They can comment to their heart’s delight, but they have no regulatory role.
Category Archives: Space
Forget Safety, We Need Our Own Spaceships
I have a follow-up to my Friday USA Today column, over at The Corner.
[Update a few minutes later]
At the suggestion of a colleague, lest I appear to be advocating kamikaze missions, the suggested language for the legislation might be: “The exploration and development of space is a national priority. Therefore, NASA’s first priority must be mission success in the critical steps toward reaching this goal. Consistent with this priority NASA shall strive at all times to achieve a level of safety comparable to that enjoyed by other critical national programs in extreme environments, such as deep-ocean and polar activities.”
The challenge and onus would then be on NASA and Congress to say why that is not a reasonable standard (which is currently met without all of NASA’s ridiculous safety/cost-plus/certification rigmarole).
The Space Movement
Is it moribund, and losing ground?
I’m not sure it matters, except to the degree that it influences government policy. Ultimately, it’s going to happen privately, if the government doesn’t prevent it. The flaw of past thinking of the movement was the notion that NASA was going to lead the way, and that it would need more money to do so. It’s pretty clear that that was never a realistic possibility.
The Russians Hold The Trump Card
Eric Berger has started a series on the space-policy mess, over at the Houston Chronicle. I hope he’ll get into the safety issue.
Space Hotels
When can we check in to one? An interview with Bigelow Aerospace.
A Declaration Off Space Independence From The Russians
I have an op-ed up at USA Today, blasting Congress on its absurd policies and attitudes toward human spaceflight.
A Space-Socialist Republican
Greg Autry is sort of singing my tune:
If NASA were compelled to “downselect” Commercial Crew to a single vendor, Washington power politics would clearly favor Boeing’s CST-100 capsule, a luxurious spacecraft, that while it has never flown, is on track for some unmanned flights to the ISS in about three years. This leisurely development schedule puts no pressure on SLS. While it is surely coincidently that both the SLS and CST-100 programs are headquartered in Houston, we are lucky to have Messrs. La Branche and Culberson standing between us and the utter chaos of free market competition.
…Frankly, DragonRider could fly to the ISS next month if it were subject to the same expectations of safety as NASA’s Space Shuttle. A truly conservative response to Mr. Rogozin would be to announce that the United States is ready to move a DragonRider launch forward without further testing, send eight Navy Seals to the ISS and “liberate” our space station from Russia’s state capitalist squatters.
Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. But that’s Greg.
The Speed Of Light
I’d missed this, but apparently Louise Riofrio’s book project met its funding goal. I’ll look forward to seeing it.
Space Access
There’s an update at the Space Access Society, per current events.
Merde Just Got Real
Rogozin is cutting off sales of RD-180s, and threatening to end ISS participation in 2020.
The former is much more concerning than the latter. 2020 is a long way off, and we have time to resolve that one way or the other. But Atlas V is out of business in a couple years if they don’t come up with a solution. Which is bad news for Boeing and Sierra Nevada in terms of commercial crew.