It’s long past time to abandon it.
It’s hard to do, though. Many just can’t imagine any other way to do human spaceflight. And of course, those in Congress don’t want to lose all their opportunities for graft.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Still Waiting For The Suborbital Future
Jeff Foust has an up-to-date status on the industry, ten years after SpaceShipOne’s first flight. Note also Doug Messier’s status on Virgin Galactic in comments, which sounds about right to me.
Congressional Hobbling Of Spaceflight
Michael Lopez-Alegria weighs in at the Huffpo:
Flying our astronauts should be a national strategic priority, and NASA should be free to continue expanding its use of public-private partnerships and building on its successes. NASA will always lead our nation’s exploration of space, but it must empower all the members of the team that makes that happen, including commercial companies. If Congress can ensure that NASA is cutting bureaucracy and getting the most value for its money, our nation will have a bright future of space exploration ahead of it. If not, our human spaceflight program may be a disappointment for years to come.
Instead, “safety is the highest priority.”
I may have missed it, but I’ve seen no support in the media for the Shelby shenanigans.
World War I
Ten myths about it.
The EPA Overreach
No, you can’t just rewrite the law to justify your junk science, EPA.
This is a good victory, but it doesn’t completely undo the damage from the court’s previous decision, which was also based on junk science.
Drones
When they fall from the sky.
It’s just a matter of time until someone is killed or injured by one. And I have no doubt that some are going to start using them as personal weapons.
SpaceShipOne
It’s been ten years since its first flight into space. Jeff Foust reflects, and he has a new book out
People have written a lot about this long gap in suborbital spaceflight, and a thorough examination of the causes is beyond the scope of a single post. Virgin Galactic has gone through an extended technical development, including a recent switch in hybrid rocket motors; it now plans to begin flights late this year, about seven years later than its original plans announced in September 2004. XCOR Aerospace’s progress has been hindered at times by limited funding, as Forbes recently reported, although the company announced last month it raised more than $14 million in a Series B funding round that should allow it to bring the Lynx to market. Blue Origin, meanwhile, keeps its plans under tight wraps; it would seem that founder Jeff Bezos, who is also funding the 10,000-Year Clock, is not in a particular rush.
And John Carmack always treated Armadillo as more of a hobby. No, it’s not any single reason (“space is hard”). As I tweeted yesterday, the problem with commercial space, until recently, is that the people with good ideas couldn’t get money to execute them, and the people with the money picked bad ideas. In the case of Virgin, it started when (the late) Jim Benson sold Burt Rutan a bill of goods on hybrids, and people who didn’t understand the technology thought that it would scale easily (though it was never a good idea). It all cascaded from there.
[Update a while later]
The top five posts on this page are my reporting that morning from Mojave.
[Sunday-afternoon update]
Dale Amon remembers that day as well.
[Bumped]
The IRS Backup Service
It turns out they conveniently canceled their contract with them, ten days after Lerner’s “computer crash,” and shortly before the other “computer crashes.”
One Or Two Spaces After A Period
I will confess to being a two-spacer, for exactly the reason described. I learned to type on a typewriter without proportional spacing. It’s a hard habit to break, particularly since I haven’t had much reason to try (HTML ignores the extra space when displaying).
SpaceX Launch Attempt
They had to scrub the Orbcomm delivery mission yesterday due to a pressurization issue in the second stage (unclear if it was a vehicle or GSE umbilical problem). They’re making another attempt today, and fueling, but they’re not webcasting. No explanation why, but the disappointment on Twitter is palpable.
[Update a while later]
Another scrub, with no details.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hearing now they got weathered out by lightning 18 minutes before T-0.