Rick Tumlinson says the concept is taking hold within the space community.
Meanwhile, the Center For American Progress is having a symposium on the past and future of human spaceflight. Interestingly, as Jeff Foust notes on Twitter, NASA isn’t involved. Interesting also that it’s sponsored by a lefty institution. I suspect that this topic may set off a civil war on that side of the spectrum.
These people want to set up at the pole. “Looking for alien life” doesn’t seem compatible with settlement, though, unless you don’t care if you contaminate or wipe it out.
They think they understand the cause of the Proton failure, but not that of the Progress.
Shouldn’t we solve poverty first?
No.
Bob Zimmerman says that it seems to be returning to the Soviet era. The Russians never learned how markets and competition actually work. As he notes, it’s not clear that this will help with their endemic quality issues.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Mind boggling financial irregularities at Roscosmos.”
I’m heading down to Long Beach. I’ll have my laptop, but blogging may be light.
Some interesting proposed amendments. Dana wants to extend the learning period indefinitely. So do I. Hope this one passes, but it would still have to be reconciled with the Senate’s five years.
The story at Spaceflightnow.
@MichaelBelfiore A truly "aggressive schedule" would be putting people up next month.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) May 18, 2015
I think that will be the theme of my proposed Kickstarter project.
BTW, if someone wants to volunteer to make a prettier version of this, I won’t complain.
[Update Saturday morning]
Per suggestions in comments, I’ve come up with a new version.
[Sunday-afternoon update]
Thanks to Ed Minchau, this probably conveys it better:
[Bumped]
There is clearly a serious QC problem in the Russian program. A Proton just suffered another Briz-M upper-stage failure, and delivered a Mexican comm sat into Sibero-stationary orbit, which isn’t particularly useful.
Way to tell that "safety is the highest priority" is that Congress trusts Russian rockets which repeatedly fail to American ones that don't.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) May 16, 2015
It's time to get our crews on American rockets. Not in 2017. Now.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) May 16, 2015
I would ride a Dragon tomorrow, even without the Max-Q abort test. Or at least, I'd do that before I'd ride a Soyuz.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) May 16, 2015
And yet, the House appropriators cut the commercial crew budget. Again.
If I were Congress, I’d go to Phil McAlister on Monday and ask him to ask SpaceX what the probability of LOC for Dragon2 is this summer.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) May 16, 2015
The Russian space industry clearly has systemic QC issues. The policy implications for this are profound, but Congress continues to ignore.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) May 16, 2015
[Update a while later]
The Russians have been averaging two-and-a-third launch failures per year for the past six years. Also worth noting that the trend is getting worse. That’s two launch failures in the past three weeks.
[Update a few minutes later]
Whoa! Two failures in one day. Apparently the reboost engines on the Progress currently at ISS failed to fire as well.
[Late-afternoon update]
Here’s a fairly comprehensive story on today’s launch failure from Stephen Clark at Spaceflightnow.