Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

One-Way Trips To Mars?

28 Comments

It’s actually the only way that makes sense right now:

The hard part, he says, isn’t subsisting in a hostile environment millions of miles from home but changing the Space Shuttle-era culture of timidity.

It would be easier to just ignore NASA than to change it. I’m working on an issue paper on risk aversion and reward, and how we have to stop fretting so much over killing people if we want to open up space.

Business, Space

USA History Bleg

15 Comments

Does anyone from Boeing know the sequence of events of the formation of USA? At the time it was created, was it known that the company was going to purchase Rockwell’s space divisions, and were the legacy Rockwell people part of the new contract? USA was formed in September of 1996, I think, but the purchase didn’t occur until late in the year. I’m assuming that, since Rockwell wasn’t one of the initial parents, this must have been part of the purchase negotiations, but am curious to know how it all worked.

Economics, Political Commentary, Space

The Space Shuttle Decision

22 Comments

Forty years ago today, President Richard Nixon announced that the nation would build a reusable vehicle, that would be used to fly all of the nation’s payloads into space. It first flew a little less than a decade later, and flew its last flight last summer, after a little over thirty years of operations. We are only starting to recover from the policy disaster.

[Update late morning]

The Space Shuttle, in happier days (flyback booster, no SRBs, no ET).