Media Criticism, Space, Weird

An Internet First

29 Comments

I rarely link to Mark Whittington’s site, but I think that this is history making. He has finally revealed one of his previously imaginary friends in his “Internet Rocketeer’s Club.” In this case, finally, it’s not imaginary.

I don’t think I really deserve the honor though, unlike Mark, I do know something about rocketry, having actually done it for a living. I also know about launch costs, economics, policy, politics, history, grammar, spelling, HTML, and many other things of which Mark seems innocent. But I hope I’ll get a secret decoder ring soon.

Political Commentary

Notes On “Plymouth Rock”

14 Comments

Jon Goff attended an interesting meeting at SwRI last week.

While a dual-Orion mission may be doable for a two-person crew, I still think that it’s more of a stunt than a serious mission, and I actually question the value of sending people to a NEO early, other than to demonstrate and practice deep-space capability. I’d also send an “armada” of two. I’m not sure you get sufficient redundancy from a single dual-Orion mission, due to potential common cause for the two docked vehicles. With two separate “ships” flying in a loose formation, you’d have a lot more depth in safety.

Of course, Orions won’t be cheap. Maybe Dragons instead. Then you’d get the bonus of having an asteroid map with the words, “Here be Dragons…” 🙂

But as Bigelow said, what you really want is an expandable habitat, and just take the capsule along for the entry, as (I suggested to Keith Reiley at Boeing yesterday on the phone) a motor home drags a car along for short excursions. Also, I can’t speak to what Boeing plans, but if I were them, I’d be scarring CST for deep space.

[Update a while later]

Now that I think about it, if you really want to eliminate common cause (other than a major solar flare), your armada would consist of a CST-based craft, an Orion-based craft (if you could afford it) and a Dragon-based craft.

General, Social Commentary

My Life With Jessica

21 Comments

Described here. Though she’s not quite as creative. Generally, she sleeps on the desk by the monitor, and when she wants food, she walks over the keyboard, sits on the edge, and reaches out to tap me on the face with a paw. Also, I’ve noticed that she doesn’t want food so much as attention and service. She’ll complain, even when there’s still food in the bowl, and demand that I add more. I don’t have to add a lot more, but I have to go through the motions.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

The Race Heats Up

28 Comments

…and Sir Richard moves on:

Dulles, Va.-based Orbital is teaming with Virgin Galactic of New Mexico on the Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev 2) project. Virgin Galactic will market commercial rides on the spacecraft, conduct drop tests of the orbital space vehicle using its WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and offer transport services for the space vehicle, industry sources said. Although Orbital expects to launch and land the spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., in the event of an abort, WhiteKnightTwo would be used to ferry the spaceship between its landing location and the Cape.

Virgin is also expected to announce this week a separate CCDev 2 bid led by Sierra Nevada Corp., the big winner in NASA’s first round of Commercial Crew Development awards earlier this year. The Sparks, Nev.-based firm garnered $20 million in CCDev 1 funds to mature its Dream Chaser orbital spacecraft, a six-passenger lifting-body vehicle based on NASA’s HL-20 concept from the early 1990s that the company has been working on for several years.

I can’t reveal the source, but I am reliably informed that at Burt Rutan’s retirement dinner last week, Sir Richard phoned it in from Necker Island, with a video lamenting Burt’s abandoning the field (though Burt had always been on record as not knowing how to do orbit — at heart he was always an airplane guy, and one of the best ever). With the hybrid engine problems, I take this as a sign that, while he still hopes to make his mark in the suborbital world, his focus has shifted to a higher velocity game. It can’t be a result of SpaceX’s success last week, because both deals have to have been in work for months, but I suspect that the week of the Dragon had some influence as to when to make announcements.

The Congress will do what it does when it reassembles in January, but with Bigelow’s habitats beckoning, I doubt that anything they do will have much influence over our future in space, at this point. At worst, they will only be able to continue to waste the taxpayers’ money.

Popular Culture

Proposed Division Names For The Big Tweleven

11 Comments

…are not getting a lot of love from the commentariat at Free Republic. The comments at the original Tribune article are pretty cutting, too.

They seem kind of stupid to me. Can’t one be both a “Leader” and a “Legend”? Or, neither, for that matter? Jeez, just go with East and West.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s a suggestion for a new, disambiguated name: “The Big Ten Plus Penn State And Nebraska.” You can call the other one “The Big Twelve Minus Colorado and Nebraska.”

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!