Some of the reporters over at Florida Today have started a new group space blog, called The Flame Trench. The name seems appropriate, because they seem to have gotten into a little pissing contest with Keith Cowing (via whom I learned of its existence). Though, as I mentioned in a comment there (unpublished as of yet), I wish that people would learn the difference between “infer” and “imply.”

Anyway, welcome to the neighborhood, guys (and gals, if there are any).

[Update at 1 PM EST]

I just got an explanatory email from John Kelly:

Sorry it took a pissing contest for some folks to find us. But we’re always glad if people are reading and visiting.

There’s three guys, one lady, writing for the Flame Trench. Our space team is veteran aerospace reporter Todd Halvorson, space, science and tech writer Christine Kridler, our Washington correspondent Larry Wheeler, and myself, the humble space editor. The blog is an add-on to our existing space news site.

Now, if they could just fix their commenting software so that it will capitalize my first and last name…

Of the first flight of a liquid-propellant rocket.

From Henry Spencer, over at sci.space.policy:

…as Jordin Kare noted a while back, the elevator people say they could give us launch cost of a few hundred a kilogram for a ten-billion investment… but there are plenty of rocket people who think they could match or beat that launch-cost number with a lot less up-front money. “They aren’t Boeing, but neither are you.”

And the nanotube materials that the elevator people need will do wonders for rocket structure, well before they’re good enough for elevators.

This post made me wonder–since so many people seem to prefer aisle seats, do they even care if window seats, or windows, exist? I’d be very uncomfortable sitting in a windowless aluminum tube going hundreds of miles per hour through the air, but I notice that many people in airplanes don’t look out the window at all.

I wouldn’t fly in an aircraft in which I couldn’t see out a window, at least somewhere (even if I had to walk forward in a cargo plane to find one). How many people out there are indifferent?

And on the subject of space, one of the costs of designing a passenger spacecraft is exactly this–the need to put in windows, which increase structural weight. This isn’t just because the view is a large part of the experience–I suspect that many space passengers would be just as psychologically uncomfortable in a windowless space transport as they would in a windowless aircraft.

Oh, one more thing. It’s very hard to get me into a glass elevator–there, I insist on not knowing what’s outside. The difference is that one is a vehicle, and the other is part of a structure (I’m acrophobic).

[Update on Wednesday evening]

Just to clarify, I’m not asking which seat people prefer. I’m asking how important it is that the airplane has windows, regardless of whether or not you sit next to them.

Phil Bowermaster is running an interesting poll. So far, my vote (for a private developer) is in the plurality. I’m kind of surprised that “Russia” isn’t an option.

And Stephen Gordon describes exciting advances in cancer therapy, improving the chances of many of us to visit or live on a lunar settlement, even if it takes longer than we hope.

It seems to me that if NASA was really listening well to the hardware, they’d get the real message–shut the thing down and put the money toward something useful to actually advancing us in space.

It seems to me that if NASA was really listening well to the hardware, they’d get the real message–shut the thing down and put the money toward something useful to actually advancing us in space.

It seems to me that if NASA was really listening well to the hardware, they’d get the real message–shut the thing down and put the money toward something useful to actually advancing us in space.

Hey, I like space elevators, but if James Miller thinks that this idea will win the 2006 election for Republicans, he’s…well…politically naive.

I can just imagine the Democrat commercials, were they to attempt such a thing. All they’d have to do is show the end of the Simpsons monorail episode, with the giant magnifying glass, the skyscraper made of popsickle sticks, and all of the people riding the escalator to nowhere and falling off the top.

“Millions go without health insurance, our soldiers are dying in Iraq, and the Republicans want to build an elevator to nowhere.”

Sadly, in many ways (as I’ve noted previously), the human spaceflight program has in fact been building a metaphorical elevator to nowhere.

I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but here’s a long piece from ABC News about the prospects for public space travel, and it seems to take it quite seriously.