Buzz Aldrin is starting a social media campaign to commemorate it.
I’m working on a piece that I hope gets good placement, on how it’s time to let go of Apollo.
Category Archives: Space
Space Solar Power
John Walker reviews John Mankins’ new book.
Regenerative Life Support
This is the kind of research that NASA should be doing, and would be if we were serious about space settlement. Instead, we waste billions on unneeded giant rockets. At least China is taking it more seriously.
Colonizing Venus
The surprisingly strong case for it.
One of the many disappointments of the NRC report on human spaceflight is the almost total neglect of this topic. That’s at least partially because if was rooted in a neo-Apollo mindset, which must have boots on the ground, though it’s not clear what they’ll be doing.
Shelby’s Antics
The Houston Chronicle weighs in.
I don’t think this is quite correct, though:
Under the current Commercial Crew Development program, SpaceX contracts with NASA for a flat payment. If SpaceX comes in under cost, it gets to keep the profit. If it goes over budget, SpaceX has to make up the difference. This system gives SpaceX more flexibility to operate as it sees fit.
Shelby has inserted language in a Senate appropriations bill that would instead force SpaceX to work on NASA’s old cost-plus model. This would require the private company to track every step of its development, assign a cost to those steps and charge it to NASA, plus an additional fee. This stilted payment model forces engineers to be accountants and removes disincentives for bloated budgets.
Shelby isn’t forcing the company to cost plus. He’s doing something worse (and stupid), forcing them to account for it as though it were cost plus, but on a fixed-price contract.
Space
Without the space. XKCD stitched together all of the land area in the solar system.
Book On Sale
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing on the 20th, Astrobooks is offering the book for $15.95 through the end of July.
Fred Ordway
RIP.
I haven’t read all his books, but The Rocket Team
The Huntsville Reality-Distortion Zone
This isn’t new, but I don’t think I linked it at the time. Eric Berger reports on the people working SLS:
May turns the cost issue around.
“My question would be, how could we afford not to do this?” May asked. “Great nations explore. Great nations push their boundaries. And this country has continued to the limits of what we know and learn for a generation, and I think we’ve got to continue to explore.”
And in the larger perspective, he argues, SLS does not cost that much. NASA spends about $1.6 billion a year building it, less than 9 percent of the space agency’s total budget, he said, which is itself less than one half of one percent of the federal budget.
“I think it’s a relatively small amount of money to set the leadership for the world in space exploration,” he says.
Count the number of logical fallacies in just those four grafs.
Commercial Spaceflight Federation
It’s undergoing a leadership transition.
Wonder who will replace Alex and Michael LA?