In the midst of an article in which he recommends that the administration encourage the Chinese to race us to the moon, Dwayne Day writes: “There is nothing that a human can do in low Earth orbit, other than the study of other humans, that a robot cannot do better.”

I hope that he didn’t give very much thought to that statement, because it’s demonstrably untrue. Could a robot have done this better? How about this? Or especially this, which happened over three decades ago?

I doubt that we have the robotic capability today to do those things, let alone at the time. Dwayne can argue if he likes that they weren’t worth doing (I would disagree in all cases, especially in the case of Skylab), but to say that there’s nothing that robots can’t do better than humans in LEO is…mistaken.

Interestingly, of course, this is being discussed as an alternate means to save Hubble, but it will clearly be a technical challenge, and it’s not being done because it’s a better way, but because NASA is unwilling to send a crew.

But there’s a lot of non-blogging stuff to catch up on. I’ll try to get a post and pics up of the conference in the next day or two, but no promises. Bottom line–there’re lots of exciting things happening, and the days that NASA dominates manned spaceflight are looking increasingly numbered.

Thanks to Michael Mealling, I’ve got connectivity enough to announce that the FAA presented XCOR with their launch license this morning, at the Space Access Conference. It was the 180th day after completion of their licence application submittal, so they brought it in under the wire.

More later, but further details can be found at Michael’s wiki. Up to the minute pictures are also available on the wiki page.

[Update on Sunday evening]

If you haven’t seen it, Alan Boyle, who was in attendance with me (and who I greatly enjoyed meeting), has a more extensive story.

I’d think that a planetary protection officer would have a much larger portfolio than just worrying about extraterrestrial biological contamination. If he’s not responsible for detecting and fending off errant asteroids and comets, who is?

As though I wasn’t busy enough, I find this at NASA Watch (I also heard about it from a friend at Boeing).

White papers are invited that address initial challenges facing Project Constellation and Project Prometheus in general, and the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) in particular. Enclosed are the key focus area, issues, and suggested white paper topics. White papers that examine one or more of the topics are invited. Papers that address other important aspects (in a manner consistent with the information requested below) are also welcome. Viable white papers should be consistent with the January 14, 2004, U.S. Space Exploration Vision, as well as with generally accepted laws of physics. Innovative approaches

I haven’t had time to read it, but the Cap’n of the Clueless has what looks like an interesting post on warfare in space.

I’ve always found it a little ironic that in Star Trek, and most other science fiction, the model of the interplanetary/interstellar military is the navy. That makes sense, because we generally, or at least popularly, think of spaceships rather than spaceplanes, and the relatively slow maneuvers and docking, and indeed the nature of outer space itself, make the ocean a much more apt analogy than the air.

Yet in this current time-space continuum, the Pentagon has assigned space to the Air Force, and they’ve made notably little progress with it. I suspect that once we solve the earth-to-orbit problem, and the atmosphere becomes a temporary hindrance on the way to the rest of the universe, that the naval model will in fact prevail.

Leonard David has a good roundup of X-Prize progress.

Last month, the X Prize rocketship race garnered the support and participation of the Champ Car World Series — an organization steeped in checker flag competitions of open-wheel speedsters around the globe. The seven-figure sponsorship includes having the Champ Car World Series logo placed on all X Prize vehicles. The series will also be the primary corporate sponsor of the X Prize flights…

…”I find it interesting that everyone says the X Prize expires at the end of the year when in actual fact the

Jay Manifold has done some depressing googling. I guess it is up to the blogosphere.

[Tuesday morning update]

Jay has a follow-up post in response to comments here.

Leonard David (who I hope I’ll see at next week’s Space Access Conference) has an interesting article today on the prospects for returning Shuttle to flight, and the potential consequences, political and otherwise, of delaying or failing to do so.

There’s a fear expressed in the article that a NASA that’s afraid to risk a Shuttle launch isn’t a NASA that can accept the risk of sending people back to the moon, let alone Mars.

I think that’s right. The first step toward a bold new space program is defeminizing our space policy. And while Dwayne says that his intent was to point out the feminine language of the rhetoric of our policy, I do think that this irrational risk aversion is in fact a feminization of the policy itself.

I’m with Jack Schmitt. My position is that we should quickly decide whether or not we’re going to continue the program. If we are, then start flying now, so people don’t forget how to fly it, and we don’t wear it out in the hangar. Stop wasting all these hundreds of millions of dollars and all this time developing improvements for something that we’re only going to fly another couple dozen times and are probably just political bandaids anyway, and just get on with it, while putting into place a plan to develop alternative capabilities as soon as possible. Tell the nation to recognize that the vehicle has risks, to expect to lose another one, and to suck it up and stop crying about dead astronauts who, now more than ever, accept the risk with eyes open, just as do our troops in Iraq. Fly them until we either finish station (and fix Hubble), or lose two, at which point the remaining one goes to Dulles.

If we can’t do that, then just shut the thing down now, so we can take the billions that it costs to keep the standing army sitting around and apply them to something useful. As it is now, we have the worst of all worlds, with wasted money and time, and continuing uncertainty as to whether or not we’ll get any value out of the wasted money and time. Let’s just do it or get off the pot.

Glenn has an article at TCS today about private spaceflight and prizes. There’s an error in it, however–he says that Burt flew his latest mission on the same day that he received his launch license. As this article by Leonard David correctly states, he got his launch license on April 1, and flew a week later, on April 8.