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.
Category Archives: Space
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.
Explaining The Problem
There’s a long comment over at NASA Watch that pretty much sums up how we got to where we are today:
Let me tell you how NASA works. Engineers in the hallways lament that they can’t believe we are designing a rocket and spacecraft this way….with very little redundancy in critical systems, no weight margin, severely restricted capabilities from what we initially wanted out of the system. And then these same engineers enter the meeting room and none will jump on the table and beat their fists and tell others what they *really* think. All of the design reviews come off swimmingly because everyone is drinking the kool-aid. You end up with a “forward work” chart a mile long but everyone smiles and exits stage left.
In a nutshell you have tremendous group-think within NASA. Why do they behave this way? I will give you a hint….its because they don’t want to rock the boat and they all want to collect their paycheck with a minimum of fuss and they all want to be promoted on schedule – many, many people think that “everything will just work itself out”.
So the answer to the initial question is that in the 1960s the people designing the hardware had real world experience building missles and they were not afraid to speak up and be heard – and they had leaders who were experts in their field – who knew what they were doing.
Today, none of the Cx leaders have any such experience. All of that experience died years ago when those people retired.
And it’s allowed to be this way, because space isn’t important. All that’s important are the jobs.
A Useful Reminder
Clark Lindsey draws some parallels between early aviation and spaceflight.