I’ll be talking to David Livingston this afternoon at 2 PM PDT about my space safety project, which seems to be turning into a small book, that I hope to publish this month.
[Update mid-afternoon]
I’ll be on in ten minutes or so.
[Bumped]
[Early evening update]
Well, that was in interesting discussion. It went on for a couple hours. The most important thing to me was that David brought up one of the very best case studies for my thesis — the Hubble decision. I’m going to incorporate it into the book (yes, I’ve decided to just call it a book). This is partly just a reminder for me to do so…
[Evening update]
It’s probably worth repeating this video from the space teddy bears. Or dogs. Or whatever.
This isn’t exactly a new question. The Space Studies Institute has been thinking about it for a third of a century. And of course, one always finds the inevitable “it’s obvious that the first colony should be on Mars” comment.
The problem with his analysis is that (as Clark Lindsey notes in comments) he assumes no elasticity of demand with the lower prices. I think he’s wrong.
Hey, put me down as all in favor of a Lagrange-point base — I’ve advocated it for years. But I’d like to see the trade study that says EML-2 versus EML-1. My preference is for the latter, but NASA seems focused on the former. I haven’t seen any explanation as to why. To my mind it’s a time versus delta-vee tradeoff. I’d prefer quicker trips, and better views of earth.
I also agree with Charles Lurio (quoted in the piece) that this isn’t the mission that SLS is looking for. It would be ludicrously expensive compared to using existing vehicles. There is no mission for which the Senate Launch System is cost effective.
But Trent Waddington says that Charles and I should hush our mouves.
I sent out a tweet to correct the one that said it was F-16s escorting. I’m pretty sure it was a couple of Dryden’s F-18s (at least that’s what it looked like when it flew over the house).