Category Archives: Space

We Are Not The World

Mark Steyn has some thoughts on Katie Couric’s less-than-royal “we.” And yes, I didn’t make a mistake in the categorization. It is a space post, though it’s also a politics post.

No, they weren’t an “airborne UN”. They were an airborne America. For a start, if there was such a thing as a UN rocket, the Israeli guy wouldn’t get anywhere near it, except on a one-way ticket to establish the viability of Ahmadinejad’s new designated homeland for the Jews on Planet Zongo. I doubt even an EU space shuttle would be eager to admit any astronauts from the Zionist Entity. As for the “Indian woman”, Kalpana Chawla was the American Dream writ large upon the stars: she emigrated to the US in the Eighties and was an astronaut within a decade. There’s no other country on earth where you can do that. And I’ll bet she had no qualms about using the dread “we” word.

Tragic News

Matt Bowes was a young space enthusiast, who had a blog called Space Liberates Us. I met him at a conference (I think in July, in DC, though it may have been at the ISDC in Dallas, in May).

He was far too young to die in a senseless accident but sadly, the young (particularly those young who want to conquer the newest and highest frontier) tend to be less risk averse, and sometimes, it bites them. He was only nineteen.

When I was his age, I (too?) thought that I was immortal. I imagine that he did as well. But no matter how advanced the technologies, accidents will still happen. I feel older now, and chastened, and mortal. But somehow, because of many of the advances that I read about as a child only as science fiction, but that I can now see on the technological horizon, I hope to live much longer, and my sadness at Matt’s loss (and ours, who knew him) is only magnified by that thought.

From Michael Mealling (who informed me of this via email, noting that it was a motorcycle accident), of Masten Space:

Matt was an intern at Masten Space Systems this past summer. Very sad and shocking…

Indeed.

On Sunday, September 9, 2007 of Bethesda, MD. Beloved son of Dr. Julia A. LaJoie and Robert B. Bowes; loving brother of Audrey and Jackie Bowes. Matt is also survived by a large family and numerous friends. Friends will be received at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church, 6900 River Rd., Bethesda, MD, on Friday, September 14 from 4 to 8 p.m., where Mass of Catholic Burial will be offered on Saturday, September 15 at 10 a.m. Interment Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Silver Spring, MD. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to St. Anselm’s Abbey School, 4501 S. Dakota Ave., NE, Washington, DC 20017-2795, Olin College of Engineering, c/o Office of Student Life, Olin Way, Needham, MA 02492-1200 or to the MARS Society, PO Box 273, Indian Hills, CO 80454.

Please view and sign the family guestbook.

Here another obit, at the WaPo.

[Friday morning update]

More thoughts from Clark Lindsey, Jon Goff (who worked with him briefly at Masten) and Keith Cowing.

Back In Business

OK, I’m back in the ARES Torrance office, and I’ll be flying back to Florida tonight. Some conference thoughts:

This was a little disappointing, relative to last year. It seemed much more like a traditional AIAA conference (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but it had much less of a NewSpace flavor, for two reasons, I think. First, last year was sort of an anomaly, because it was up in San Jose on Ames’ turf, and it was really Pete Worden’s conference. He worked pretty hard to make it a NewSpace conference. Second, it was (let’s face it) a bad year for NewSpace. While there are some success stories (more on that in a minute), the explosion at Scaled put a damper on things somewhat, and RpK’s problems will haunt people raising money, though they had a somewhat unique situation. There was very little NewSpace presence, at least relative to last year.

On the other hand, Jeff Greason was on the first morning’s plenary panel, and was a refreshing new voice, in conjunction with the usual suspects from the Aerospace Industries Association and other usual suspects. As he noted himself, a few years ago, there wouldn’t have been even a slot on the panel for someone like him, let alone him personally. XCOR has come a long way, and seems to continue to do well.

He was also on a panel with Elon, in which “the Gap” was a topic of much discussion, and for some, consternation. This Wired article describes it (sort of). Why this is big news, I don’t know. There has been a “gap” ever since January 14th, 2004. It was intrinsic in the VSE announcement. All that’s changed is that it’s increased slightly, from four years to five. Stop the presses!

I hope that Elon can live up to his boast, and I suspect that Jeff does as well. I suspect that what he meant to say is that it won’t be closed with fully reusable vehicles in that timeframe (a statement with which I agree). I don’t think (as the article implies) that he was saying that Elon won’t be able to do it. Only the future will tell.

One other interesting (and concerning) bit of information. Though it wasn’t publicly announced there (because it’s not really an announcement), based on a reliable source, they still don’t know what caused the explosion in Mojave. The implications of that are troubling. I would think that it means that they can’t move forward on a nitrous hybrid system, and have confidence that this won’t happen again, until they know why it happened the first time. That implies that (assuming they don’t come up with an answer in which they have confidence) they will either have to change oxidizers (probably to LOX) or perhaps go to an all-liquid system (something I’ve long advocated, and speculated they might do).

This could be an opportunity for one of the engine companies (XCOR jumping first to mind), since it’s unlikely in the extreme (particularly considering what happened with the hybrid development) that Scaled would try to develop one on its own. That’s probably the only way to move forward fast enough for Virgin to start generating revenues in a reasonable amount of time.

Light Posting

I don’t have Internet where I’m staying, and while I’ll probably have wireless for the next three days at the conference, there will be way too much going on to have any time for live blogging. I’ll try to provide at least some daily highlights, though, and live coverage if there is any breaking news, as there was last year.

[Tuesday evening update]

I don’t know whether it’s my computer, or the wireless in the convention center, but this is the first time I’ve been on line all day, when I got back to where I’m staying, with ethernet. Probably little blogging from the conference…