Via Wired, it looks like the Da Vinci Project (now renamed the GoldenPalace.com space program) is running into problems with finding insurance.

Insurance is a huge deal for suborbital startups, and will probably turn out to be a showstopper for at least some of them. I was very surprised to find out how much of a problem insurance and launch licensing (including environmental regulation) were going to be when I first got seriously involved with this area. Launch licensing is partially addressed by Senate bill 2772, but insurance is still out there. If I was to start a suborbital launch services company tomorrow I’d tackle the insurance issue in parallel with vehicle development. The right vehicle design will keep insurance costs low, and the wrong design will drive them towards infinity.

Tim Worstall has some post-apocalyptic thoughts that are applicable to pre-apocalyptic space policy. I can never remind people enough the reason that we aren’t a true space-faring nation is not lack of technology or technologists–it’s lack of the viable institutions and means of organizing resources toward that end. Fortunately, that’s starting to change.

Tim Worstall has some post-apocalyptic thoughts that are applicable to pre-apocalyptic space policy. I can never remind people enough the reason that we aren’t a true space-faring nation is not lack of technology or technologists–it’s lack of the viable institutions and means of organizing resources toward that end. Fortunately, that’s starting to change.

Tim Worstall has some post-apocalyptic thoughts that are applicable to pre-apocalyptic space policy. I can never remind people enough the reason that we aren’t a true space-faring nation is not lack of technology or technologists–it’s lack of the viable institutions and means of organizing resources toward that end. Fortunately, that’s starting to change.

Not a whole lot new here to people who’ve been following this, but Jim Oberg has an article about SpaceShipOne in the IEEE Spectrum magazine.

A loon from my home state of Michigan believes that NASA’s Mars exploration activities are affecting weather on the earth.

[Via emailer Frank Johnson]

There’s a huge (and largely pointless) argument going on over at Space Politics about whether or not we should go to the Moon before Mars (kicked off by Bob Zubrin’s wishful thinking).

I liked Ed Wright’s comment:

We don’t have a national consensus on what to do in the air or on the sea or on land.

We don’t need a national consensus to decide whether Americans will go to Las Vegas or Disneyland next year.

Why is that when it comes to space, people think there can only be one destination and one goal, which is chosen by national consensus?

That is the question. Sam Dinkin discusses the pros and cons of pilots in space vehicles. He ignores the most critical issues, though–the willingness of passengers to fly, and the FAA to license, an unpiloted space transport. I’ve discussed this issue in the past.

I doubt it. I suspect that Bob Zubrin is fooling himself, and that these supposed Kerry space staffers are just telling him what he wants to hear. After the election, if Kerry manages somehow to win, he’ll just tell Bob that he was for Mars exploration before he was against it.

The Beagle 2 mission team has released its own report on what went wrong – they place a lot of blame on ESA management, but the upshot is that the atmosphere wasn’t as dense as they thought. Story via Nature

Nature also has a story on the Shuttle return to flight. One paragraph stands out to me:

The CAIB report said that safety checks were often poorly managed. “The shuttle programme had become comfortable with an operational mindset that treated a developmental vehicle as an operational vehicle, accepting debris strikes as normal, and so on,” says Hubbard. This culture is being challenged through increased communication between different areas of NASA, says Hubbard.

The problem of treating a vehicle in development as operational is serious, but the solution is not more communication. Reading between the lines, that looks to me a lot like more forms, more reports, more meetings, more teleconferences. In other words, more noise. The solution I prefer is a single office tasked with both operations and upgrades, and with the authority to take the vehicle off line. The bipod ramp foam shedding was a known issue and it could have been addressed with a number of different fixes had work started when the problem was first identified. Of course this presumes management with an attitude oriented to fixing things before they become problems, which may be asking too much. Certainly expecting NASA to behave in ways which fly in the face of the political incentives imposed by congress is asking too much, but hey, a man can dream, can’t he?