FAA-AST has finalized their rule making for private crew and spaceflight participants. Happy reading.

Apparently, Canada is reassessing its future in space:

The federal government has turned down a request by Canada’s space industry to support a contract that would have allowed the companies to build the European Space Agency’s Mars surface rover, CBC News has learned.

The decision stunned the companies and has left the ESA scrambling to find a new partner, as no European firm is adequately prepared to match the technical abilities of Canadian firms to build its ExoMars rover.

This points out once again that government space programs are first and foremost jobs programs. If having the best robotics (which at least in theory might translate into the best science) were really important to the Europeans, they’d simply send CSA the money, and hire them as a contractor. But space development funds are not allowed to cross borders. ESA insists that each government get an amount of work on its projects in proportion to each member nation’s contributions. Now they’ll have to spend a lot of money for one of the European partners to get up to speed, and it will result in schedule delays, cost overruns, and risk of failure, all because (at least) when it comes to space, they don’t believe in comparative advantage.

We will make much more progress on the high frontier when it starts to pay for itself, and management decisions can be made independently of politics.

I haven’t talked much about this, but apparently, as things stand now, NASA is not going to get the funding increase it anticipated for 2007, because the federal government is apparently going to be funded on a continuing resolution.

This could mean a new bloodletting to continue to fund the Constellation-related programs. Under those circumstances, I won’t be shocked to see COTS put on the block. Millennium Challenges are probably at risk as well.

This looks like it’s going to be a tough team to beat:

ATK Launch Systems, Lockheed Martin Inc. and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have formed Team Ares and said they will bid to develop the upper stage of the Ares I rocket.

On top of their loss of the CEV contract, and in the wake of Lockheed Martin’s aggressive marketing of the Atlas V, this will be another blow to Boeing’s human spaceflight business prospects if they can’t win (or decide not to bid) the Ares upper stage. And this one can be chalked up to the fact that they decided they didn’t want to own Rocketdyne any more. That decision to sell it to Pratt a couple years ago isn’t looking so smart now.

This looks like it’s going to be a tough team to beat:

ATK Launch Systems, Lockheed Martin Inc. and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have formed Team Ares and said they will bid to develop the upper stage of the Ares I rocket.

On top of their loss of the CEV contract, and in the wake of Lockheed Martin’s aggressive marketing of the Atlas V, this will be another blow to Boeing’s human spaceflight business prospects if they can’t win (or decide not to bid) the Ares upper stage. And this one can be chalked up to the fact that they decided they didn’t want to own Rocketdyne any more. That decision to sell it to Pratt a couple years ago isn’t looking so smart now.

This looks like it’s going to be a tough team to beat:

ATK Launch Systems, Lockheed Martin Inc. and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have formed Team Ares and said they will bid to develop the upper stage of the Ares I rocket.

On top of their loss of the CEV contract, and in the wake of Lockheed Martin’s aggressive marketing of the Atlas V, this will be another blow to Boeing’s human spaceflight business prospects if they can’t win (or decide not to bid) the Ares upper stage. And this one can be chalked up to the fact that they decided they didn’t want to own Rocketdyne any more. That decision to sell it to Pratt a couple years ago isn’t looking so smart now.

This should help boost the economy in Mojave:

The extension brings the runway length to 12,500 feet, making it the longest nonfederal runway in Kern County, according to airport officials. It was declared open for use by the Caltrans Division of Aeronautics on Dec. 5.

The longer runway will make possible long-haul freight flights, which may use the airport as a hub for distribution of goods.

Trucking activities could be conducted at vacant areas on the north side of the airport, with access to the State Route 58 bypass and Highway 14, district General Manager Stu Witt said.

A rail spur already connects the airport to the main Southern Pacific line through Mojave.

The activity could lead to the airport becoming the ground distribution center for freight from Central America, Mexico and Asia, Witt said.

And this will help new space companies moving in as well, like XCOR:

New hangar and office facilities, which will utilize vacant land along the new taxiway, will help ease the shortage of space available at the airport, where officials have leased all facilities available.

Good for Stu.

Jeff Foust discusses the problems that NASA is having in communicating a purpose for its lunar activities. Understanding the “why” isn’t just important in terms of maintaining public support. It also drives requirements.

There are implicit assumptions about why we’re going back to the moon intrinsic in NASA’s chosen mission architecture, though they’ve never been stated explicitly. I lay out several potential reasons for a lunar base in this post, in which I point out that NASA’s architecture is actually ideally suited to a “touch and go” approach (i.e., the only reason we’re going to the moon is because the president said so, so we’ll build a system that’s really designed for Mars instead, and just happen to use it for some lunar missions if the political establishment decides it still wants to do that in a decade or so).

If the purpose was really to enable settlement, rather than just setting up a tiny and trivial government base, we’d be spending a lot more money on systems that drive down the marginal cost of trips to the moon. Instead, NASA has chosen an approach that maximizes it.

Jeff Brooks has an intriguing, but I think fundamentally flawed idea: to set up an international organization to manage Martian land sales.

I’m all in favor of granting title rights off planet, and agree that it could provide a useful mechanism to raise private funds for planetary exploration, but I’m afraid that a transnationalist approach is doomed to failure. Better to simply amend the OST (or withdraw, failing that) and allow sovereignty claims (in fact the treaty could come up with a way to equitably distribute the claims). But I wouldn’t trust an international organization to safeguard my civil or property rights, given the nature of the international community.

Jeff Brooks has an intriguing, but I think fundamentally flawed idea: to set up an international organization to manage Martian land sales.

I’m all in favor of granting title rights off planet, and agree that it could provide a useful mechanism to raise private funds for planetary exploration, but I’m afraid that a transnationalist approach is doomed to failure. Better to simply amend the OST (or withdraw, failing that) and allow sovereignty claims (in fact the treaty could come up with a way to equitably distribute the claims). But I wouldn’t trust an international organization to safeguard my civil or property rights, given the nature of the international community.