There’s a good article at The Space Review today on the pros and cons of L-1 versus L-2 as a stepping stone for operations on the moon and points far beyond cis-lunar space. I tend to favor L-1 myself, for the travel-time reasons, but there are good arguments to be made both ways. Eventually, I would expect the market to sort it out, and there will probably be facilities at both locations.
Category Archives: Space
Heavy-Lift Pork
Thoughts on the current NASA mess from Ric Locke.
Heavy-Lift Follies
Keith Cowing, Marcia Smith and Jeff Foust all have reports on General Bolden’s comments yesterday, some of which were in response to questions from Keith. I would note (as Jeff does) that Congress doesn’t want a vehicle sized in metric tons — it asked for one in tons. NASA seems to have confused this issue by sizing in MT, and now Keith and Marcia are stating that as though it’s the requirement. But that oversizes the system considerably, as I noted in my satirical but sadly accurate robot theater a few weeks ago.
Dampening The Asteroid Mining Market
Behold: a carbon-nanotube catalyst that’s over six hundred times more effective than platinum.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, that was sloppy. More cost-effective (that is, cheaper) than platinum, not six hundred times better as a catalyst.
This Explains So Much
According to noted exobiologist Hugo Chavez, life on Mars was destroyed by capitalism.
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?