Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

State Socialists In Space

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I use the “s” word because the “f” word seems to really upset people, even though it’s more accurate. It’s a shame that Hitler gave it such a bad name.

Anyway, Jeff Foust has an article today on the irrational antipathy of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, to private enterprise. Well, OK, it’s not all irrational. Some of it just typical rent seeking. Congressman Culberson comes off as particularly foolish, and not just for his Marine analogy:

“If the private sector exclusively owns access to space, who owns the technology? They’d have the right to sell it to any nation on the face of the Earth?” (Not easily, thanks to the export control regime that covers space technology in the US today.)

“Imagine if America had to hitch a ride on a commercial vehicle,” he continued. “If the private sector and the Chinese and Russians control access to space, they could charge us whatever they want.”

Yes. Whatever they want. As long as the price wasn’t higher than their competitors.

Why does this so-called fiscal conservative either not understand, or not believe in, how markets work?

You know who really charges “whatever they want”? A monopoly cost-plus contractor for NASA. Which is why Ares I has already cost about twenty times as much as Falcon 9, for similar capability (if it’s ever completed), with first flight for the former still years away, versus weeks away for the latter.

Business, Media Criticism, Space

More Space Misreporting

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There’s a story over at the Grauniad today about the dotcom space millionaires, featuring Elon Musk and SpaceX. As usual, the reporter doesn’t understand what Constellation is/was:

His confidence has been boosted following last month’s decision by President Barack Obama to drop funding for the Constellation programme – the Nasa spacecraft intended to replace the space shuttle, which is to be grounded later this year.

Once again, Constellation is not now, and never was, a “replacement” for the Space Shuttle. If anything, it’s a replacement for Apollo. It’s an architecture of vehicles designed to get humans back to the moon, including launchers, capsule, earth-departure stages, and lunar lander and ascent vehicle. And the only parts that are really being cancelled are the Ares I launcher and the Orion crew module, because none of the rest of it was scheduled to start development for years.

Beyond that, the reporter doesn’t seem to understand the difference between suborbital and orbital, saying that Falcon I went to suborbit. Well, the first one did, but the other four went to orbit, albeit only the last two with full success. And all five were intended to.

Space

David Brin On Space Exploration

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There are some videos over at Next Big Future. I have no comments on them, because I haven’t taken the time to watch them yet, but some of my readers may be interested. It will be nice when it gets cheap to transcribe things like this.

I will say, though (as I often think) that it would be nice to banish the word “exploration” from the discussion. Brin appears to be talking about a lot more than that. That was a perhaps fatal flaw with the Bush plan — calling it the Vision for Space Exploration. As long as we think that we’re doing “exploration,” it opens up a hole big enough to fly a shuttle through for opponents to say, “let’s do it with robots.” What we needed was a vision for space development and a vision for space settlement. Once you get buy-in for that, the notion of doing it without people becomes instantly absurd.

Political Commentary, Space

Hardball

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“Sell your vote, and we will publish it.”

Sounds good to me. That’s just called political accountability. I also like the threat that any nominations for sold votes will be held by the Senate.

Speaking of which, there’s an interesting rumor over at Human Events:

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) who announced his retirement from Congress has been promised the job of NASA administrator in exchange for his vote, and Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), another retiring Democrat, has been promised an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to NATO in exchange for his vote.

It will be interesting to note any job announcements from this Tennessee duo post-House retirement. Both voted against passage of the House bill back in November.

Emphasis mine. If true, this has at least two implications. First, the administration is willing to throw Charlie Bolden under the bus. Second, they’re also willing to throw the new plans for NASA under the bus for health care, because Gordon (who just happens to be the relevant committee chairman) has expressed skepticism about them:

Even Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), the House Science and Technology Committee chairman who has no real parochial interest in Constellation, branded NASA’s budget request “a radical departure” from the Bush-era plan twice endorsed by Congress.

Stay tuned.

[Update a few minutes later]

As I said, if it’s true. My question is: why would he even want the job, particularly if he relishes the status quo? It’s no plum.

[Update a couple minutes later]

In light of this news, you might want to listen to the live webcast of the Senate Commerce Committee hearings discussing commercial crew. It’s quite a line up. But it may or may not be relevant, depending on how the policy works out.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Clark Lindsey is following Twitter feeds on the hearings. Stafford is testifying now. Saying that we need the POR for “risk mitigation.”

I never fail to be astounded that people don’t recognize the high amount of risk with Ares.

[Early afternoon update]

Over at Space Politics, pseudonymous commenter “Major Tom” notes that this may be a recycling of an old rumor from last year, before Bolden was chosen. That is certainly possible. It would be nice to see some substantiation or verification of it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Gordon has announced that he is now a yes vote on the bill. FWIW. For some reason, no quid pro quos are discussed.

Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

Back To The Drawing Board?

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I’ve never been a big fan of nuking asteroids, but this test should cause some concern:

Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Catherine Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico simulated blowing up asteroids 1 kilometre across. When the speed of dispersal was relatively low, it took only hours for the fragments to coalesce into a new rock.

“The high-speed stuff goes away but the low-speed stuff reassembles [in] 2 to 18 hours,” Korycansky says. The simulations were presented (pdf) last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

So you have to have a big enough bomb to really do the job. I think there are better, more controllable ways.