Category Archives: Space

Political Commentary, Space

Schizophrenic

Jeff Foust has a tale of two bills. As he notes, the language in the authorization bill is great:

It is further the sense of Congress that United States entrepreneurial space companies have the potential to develop and deliver innovative technology solutions at affordable costs. NASA is encouraged to use United States entrepreneurial space companies to conduct appropriate research and development activities. NASA is further encouraged to seek ways to ensure that firms that rely on fixed-price proposals are not disadvantaged when NASA seeks to procure technology development.

I wonder if the part about fixed-price contracts was in response to pressure from XCOR specifically, or perhaps from the Personal Spaceflight Federation?

Anyway, nice as it sounds, the only bill that really counts is the appropriations bill, which (again as he notes) cuts COTS funding.

History, Space, Technology and Society

A New Project In The Works?

4 Comments

Alan Boyle has an interview with Paul Allen. This isn’t right, though:

Adrian Hunt, the collection’s executive director, told me that putting a pilot in the V-1 turned out to be a terrible idea.

“The theory is that you open the cockpit and you jump out just when you’re getting close to the target,” he said. “There’s a slight design fault there. Once you open the cockpit, that’s the intake for the rocket – and it tends to suck in things, including people.

“…intake for the rocket”?

It was a pulse jet.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

A Glimmer Of Hope?

22 Comments

As current blog readers know, I’ve been pretty much of an agnostic as to which candidate would be best for space policy (at least in terms of actually advancing us toward becoming a spacefaring society). But I just saw a very interesting rumor over at Space Politics. The post is about whether McCain likes Mars, and was influenced by reading The Martian Chronicles (which are not, contrary to common belief, science fiction, but rather fantasy, like much of Bradbury’s work).

But the rumor is in comments, from two separate commenters:

My understanding is that Craig Steidle is formally advising the McCain campaign, and may be determining McCain’s NASA policy…

…Admiral Steidle has also adopted an EELV-based approach for Shuttle replacement, albeit with the Orbital Space Plane (OSP). I think it would be very easy for him to embrace an approach using a downsized Orion/CEV on top of an EELV.

The Admiral had a very forward focused program that didn’t play favorites with any of the NASA centers, particularly Marshall. This ticked off several of the congressional delegations. But I have a feeling that the Alabama contingent may not hold as much sway over the upcoming years.

It’s interesting that you brought up the Admiral here. I’ve heard rumors from several sources that he would be the likely NASA Administrator if McCain is elected. Unlike the current Soviet-style Design Bureau Culture at NASA, Steidle is a believer and practitioner of good old American free enterprise and competition.

Steidle was in charge of the VSE before Mike Griffin came in (O’Keefe was much more hands-off as an administrator, particularly because he wasn’t a rocket scientist, and didn’t pretend he was). Mike Griffin essentially tore up everything that Steidle was doing by the roots, and instituted his own plan. So while Steidle is hardly perfect, he’ll be a big improvement, and get the program back on track as it was when he left, with the loss of three years or so. If this rumor is true, for this reason alone, McCain now looks like a far preferable candidate to Obama, in terms of space. Of course, for me, and many others, space remains a lower-priority issue. But it does provide a reason to vote for McCain (as opposed to against Obama), which I’ve been having trouble coming up with.