Bob Zubrin’s take on the stagnation in NASA human spaceflight.
As I’ve often said, if we don’t know why we’re doing something, it’s not possible to come up with a sensible way to do it.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Seventeen Years
Ian Kluft remembers seeing Columbia breaking up, from California.
[Sunday-morning update]
Here are my thoughts from that day. If you click on “Next Post” you’ll read a lot more from the hours and days that came after.
The Coastal States
…are in the fight of their lives.
I hope, at some point soon, there will be a backlash in California. I don’t want to have to leave to be free.
BTW, I was in DC all week, but back now.
Starship Production
…may be coming back to California.
College
“We don’t talk about” it here.
I didn’t think much about college in high school, except to take courses like Latin, math, and science. I didn’t even take the SAT. I took a year off after graduation (with low grades), then went to community college. I think I did OK.
SLS
Nothing new to readers of this web site, but Eli Dourado has a good history of the mess.
Axiom
I got up at O Dark Thirty this morning to catch a flight to DC for the Space Transportation conference tomorrow, and haven’t had a lot of time to catch up on news, But Bob Zimmerman has thoughts on the announcement.
One of the reasons I left Rockwell over a quarter of a century ago was that it had become clear to me that they were never going to do anything commercial in space. It annoyed management when I told them this, but they knew it was true; they weren’t in the space business, they were in the government-contracting business. We’ll see how this goes.
A New Spaceplane Company
Good luck with this.
Electrical Problems
We’ve got a circuit out (most critical issue: Patricia’s upstairs office). No breaker is obviously tripped. Guess I’ll have to open the box.
[Late-afternoon update]
I appreciate the comments, but have heard nothing I don’t know. Fun fact: When I was a kid we didn’t have breakers; we had fuse boxes.
And yes, I know that some wags will say that when I was a kid, electricity hadn’t been invented.
[Update Saturday morning]
Bad news: There’s voltage on all the breakers. Not sure how to trace where the line opens up. Don’t know how much an electrician would charge, but I might be able to buy some kind of tracer for the same cost.
[Bumped]
[January 27th update]
Threw in the towel and called an electrician. It took them an hour or so to run down the problem; a bad neutral line in an upstream outlet. Buried behind oak cabinets that were earthquake strapped, of course.
Good deal, though, for $225, plus they fixed a couple other things that had been an issue for a while.
[Bumped again]
The House NASA Authorization Bill
It was just released, and at first glance, it appears to be a disaster. More anon.
[Saturday-morning update]
No moon in 2024, must use SLS to get to the moon, not allowed to do anything on the moon that would help with Mars, not allowed to purchase commercial landing services, not allowed to do any exploration at the South Pole for ice.
Saturday-afternoon update]
Here‘s Jeff’s story.
[Monday-morning update]
It’s the greatest hits of terrible space policy.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
[Late-morning update]
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation has weighed in.
The Planetary Society isn’t happy, either.