Brian Doherty at ReasonTV interviews Doug Jones of XCOR.
Category Archives: Space
Commercial Crew Budgets
The current state of play. This is disturbing:
Bolden has acknowledged in congressional testimony, most recently in an April 25 hearing of the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, that without a fully funded Commercial Crew Program, the agency may have to pick only one aspiring provider to fund.
That could happen as soon as next summer, when NASA plans to award the next round of Commercial Crew funding.
They make it sound like he’s issuing a threat when that’s exactly what Congress wants them to do. If I were Bolden (or rather, if I were administrator — obviously if I were Bolden I’d do what Bolden would do), I’d be figuring out a way to avoid the down select with a smaller budget. But if I were administrator, a lot of things would be done differently.
Is NASA About Jobs?
…or actually accomplishing something?
This isn’t exactly breaking news.
Black Carbon
Is it a problem for suborbital spaceflight? The article says “space tourism,” but there will be a lot more applications than that.
The problem is that, like most “climate science,” we don’t really know. But if it is an issue, I suspect that it’s a worse one for Virgin than for XCOR, at least based on pictures of the plumes of both, and the solution to it would be LOX/hydrogen.
Paul Dietz
For those wondering from my post the other week, he has contacted me.
Kepler
…has lost a reaction wheel.
This is bad news for exo-planet hunting.
Having a deep-space capability would allow the repair of systems like this.
Dream Chaser
There’s an article on Sierra Nevada’s upcoming drop tests at Dryden, in which Yours Truly is cited, at the Denver Post.
Interview With Elon
By Michelle Fields, at NextGen TV.
Wayne Hale
…is looking for input on his upcoming Congressional testimony. Here’s my suggestion: Tell them that they worry too much about mission safety, and too little about actually opening up and developing space.
Lost In Space
Lileks has a review of the sixties series (scroll down).
I never liked it, myself. Thought it was stupid.