness of at least one Commercial Crew vehicle in a Soyuz availability emergency. At a House Appropriations hearing last March, Administrator Bolden stated NASA policy in the event of a cutoff of Soyuz access would simply be to evacuate Station (news story, video of testimony).

The statement was made in the context of a political rather than mission-failure Soyuz cutoff, but given the spate of other launch failures and an apparent recent general deterioration in Russian space vehicle reliability, we think it’s becoming obvious that NASA urgently needs a backup plan should Soyuz go down for an extended period.

If the US Commercial Crew contractors haven’t already been asked by NASA to lay out how much each could accelerate its first crewed Station flight in an emergency, what resources it would need to do so, and what increased risks might be involved, they should be, immediately. (Regarding the question of risk, there is nothing sacred about NASA’s current protracted Commercial Crew safety certification process. Some parts of it no doubt do provide cost-effective safety improvements – others, perhaps not so much. Given what would be at stake with a Soyuz failure, a hard look at which is which is warranted.)

Yes.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Here’s a detailed story on Elon’s remarks in Boston yesterday.

Meanwhile, ESA has learned their lesson, and isn’t letting the incident make them complacent:

Gaele Winters, who is expected to ask ESA’s check-writing body on July 16 to approve a nearly $3 billion contract with Airbus Safran Launchers to develop Ariane 6, said the June 28 Falcon 9 failure in no way changes ESA’s assessment of SpaceX.

“We have seen the outstanding success of Falcon 9,” Winters said. “Despite the issue of about a week ago, it is a fantastic track record for this launcher.”

Yup.

[Bumped]

Administrative, Space

Forecast: Light And Scattered Blogging

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We’re heading out to Colorado tomorrow for a business vacation, including meetings about the project in the Denver area. We’ll be staying in Vegas tomorrow night, where rumor has it they’ll have fireworks (as they probably will in more abundance on Saturday, the actual 4th). The plan is to be back in LA by the twelfth.

It’s actually the first driving vacation we’ll have been on in the west (not counting California only) in years. I’ll take a laptop, and I’ll probably be checking in, but we’ll be spending a lot of time in the car, so blogging will be sporadic.