I have some thoughts, over at the SpaceTech Analytics blog.
Category Archives: Space
Virgin Galactic
…is grounded. I wonder if they’ll take away their allowance, too?
Honestly, this seems kind of dumb. A SpaceShipTwo that is out of fuel is no more of a risk to public safety than a business jet. In fact, it’s less, if the jet goes down full of fuel.
[Late-evening update]
My assumption when I wrote the original post was that the concern was uninvolved public on the ground. It didn’t occur to me that it could be incurring on other airspace that might be unaware of it, and into which it was not supposed to go. My bad.
SLS
I’m sure that you’ll be as shocked as I am to learn that the first flight will be delayed again.
Environmental Red Tape
Keep it out of outer space.
The Latest Salvo Against Innovation
The usual suspects want to end the learning period for commercial spaceflight.
As George points out, it is not obvious that making people wear pressure suits doesn’t add more hazards than it reduces. We don’t make everyone on an airliner wear a parachute. We minimize the possibility that they’ll need one. Just design to vehicle to have a low probability of unexpectedly depressurizing. We know how to do this much better today than we did in the sixties.
To Declassify
…or not to declassify? That is the question. An interesting article on space weapons and deterrence.
English As A Second Language
This video about the competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin is…interesting. The music is a nice touch.
Seventeen Years later
It’s interesting to read this essay that I wrote on space policy just after the first flight of SpaceShipOne and see how it’s held up. Things haven’t happened as quickly as I had hoped, and the government policy has remained awful with respect to NASA human spaceflight, but I think we’re finally on the verge of seeing things happen.
Fusion Power
Is it finally less than thirty years away? It doesn’t say what the fuel is, but I assume it’s deuterium. I wonder if the concept can be adapted for space propulsion?
The ISS Incident
Yes, it does need a serious investigation.
[Update a while later]
And then there’s the disastrous suit program.
Sad to see the IG indulging in the sunk-cost fallacy.
[Bumped]