What are China’s lunar ambitions?
Category Archives: Space
Space, The Mining Frontier
The latest on Planetary Resources.
Safety Is The Highest Priority
The latest from the teddy bears. Or dogs. Or whatever they are.
Kickstarter Projects
Time to go help out John Mankins. His project for his book on power satellites is only a third of the way there, with only five days to go.
And unrelated, other than it’s Kickstarter, Patricia’s aspiring film-maker nephew is a ways from his goal as well.
Eight Years Since First Flight
On June 21st, 2004, SpaceShipOne made its first journey into space, a test run for the X-Prize-winning flights the following fall. I was there (the top five posts on this page are from Mojave). Jeff Foust has some thoughts on the slower-than-anticipated progress in the industry. Ed Wright and Doug Messier also remember.
Space SF Art
…from the fifties.
Celebrity Watching
So I’m watching the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on commercial space, and seeing Jim Muncy and Laura Montgomery (FAA-AST legal counsel) sitting behind Gerstenmaier as he testifies.
[Update a few minutes later]
Now I’m seeing Alex Saltman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation over Mike Gold’s left shoulder. And Patti Grace Smith is behind Alex’s left shoulder.
[Update a few minutes later]
Now I see Stu Witt of the Mojave Air and Spaceport off Gerst’s left shoulder.
[Update]
Hearing adjourned. We certainly heard a lot of the usual ignorance from the usual suspects. Nelson didn’t know that NASA science missions are FAA licensed.
China’s Space Race
It isn’t with NASA, or any government. It’s with SpaceX and U.S. private industry. Though it’s amusing that the author actually believes that the SLS will be sending anyone to the moon or asteroids.
V’ger And Nazis
Thoughts on the cosmos and other stuff from Lileks.
Yesterday’s FAA/NASA Press Conference
I only crudely stenographed it yesterday, and didn’t really comment, though others did. But Alan Boyle has the story. It’s a good description of the current state of play, but I don’t necessarily agree with this:
Theoretically, NASA would not have any formal say over the flight of a Boeing CST-100 space capsule that’s launched on an Atlas 5, heading for a Bigelow Aerospace orbital module. But because NASA is expected to be the biggest customer by far for orbital spaceflight services, the space agency would probably play a key role in the development of any private-sector orbital spacecraft developed in the U.S., even if that craft ended up occasionally going someplace other than the International Space Station. Pragmatically speaking, it’s likely that NASA would be to spaceflight standards what California is to auto emission standards, or Texas is to school textbook standards.
“Expected” by whom? I don’t expect that beyond the next five years or so, though I’m sure it’s an accurate reflection of the conventional wisdom. I think that Bigelow-induced traffic will be far greater than NASA’s needs. I also think that if SpaceX does get to full reusability it will both drop launch costs in itself, but that SpaceX’s success will draw competitors into the market to further reduce costs. At that point, NASA’s standards will become largely irrelevant, because one of the ways that people will compete on cost (and safety and availability) will be to ignore them when they don’t make sense.