Category Archives: Space
ISPCS
The opening ceremony is a (brief, presumably) literal space opera about a mission to Mars.
[Update]
“Searching for nothing but action verbs” on Mars. OK.
[Update after the 20-minute opera]
Pat Hynes paying tribute to the late Bill Gaubatz, who helped her get this conference started ten years ago, who died in July.
Off To Las Cruces
I’m heading to the airport to go to ISPCS. I’ll check in later.
[Later]
OK, made it here, went to reception, much food and drink was consumed and many old acquaintances refreshed. Lots of compliments on the book, but this is the choir. Off to bed, and conference tweeting/blogging on the morrow.
Safe Is Not An Option: A Review
Finally, someone at NASA is willing to take the book seriously enough to critically review it. Obviously, I will respond at some point (TL;DR version, he cherry picks and ignores much of what I have to say, but that’s to be expected, given his NASA-centric viewpoint), but it’s a bad week between taxes and ISPCS. Anyway, despite my disagreement with the review itself, I’m sincerely grateful to Mr. Fodrocci for finally acknowledging the book’s existence, rather than (as much of the industry, including IAASS, has) pretending it doesn’t exist and hoping it will just go away.
Sierra Nevada’s Bid
Although the document praises Sierra’s “strong management approach to ensure the technical work and schedule are accomplished,” it cautions that the company’s Dream Chaser had “the longest schedule for completing certification.” The letter also states that “it also has the most work to accomplish which is likely to further extend its schedule beyond 2017, and is most likely to reach certification and begin service missions later than the other ‘Offerors’.”
Discussing costs, Gerstenmaier says that “although SNC’s price is lower than Boeing’s price, its technical and management approaches and its past performance are not as high and I see considerably more schedule risk with its proposal. Both SNC and SpaceX had high past performance, and very good technical and management approaches, but SNC’s price is significantly higher than SpaceX’s price.”
Touching on why Boeing received a $4.2 billion contract, versus $2.6 billion for SpaceX, he adds “I consider Boeing’s superior proposal, with regard to both its technical and management approach and its past performance, to be worth the additional price in comparison to the SNC proposal.”
Given how subjective such evaluation processes are, it’s not an implausible story.
Five Years After Augustine
James Dean has an interview with the man himself.
This is the essay I wrote the previous summer as an input to the committee.
The Chairman Of The House Science Committee
“If Orion could provide a redundant capability as a fallback for the commercial crew partners, why is it necessary to carry two partners to ensure competition in the constrained budget environment?” Smith asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in an Oct. 7 letter co-signed by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Science space subcommittee.
So as a bonus, the chairman of the space subcommittee is an idiot, too.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
XCOR’s Approach To Space
Speaking of Stewart Money, he has a nice post, comparing and contrasting Virgin, XCOR and SpaceX.
About That Mars One MIT Study
Some thoughts from Stewart Money, with which I agree:
While presented as a legitimate concern, $4.5 billion is after all a large sum of money, and a very tall hurdle to overcome, it still leads to an interesting counterpoint which the authors of the NASA funded study do not address. NASA is well on the way to spending $16 billion to get the Orion capsule alone through one crewed flight, a number which excludes the development costs of the Space Launch System as well as its ground infrastructure. The agency cannot even begin to put a price tag on gong to Mars. It would be interesting to see the same team run the numbers on that.
There is no doubt that Mars One is [a] risky concept, and if it is to ever gain real traction, it will have to endure a lot more scrutiny than presented in the MIT study. It should probably begin with a clear statement that Mars One is meant as an evolving concept, in which the final product may differ considerable [sic] from what has initially been put forward on a time frame which like all space projects, is subject to change. At the same time, its many critics might want to at least consider how much of the risk to any future Mars mission, whether one way of with a return ticket, could be reduced through advancing the Technological Readiness Level (TRL) of some of the core technologies the MIT team identifies.
Finally, they might want to ask why the U.S. is committed to a very different, but perhaps even more financially implausible plan.
Yes.
[Update a few minutes later]
By the way, Bas Lansdorp has responded in comments over at Marcia Smith’s place.
Twelve Technologies We Need To Get Going On
A list, at io9.
Not sure about either the space elevator or space solar. And he leaves off a gravity lab, which we need to understand if or how we can properly conceive and gestate in partial gravity.