Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon on this day. It’s now been over half a century since the last man kicked up the regolith there. I’ll be on The Space Show this evening (1900 PDT) to talk about it, and space in general.
[Late-morning update]
Anniversary thoughts from Rick Tumlinson. He worries too much about the “climate crisis,” though. And he’s fooling himself if he really thinks that China is worried about it.
An industry wish list.
Yes, you shouldn’t be learning new things in an acceptance test, but sometimes you do.
A review of Ashlee Vance’s latest book. Highly recommended.
Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed.
Assif Siddiqui says that we need new ways to think about it: “We need to let go of our nostalgia for Apollo and move on and work with different models to the old 1960s space races.”
I’ve been saying this for years.
Stephen Clark has moved over to Ars Technica to help Eric Berger cover the increasingly busy space industry. He has the latest on plans for the next Starship attempt.
Glenn has thoughts.
Now Mars Sample Return threatens the planetary science budget.
I agree that JPL should be soliciting bids from contractors.
It has ties to space exploration.
There are a lot of parallels with space tourism here. It is a high-risk, high-cost activity for wealthy individuals, that is currently unregulated. It is a visit to a harsh environment (worse than space in some ways), where life support is required, and finite. I hope that this incident doesn’t result in clamoring for regulation, of either submersibles, or space adventures. In the case of the submersible, it’s not clear who would regulate something that’s taking place in international waters.
[Update a few minutes later]
[Noon update]
One of the people on the boat is an adventure addict.
Well, that’s the sort of people who do this sort of thing.
[Wednesday-morning update]
It’s looking more and more like this was negligence, and the people who did it were daredevils.
And then there’s this.
[Bumped]
[Noon update]
The company was warned twice of potentially catastrophic consequences. It will be ironic if Rush is killed by his own decision, but it shows his misplaced confidence in it.
[Thursday-afternoon update]
“They likely didn’t know what hit them.”
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
Thoughts from James Cameron: