According to noted exobiologist Hugo Chavez, life on Mars was destroyed by capitalism.
Category Archives: Space
No Orbital Animals For Iran
Remember that goofy press story a few days ago about Iran putting a “life capsule” in a 75-mile orbit?
Well, I just got confirmation from the JSpOC that it was indeed nonsense:
According to our Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC): “Our sensors did not detect, identify or track any space launch from Iran of the type described. No new object originating from Iran was entered into the orbiting satellite catalogue.”
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
Very Respectfully,
Rodney E. Ellison Jr., Civ
Media Operations
U.S. Strategic Command
Public Affairs Office (J020)
901 SAC Blvd. Suite 1A1
Offutt AFB, NE 68113-6020
AP and the BBC probably just bungled the Farsi translation, when it was clearly suborbital.
Time To Stop The Nonsense
Florida Today reads the riot act to Congress over its idiotic space policy dithering.
[Update a few minute later]
Solving The Real Problem
One of the most bizarre aspects of contemporary space policy is the degree to which the policy establishment has completely thrown in the towel on reducing the cost of access to orbit, as exemplified by the Senate Launch System. Stewart Money lays out the technical issues on the off chance that the community will come to its senses and decide that this is an important goal.
An RL-10 Killer
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.
After Earth
Why, when and how may we have to find another home?
The Launch Lab
There’s a nice long piece at Air & Space about Mojave. I’m still reading it, so I may have comments later.
Space Access ’11
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.
Iran Lies About Its Space Program
…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.
I Wish Congress Wouldn’t Make NASA Waste So Much Money
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.