[Via Bruce Webster]
Category Archives: Space
Saving The Space Program
A colleague who wishes to remain anonymous inspired the latest exciting space policy adventure from Broccoli Man and ZZZwoman.
Just A Right-Wing Fantasy
No, of course Atlas Shrugged has nothing to do with life in modern America:
Ah, that must be the Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Law, or one of the Fairness Laws, or something, right? The WSJ isn’t sure what law the NLRB is talking about, either. Not only do businesses routinely relocate to find the most advantageous environment possible, states and cities compete for that business by calculating their business climate. If this has escaped the notice of the NLRB, perhaps they should get out more.
This will be an important court case, assuming it’s fought. Then again, it’s hard to feel too bad for Boeing — as Mickey says, live by crony capitalism, die by crony capitalism. Sadly, we’ve also seen this sort of corporatism/fascism wasting our space dollars as well, in addition to inhibiting innovation.
Jeff Greason
The Joys Of International Cooperation
If Mike Griffin had let Steidle continue, we’d probably have a CEV flying on an Atlas by now, and wouldn’t have to worry about potential extortion attempts like this. Deciding to end Shuttle without focusing on getting a new system in place first was a policy blunder of the highest order. Unless we simply pull out of ISS, the Russians have us over a barrel. They can continue to help Iran develop nukes and missiles with impunity, and they can continue their monopoly by obstructive behavior such as this. Bob Bigelow needs to start getting some facilities up, and NASA needs to accelerate the Boeing and SpaceX activities. Also, while I know this is controversial, I think that they should start crewing Dragon ASAP, and not wait for an abort system. And that’s what we’d be doing, if space were important.
Tea In Space
I just discovered a new web site, apparently devoted to getting sensible space policy from a Tea Party perspective.
Congress Wants To Go To The Moon?
Really?
My thoughts at the Washington Examiner.
Jay Barbree’s Latest Nonsense
Just when I thought he was starting to get it, off he goes on another ignorant piece about the “loss of expertise” at NASA, and the “inability” of the commercial crew providers to do it without them. He doesn’t seem to understand that companies and agencies don’t have expertise — people do. All of the people at NASA who know how to develop launch systems are dead or retired (because it’s been over three decades since NASA did one), and no one at NASA has ever known how to do one cost effectively. That experience resides at SpaceX, and other places. Clark Lindsey addresses the nonsense in comments over there.
Embracing The End Of Human Spaceflight
Thoughts from Paul Spudis.
Back To CA
The conference was very interesting, and I hope useful in the longer run, and I want to thank the Cornhuskers for their hospitality. Stayed at a very nice hotel downtown (Cornhusker Marriott) that would have been at least three benjamins a night in DC, for only one. I didn’t blog it yesterday because I was busy finalizing my own talk on Civil Reserve Space Fleet, Space Guard, and my three rules of space policy which are:
Rule 1: Space is not important. Over the fold for the other two: Continue reading Back To CA