I have some thoughts on human spaceflight and inappropriate risk aversion, over at Popular Mechanics.
Category Archives: Space
A Roundup Of Reaction
…to the Augustine summary, over at NASA Watch.
[Early morning/late evening update]
I haven’t read the whole thing, but I’ve scanned the intro, to take a break from doing triage on my office before packing it up tomorrow. Two things jump out at me. First:
Can we explore with reasonable assurances of human safety? Human space travel has many benefits, but it is an inherently dangerous endeavor. Human safety can never be absolutely ssured, but throughout this report, it is treated as a sine qua non. It is not discussed in extensive detail because any concepts falling short in human safety have simply been eliminated from consideration.
If the sine qua non of the opening of the New World had been human safety, we would still be in Europe, wondering why we couldn’t return to the Caribbean forty years after Columbus’ first voyage. We would never have opened up the western United States, and we would not have settled California and built an aerospace industry that ultimately got us to the moon. This is a major fail on the part of the panel, for politically correct reasons.
Second, in the “five key questions to guide human spaceflight”:
3. On what should the next heavy-lift launch vehicle be based?
This, to me, is tragic. It is the primary reason that we remain stuck in LEO, forty years after Apollo. Note that the assumption is how should we build, not if we should build, a heavy lifter.
Norm (and I am assuming, based on comments he made in the public hearings, that this was driven by him), you disappoint me. But perhaps I shouldn’t have expected better from the old guard. This flawed assumption lies at the heart of the recommendations. I hope it won’t continue to be a stake in the heart of progress in human spaceflight, but I suspect it will. At least for government human spaceflight. Fortunately, others, who are spending their own money, won’t succumb to this continuing disastrous conventional wisdom.
We’ll see in good time what the administration’s response is.
Launch Reliability
With the summary of the Augustine report being released today, and a lot of people thinking about future space policy, while I don’t have time in the middle of a move to write anything fresh, I’ve written so much in the past that I can run some golden oldies. Here’s what I think is a relevant piece that I wrote over half a decade ago.
COTS-Like Procurement
What’s not to like? Unless you’re a cost-plust contractor, of course. Or a Senator more interested in “jobs” than progress or parsimony with the taxpayers’ money.
One application not mentioned — interorbital LEO tugs. And safe haven co-orbiting facilities that would eliminate much of the need for an ISS lifeboat (though not ambulance).
Artists In Space
Many have advocated for years that NASA shouldn’t just send the steely-eyed missile men into space, but teachers, journalists, and artists, to properly articulate the experience and make it more accessible to the public. Well, the teacher things didn’t work out so well, and they never got around to a journalist (Miles O’Brien was being considered, IIRC, prior to the Columbia loss). And they’ve never even thought much about an artist, but that’s OK, because one is going to pay his own way. Private enterprise at work.
This is the future of human spaceflight, not government employees.
[Early afternoon update]
Related thoughts from Jeff Foust.
The Future Of Orion
Some thoughts from “Mr. X.”
The Latest Lurio Report
Clark Lindsey has the T of C.
X-Prize History
Memories from Peter Diamandis.
For the record, I have a vivid memory of sitting in a meeting with Peter in LA at a meeting on the subject in conjunction with a Space Frontier Foundation meeting around 1994-1995, and when he said that he had been talking to businessmen in St. Louis, I suggested that he suggest to them that the theme should be the “New Spirit Of St. Louis,” in memoriam to Lindbergh.
I’m not claiming that I came up with it first, or that someone else didn’t suggest it to him or them earlier, or that he didn’t come up with it prior — there’s no way to know that, unless Peter has something to say. But I recall it vividly.
New Life For Falcon 1
Falcon 1e, that is:
SpaceX plans to launch the second-generation satellites on multiple Falcon 1e launch vehicles, an enhanced version of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Most recently, Falcon 1 successfully delivered the RazakSAT satellite to orbit for ATSB of Malaysia. Designed from the ground up by SpaceX, the Falcon 1e has upgraded propulsion, structures and avionics systems in order to further improve reliability and mass-to-orbit capability.
There’s been an assumption that the Falcon 1 was kind of a learning experience, and that the focus would shift to Falcon 9, but it looks like they’re going to continue with both for quite a while. Also, I’ve been having an argument with someone over in comments at NASA Watch who thinks that SpaceX can’t survive without NASA. That’s always been nonsense, and remains so.
Of course, Falcon 1e has never flown. Considering what happened when they switched engines from Flight 3 to Flight 4, it would behoove them to not use one of Orbcomm’s birds for a guinea pig.
[Update a few minutes later]
If this page is right (it seems a little tentative, with the question mark — it’s probably a guess based on satellite weight and vehicle performance), they will go up three at a time, so that’s six flights.
[Update a while later]
Some commenters here think that it might be six birds per launch, so that would be only three additional flights to the manifest. Seems like a lot of eggs in each basket. I wonder what the cost of the satellites is versus launch cost? It would be an interesting sales job for SpaceX, because if they tried to get more launches by putting fewer satellites up per launch, they’d be implying that their vehicle wasn’t reliable…
But there really is a trade, if the satellites cost a lot more than the launch, and you have to have a good idea of vehicle reliability to perform it properly.
I should add that this is one of the key arguments for propellant as a payload. The vehicle reliability becomes almost irrelevant.
A Blow For Space Diving
I’ve heard from a reliable source that Eli Thompson has died in a skydiving accident in Switzerland. He had been planning to be the first person to dive from a rocket. I’m sure that someone else will step up, though. Condolences to his young family.
I thought this was kind of ironic, from the link:
After his first jump at 19, Eli Thompson knew that skydiving was something he would do for the rest of his life.
Sadly, he was right, but probably not quite in the way he intended.