Here’s a pretty good take on NASA’s current situation by the Economist.

My main complaint comes toward the end, when it seems to lament that this isn’t about science. Who says it should be?

Florida Today makes a rampant speculation, unsupported by anything, apparently, other than the fevered imaginations of its editors:

In case you missed it, NASA’s former chief Sean O’Keefe killed the [Hubble] mission in 2004, citing post-Columbia safety concerns. More likely, that was just a cover story to start redirecting money for the agency’s moon-Mars plans.

No, more likely it was exactly what O’Keefe said, and no evidence has ever been produced to indicate otherwise. It was a dumb decision, and O’Keefe should have stepped down much sooner, because it was quite clear that he no longer had the stomach for the job post-Columbia, but it had nothing to do with the VSE. As Keith Cowing says, if they don’t have any actual basis for this statement, they shouldn’t be making it.

Robert Zimmerman says that we’re on the verge of a new renaissance in space exploration, with an explosion of creativity partly fueled by the new media.

Jeff Foust has an extensive description of Virgin Galactic’s plans, based on Will Whitehorn’s talk at last week’s ISDC:

Virgin is open to other uses of suborbital spaceflight, such as point-to-point transportation, although Whitehorn noted that they are not actively pursuing it because they would then be treated as an airline from a regulatory standpoint, with strict limitations on the flights that a foreign-owned airline can offer in the US. Instead, Virgin is looking at the possibility of orbital spaceflight.

From Clark Lindsey, with links to others’ reports:

I last attended a NSS conference in 1990 and much of that meeting dealt either with NASA or with theoretical proposals for grand futuristic projects of all sorts. This time most of the focus was on projects in the private sector that are actually doable. The discussions dealt extensively with real hardware that has flown, like the SS1, or is under development, like the SS2.

This time there were representatives from well financed companies with believable business plans such as those that are getting ready to offer spaceflight services to a space tourism market that looks increasingly viable and sizable. Companies like ZERO-G are offering spaceflight related services today and seemed to be doing it profitably.

NASA and its exploration initiative certainly had a place at the conference but I didn’t detect any great excitement with the agency’s long term plans. Skepticism towards NASA and its ability to carry out its plans has been well earned. Most activists have learned that nothing great is going to happen in space until the costs come down significantly. So there seemed to be much greater interest in the t/Space consortium and its plan for an Earth-to-LEO transport system with a price tag a factor of ten below the expected price.

Space activism has had many ups and downs over the past 30 years or so since the end of Apollo era. There will certainly be many more disappointments. However, there is a substance and vitality to what is happening now that I’ve never seen before. I think this conference definitely is an sign that things have changed fundamentally. The old “NASA is space, space is NASA” paradigm is fading fast and a new age of independent space pioneering is upon us.

Amen.

As a demonstration that the web is a conversation rather than a lecture, Dwayne Day has inadvertently written a couple of interesting essays on military space in the comments section of this post.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:

Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:

Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.

I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Diamandis here:

Diamandis said that the wealth of individuals is rapidly increasing thanks to the evolving power of the Internet, and very shortly through breakthroughs in nanotechnology. Billionaires and multi-billionaires are making their own future happen, he said.

I’m still getting ready for a last-minute trip across the Atlantic, but Thomas James has a restorative tonic for Helen Caldicott’s ongoing idiocy about “militarizing space,” and Clark Lindsey has a lot of good stuff on the recent International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC.