I guess I’m supposed to be impressed at the record number of women in space right now. I’m more depressed about how, almost fifty years after the beginning of human spaceflight, how few there are.
Category Archives: Space
Sigh…
I just heard Jane Skinner on Fox News reporting on the Shuttle launch, noting that there were very few left, and promising more on “NASA’s big budget cuts.” Never mind that the agency is actually getting an increase.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, she interviewed Corey Powell, editor of Discover magazine. Who dutifully informed us that Constellation was the “replacement” for the shuttle. I’ll have a Pop Mechanics piece about this kind of misreporting, probably this week.
And on a different topic, but still Fox News, could someone tell Trace Gallagher that the San Andreas Fault does not run through downtown LA?
What Went Wrong With The VSE?
Paul Spudis says that NASA lost its way on the way to the moon.
It was clear that once the Griffinites came in, the lunar goal was being sabotaged by people who didn’t really believe in it (e.g., Doug Stanley). But I’m more sanguine than Paul is. There’s plenty of time to again make the case for moon first, and most of the things that we need to do (get commercial crew going, develop depot technologies) are independent of destination. That’s what Flexible Path is all about. As the time approaches at which it will be realistic to think about affordably going beyond LEO, we can decide how best to proceed. The most important thing in the near term, it seems to me, in that regard is to fund ISRU technologies and further prospector missions, and perhaps even robotic prototypes of processing facilities. That will provide a lot more ammunition for Paul and others who want to exploit the lunar resources and bootstrap the rest of the solar system with them.
Mike Griffin Speaks
And Clark Lindsey responds, also explaining why commercial crew really is commercial, honest, even it it is a monopsony (which it won’t be).
Painting What Can’t Be Seen
Some thoughts on the history of space art, with some excellent examples of the prescience of many of the artists.
The Goal Remains The Same
Laurie Leshin attempted to tamp down the mindless hysteria over the new space policy yesterday:
The new plan represents “a change in approach and philosophy, but not a change in goal,” said Laurie Leshin, NASA deputy administrator for exploration, in a speech yesterday at a Marshall Institute event on space exploration policy in Washington. “The goal remains the same: to see human explorers out in the solar system.” The new focus on “sustainable and affordable” human space exploration isn’t that new, she said, noting that it was emphasized back in 2004 by the Aldridge Commission that evaluated the Vision for Space Exploration (a committee she served on when she was a professor at Arizona State University.) “We’ve come back to needing to have new and enabling approaches in order to make this a sustainable program for the future.”
To emphasize the need for technology development—one of the cornerstones of the new plan—to enable sustainable human space exploration, she put up a chart showing the mass needed to carry out the latest version of NASA’s Design Reference Mission for human Mars exploration. “If today, with today’s technology, decided we wanted to go to Mars, our mission would have a mass about 12 times of the space station,” she said. “It’s just impossible.” Various technologies, from reducing cryogenic boiloff to in situ resource utilization, can get it down to a more manageable level, she said. “It’s not that these technologies are nice to have, they’re absolutely required if we’re going to have a sustainable path out into the solar system.”
I wish that people would understand what a hopeless dead end Constellation was. Regardless of the new policy direction, its rotting carcass had to be cleared from the road. I assume that we’ll be seeing a lot more details and specifics in the coming weeks and months (probably at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in a couple weeks).
[Update a few minutes later]
One of the things that encourages me about the implementation of the new policy is that Dr. Leshin, the new head of the Exploration Directorate, was on the Aldridge Commission, and understands better than most the need for affordability and sustainability recommended by that body. I suspect she’ll do a lot better job than Mike Griffin’s NASA of implementing all, or at least most of the Aldridge recommendations.
A Reusable Indian Rocket?
I don’t expect to see this thing fly into space any time soon. They don’t seem to be serious about it, as indicated by this:
“The RLV-TD will act as a flying test bed to evaluate various technologies like hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air breathing propulsion. First in the series of demonstration trials is the hypersonic flight experiment (HEX),” it said.
“Powered cruise flight”? Of what value is that to getting into space (other than giving you azimuth and longitude flexibility)? Unless you can refuel it in flight, it will kill your performance.
I’ll repeat the three rules of aerospace vehicle design:
1) If you want to cruise, use an airbreather.
2) If you want to turn, use a wing.
3) If you want to accelerate, use a rocket.
In order to get to orbit, you have to accelerate.
[Update a few minutes later]
You’ll know that the Indians are serious about building reusable orbital vehicles when they start working on reusable suborbital vehicles.
Irony
An amusing tweet from Jeff Foust, before what looks like an interesting panel discussion:
Overheard pre-event chatter: “Democrats don’t think capitalism works below the atmosphere and Republicans don’t think it works above it.”
Sad but true.
Mimas
…is not boring. New details on the “death star.”
Only A Week And A Half Away
Henry Vanderbilt has released the latest (and probably ninety-percent certain) schedule for next week’s Space Access Conference in Phoenix (I wish he would have permalinks for these things…):