So I’m watching the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on commercial space, and seeing Jim Muncy and Laura Montgomery (FAA-AST legal counsel) sitting behind Gerstenmaier as he testifies.
[Update a few minutes later]
Now I’m seeing Alex Saltman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation over Mike Gold’s left shoulder. And Patti Grace Smith is behind Alex’s left shoulder.
[Update a few minutes later]
Now I see Stu Witt of the Mojave Air and Spaceport off Gerst’s left shoulder.
[Update]
Hearing adjourned. We certainly heard a lot of the usual ignorance from the usual suspects. Nelson didn’t know that NASA science missions are FAA licensed.
I’d guess that all of Obama’s speeches are archived somewhere. Could someone do a search on them and compare the number of times he’s used the phrase “create jobs” compares to the number of times he’s used the phrase “create wealth”? I’m guessing the number of uses of the latter is approximately, or exactly zero. If so, it will be fodder for a rant on his Marxist tendencies. You can guess the theme. In fact, here’s the Twitter version: You can create jobs without creating wealth, but it’s very hard to do the latter.
It isn’t with NASA, or any government. It’s with SpaceX and U.S. private industry. Though it’s amusing that the author actually believes that the SLS will be sending anyone to the moon or asteroids.
For now Andraka is going to continue promoting his breakthrough test, which he says will “completely replace the ELISA test” within a few years. He’d like to explore how to put multiple antibodies on a single test strip to check for a variety of agents in the bloodstream. And what about the rest of high school? Andraka says “hopefully” he will finish North County High School in Glenburnie, Md., but if he does form a company to commercialize the nanotube test strip, he will put high school on hold.
A young man after Peter Thiel’s heart. Some of the most talented people we have have no need for formal schooling. Speaking of which, thoughts on parents who public-school their kids.
I only crudely stenographed it yesterday, and didn’t really comment, though others did. But Alan Boyle has the story. It’s a good description of the current state of play, but I don’t necessarily agree with this:
Theoretically, NASA would not have any formal say over the flight of a Boeing CST-100 space capsule that’s launched on an Atlas 5, heading for a Bigelow Aerospace orbital module. But because NASA is expected to be the biggest customer by far for orbital spaceflight services, the space agency would probably play a key role in the development of any private-sector orbital spacecraft developed in the U.S., even if that craft ended up occasionally going someplace other than the International Space Station. Pragmatically speaking, it’s likely that NASA would be to spaceflight standards what California is to auto emission standards, or Texas is to school textbook standards.
“Expected” by whom? I don’t expect that beyond the next five years or so, though I’m sure it’s an accurate reflection of the conventional wisdom. I think that Bigelow-induced traffic will be far greater than NASA’s needs. I also think that if SpaceX does get to full reusability it will both drop launch costs in itself, but that SpaceX’s success will draw competitors into the market to further reduce costs. At that point, NASA’s standards will become largely irrelevant, because one of the ways that people will compete on cost (and safety and availability) will be to ignore them when they don’t make sense.