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…

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…

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…

Ken Silber says that space settlers may be living in caves.

Thomas James thinks that Elon Musk is trying to get Boeing and Lockmart to pay the development costs for the Falcon series.

The Guardian is talking seriously about property rights on the Moon.

The Chair Force Engineer has a lot of good stuff over the past few days, including commentary on the SpaceX lawsuit against BoLockMart, NASA’s architecture plans, and many pictures of the recent X-Prize Cup exhibition in New Mexico.

Jeff Foust has a good wrapup of the current state of play in the space activist community over the proposed exploration architecture, from this past weekend’s Space Frontier Conference, over at today’s The Space Review. Bottom line, to quote Bob Zubrin, is that it “sucks.” Those in the community who (unlike Space Frontier and Space Access) aren’t saying so officially are doing so only to be polite, and operating on the principle that if you haven’t anything good to say about it, say nothing at all.

Unfortunately, as Jeff points out at Space Politics, the sophistication of the debate on space policy in Washington is less than informed or reasoned. It’s very easy to confuse criticism of NASA’s chosen means of executing the vision with the vision itself. Nonetheless, if NASA has chosen a hopeless path for our goals (which in fact they have) we must state that. There’s little point in supporting a program that will once again end in tears, after many more billions of taxpayer dollars and more wasted years just because it is ostensibly a “space” program.

And speaking of debate style, Jeff was overtactful in characterizing Bob Zubrin’s as “contentious,” in which he repeatedly interrupted anyone who disagreed with him, shouting “stop, stop,” “it’s impossible!” “stop.”

This heavy-lift issue is one that needs a vigorous, informed (and civil) public debate, since it’s not at all clear that it ever received one in the workings of the exploration team at NASA. Cyberspace, and the blogosphere, would be a good place for it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey points out an Aviation Week article that indicates that many are in agreement that the “all eggs in one basket” approach is potentially disastrous (and does little to advance our abilities as a spacefaring nation), and asks:

What is going to happen to the lunar program when (1) there is the inevitable long delay in the development of the HLLV and (2) when a HLLV fails and destroys a really big collection of lunar exploration hardware, and (3) the HLLV is then grounded for a long period?

Hey, Clark, didn’t you get the memo? We’re not supposed to ask those kinds of questions.

[Update at 7:40 AM PDT]

Clark has further thoughts:

…NASA’s plan is already under considerable stress due to budget restraints.

This further emphasizes the need for NASA to focus on lowering space transportation costs significantly rather than on getting to the Moon by a fixed date with a straight-forward but very costly and impractical system. With cheaper space transport, NASA can still reach the Moon within a budget that probably won’t grow and may even shrink.