Amy Shira Teitel has an amusing bit of Apollo history.
Category Archives: Space
The Right Stuff
Brian Binnie (who flew the first X-Prize flight) emails:
…this e-book:
The Right Stuff: Interviews with Icons of the 1960s
, is available just in time for Father’s day. It’s the first in a series dealing with “adventurers” over the decades, many of whom are leaders in the space arena. I wrote the forward to it and the SpaceShipOne story will appear when the chronology finally gets to the 2000’s.
I met Jim via the eclectic Explorers Club and he is regular contributor to Forbes Magazine.
Cheers, Brian
You might want to check it out.
Losing The Universe
…with LOST. I have a piece up at Open Market about what a disaster ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty could be for space development.
Tapping The Riches
…of space. Yes, what’s primarily been holding us back is risk aversion. Constellation was a perfect example of it.
Cal Tech Commencement Speech
…by Elon Musk, will be webcast here.
[Update at the end of the speech]
Nothing new here to people familiar with Elon. He wasn’t trying to commit any acts of news today.
Fighting LOST
So Don Rumsfeld testified against ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty. This is a key point:
Rumsfeld called “an idea of enormous consequence” the fact that “anyone who finds a way to make use of such riches by applying their labor or their technology or their risk-taking are required to pay writ royalties of unknown amounts, potentially billions, possibly even tens of billions over an extended period, an ill-defined period of time, to the new International Seabed Authority for distribution to less developed countries.”
Saying that this principle has “no clear limits,” he mused that it could set a precedent for space exploration, too.
He shouldn’t just “muse.” It could be a disastrous precedent, completely undercutting the arguments we make against the Moon Treaty.
Lunar Orbit Rendezvous
The decision was made fifty years ago this month.
Historically, the decision was a disaster, from the standpoint of making the effort sustainable, though it’s what won the race. Unfortunately, it was inevitable once it became a race to the moon and back. There was simply no time to develop the LEO infrastructure that von Braun and others wanted to put into place that would have obviated the need for the Saturn V. And it created a myth — that we can’t explore without such a vehicle — that haunts us to this day.
Elon And Charlie
I went over to SpaceX this morning to hear them speak, with the first Dragon to go into space (it was a repeat of their show in McGregor, Texas yesterday with the Dragon that flew the recent mission). There are a bunch of pictures at SpaceflightNow. I don’t think I’m in any of them. I was standing in the press area, just below the vantage point of most of the shots.
You might see some bulges on the side of the Dragon to the right rear. I asked Elon if those were the pods and thrusters for the abort/landing motors. He said they were, but that the design was still in flux. I also asked him if there were cosine losses, and he said yes, that they are unavoidable, since you can’t thrust straight down from the side of a cone.
Speaking of Elon, he’s giving the commencement address at Cal Tech tomorrow morning.
Commercialization Of Human Exploration
If I were in DC, I’d attend this event on the Hill on Friday. But in my experience, space historians won’t necessarily do a good job of extrapolating into the future, particularly when it comes to technological trends.
Rescuing Apollo Astronauts
…in lunar orbit. They thought of everything, which you can do when it’s important and you have a big budget.