Jeff Foust has a report of what Jeff Greason had to say about the Augustine panel at the Space Investment Summit. I agree with the coment from Paul Spudis that it was another lost opportunity to straighten out space policy, though that’s no fault of Jeff’s.
Category Archives: Space
Five Years Later
It’s hard to believe that it’s been half a decade since the first X-Prize flight. I remember it well because I had moved to Florida only a month before, was still recovering from being hit by two hurricanes within two weeks (Frances and Jeanne), and watching on television, frustrated that I could no longer just get in the car and drive up to Mojave to see it.
Now I’m back in California, and hope I’ll have more opportunities to go up and see the other exciting activities that it spawned. Things haven’t moved along as fast as people hoped, either for Virgin Galactic (due to some poor technical and contracting decisions on their part, in my opinion), or the field in general, but things are starting to pick up. As Arthur Clarke noted, we are often overoptimistic about schedules in the short run, but overpessimistic in the long run. It’s starting to be a longer run from 2004.
Seventy-Two Hours
A long article at The New Scientist about our current state of preparedness against an extraterrestrial hit. Bottom line: we could be doing a lot better. And it wouldn’t have to cost a lot of money. In fact, we could probably save money while enhancing planetary security, if we took a less insane approach to human spaceflight.
The Last IMAX Movie
…filmed in the Shuttle. It should be spectacular. The future will belong to digital, though. In fact, if Constellation goes forward as planned, and they actually redo Apollo, the biggest difference will be in the quality of the imagery returned.
Lunar Lakes
Alan Boyle has an extensive story on the implications of water on the moon for human spaceflight policy. I agree that NASA’s prize focus should be on lunar processing tech demos.
[Update a few minutes later]
Dennis Wingo discusses the importance of lunar water.
Send More Money
I find it hard to get behind efforts like this, because there is no discussion of what NASA should actually be doing with the money, and it’s assumed that there are no problems at NASA that money won’t fix. But absent major reforms and ways of doing business, sending more money to NASA is like sending more booze to a teenager behind the wheel.
[Update a couple minutes later]
From the “About” page:
We hope you’ll join us in showing your support for NASA and human spaceflight by sharing this website with your friends and family, and by contacting your elected representatives.
Note the implicit assumption that NASA is identically equal to “Human spaceflight.” How naive. And counterproductive. When I look at Constellation, I have to channel William Proxmire: “Not one penny for this nutty fantasy.”
[Update Sunday morning]
Jeff Foust has further thoughts on the petition:
The site…just rehashes many of the old arguments, the ones that have not proven compelling in the past. The site includes a letter you can sign to send to your representatives, but the call to action is weak: “I urge you to provide adequate investment in our nation’s space program.” What may be one person’s “adequate investment” may be another’s wholly inadequate—or simply unaffordable.
[Bumped]
[Late Sunday afternoon update]
More thoughts from Clark Lindsey:
I know these guys mean well…but I can’t support giving more money to an agency that would waste it on absurdly expensive projects like Ares I/Ares V. If the cost of access to space cannot be reduced substantially from currently levels, it is pointless to continue with human spaceflight. These projects neither lower space access costs nor lay a technology development path towards lower costs.
Yes. As I’ve noted often, even if these programs were successful by their own metrics, they would be an utter failure in terms of opening up space to humanity, as all of NASA’s human spaceflight programs have been to date.
Water, Water, Everywhere
I’ve been wondering what Paul Spudis would have to say about yesterday’s press conference. Well, we need wonder no more:
What’s surprising about this new data is not the presence of water, but its pervasiveness. The published image (above) shows this water to be present from the poles down to about 60° latitude. This area subtends over 10 million square kilometers, or about one-third the surface area of the entire Moon! Although the water appears to be present only in the upper few millimeters of the surface, its total mass could be enormous, greatly exceeding the several hundred million tones estimated to be present as ice in the dark areas of the poles.
As always with good science, the new results raise many more questions than they answer. In part, this is a “chicken or egg” issue – do the newly discovered deposits result from surface alteration by water derived from the polar ice, or do they serve as a source for such deposits? How does water form, move, get destroyed or get cold-trapped on the Moon? What are rates of water deposition and removal? What and where are the ice deposits and how pure might they be? Right now we can only dimly perceive the beginnings of a whole new sub-discipline of lunar studies: polar geoscience.
Lunar geoscience. I guess the battle is lost…
Obama And NASA
Some thoughts from Chris Muir. I had similar ones a few months ago.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Alan K. Henderson has further thoughts.
“Thrust Oscillation May Be Less Than Feared”
Then again, it may not be:
…there were early claims by engineers and Ares I supporters that the test proved that that the Ares I rocket won’t shake violently during its ascent to orbit — as had been predicted — and that the shaking problem, called thrust oscillation, is no longer an issue for NASA.
But as the data is studied further, engineers and managers for NASA and ATK say those early conclusions are overstated.
NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, told NASA officials and contractors not to repeat the claims, especially to members of Congress, because, “That is not what the test showed.”
Picky, picky, picky. That mean old Gerst is such a party pooper.
Guys, it’s not possible to know how a motor will perform dynamically in free flight from a horizontal hold-down test. At best, they got some valid data to plug into the dynamics models, the latter of which they may or may not have confidence in (though the Ares I-X test will help to validate — or invalidate — them).
[Update a few minutes later]
“Rocketman” has similar thoughts:
Drawing good news conclusions from one test, pinned to the ground, is folly. Proposing Ares 1 as a tech development program for Ares V is also folly. And taking a crap shoot like Ares 1X is desperate folly. But, these are the kind of fool’s games that will be played from here to cancellation.
It will continue until the administration comes up with a policy. But like Afghanistan, it seems determined to continue to kick the can down the road for now. I don’t envy Administrator Bolden right now.
Watching The Lunar Press Conference
Wow. A lot of water at both poles, with some strong signatures, with spacial variability in large craters.
I’m recording it, and I haven’t watched the whole thing, but apparently it’s at all latitudes, but they were looking more at the poles, and it’s more abundant there.
[Update at noon]
Keith Cowing has notes from the event.