Al Globus lays out the potential paths.
Category Archives: Space
Two-Thirds Of The Way
I’ve raised almost $2400 on the Kickstarter project, with a little over a week to go. By the way, I don’t know if people noticed, but if you click on the video, you’ll see an endorsement from the space-policy teddy bears. Or dogs. Or whatever they are.
How The World Almost Ended
Apparently we had a very close call in 1883.
It’s amazing to me how unseriously we take this threat, at least judging by our policy choices.
3-D Printing
Revolutionizing military logistics.
It’s going to be a crucial technology for space development and settlement as well.
The Magic Of Competition
Gee, it works in space transportation just like it does in any other:
The Boeing and SpaceX spacecraft both ranked high on their technical merits. But NASA raised concerns about Boeing’s financial commitment to the public-private sector partnership.
Ferguson said Boeing is thinking about upping its corporate ante, aiming to advance the date of its first piloted test flight.
“We’re looking heavily into getting some additional Boeing investment to move that (late 2016) date to the left significantly, which we think we need to do to keep pace with SpaceX,” Ferguson said.
To me, at this point, their real problem is Atlas prices. They’ll just have to hope that NASA wants to have redundancy in providers, because they can’t compete with Hawthorne on price.
Prometheus
The Lileks review (scroll down). He’s not impressed. I’m pretty sure I’ll never waste time watching it.
One Third Of The Way There
It’s been up less than 24 hours, but I’ve already raised 33% of my goal on the Kickstarter. Hope I can keep it up, and vastly exceed it.
The Problems With The Last Dragon Flight
…weren’t as bad as originally reported. I found this interesting, though:
As for the engine shutdown issue, data analysis has yet to result in any definitive conclusions. Although the analysis will continue, the observation that this particular engine had undergone a comparatively high degree of pre-flight testing, may ultimately lead to the conclusion that the shut down was related to the accumulating fatigue of an engine firing more than its nominal mission requirements. If this turns out to be the case; it would prove to be both somewhat ironic, as well as easily addressed by limiting cumulative firings for flight engines. Ongoing analysis has likely pushed the likely date of the next Dragon flight to ISS into the early March time frame.
Wouldn’t “limiting cumulative firings for flight engines” have interesting and problematic implications for reusability?
If this is really a problem, sounds like they’ll have to have a more robust engine design (or perhaps downgrade performance) for reusable versions. And of course, it’s possible that the new engine to start being used next year will resolve whatever the issue is.
Safe Is Not An Option
I’ve belatedly launched my Kickstarter project to publish my book on our irrational attitudes toward safety on the high frontier. I’ve put a short fuse on it — just fifteen days to raise four grand. I’d like to raise a lot more, to really publicize the thing, but that’s the minimum I need to have a quality product, I think.
Everyone who contributes at least five bucks will get some form of the book. Please consider donating generously, if you want to see this get more attention in the new year.
SpaceX And Radiation
John Muratore describes SpaceX’s approach to their SEU issues.