I’ve been at the Space Frontier Conference, but was in and out, having to split my time with issues at my current day job in El Segundo, so I haven’t had my computer there, and consequently haven’t been live blogging it. But Michael Mealing has.
In light of the desire for budget controls in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, Congress is possibly in the mood to cut budgets either now or in the future. If the space community is misunderstood by Congress to be against the Vision itself then Congress may not have any qualms about forcing the Architecture to be indiscriminately cut. Currently the Centennial Challenges program is part of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate which is the part of NASA in charge of the Architecture as well. If ESMD’s budget is cut and money has to be moved around to support large contracts with the primes then that money will in all likelihood come from programs like Centennial Challenges. Ambiguous punditry that confuse the Vision with the Architecture now would most likely result in future cries of “That’s not what we meant!”
I haven’t had much to say about the Miers nomination, but a fellow blogger asked me last night at dinner what I thought about it. A lot of other people are discussing this, but all I’ll say is that I think that it’s the most boneheaded thing that the president has done during his presidency.
I learned from Gwynne Shotwell today that SpaceX has delayed the launch of the Falcon I from their earlier planned date of October 31st to later in November. She didn’t describe any particular issue, other than that they want to take a little more time to make sure that they get everything right on this flight, which is their maiden one, and will be crucial to the credibility of their future endeavors. Unfortunately, if they delay past the third week of November, they’ll lose their launch site in Kwajalein for a couple months, so if it doesn’t fly in November, it won’t fly until next year.
Good luck to them–a lot of hopes are riding on a company that can demonstrate that orbit doesn’t have to cost as much, or take as long to develop, as conventional wisdom would indicate.
But if you’re interested in space, and aren’t a regular reader of Space Transport News, you should be, and there’s lots of good stuff over there today.
Folks in southern California will have an opportunity to see the last Titan IV launch out of Vandenberg in about an hour, at 11:04 AM Pacific time. If the sky is clear, go outside and look to the west. Spaceflightnow is blogging the countdown.
[Update a couple minutes later]
To clarify, it’s the last Titan IV (or Titan anything) launch, period. It just happens to be launching out of Vandenberg. And with its retirement, Delta IV can take over as reigning pad queen.
[Update at 11 AM PDT]
I don’t know if it was the Transterrestrialanche, or what, but SpaceFlightNow is now down.
[Update at 11:30 PDT]
Well, it apparently launched, but I didn’t see it. There was a slight marine layer, and it may have obscured the view.
Just a note to say that I’m waiting for my plane to LA, and that Fort Lauderdale airport has wireless capability throughout the terminal. They also have power outlets next to the seats so I don’t have to run down my battery, and can save it for the plane trip. Once they have wireless in the airplanes, I’ll never get away from the blogging ball and chain…