Dwayne Day debunks sensationalistic misreporting about the Chinese space program.

Despite Western media

I missed Pete Worden’s talk on the use of lunar resources to alleviate global warming, on the first day of the Space Frontier Conference, because I was splitting time between it and work in El Segundo. But it was quite interesting, and Jeff Foust has a report on it in today’s The Space Review.

It has this curious exchange, though:

…someone asked Worden after his speech, if this system is privately developed, what

Blue Origin is moving and expanding its facilities in Seattle:

Blue Origin’s mission, according to a brief description on the company’s Web site, is developing reusable launch vehicles and technologies “that, over time, will help enable an enduring human presence in space…”

…During an interview that lasted a little over a half-hour, Bezos discussed his plans to develop reusable suborbital launch vehicles that could carry passengers nearly into space, the couple said.

Simpson said Bezos hoped to be able to begin offering commercial passenger flights within three to five years of the initial test launches, with the ultimate goal of helping humankind achieve space colonization “in his lifetime.”

Well, I’m glad to see that someone is working on this, since NASA obviously isn’t.

“Rusty” over at sci.space.history says:

The Chinese space program is similar to the early American space
program.

Except, Tang is one of the astronauts.

In another dispatch from Planet Strawman, Mark Whittington writes, among other nonsense:

Settling the Moon or any place else in space without a government presence is a fantasy.

I haven’t seen anyone propose that space will or should be settled without a government presence. Mark confuses legitimate concerns about the architecture that NASA has chosen to return to the moon with proposals for anarchy. He’s apparently impervious to irony when, in his indefatigable NASA worship, he accuses others of being kool-aid drinkers.

[Update at 10:18 AM PST]

Jon Goff has a much longer response.

[Afternoon update]

Robot Guy has further thoughts.

Michael Belfiore updates his previous post, to indicate that Rocketplane (as I was quite confident was the case) has in fact been in discussions with the FAA. But he persists in his misguided (in my opinion) fear of liquid propulsion:

I say a good healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anyone about to climb into a commercial spaceship fueled with explosive liquids.

While not denying that skepticism is always appropriate to some degree, he still seems to think that hybrids cannot explode. That would come as a shock to many (including me) who watched an Amroc 250,000-lb-thrust motor launch itself down the mountain up at the rocket lab in the early 90s, as a chunk of rubber got caught in the throat, blocking the flow and causing the internal pressure to build up to the point that it blew the bolts on the aft bulkhead, with spectacular results. Hell, even steam boilers can explode (this killed many people in the early days of river transportation).

It’s true that a hybrid can’t achieve total combustion in the same way that mixing liquids can, but it’s a big mistake to think of them as intrinsically “safe” (a term that is always relative, and never absolute). I would personally feel just as comfortable on a vehicle powered by one of (for example) XCOR’s rocket engines as by any hybrid, because I’d be confident that they would build adequate margins and safeguards into it to make it as safe as reasonably possible.

Michael Belfiore is concerned about Rocketplane’s business plan and technical approach:

These guys say they’ll fly paying passengers–and not just any paying passengers, but ones able to blow almost a quarter of a million dollars on a what amounts to a fabulously expensive roller coaster ride–in an experimental spacecraft built around a used business jet. Because its cheaper.

Well, there’s actually nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly an airframe with which we have a lot of experience (though not necessarily for this application). It’s not at all obvious to me that it’s better to use a new design from scratch. And the fact that it’s used doesn’t bother me, either. Many airliners are flying safely with aging airframes (and we now have B-52s flying some of whose current flight crews may have grandfathers who flew them). What matters is not age (or even cycles), but inspections.

And there’s more, unfortunately. Turns out the rocket engine is going to be preowned as well, of the highly explosive liquid fuel variety. That’s because the built-from-scratch engine they were going to use blew up on the test stand.

Without knowing more about this, I can’t really comment, but liquid engines are not intrinsically dangerous, marketing hype from SpaceDev aside. It depends on the design, and the margins.

And something for me to follow up on: a tipster tells me that Rocketplane hasn’t approached the FAA about certifying their hot-rodded Learjet–surely a requirement for following through with their business plan.

If they haven’t talked to the FAA at all, I’d be concerned (and surprised, if not astonished). But if the “tipster” is saying literally that they haven’t applied for “certification,” I wouldn’t expect them to, now or later. “Certification” has a very precise meaning in this context. The whole purpose of the new launch legislation last year was to allow passengers to fly without having to go through certification of a spaceplane (something that the FAA-AST doesn’t know how to do at all, and that FAA-AVR, the part that certifies aircraft, doesn’t know how to do it for spacecraft).

All that is needed is a launch license. Virgin Galactic may attempt to get their spacecraft certified (because that seems to be Burt’s druthers), but if they do, I suspect they’ll find out that it will throw a wrench into their business plans, cost them a lot more than they expect, and delay their entry into the market for years.

[Update on Sunday night]

Robin Snelson makes a good point in comments–Belfiore is comparing apples and orange. Virgin Galactic is a spaceline, whereas Rocketplane is a manufacturer. Better to compare the latter to the SpaceShip Company.

Slick Goodlin, who lost a chance to be the first man to exceed the speed of sound in level flight to Chuck Yeager due to a dispute over the pay, has died.

Frank Borman apparently displayed a distinct lack of imagination the other night at the Smithsonian. Clark Lindsey comments, pointing out once again why we shouldn’t take pronouncements of astronauts on space (or any subject, for that matter) as seriously as we too often do, just because they’re astronauts:

As I found from books such as The Right Stuff and John Glenn’s autobiography, most of the Space Age astronauts, except for a few exceptions like Buzz Aldrin, were not space buffs. They had instead been obsessed their whole lives with flying airplanes. After working their way up to the elite world of test pilots, they saw their selection as astronauts as the ultimate proof that they were the hottest flyboys around. They didn’t go through all that just to open up the cosmos to any Tom, Dick, or Dennis Tito.

And as Clark also stingingly points out, Frank Borman should hardly be considered an expert on commercial anything.

Thomas James notes that:

Michael Griffin spoke at JSC today, and is reported to have said that the Chinese are “five or six years closer to the Moon than we are.”

Depends on what he means by “we.” This statement needs elaboration, and a description of how he thinks that, at their current snail’s pace, the Chinese are going to get to the Moon at all, let alone before “us.” If he means Americans, I’ve no worries at all–the government-copycat Chinese space program is not going to beat private enterprise.

On the other hand, if he means NASA, I suspect he’s right. Of course, the way NASA goes about things, I don’t expect them to get to the Moon before 2040 or so…