Category Archives: Space

Business, Space

An RL-10 Killer

30 Comments

I’ve known, or at least guessed, that this was in the works for several months (almost a year, really). It was the only thing that made any sense in terms of why ULA would have wanted XCOR to build a hydrogen piston pump. It’s not good news for Pratt & Whitney — they’re going to lose what has been essentially a monopoly for decades. I would assume that the engine production will not occur in California. They’ll be looking for some place with a sane business environment. Again, I have no specific knowledge, but Florida would make a lot of sense.

[Update a few minutes later]

The latest Lurio Report is out. Clark has the T of C. If you don’t subscribe, you should.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Clark also has additional links on the XCOR story.

[Update a few minutes later]

Busy space news day. The latest Space Studies Institute update is out.

[Update in the afternoon]

It turns out that “Joe” in comments had a good guess as to development time:

Sowers said Monday that the pace of the development will depend on the level of investment as milestones are met in the build-a-little, test-a-little approach favored by XCOR. Under the low-cost development approach, it would be 5-10 years before flight engines are available, depending on how the work goes.

Of course, as I said, my estimate of much less time was based on having “adequate funding.” Sounds like they’re doing go as you pay.

Business, Space

Space Access ’11

2 Comments

Henry Vanderbilt has the list of speakers up. With the number he has, it’s going to be hard to come up with a schedule. It really needs two tracks, given the time available, but that would entirely change the flavor of the conference. I’m not sure what he wants me to talk about, but likely it will be my ongoing efforts to get Republicans and conservatives to act like it when it comes to space policy.

Now that this stuff is finally taking off (both figuratively and literally,with real hardware), the industry may be outgrowing the conference. I’m sure that Henry can’t be unhappy about that, though it may mean big changes in the future.

Media Criticism, Space, War Commentary

Iran Lies About Its Space Program

10 Comments

…and the AP buys it uncritically:

Iran says it has sent the country’s first space capsule that is able to sustain life into orbit as a test for a future mission that may carry a live animal.

The state IRNA news agency says the capsule was carried by a rocket dubbed Kavoshgar-4 – or Explorer-4 in Farsi – some 75 miles (120 kilometers) into orbit.

There is no such thing as a 75-mile orbit. That’s barely into space (the official altitude is a hundred kilometers, or about 63 miles), and there is too much drag to sustain it. If they have enough velocity to get to orbit, they’d also have enough to get to a decent altitude (at least a hundred fifty miles or so). This was probably a suborbit. If there was a launch at all.

I wonder if they bothered to confirm with the JSPOC? Maybe I will.

General Science, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

I Wish Congress Wouldn’t Make NASA Waste So Much Money

11 Comments

So they could afford to do things more like this.

It’s always a little unnerving to me to see them fly through the ring plane. It makes you realize that as striking they are in appearance, the mass density is very slight, and there’s plenty of open space in there. Not that they couldn’t have had a collision, but they haven’t.

OK, I know, even if they weren’t being forced to waste money, they’d still have trouble getting more funding for more planetary missions.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Vanity Press

20 Comments

I see that Mark Whittington has found a new place to self-publish his ever-illogical ignorance.

Note that the commenters are unremittingly clueless as well.

[Sunday afternoon update]

Just in case anyone ever bothers to read Mark’s web site, he is now (as often, and hilariously stupidly) claiming that I have “leaped the length of my” (imaginary, just like the “Internet Rocketeers Club”) “chain,” once again demonstrating his complete inability to accurately discern human emotions. He also accused me of lying, with zero basis, since I never claimed that he wasn’t being paid. But then, as always, reading comprehension has never been been his strong suit, either.