Category Archives: Space

Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Education, Technology and Society

Making Space Relevant To The American People

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In a discussion at NASA Watch about the president’s…interesting…statements on space policy, Andrew Tubbiolo has some ideas:

Launch Vehicle Extreme Makeover:
A team of crack yet touchy feely Engineers arrive on a bus, send the NASA team to Disney World, tear everything apart, and employ John Carmak and XCOR Aerospace to rebuild everything…..It’ll all look nice, but doesn’t really need to work. Employ the typical attendees of the Space Access Conference as the mindless mob cheering the action on.

Big Brother, Space Station Edition:
Pick the hottest babes from an international set of scientists, one grumpy Russian, a cut party animal fighter jock from the US Navy and lock them in an orbital space station for one month of intense competition. Make them execute complex, obscure, yet useless tasks that employ almost none of the skills they developed thus far in their lives. Every week someone is voted out the airlock.

The Gong Panel:
A panel of three PI’s from past obscure space missions completed at least a decade ago decide the fate of proposed programs as they are presented live on stage. The proposed project with the highest score wins funding. At any time during the presentation panel members are allowed to reject the proposal by banging a gong.

I think this would go a long way towards making space more relevant to the general public. Heck, it would make me pay more attention to it.

Don’t give PAO any ideas.

[Late morning update]

Here is the full story on the president’s remarks.

He said nothing about whether he wants to continue the Bush administration’s Constellation program, intended to send astronauts to the moon by 2020. The program’s Ares I rocket is behind schedule and over budget, leading to speculation that it will miss its targeted 2015 launch date and further reduce the skilled work force at KSC.

He was also silent about the fate of the $100billion international space station. Once the shuttle is retired, NASA will depend on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for access to the station.

I’ve been trying, ever since the inauguration, to figure out if the plan is to come up with a new direction for the agency, and then find an administrator to implement it, or to find a good administrator, and direct him (or her) to come up with the plan. Or, given a lot of the other Charlie Foxtrot that’s been going on in general, if there is no plan.

Political Commentary, Space

Courtney

5 Comments

I don’t think I’ve posted on this subject, but I was shocked to hear that Courtney Stadd was indicted recently for allegedly steering funds to a client while at NASA. Shocked because it seems entirely out of character, based on knowing him for almost three decades. In any event, there has been some discussion of it over at NASA Watch, where he has broken his (no doubt lawyer-encouraged) silence in comments:

There are no words to express my gratitude to (a) Keith Cowing for reminding his readers of the presumption of innocence (believe me, I will NEVER again second guess someone who declares from the courthouse steps his or her innocence!) and to (b) the many who have taken the time (the most precious gift we have to give one another) to express their heartfelt support for me and my family.

I guess the greatest compliment I have received since the indictment came out on Friday is that my server had a near nervous breakdown from the outpouring of support from extended family and friends. The other side has the unlimited resources of the US Government (I guess I should be grateful that the NASA Inspector General has yet to be supplied with Apache gun ships) but I want you all to know that I have felt empowered and fortified by your collective good wishes and prayers. Faith is a very powerful weapon. Empires have been known to crumple at its feet.

I would not wish this situation on my worst enemy. But I am bearing it with the strength, courage and honor that I was brought up to believe in. When I recently read about a 75-year old woman in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 40 lashes, and four months in prison, for mingling with two young men who reportedly brought her bread, I am reminded of the fortune of living in this great nation. To date, the prosecution has held all the cards – including how to shape and time the indictment, including the press release to drive the news cycle. (And, of course, a grand jury hears but one side of a case. Thus the cliche: a prosecutor can get a ham sandwich indicted for not having cheese.) As the wheels of US jurisprudence turn, the defense, thankfully, gets its turn at bat. Although I sleep with an absolutely clear conscience, I would not be human, of course, if anger did not try to interrupt my slumber from time to time. But I find great solace from these superb lines from A Man for All Seasons:

Sir Thomas More: “You threaten like a dockside bully.”
Oliver Cromwell: “How should I threaten?”
Sir More: “Like a Minister of State. With justice.
Cromwell: “Oh, justice is what you’re threatened with.”
More: “Then I am not threatened.”

My family and I feel grateful and most blessed by your support in the weeks and months to come.

Let us hope that justice is served. As Jim Muncy also notes in comments, it sounds like he’s being accused of recommending to the agency that a powerful appropriator’s earmark be honored, which isn’t corruption — it’s just common sense in the very ugly world of Congressional prerogatives and federal procurement.

Administrative, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Are We Serious About Space Policy?

2 Comments

Jeff Foust reports on a forum where that is the topic of discussion. The (unsurprising, or at least it should be to readers of this weblog) answer is, “no.”

Space, at least civil space, is not important, and has not been since the early 1960s. What is more dismaying, though, is that military space is not treated seriously, either, and that really should be considered important.

The panel also doesn’t think much of reviving the Space Council. I agree that the focal point should not be at OSTP, and that space does need a more serious advocate on the National Security Council.

I wonder why Jeff doesn’t quote anyone by name? Was he reporting under restrictions?

[Update in the afternoon]

Apparently, he was. He writes over at Space Politics:

Because of the ground rules of the discussion, none of the comments are attributed to any of the attendees.

I’d be curious to know at least who the attendees were, even if we can’t correlate specific statements with specific attendees. Is that a secret, too?

Also at The Space Review today, a good tutorial on how to tell a launch system from a ballistic missile.

I should note that one point not made here is that it’s actually easier to build a launch vehicle than an effective ballistic missile, if one defines “effective” as being able to hit a precise target, because the latter requires an entry vehicle. Getting into orbit, per se, does not require a precise injection, or heat shields, as long as the resulting trajectory doesn’t intercept the atmosphere.

Finally, Dwayne Day clears up (or at least attempts to clear up) media misconceptions about the Chinese space program.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Jeff provides the list of speakers, though it’s still not clear whether the quotes are from speakers or attendees.

Space

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Air Breathers

17 Comments

Henry Spencer (who I expect will be at Space Access this year, after missing last year for the first time ever) explains (once again) why the future of space launch continues to lie with rockets, despite the superficial appeal of not having to carry oxidizer.

This is an important point that I’d never thought about explicitly:

The pure-rocket design was more than twice as heavy as X-30 at takeoff, because of all that LOX. On the other hand, its empty weight – the part you have to build and maintain – was 40% less than X-30’s. It was about half the size. Its fuel and oxidiser together cost less than half as much per flight as X-30’s fuel. And finally, because it quickly climbed out of the atmosphere and did its accelerating in vacuum, it had to endure rather lower stresses and less than 1% of X-30’s friction heating. Which approach would be easier and cheaper to operate was pretty obvious.

This implies that a rocket powered vehicle will have much better off-design (higher delta V, such as more altitude or higher inclination) performance than the air breather, because its dry mass that has to be given the additional velocity is much less. It also means that it will be cheaper to deorbit, and the thermal load will be less, for a given wing area (assuming that it has wings, which an air breather certainly would). I suspect that no matter what the technology level, air-breathing launchers are doomed to remain the equivalent of flying cars — interesting in theory, but never achieved in practice.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

I Hope He Freezes In The Dark

52 Comments

Timothy Noah is cheering what he hopes is the upcoming demise of the nuclear power industry, in the wake of Obama’s closing off the Yucca Mountain option. I was never a big fan of Yucca Mountain — I think it a ridiculously overpriced solution to an hysterical non-problem. But for the money that they planned to spend on it, we could have come up with a safe and reliable launch industry, by using it as a market for storage on the moon.