Category Archives: Space

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Six False Lessons

31 Comments

…of the Shuttle program. With Atlantis in orbit for the last time, I have some cautionary words over at Popular Mechanics.

[Update a few minutes later]

I also have a piece up over at National Review Online — is the era of big-government space programs over?

[Update at 12:45 PM PDT]

I’m on hold right now with Bill Carroll on KFI-AM in LA, who’s been bewailing the end of the space program. Don’t know if I’ll get on or not.

[Update a while later]

The segment ended before he got me on, but I’ve been in an email discussion with his producer, so maybe next week.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

The Last Shuttle Flight

29 Comments

…and the state of the space agency. A pretty good story by Joel Achenbach. I wish that he hadn’t let this stand unchallenged, though:

“It’s sad. There’s a lot more left in them. The airframes are certified for 100 flights. This one had 39 flights,” said senior mechanical technician Bill Powers, 58, who works for United Space Alliance, the primary contractor for the shuttle. USA already has laid off thousands of shuttle workers across the country. On July 22, the contractor will lay off about 1,900 more people here in Florida.

“It’s not wore-out. It’s just broke-in,” said Tim Keyser, lead mechanic for the orbiters. “It could fly another 20 years. We get into the guts of this thing, it’s pristine.”

That’s not what the CAIB said. The notion that the orbiters were “certified” for a hundred flights is one of the canards of the program. That was a design specification, but it’s a matter of the highest conceit to think that NASA could really know how many flights they were good for. If it were really true, they wouldn’t have needed so much inspection and TLC every flight, which was a dominating factor in the operating costs.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

An Open Letter To Certain Senators

8 Comments

…who are writing open letters to the NASA administrator.

Dear Senators Shelby, Boxer, Feinstein, Warner, Chambliss, and Murray:

Why are you only calling for competition on one particular component of the SenateSpace Launch System? It is a huge project, estimated to cost many billions of dollars. If the taxpayer would be best served by competing the side boosters, why not increase the joy by competing the entire system, including main engines, tanks, upper-stage engines, and design? Why is that only the boosters would benefit from this novel procurement approach? For that matter, why not simply have a competition for the most cost-effective proposal to get humans beyond low earth orbit, or to resupply space station, since these are the reasons that we have been given when asked about the requirements for the SLS. Of course, such a competition might result in no SLS at all, if someone can come up with a cost-effective way of meeting those goals without it, but this is about the taxpayers, right?

Most sincerely and cordially,

Rand Simberg

[Cross posted at Competitive Space]

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Uh, Guys?

52 Comments

The supply chain is gone:

To avoid any gap in providing independent repair spacewalks as a safety contingency for the space station, Congress, NASA and the ISS partners should evaluate the option of postponing the launch of STS – 135 until more external fuel tanks and other parts can be built to support additional shuttle flights in 2012.

2012? What are they smoking?

It would be at least two years, probably three, before they could resurrect the tooling and manufacturing needed to do this, and it would cost billions of dollars that NASA does not have, and isn’t going to get. Meanwhile, we’d have thousands of workers sitting around, forgetting how to launch safely. This is just crazy, and disappointing, considering the sources. Do they really so completely lack imagination that they can’t conceive of ways to do EVA and ISS repair and maintenance with what is currently coming on line, and not relying on an unsafe hyperexpensive vehicle? This is the product of emotion, not thought.

[Update early afternoon]

I have a sort-of-related bleg. I’m working on an article about the false lessons learned from the Shuttle, and how they’re continuing to screw up space policy. Suggestions in comments are appreciated. The first and most obvious one is that it proved reusables don’t reduce cost.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Public Support For Space

1 Comment

With the approach of the final Shuttle launch next week, Pew has done a survey of public opinion, that shows continuing support for maintaining our “leadership” in space, whatever that means.

As is often the case with such polls, put together by people who don’t understand space policy themselves, those questioned are presented with a false choice:

Q.17 Thinking about the space program more generally, how much does the U.S. space program contribute to:

a. Scientific advances that all Americans can use

b. This country’s national pride and patriotism

c. Encouraging people’s interest in science and technology

You’d think that if they lacked imagination to come up with anything else on their own, they’d at least provide a d) Other, so they would know to think harder next time. I can think of at least two:

d. Increasing the nation’s wealth and standard of living

e. Increasing the potential for human freedom and opportunity.

I’d like to raise the money to do my own poll, that would actually be useful in guiding policy.

Political Commentary, Space

The Ground Continues To Shift

1 Comment

For years, since its founding in the wake of the Challenger disaster by June Scobee (not June Scobee Rogers), widow of perished commander Dick Scobee, the Challenger Center has been a strong defender of the Shuttle program and traditional NASA human spaceflight. So this press release supporting commercial human spaceflight is sort of a big deal (or as the vice president would say, a BFD), I think. At some point (and particularly if we can get a new president, and people have forgotten that it was Obama who came up with the new direction), the only supporters of the Senate Launch System will be those who benefit from the pork. Most others who are truly interested in actual space accomplishment will see it for what it is.

[Update late morning]

It’s nice to see Bolden standing up for sanity at the National Press Club:

Bolden: ‘When I hear ppl say last shuttle launch marks end of human space flight, I say u must B living on another planet.

We’ve been getting lots of dispatches from other planets over the past year and a half.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Is The Space Age Over?

35 Comments

The Economist seems to think so. More thoughts later.

[Friday morning update]

Clark Lindsey has a good comment over at their web site:

The author uses the cheap-shot pejorative “Space Cadet” to demean those in favor of space travel. So I will use “Earth Child” to characterize the author’s parochial one planet view.

Go read all, as he takes Earth Child to task. A lot of the other comments there are also pretty critical and disdainful.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

More comments over at NASA Watch.