Very little in this essay is new to people who have been following the arguments in space policy circles for years, but it’s useful to pull it all together into one place, and bring it up to date. I and many others have long advocated that we need to resurrect NACA (which was absorbed into NASA half a century ago) and start developing technology that can support private industry, as we did for aviation. With the new private space passenger vehicles now starting to be developed, the time is ripe for it, and Jeff Foust and Charles Miller have made a very powerful case. This should be must reading for both presidential campaigns.
[Update mid morning]
This piece I wrote a few years ago on the centennial of flight seems pertinent.
In all of the reports I find on the award of the new suit contract to Oceaneering, I can’t find any technical details on it (I suppose a lot of the info for both competitors is embargoed for proprietary reasons). But from the pictures, it looks like a hard suit. Does anyone know? If so, that would be the second revolution. The first, of course, is Ham Standard/Sunstrand finally losing their decades-long monopoly, going back to Apollo. It’s nice to see David Clark back in the game as well, after all those decades. I wonder if they’ll be using a glove concept based on Peter Homer’s?
[Update in the afternoon]
Louise Riofrio has more thoughts. Apparently, though, this wasn’t a design competition–it was a competition to see which contractor was more generally qualified to build suits. Process over product…
Jeff Krukin writes that Europe is leaving NewSpace to the US, out of (among other things) foolish class envy:
the views expressed by European Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen speak volumes about the attitudes of the European political establishment toward entrepreneurial space activity (NewSpace). Referring to public remarks by Guenter, Astrium Chief Executive Francois Auque said, “I was even told that this project was morally blameworthy because it targets an audience of the rich people.”
Well, that’s why many of our ancestors left Europe.
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.
It looks like Boeing had a successful Delta 2 launch (delayed by twenty minutes) today. I guess that since it doesn’t need any specific orbit, as is needed for an ISS launch, there was no critical launch window. I went outside to watch, but as usual, saw nothing. The only launch I’ve ever seen from the house is a Atlas night launch.