When I was digging through my December 2003 archives to see what I was writing about the Wright brothers anniversary, I ran across this space policy essay that I wrote a few days later. As long as I’m doing reruns today, it still holds up pretty well, I think, so here’s an encore, from almost four years ago.

Continue reading A Vision, Not A Destination →

That’s how long it’s been since the Wrights first launched their first airplane from the dunes of Kitty Hawk. That also means, now, that it’s been four years since the X-Prize was won. We haven’t made as much progress since then as many of us hope, but I think that things are moving along reasonably well. I in fact expect to see an acceleration of suborbital activity, in the near future, with John Carmack hoping to fly into space in the next two years. I think it was Arthur Clarke who pointed out that we tend to be overoptimistic in the short run, and overpessimistic in the long run, partly because we tend to think linearly.

Anyway, I’m going to reprint my thoughts from four years ago, including links to two other pieces that I wrote at National Review and TCSDaily (then TechCentralStation).

Continue reading A Hundred And Four Years →

I’ve been meaning to comment about this piece at TAP, which is a few weeks old, but I haven’t had time to give it much thought. Among many other problems, though, one thing really jumps out at me; it has absolutely no mention of space, or who should handle it. That by itself makes it hard to take the rest seriously.

Over at Universe Today.

Elon Musk has a long update on progress on the new Merlin engine, the Falcon 9 and Dragon. Those are the first pictures I’ve seen of the Hawthorne facility. It sounds like they have a lot of room to grow.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that they’ve gone with hypergolics for reaction control. That’s going to complicate turnaround.

But overall, (in contrast to Orion/Ares) progress seems to be good. Note that they’re continuing to hire, and even offering bounties, if you know anyone to refer to them.

[Update a few minutes later]

SpaceX should look into this engine for RCS. Presumably, the hypergolics were chosen for reliability (no igniter required) and storability, but XCOR has pretty reliable engines, and they don’t use such nasty propellants, and they have been working on well-insulated LOX tanks.

Eric Hedman has some ideas. I agree with Clark Lindsey–he is far too optimistic about the prospects for scramjets providing a solution to the problem:

Scramjet propulsion theoretically has the advantage of increasing a vehicle

Dennis Wingo thinks so. So do I.

In over 30 years of reading space literature from NASA, congress, and the president, this is the first time that the presidential stamp has been placed on the development of extraterrestrial resources. This was not the only step in the development of this thought at the highest reaches of our government. In 2006 at the 44th Goddard Symposium the presidential theme was extended and amplified.

“As I see it, questions about the VSE boil down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere, or not. Our national policy, declared by President Bush and endorsed by Congress last December in the NASA authorization act, affirms that, “The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program.” So at least for now the question has been decided in the affirmative.”

These two speeches, one by President Bush, and another by his science advisor, the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy laid the foundation and provided the ground rules, and gave very explicit policy direction to NASA regarding what we are to do in the return to the Moon and conduct exploration to Mars and beyond.

The problem is that NASA has not embraced this expansive goal for our national space program. Why is this? It seems to be just the kind of red meat goal that NASA has dreamed of forever. Even in the SEI era there was never this kind of clear cut, practical direction for a policy, as Marburger states, from the President and Congress. It boggles the mind that this has not been incorporated as a core value for the lunar exploration program–it is exactly this type of effort that has the potential to connect to the American people.

Just as was the case with SEI, VSE is being done in by NASA, though in a different way this time. In SEI, they did it by deliberately sabotaging the program with outrageous cost estimates, and actually lobbying against it in Congress. With VSE, it’s more a case of negligent manslaughter, rather than premeditation. ESAS, and NASA’s lack of vision, is killing the Vision. And the administration is too preoccupied with other things, and long in the tooth, to do anything about it.

I just got my fall issue of The New Atlantis–its focus is space, in keeping with the Sputnik anniversary in October. I just glanced at it, but it’s got lots of good stuff in it, by Oberg, Mike Griffin, and others, including a long review of Rocketeers by me (well, that one may not be so good). Unfortunately, no links, because it won’t be on line for a couple weeks or so, but when it is, I’ll remind folks. So if you’re not a subscriber, this is just a teaser.

No launch today, either. Maybe tomorrow, but I don’t think I’ll hang around for it–Patricia has to work.

Anyway, I’m guessing that they’ll ultimately have to roll back, and launch in January. These sensors seem to be even more flaky than usual.

[Update about a minute after posting]

Yup. I just got a text message that they’ve decided to give up on it for the year.

[A couple minutes more]

Here’s confirmation on the web site. January 2nd at the earliest.

[11:20 update]

Here’s more info.

There have been a new development in the story about Mojave potentially losing its spaceport license.