Category Archives: Space

Out Of Touch

Mike Griffin doesn’t read blogs.

On the surface, I’m sure that he could make a good argument for why he shouldn’t, that many would find compelling. He’s a busy guy, he’s got plenty of other things that he needs to read, why waste time watching a bunch of Interweb people arguing about stuff they know nothing about, yada, yada.

The problem is that, in the twenty-first century, if you ignore the blogosphere, you can get blind sided, as more than a few Senators discovered yesterday.

The administrator may not think much of what people are saying out here, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no significance to it, or that it has no effect on policy and public mood. The blogosphere, and that includes the space blogosphere, may not have as large a readership as the Washington Post, but its readership is not without influence. Congressional staffers read it, and when they do, and read about problems that they’re not necessarily hearing about from NASA, they have to wonder if they’re getting the straight story when Code L comes up to the Hill. What’s being said in the blogs is often a canary in a coal mine of a potential political imbroglio, that is ignored at a bureaucrat’s, or politician’s peril.

If Mike isn’t reading blogs, he’d better make sure that someone he knows and trusts is, and is keeping him abreast.

Rocketeers

I just scored a review copy of Michael Belfiore’s new book. Unfortunately, part of the deal is that the review won’t be published until August, so you’ll have to wait until after the book (on August 1st) comes out to read it.

Ariane

Ariane is touted in an article by Andy Pasztor in today’s Wall Street Journal with a new person singing its praises–Mike Griffin:

Mr. Griffin declared the launch system “probably the best in the world, very smooth and very impressive.”

One quibble: there is an apple to orange comparison of the commercial launch business ($2.7 billion) to US national security space spending ($80 billion). Commercial space launch supports tens of billions in satellite products, services and content. A more relevant comparison would be to look at how much the Department of Defense spends on launchers. The total space budget for military and intelligence is in the $50 billion range. Launch costs presumably would comprise about 3-4% of that if they were more competition. I’m having a little trouble finding a good source of Pentagon launch spending budget figures, but I’m guessing it’s in the 5-10% range.