It’s undergoing a leadership transition.
Wonder who will replace Alex and Michael LA?
Category Archives: Space
The SpaceX Webcast
Gwynne Shotwell explains.
Bob Farquhar
Monte Morin has a great piece on him and the ISEE-3 reboot.
SpaceX And Orbcomm
The launch delays are costing money. Note this, though:
Commercial satellite fleet operators have said that with a price differential so large — more than 50 percent in this case — they can absorb the cost of even lengthy SpaceX delays without much trouble.
They’re changing the rules.
NASA Mission Planning
If you want to see how ludicrous SLS is, look at this chart.
That is not a spacefaring civilization.
Lunar Gravity
A beautiful map of the field, courtesy of the late GRAIL satellites.
The VA Scandal
It’s the face of government as it actually exists.
Between ObamaCare, the IRS, the VA, and now the EPA, it’s been a bad year for cheerleaders of big government. Which means a good year for liberty. We’ll see what it means in November.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Note Glenn’s quoting of Pournelle’s law of bureaucracies:
…the strongest priority of most bureaucracies is the welfare of the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats it employs, not whatever the bureaucracy is actually supposed to be doing.
I often say that there are a lot of good people at NASA, and there are. But they are trapped in a similar system.
Here Be Dragons
Stewart Money has a book out on the history of SpaceX.
Today’s Stupid Space House Hearing
Jeff Foust has a report.
[Update a few minutes later]
Frank Morring on why we explore space.
This all misses the real point, which is that exploration is a means to an end. As long as we imagine it’s just a search for knowledge, we can’t possibly justify the insane amount of money (for so little activity) that NASA spends on human spaceflight.
Safe Is Not An Option
The Nook version is now available. The last frontier is iTunes, which is a PITA for me because Apple insists on my having an Apple device to set up an account and upload it to their store. I think I can set up an iTunes account if I fire up my Windows laptop, but not sure how to do the book upload.