Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Space History

Another Book Review

4 Comments

Mark Lardas had a review a couple weeks ago in the Galveston Daily News, but it was behind a paywall. But I just learned that he reposted it at Ricochet. It’s an appropriate time to note it, given that today is the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, and tomorrow is the 28th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

[Update late afternoon]

Here’s another brief (partial) review, in comments at the same web site. It’s the first one to discuss the quality, as opposed to the content of the book.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Does Virgin Galactic Have A License Problem?

14 Comments

It would be nice if they did. That would be a lot easier to deal with than their real problem, which is propulsion.

As Jeff explains, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of spaceflight regulation in the US, both here and across the pond. As I noted on Twitter:

This, from Jeff’s article, is a good summation of the license situation, despite the recent misleading stories about it:

The emphasis on a lack of a commercial launch license, then, is something of a red herring. Virgin doesn’t need a launch license now to continue its testing regime, isn’t late now in receiving one, and given current law, there’s no reason to believe the Virgin won’t receive one before it plans to begin commercial flights, so long as as it can demonstrate the vehicle’s safety to the uninvolved public.

Yes.

[Afternoon update]

Jeff Foust also has a summary of the London Times article that’s behind their paywall, with some corrections.

[Update a couple minutes later]

If the reporting is true, and they really are finally running away from the hybrid, and particularly the rubber hybrid, as fast as possible, I wonder what the implications of this are for Sierra Nevada? Will they continue to promote hybrids, and will they still use one in Dream Chaser assuming it flies in three years? I’d bail on it myself and just buy something from XCOR, but they have a lot of PR invested in the technology, thanks to Jim Benson.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Space Journalism

33 Comments

Why oh why do reporters imagine that cosmologists know anything about spacecraft?

Dr Xing Li, an Aberystwyth University expert on astrophysics and cosmology, said as a scientist it would be “beautiful” to be one of SpaceShipTwo’s privileged passengers.

But SpaceShipTwo travels at a super-sonic 2,500mph – more than four times faster than a passenger jet – and Dr Li believes it’s difficult to imagine anything that goes at that speed becoming affordable.

He said: “Now we don’t have supersonic flights because of the cost issue. At the moment I don’t see that it will be possible even in 30 or 40 years. It will only happen if we have some technological advance that would bring down the cost.”

Ask a frickin’ engineer, not a scientist.