I have some thoughts on recent events over at Open Market.
Category Archives: Space
Tomorrow’s Announcement
Here’s a WSJ piece on it. If they do actually move an asteroid, under current precedent, they’d own it.
I won’t be covering it in real time, because I’ll be at a workshop at JPL giving a talk on propellant depots. Interestingly, Dennis Wingo gives a talk following mine on extraterrestrial resource utilization. It seems like a lot of things are coming together at the same time.
[Evening update]
Sorry, workshop link was wrong. Fixed now, I hope.
Another One-Week Slip
The Dragon flight has been pushed off again, apparently to do some final validation on code. There’s entirely too much political pressure on the successful outcome of this flight.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the official release from SpaceX: “After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data. While it is still possible that we could launch on May 3rd, it would be wise to add a few more days of margin in case things take longer than expected. As a result, our launch is likely to be pushed back by one week, pending coordination with NASA.”
Another Unfortunate Document Leak
If you’re an SLS supporter, that is. Spaceref has a NASA document from November that concludes utilizing orbital assembly and fueling for exploration missions adds no significant mission risk. Opponents of this concept have been sowing FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about this ever since it became viewed as a threat to first Ares, and now SLS. It was always a monumentally ignorant argument, that could be made only by someone unfamiliar with basic statistics and space ops (and sadly, it was once even made by the administrator himself), but now NASA has an internal document that shows what nonsense it is (and really, always was). Of course, in defense of Bolden, he knew what his audience wanted to hear.
Proposed ITAR Changes
A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights
[Note: this is a guest post by Alan Wasser, Chairman of the Space Settlement Institute]
As the Space Settlement Initiative says, the settlement of space would benefit all of humanity by opening a new frontier, energizing our society, providing room and resources for the growth of the human race without despoiling the Earth, and creating a lifeboat for humanity that could survive even a planet-wide catastrophe.
Unfortunately, it seems clear that, as things stand now, space settlement will not happen soon enough for any of us to see it, if it ever happens at all. The US government has now officially decided not to go back to the moon, philanthropists cannot afford it, and there is nothing else on the moon or Mars that could be profitable enough to justify the cost of private enterprise developing safe, reliable and affordable human transport. Continue reading A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights
Will America Go To Space Again?
Bryan Preston is unduly pessimistic. The answer is yes, and hopefully in a couple weeks.
Discovery, We Hardly Knew Ye
I have some thoughts about the belated mourning of the Shuttle program, over at PJMedia.
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.