Paul Ryan is reportedly expecting it.
I know what I’d do if I were overseeing NASA’s budget, but it’s not what they’ll do.
Category Archives: Space
Twenty-Seven Years
That’s how long ago was the beginning of the end for the Shuttle, not even five years after it first flew. Eleven years ago, I recalled the event:
I was sitting in a meeting at the Rockwell Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey, California. It was a status review meeting for a contract on which I was working, called the Space Transportation Architecture Study. It was a joint NASA/USAF contract, and its ostensible purpose was to determine what kind of new launch systems should replace or complement the Space Shuttle. Its real purpose was to try to get the Air Force and NASA Marshall to learn how to play together nicely and stop squabbling over turf and vehicle designs (it failed).
It was a large meeting, with many people in attendance from El Segundo and Colorado Springs (Air Force) and Houston, Huntsville and the Cape (NASA) as well as many Rockwell attendees.
As I sat there, waiting for the meeting to begin, one of my colleagues came running into the room, his face white as a freshly-bleached bedsheet. He leaned over and told me and others, in an insistent sotto voce, “I just saw the Challenger blow up.”
We stared at him in momentary disbelief.
“I’m serious. I just came from the mission control center. It just exploded about a minute after launch.”
One could actually see the news travel across the large meeting room as expressions of early-morning torpor transformed into incredulity and shock. More than most people, even with no more information than the above, we understood the implications. While there was speculation in the media all morning that the crew might be saved, we knew instantly that they were lost. We knew also that we had lost a quarter of the Shuttle fleet, with a replacement cost of a couple billion dollars and several years, and that there would be no flights for a long time, until we understood what had happened.
The ironic purpose of our meeting became at once more significant and utterly meaningless. Most of the NASA people immediately made arrangements to fly back to Houston, Huntsville and the Cape, and we held the session without them, in a perfunctory manner.
This was one of those events, like the more recent one in September, that is indelibly etched into memory–where you were, what you were doing, what you were feeling. I’m curious about any inputs from others, either in comments here or email.
Oh, and I should note that it’s an easy date to remember for me–it was (and remains still) the anniversary of my date of birth…
So today, I start another trip around the sun, and space policy remains a mess.
And it’s not just today. The Apollo 1 fire happened the day before my twelfth birthday. And Columbia was lost four days after my forty eighth. I have no trouble remembering any of these anniversaries.
Forty-Six Years Ago Today
Ed White, Roger Chafee and Gus Grissom died on the launch pad, an event that resulted in the formation of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, and a complete overhaul of the design and management of Apollo. It was the first of the late-January tragedies that make this time of year a sad one for NASA. Tomorrow will be the twenty-sixeventh anniversary of the loss of Challenger, and Friday will be the tenth anniversary of the loss of Columbia.
The Hazards Of Scientific Research
A plane has gone down with three on board in Antarctica.
How could they have let them fly in that kind of weather? NASA would never have taken such a risk, because space research is much less important than Antarctic research.
[Update a few minutes later]
So, if they don’t survive, will Antarctic researchers shut down all operations until they’ve had a national commission investigate it, perhaps for years? That’s what NASA/Congress would do.
In my book, I go through the litany of the number of problems they’ve had at Scott-Amundsen Station, and conclude:
…despite all of these problems, one of them fatal (and Nielsen might have lived longer had she gotten better treatment sooner) there has never been a call by anyone to spend billions of dollars on a unique specialized emergency vehicle to provide 24/7/365 access to and from the Antarctic station, though given sufficient resources some clever engineers could probably come up with such a thing. And unlike NASA, the National Science Foundation has (sensibly) never gotten those kinds of resources. Because we recognize that sometimes research is worth taking risks for, and that the lives of the researchers do not have infinite value, or even billions of dollars worth of value. Except, inexplicably, when it comes to space research.
I may add this incident to the book.
My Space Safety Press Event
I’m trying to do one on February 7th, immediately following the final session of the Space Transportation Conference in DC, which is only two weeks off. I’d probably need about three or four grand to do it, though, given the cost of renting a conference room at the Westin, and my travel expenses, and PR. I’m thinking about raising the money via Kickstarter, but not sure what the rewards would be. Just signed book copies? Autographed copy of the press release?
How Much Would A Death Star Really Cost?
To the disappointment of thousands who signed the petition, the Obama administration recently informed us that it has, and will have no plans to build a Star-Wars-style death star. Now, there may indeed be good reasons to forgo this addition to the nation’s defense, but the first one listed, that it would cost 850 quadrillion dollars, was based on an extremely flawed estimate. Which isn’t surprising, because among the people doing the estimating, only one has any experience in aerospace engineering (and probably none in costing of such projects). Continue reading How Much Would A Death Star Really Cost?
The Xichang Disaster
The story of the worst launch catastrophe in history is finally being told.
[Via Clark Lindsey, who has video]
ISS Solar Power
John Hare has an interesting idea to augment ISS capabilities.
Our Future In Space
The National Space Society has started a Kickstarter project for a video documentary.
A Plague On The Earth
That’s what misanthrope extremist David Attenborough thinks of humanity.
I suspect he also wants to confine the infection to a single planet.
And as always, my advice to such people is to lead by example.
[Update a while later]
Here’s another person who should lead by example. Paul Ehrlich, who’s been wrong about pretty much all of his predictions for forty years, says that no one has a right to twelve, or even three children.