Category Archives: Space

Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Yeah, I’m Still Here

I’m actually suffering from a rare thing for me–writer’s block. Primarily because there is so much to blog about on the space policy front that I can’t even figure out where to start, and I have some personal issues (and no, not health, and not relationship–not that big a deal in the grand scheme–primarily financial and organizing my life) going on that are distracting. But until I can do so, here are some links.

Go read Shubber’s latest at Space Cynics, then Jon Goff’s semi-concurrence. Go read Jeff Foust’s account of Mike Griffin’s defense of his architecture choices (responding to that is a long blog post in itself). And then, what the hell, just go scroll through Space Politics, and Clark’s place. If you haven’t been doing that already (they’re all on my space blogroll to the left), then there will be a lot of food for thought, even before I weigh in.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oh, and while it’s kind of last week’s news, go check out Thomas James’ interesting side-by-side comparison between his remembrances of Challenger and Columbia. More contrast than mine, because I was working in the industry during both, while (being younger than me) he went through a major life transition between the two.

Space, Space History

Five Years Ago

5 Comments

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been five years since Columbia was lost. I was up in San Bruno at the time, getting ready to drive home to LA. Here was what I blogged about it immediately upon hearing. I think that most of my initial speculation has held up pretty well. Also check though the February 2003 archives for a lot more space commentary from the time. I wrote three related pieces at Fox News (here and here) and National Review in the next few days.

Was this as traumatic and memorable as the Challenger disaster? No, for several reasons. We didn’t watch it live on television, there was no teacher aboard to traumatize the kids, and we had already lost our national innocence about the Shuttle. Still, people might want to post remembrances here.

[Update mid morning]

I’d forgotten about these. Columbia haiku that I and my commenters came up with.

[Late afternoon update]

Clark Lindsey has more anniversary links.

Space, Space and Campaign 2008, Space History

Triumph And Tragedy

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I have some thoughts about space anniversaries, over at Pajamas Media.

[Update a few minutes later]

Alan Boyle has a more detailed and humanized history of the Explorer 1 mission. Though I should add, as I say in my own piece, that the belts weren’t “discovered” by the satellite–their theoretical existence had previously been proposed by Christofilos, so finding them was confirmation, rather than a complete surprise.

Space

False Lessons

24 Comments

Many false lessons have been learned from the Shuttle program in general, and from the Challenger loss particularly. Chair Force Engineer explains:

NASA management’s most enduring lesson from Challenger is the flawed mantra of “Crew must be kept separate from cargo.” While such flawed logic is enough to trick Congress into funding the development of two very different launchers, it doesn’t always hold true. If a launcher can be made safe enough for a human crew, there’s no reason why it can’t be trusted with carrying a reasonable amount of cargo at the same time.

Yes, that’s one of the more illogical ones. He has more.

Space

Six Months Later

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Still no answer:

“I can tell you for certain that, when we do determine the cause, that it will be published so that it can’t happen to others,” Rutan said. “But we don’t know yet what caused the detonation.”

This seems to me a serious setback. If I were them, I’d be talking to XCOR and others, and doing a vehicle redesign to accommodate a different (liquid, not hybrid) engine. They have been overhyping the safety of hybrids for too long on this program, and the fact that they killed three men and wounded three more is going to have an effect on the perception of the engine’s safety, even if it was not something that could rationally be expected in flight. As long as they don’t know what happened, they can’t move forward. They’re sort of in the same position as NASA, dealing with an unknown risk, but betting on the come, and hoping that they’ll have it figured out in a year or so, in time to start flight tests under rocket propulsion. But as I said, hope is not a plan.