I have some thoughts about the belated mourning of the Shuttle program, over at PJMedia.
Category Archives: Space
More Space Property Rights Commentary
It’s sort of turning into a telephone game, like this piece:
Simberg, an aerospace engineer, says a new law granting the United States conditional permission to claim extraterrestrial land is internationally legal. His view: failure of the 1979 Moon Treaty to get even one signature nullifies the Outer Space Treaty.
a) The Moon Treaty has fourteen countries who have acceded to it.
b) I didn’t say that the Moon Treaty’s failure nullifies the OST.
Other than that, they get it completely right.
Spacefaring
Is space more like seafaring or aviation? It started out like the latter, but the former is a better model once we actually get serious about it.
[Update a while later]
Meteor craters, dinosaurs and spacefaring.
Actually, while I do think it’s a federal responsibility to keep an eye out for impactors, it’s not clear that it’s NASA’s job. It’s one of the things we need a Space Guard for.
More Space Access Thoughts
Jon Goff is encouraged at progress among the suborbitals.
Space Access
I was remiss in not posting much from the conference, but Clark Lindsey has some thoughts in the aftermath, with a lot of links. My impression? It wasn’t as exciting as last year, when Gwynne Shotwell came and not only gave a speech but answered questions. I think that both SpaceX and XCOR weren’t there in force this year (the latter for the first time, though ably represented by Mark Street) because they’re busy building hardware that will reduce the cost of access to space.
The Property Rights Debate Continues
I report on the latest Alan Boyle piece over at Open Market, with a bonus comment from Glenn Reynolds.
More Space Property Rights Discussion
Tanja Masson-Zwaan says I don’t know what I’m talking about. No surprise there:
…as I said in the paper, any opinions expressed on this issue, whether Jim Dunstan’s, my own, or that of (for example) Tanja Masson-Zwaan, current president of the International Institute of Space Law, are simply that — opinions, and will remain nothing more than that until the matter is litigated and adjudicated.
We will agree to disagree until that happens.
[Update a few minutes later]
I did find this comment interesting:
Masson-Zwaan acknowledges that the current treaty is not perfect. “More rules are needed,” she said, “but I am also of the opinion that you do not need to create property rights.”
“More rules are needed.” We agree that the treaty is not “perfect” but I’m pretty sure that we’ll have a major disagreement on what we need to do to approach perfection.
Space Guard
Phil Chapman is giving a talk at Space Access on revitalizing the human spaceflight program, and in one of his charts, he just made a pitch for the U.S. Space Guard concept.
[Update a few minutes later]
Is there a Wikipedia editor in the house? The Space Guard article over there is woefully behind the times.
The Nork Missile Failure
Interesting that they launched on the anniversary of the Gagarin and first Shuttle flight. The joke tweets have started already. “Man, North Korean rockets break up faster than a Kardashian marriage.” “It didn’t crash into the sea — it was a successful attack on Aquaman.”
I’ll bet Hilary Rosen is happy that Twitter has found a new distraction. Except for the combined tweets: “That rocket had the same trajectory as Hilary Rosen’s PR career.
Off To Phoenix
We’re hitting the road in a few minutes. I may check in with my phone, but we should be arriving at the conference (Space Access) mid afternoon. I would note that today is the fifty-first anniversary of the first man in orbit (which will be celebrated at parties tonight, including one at the conference) and the thirty-first of the first Shuttle flight.