Tart commentary from Jim Bennett (who I’ll probably see this evening at the Space Settlement Summit in Beverly Hills).
Category Archives: Space
NASA Safety
An article about Homer Hickam and Yours Truly. They get this wrong, though: “…while Hickam and Simberg may disagree on the value of safety, they may agree that NASA could not afford to suffer such losses, especially considering pressures from Congress and the general public.”
Homer and I do not in fact disagree on the value of safety. Here is his review of the book.
Starship
…is still not understood.
[Update Friday afternoon]
The latest SLS follies: This isn’t insane at all.
Immortal Data
My business associate and former XCOR employee Dale Amon is doing an equity crowdfunding on his company in Las Cruces.
Another Commercial Space Station
As with the Nanoracks/Lockmart one, there is no discussion of orbital location. It looks like Sierra has decided to team up.
[Tuesday-morning update]
OK, here’s a description from NASA Spaceflight. They clearly want to be co-orbital with ISS, but they say that they’ll be at a higher altitude. That doesn’t make sense, because if they aren’t at the same altitude, the nodes are going to drift apart and while they’ll be at the same inclination, they will be in a different orbit plane. They should be leading or trailing it at the same altitude if they want to stay co-planar.
A New Space Station
This is interesting. I wonder what orbit it will be in? I’d think they’d want to be co-orbital with ISS.
Virgin Galactic’s Problems
I’ll trade options on that stock, but I wouldn’t buy and hold.
“If SpaceX Were An Oil-Exploration Company
Starship Landings
Will they ever be safe? As the analysis indicates, it all comes down to propulsion reliability. I think they can get there.
That Chinese “Orbital Weapon” Test
Jonathan McDowell’s current take (mostly questions).
[Tuesday-morning update]
Thoughts from Bob Zimmerman.