The American Spectator has published a response, but Colebatch remains clueless.
It's a strange world in which we have to explain the advantages of private enterprise over Chinese communism to "conservatives" at @AmSpec.
— US Rocket Academy (@RocketAcademy) January 7, 2015
CNES is getting in on the action:
Eymard was asked whether CNES is not in the position of having spent two years to catch up to SpaceX with a lower-cost expendable rocket in Ariane 6, only to find that SpaceX has moved to a partially reusable model that cuts costs even further.
“We don’t want to be in the position of appearing to follow in their footsteps all the time,” Eymard said. “But we admire what they are doing and we think it helps put pressure on all of us to do better.”
SpaceX, Blue, ULA, now the Europeans. But NASA insists on building a giant throw-away vehicle.
It's funny (or sad) that everyone is getting the reusable rocket religion except for NASA, who irrationally gave up on it after X-33 fiasco.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 5, 2015
J. R. Thompson said that "X-33 proved that reusability doesn't work." Which was, of course, totally illogical. It just proved X-33 wouldn't.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 5, 2015
SpaceX is attempting to land a stage, ULA and CNES looking into reusability. NASA continues to build unneeded giant expendable rocket.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 5, 2015
…are the most earth-like yet.
Sounds like all we need is a warp drive now.
My commentary on that stupid misfire at The American Spectator last week.
[Tuesday-morning update]
I have more thoughts over at Ricochet.
[Bumped]
On the eve of SpaceX’s first barge landing attempt, some thoughts from an IP attorney on the status of Blue Origin’s fly-back patent.
…is home,recovering from his stroke, and coming home Friday. His advice not to get one is good, if you can follow it. Here’s to a rapid recovery.
Robert Graboyes, of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, notes the similarities between spaceflight and health care.
A concept for doing it on the cheap.
One problem I see in the near term is that NASA plans to use Dragons as lifeboats, so I’m not sure when one would become available on orbit.
[Update a while later]
Actually, I think that a cargo Dragon meets the requirements for this much better than a crew Dragon. It’s an on-orbit mission only, so there’s no need for couches, which just take up room. It can’t be used for a lifeboat, because it has no docking adaptor (at least currently), so NASA wouldn’t miss it. Even a Dragon V2 would need an ECLSS upgrade, so might as well just put it in the cargo version. It would have a lot less value to NASA than a V2, so it would be easier to get it from them. All they’d be giving up is the cargo return (which they could even get when the mission was over, months later, if they wanted).
I don’t know if I mentioned this foolish piece by Charles Seife last week (what would we do without “journalism” professors?). At the time, I merely tweeted that I didn’t understand why I was supposed to care whether or not Virgin Galactic and SpaceX were about “exploration.”
Jeff Foust commented that Slate editors must have taken the week off (which I think gives them too much credit during the non-holidays). Anyway he has taken it apart.
It’s difficult to imagine a student of Professor Seife’s turning in a class assignment with such factual errors and getting a passing grade.
Zing.
And speaking of “space exploration,” I’ve decided that this is the year I make all-out war on the phrase. It has held us back for decades in thinking about space in a sensible way.
If it weren’t for that fiasco at The American Spectator yesterday, this would take the prize for the week, if not the month.
After reading this "Billionaires' Space Club" piece, I can only assume Slate's editors are taking this week off. http://t.co/eZFGoyLofB
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) December 30, 2014