…to be the public’s representative for space exploration?
As Paul Spudis (who I recently discovered has a blog or two) notes in comments over there, it’s a deadly combination of insufferable arrogance and unsurpassed ignorance. Though I think he gives Lou too much credit when he calls it an accomplishment. It comes naturally to him.
Is that really the loss-of-crew probability for an ISS trip with Ares/Orion?
I could buy that number for a lunar mission, but if that’s just for a crew changeout, they seem to be managing to spend billions on a new launch vehicle that is less safe than Shuttle.
How could it be? As one of the commenters speculates over there, they may have pulled a lot of redundancy out to save weight when they ran out of margin on both the launcher and the capsule. Also, as I think I’ve mentioned before, it may be that they’ve figured out that the Launch Abort System actually adds more risk than it removes, given the dozens of hazards it introduces, over half of which can happen on an otherwise nominal mission.
Anyway, if true, it’s just one more reason to abort this monstrosity now, before it wastes any more time or money.
Rob Coppinger has some suggestions to the Obama administration for NASA policy. I agree that Ares I should be mercy killed ASAP, but I disagree that we need an Ares anything else. We need to stop focusing on heavy lift and start developing the capability to store propellant on orbit, which will allow us to launch escape missions of arbitrarily large mass.
Which in fact I’ll probably be offering in the next days and weeks, since I actually know several of them quite well.
If you want to know how to get the VSE back on track, you could do a lot worse than to simply go back and reread the Aldridge Commission Report. Mike Griffin doesn’t seem to have done so, or if he did, he largely ignored its recommendations, with the one exception being developing a heavy lifter (which was the one main thing that the commission got wrong).
Jack Schmitt has resigned from The Planetary Society over their destinational dispute. As I noted the other day, to argue about destinations at all is to miss the point.
I agree with most of his points, other than the need for heavy lift. And I absolutely agree that making it an international venture would be the kiss of death, at least in terms of meeting schedules or making it affordable, other than setting up propellant depots that can take deliveries from a wide range of sources, including international and commercial. But the Mars hardware and expeditions should be national in nature. We need competition, not “cooperation.”
Alan Boyle has a good roundup of the current state of play, with lots of links. As I’ve noted before, people who merely argue about destinations are missing the point.
I was thinking about driving up to watch it (who knows how many night launches are remaining?) but couldn’t work up the gumption for it. Patricia was up in Orlando yesterday, and could have stayed later, but I would have had to drive up and meet her somewhere, and then we’d have come back separately, and gotten in late. But I did see it from the house (first time I’ve ever done that). Now I know where the trajectory is, and where to look the next time, if it’s clear. But I doubt if I’d see anything past SRB burnout in the daytime. Even at night, the main engines were pretty dim from 150 miles away. Though, of course, it was also heading northeast, away from us.
Jonathan Gewirtz took a shot of it from downtown Miami (which is actually a couple hundred miles away, being fifty miles or so south of me). The Hubble flight should be a better view, since it will launch due east.
“…I know how to fail. Just pick the wrong people, and you are doomed.”
Yes, at this point, I’d say you’re a poster boy for that bit of acquired wisdom.
…but…the Moon is to Mars as the Canary Islands were to the Americas.
Discuss.
Not for me, but for Jon Goff (though John Hare has been picking up the slack with a lot of out-of-the-box technical posts). Two words: shock diamonds.