Looked like they had another foam strike at liftoff, though. I guess they’ll take a look at it when they get to ISS.
Category Archives: Space
A Big Suborbital Deal
XCOR and Southwest Research Institute have a major announcement today:
In a first for the reusable suborbital launch vehicle industry, XCOR Aerospace announced today that the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), a commercial entity, has purchased six suborbital flights to carry SwRI experiments as pathfinder missions for other SwRI suborbital clients. This is the first such contract SwRI has issued, and XCOR is proud to be chosen for this opportunity.
I hope it’s the first of many such deals, for XCOR and other providers.
Impaired Vision
Paul Spudis doesn’t think much of NASA’s newest vision statement. Neither do I, but I’m unmoved by his replacement: “To explore the universe with people and machines.”
He’s thinking too much like a scientist. Exploration is a means, not an end. I’d say “To flower the universe with sapient life.”
A Call For Papers
Sort of. I’ve set up a new section of Competitive Space for HSF myth busting, but I haven’t had time to flesh out the pages, so I’m calling for suggestions, or drafts, that can be improved over time. Ideally, it would be as a wiki, but I don’t have time to figure out how to set one up right now. Instead, I’ll incorporate comments into the pages as they come in. Credit will be provided to contributors.
[Update on Wednesday morning]
For those wondering about the 404, I’ve taken the page down, because it wasn’t getting enough input to clean things up. I’ll just have to work on it myself and then inaugurate it again.
Launch-System Reusability
…and the ongoing policy insanity of completely ignoring the issue. A good essay by Stewart Money.
[Cross-posted at Competitive Space]
The Misnamed Blog Carnival
The latest Carnival of Space is up.
For anyone interested, I’ve never participated in this, primarily because in my experience, they’re not really carnivals of space — they’re carnivals of space science, a subject in which I have little more interest in than other kinds, except to the degree that it provides knowledge of how to develop and settle it. This is a specific instance of a more general irk — when many people learn that I’m an expert on space policy and technology, or I do a radio interview, they assume that I’m both an expert on and interested in space science and astronomy and (even more annoyingly) UFOs. It’s the same kind of general public level of (lack of) knowledge that leads to phrases such as “rocket scientist.”
Jupiter Bound
Leonard David has a nice story on a vehicle that’s being built almost in his back yard. Let’s hope Webb doesn’t eat up all the funding for it.
Who Would Have Thought?
There are documentation problems at NASA. It’s endemic to the industry. It’s one of the causes of high costs. And failures. Be sure to read the comments.
One of the advantages that SpaceX has is that with a tightly integrated co-located team, the knowledge is much more accessible, though individuals become more critical
On The Stupidity Of ITAR
…and immigration policy. This is probably an issue that the CSTF should take up.
The Current State Of Space Policy Play
Henry Vanderbilt has a summary of what’s going on with the NASA budget, though it’s a fast-moving topic. For instance, this sort of nonsense occurred after he got the mailing out:
On Wednesday the full House, debating the full-year continuing resolution HR 1, voted 228-203 to approve an amendment that would transfer $298 million from NASA to the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services, a program that provides funding for local police forces. The amendment, introduced by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was actually debated Tuesday evening by the House and failed by a voice vote, but prevailed in the recorded vote hold over to the next day, with 70 Republicans joining 158 Democrats to approve the amendment.
In the current environment, the agency is a wounded antelope on the savannah, and the jackals and hyenas are going to be swarming on it in the coming days and weeks, with people like Anthony Weiner foremost among them.
This is awful on two levels — first, that there is no sensible discussion about what our space policy should be, and second, that there was no discussion of whether or not community policing is even a legitimate federal responsibility. I’d like to see the names of the Republicans who voted for this atrocity, and see how many have claimed fealty to the Tea Party, because if so, they’re flaming hypocrites, and should be mocked and shamed.
[Cross posted at Competitive Space]
[Update a few minutes later]
John Healey at the LA Times agrees:
…it’s hard to extrapolate from the actions Wednesday to a coherent vision of smaller government. The vote that really confounds me is the one in favor of a proposal by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) to restore $298 million for COPS, a neighborhood policing program. The money is to come out of NASA’s budget, shrinking that agency’s funds by an additional 1.6%.
I wouldn’t argue that hiring cops is more or less important than conducting space missions. But hiring cops is clearly a local responsibility, and NASA is clearly a federal responsibility. If you’re going to shrink the federal government, the starting point should be eliminating its involvement in what are purely local affairs. You can’t get more local than neighborhood policing.
But that’s not the logic typically employed by members of Congress. In their calculus, anything that promotes law enforcement is A Good Thing. And until NASA has a mission as sexy as winning the race to the moon, it will never be able to compete with programs like COPS.
Here’s an idea for an even sexier mission: opening up the solar system and its resources to humanity. Which it could afford to do if we would end the insistence on making it a jobs program for engineers of unneeded new rockets.