Former Congressional space staffer David Goldston has a piece over at Nature about the grid-locked and paralytic state of space policy. He also describes the ongoing ignorance of much of the Congress, the media, and the public on the subject:
…the story one hears now from most members of Congress, and some in the media, is that the president made a speech about going to Mars in 2004, got nothing but grief for it, and the proposal went nowhere. This is, of course, almost entirely wrong.
Former Congressional space staffer David Goldston has a piece over at Nature about the grid-locked and paralytic state of space policy. He also describes the ongoing ignorance of much of the Congress, the media, and the public on the subject:
…the story one hears now from most members of Congress, and some in the media, is that the president made a speech about going to Mars in 2004, got nothing but grief for it, and the proposal went nowhere. This is, of course, almost entirely wrong.
Former Congressional space staffer David Goldston has a piece over at Nature about the grid-locked and paralytic state of space policy. He also describes the ongoing ignorance of much of the Congress, the media, and the public on the subject:
…the story one hears now from most members of Congress, and some in the media, is that the president made a speech about going to Mars in 2004, got nothing but grief for it, and the proposal went nowhere. This is, of course, almost entirely wrong.
There’s a lot of interesting discussion over at Space Politics about NASA’s budget dilemma. Al Fansome makes a very interesting point, that needs to be turned into a policy paper:
There are other clear
Clark Lindsey has some thoughts:
NASA lost public support after Apollo 11 for many reasons but cost was the primary factor. It didn’t help that no one could see themselves ever traveling on such a stupendously expensive throwaway system like Apollo. Today NASA managers should not be surprised that few people, especially young people, are excited about seeing NASA build yet another totally impractical and stupendously expensive machine to carry another small elite group of astronauts to the Moon by some arbitrary date.
[Update in the evening of the thirteenth]
Dan Schrimpsher, who is “just an engineer,” has some further thoughts.
Jim Oberg has a dozen of them. But I’m sure that the fantasists will persist in their anti-US propaganda.
And while I think that a ban on destructive anti-satellite weapons is unrealistic and unverifiable, I agree that a ban on testing them, at least in orbit, is a good idea.
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.