Tariq Malik has an article on the Orbital Express satellites, launched as part of the payload on last night’s successful Atlas V launch. (By the way, that launch success is good news for both Lockheed Martin and Bigelow–a failure would have been a major setback in their stated plans to use the vehicle to deliver passengers to orbit).

During its planned 91-day mission, the Orbital Express vehicles are expected to go through a two-week checkout period, and then test initial refueling and equipment replacement techniques — while still mated to one another — using ASTRO

This looks like an interesting technology, for both detection and deflection. I’m assuming they’d have to be space based, which implies a much more significant spacefaring capability than we have now.

But not from as close as we wanted. We got a late start, so we pulled on to the beach in Melbourne just about the time the window opened. As it turned out, because of the half-hour delay, we had time to drive up further to Cocoa Beach, but there was no way to know that at the time. It was a little hazy on the ground, so we initially just saw a dull glow at ignition, that slowly brightened into a fireball that slowly rose into the sky and headed off to the east. Too far away (or perhaps the wind was blowing the wrong way) for any acoustic effects. Looked like a very smooth ascent, though. Here’s to the success of Orbital Express, which could give us some badly needed key technology demonstrations for orbital fueling.

There are no technical issues, and the weather is estimated to be 90% probability of acceptable at launch time.

There is this, though, which I think is something that we will need to deal with to make spaceflight routine:

The Air Force will be clearing a Launch Hazard Area off the coast of Cape Canaveral, and mariners are being asked to keep out of the danger zone between 7:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Friday.

Violators can be fined up to $250,000 and jailed for up to six years. A map of the danger zone is: launchhazardarea.doc.

OK. We’ve warned them. The probability of anyone in the box being harmed by the launch is infinitesimally small (it’s the joint probability of a launch mishap and such mishap actually affecting a boater).

Is this really a justification to hold up a launch that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and the delay of which could cost many thousands or millions of dollars, or in the case of a military launch, not having a military asset on station during war?

This is a stupid policy. It should be changed. Chase people out of the box, and fine (and even imprison) them if they are there, but don’t hold up the launch over it. Please?

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, on reconsideration, I now realize the reason for the policy. It’s not to protect the boaters. It’s to protect the launchers from a boat-fired missile.

But still, we manage to do thousands of airline flights per day. Why can’t we do it for space launch? It seems to me like a great application for an anti-missile system, installed at the launch site.

Things are looking good for a launch at the Cape tonight. We may drive up.

He may have written a dumber article in the past than this one, on how unsafe rocket planes will be, but I can’t recall it. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but in what I’ve read so far, almost every single sentence in it is wrong. I almost have to fisk it line by line, but I don’t have the time right now.

I’ll note, though, that attempting to extrapolate the safety record of 1960s research aircraft to twenty-first century operational tourism vehicles is…nutty.

The whole purpose of those programs was to learn how such vehicles operated, and about supersonic flight and spaceflight in general. We have much more knowledge now than we did then, and much better materials. The new aircraft will have much better margins. More importantly, it was a research program. Of course there were crashes–they were pushing the envelope. Tourist vehicles will be designed and operated with an entirely different philosophy.

When he notes that the X-15 broke in an aborted landing when it couldn’t do a full fuel dump, he seems to assume that the designers of modern spaceplanes are stupid, and that that their structure won’t be designed to handle fueled landing loads. His comment about the safety of SS1 verges on libelous, and his speculation that it wasn’t flown again for safety reasons is just that. SS1 was designed for one thing, and one thing only–to win the X-Prize. It was never intended to be a commercial operational vehicle.

When he claims that rocket planes will cost more to test than airliners, he provides zero data to support such a claim. When he writes:

The fatal crash rate will be at least 1-in-200 and probably more like 1-in-50.

…this is a number pulled out of his own exhaust nozzle.

I’ll leave the rest to the commenters, for now.

An interesting discussion on the subject, involving Jim Benson, at Space Transport News.

My opinion? I think that the danger of liquids is overrated, but may the best concept win. The ultimate answer is competition, on both safety and cost.

Apparently the Atlas launch I mentioned earlier is Thursday night, not Friday. Makes it a little tougher to go up and see it, but probably worth it anyway, even if we lose a little sleep.

Mark Whittington has a useful set of recommendations on space policy for the next president. I could nitpick some of it, but there’s actually little with which I disagree. But I think he missed one: reform ITAR.

Mark Whittington has a useful set of recommendations on space policy for the next president. I could nitpick some of it, but there’s actually little with which I disagree. But I think he missed one: reform ITAR.