I don’t know, but here’s the worst thing about him. He would never kill the Senate Launch System. He’d be in ATK’s pocket.
Category Archives: Space
Newt’s Moon Mines
Over at The Corner, I have some thoughts on Saturday’s debate.
[Update a few minutes later]
Gingrich the psycho-historian.
Space Policy Crops Up In The Republican Debate Again
I didn’t see the debate last night (we were partying down), but apparently Mitt went after Newt on space. Jeff Foust can’t figure out what he’s talking about, and I don’t know, either. All I know is that it’s one more reason to hope Romney isn’t the nominee. He doesn’t seem to understand the issues at all.
[Update a few minutes later]
Question for the Romney campaign. Why is the governor opposed to opening up new resources? Why does he think that we would have to spend more to do so than we are now on a rocket that will never fly?
The Failures Of Durban
Dennis Wingo has an essay over at Andrewthony Watt’s place on the flawed assumptions of the warm mongers.
Our Iowahawk Party Last Night
Looks like Amy Alkon had a good time. More at the Hawk’s Twitter feed. And yes, you bet your sweet bippie we’re counting the silverware.
The Year Of The Dragon
Alan Boyle has a post up about today’s NASA Future meeting in Seattle.
What Does The Phobos-Grunt Failure Mean For NASA?
My thoughts over at Popular Mechanics.
Another December 7th Anniversary
Thirty-nine years ago today, the crew of the last mission to the moon took this picture in their rear-view mirror.
What Really Happened To Air France 447?
It was pilot error. As the article notes, humans will always be fallible (it’s one of the defining characteristics) and you can never build a guaranteed safe system. There are probably lessons to be learned here for the design of space transports as well. But I don’t think that “automated systems will be safer” is one of them.
The Latest Space Quarterly
Two articles from the current issue have been put on line for non-subscribers. One is a piece by Jeff Foust, discussing the stakes for commercial spaceflight in the upcoming COTS demonstration flights, and the other is a longer essay by Marcia Smith (who I first met at a AAS conference in Boston about thirty years ago) on the past and future of space policy, including human spaceflight. It’s a good overview, but I don’t think she’s sufficiently critical of the damaging role that Congress has played, and the role that pork, rather than actual accomplishments in space, plays in the SLS mess. She is justly harsh on the administration, whose policy making with space has been just as inept as in all else, though at least it had a more sensible policy even if it is unable to coherently articulate it. I’ve spent the last two years trying to make up for it, defending the new direction with numerous essays in various venues, but it’s hard to break through the FUD, noise and parochialism, particularly given how unimportant space policy is, as she notes herself.