Category Archives: Space
XCOR
An interesting interview about spaceflight regulation with COO Andrew Nelson.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I should note that much of this is ground that I cover and justify in the book.
The Vision For Space Exploration
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Bush’s speech, and no one seems to have noticed. Down the memory hole, I guess.
Anyway, I’ll have a piece up sometime today about it at USA Today.
[Mid-morning update]
Heh. Google has picked up this post, and it’s the only one in the top ten that is actually discussing it. I can sort of see why NASA didn’t make a big deal of it, given that most people consider it to have been canceled in 2010. I disagree, though, as you’ll see.
The Peter Principle
Could it explain the Fermi paradox?
Dedication To Going To Mars
This guy’s so determined he’s willing to leave his wife and four kids.
NASA’s 2004 Budget
Did you know that it was eighty-six billion dollars? The National Journal thinks it was.
Layers and layers of fact checkers.
Bob Sackheim
…has died.
I met him a couple times, but didn’t really know him well. But the man is a propulsion legend.
NASA’s Budget
Jeff Foust has the details.
As usual, SLS/Orion is funded above the request, and Commercial Crew below it. And technology takes it in the shorts yet again. But at least they didn’t underfund Commercial Crew as much as they have in the past. It’s only about a hundred-twenty-five million less than the $800M+ request. It apparently also contains a three-year extension on launch indemnification.
Note that Congress is demanding a cost-benefit analysis for Commercial Crew, but (as Clark Lindsey notes) not one for the wasteful $3B that’s going to SLS/Orion.
A “Zero-Gravity Space Chamber”
No, New York Post, there’s no such thing. If they shot her b00bs in weightlessness, it was probably in a parabolic aircraft.
The Aldridge Commission
In researching a piece on tomorrow’s VSE anniversary, I just started to reread the commission report. You know what isn’t mentioned in the Executive Summary of recommendations? Heavy lift.