Space & Campaign 2004

Still Asking the Wrong Questions

Keith Cowing has gotten his hands on a draft space policy document that’s apparently been floating around inside the Beltway. He thinks that it may provide some insight into potential Kerry space policy. If so, it sounds like business as usual (in terms of the continuing notion that NASA must remain in the lead of developing new human transportation systems).

As Keith writes:

I am struck by the rather superficial nature of the analysis being done. The paper either skims over important details or simply regurgitates technical descriptions gleaned from news reports and NASA documents. No obvious attempt is made to systematically compare and contrast various technical risks and then prioritize them in a fashion that offers a chance for larger conclusions to be derived. This document is just a laundry list. The only clear recommendations made by the authors have to do with their views on national space policy – something which would seem to be beyond the scope of what they were tasked to do in the first place.

There is also the issue as to the level of expertise in place at GWU to fully understand the technical operations of the shuttle and ISS. Looking at the project staff listed on GWU’s website no one seems to have any experience working with human spaceflight operations or systems or risk and safety analysis associated with human spaceflight. Of course, I have not seen the proposal they submitted – one which might list additional personnel with that expertise who are assisting in this project. None the less, this apparent lack of expertise in the area of human spaceflight and risk analysis is evident in many places in this paper.

Yes. John Logsdon is a great historian of the space program, but his policy prescriptions are often wrongheaded, because he fundamentally doesn’t understand the technology issues.

What I found most disturbing was this section:

The paper leaves a clear impression that the authors think that the shuttle system is very risky – perhaps too risky to continue flying. The paper goes on to make a broad observation that the shuttle should be flown much less often than NASA plans to fly it:

“Some individuals, although a small number of those interviewed by the GW team on a confidential basis, have gone so far as to assert that the Shuttle program should be permanently halted, the Orbiters permanently grounded, and the ISS limited in scope with certain elements not completed because of the risks presented by the ambitious launch schedule required to complete the ISS. These individuals with major safety concerns have also said that

Space

Interview With A Space Tourism Pioneer

CNN talks to Mark Shuttleworth. Most of the discussion is about his privately financed trip to Mir, but he does talk about the future of the industry:

Shuttleworth: We’re just starting to see the first private vehicles being certified as safe for flight, carrying passengers to the edge of space and back. Now, to put that in perspective, 30 years ago NASA and the military had vehicles that were capable of doing the same thing. But these are now vehicles that have been entirely privately designed. So in the next year or two, we’ll actually see the first privately funded space flights that take people out of the atmosphere and back. And those aren’t sort of Mercury Star or Apollo Star or Soleal Star orbital flights; they don’t go round the Earth and go into orbit. They literally shoot up like a canon ball, get you out of the atmosphere into space and falling back to land within a couple of minutes of your launch. That’s the first step that will really lay the groundwork for a whole exploration of private space flight.

Within five years I expect that we’ll have regular private flights, so that people paying relatively small amounts of money to have the privilege of being shot out of the atmosphere, experiencing the Earth as seen from space, that incredible sight of the Earth without borders, and then experiencing weightlessness and the feeling of looking into the universe, you realize just how small the Earth and solar system are in the context of the broader universe. So that’s really what we’ll see over the next five years. And then in 10 to 15 years, that will have grown to the point where maybe we can expect to see four orbital flights, entirely privately funded with vehicles that are entirely privately designed. There’s a tremendous amount of capital now going into the private space industry on the basis of somebody having done it. It’s like the four-minute mile. Once somebody does it the first time, everybody else wants to step up and give it a run. So, this really is the cusp of a new era.

Curnow: Which nations will dominate?

Shuttleworth: Clearly there is a lot of American capital going into private space flight at this stage. A lot of the technology, though, is still Russian and there are other countries entering the space race as well. India, China and Brazil all have developing capacity in space. I’ve no doubt though that it will be American-driven investment that leads the private exploration of space.

Curnow: What about private visits to the moon?

Shuttleworth: Well, the two are very intricately interlinked. It’s space tourism that’s going to reduce the cost of getting to space. Once you reduce the cost of getting to space, then national space budgets — the amount of money that NASA spends keeping people in lowest orbit, for example — can be used to take us that much further. It’s going to be a very rich interplay between commercial space flight, private space flight and a public exploration into the solar system for the greater good of humanity. The two are absolutely interlinked and we couldn’t realistically get to the moon without reductions in cost that will only come from private space tourism.

Emphasis is mine.

I’m not sure what he means by “four orbital flights.” Does he mean four companies offering them?

Unfortunately, he wasn’t asked what his own investment plans were.

Humor

Endless Conspiracies

Now we know how they do it. I knew they weren’t smart enough to come up with these on their own.

My first attempt:

George W. Bush invaded Iraq so that oil companies and the Christian Coalition could kill Al Franken.

Try it, it’s fun for the whole family! Well, at least if you’re a member of the Kennedy or Moore family.

I’m not sure that it’s possible to generate one that at least a few moonbats over at DU wouldn’t buy.

Administrative

Not My Day

We had an intermittent power failure last night.

I woke up this morning and wandered into the kitchen, and saw that, in place of the time, the LED on the microwave was displaying a “PF.” Most of the clocks have battery backups, but the one in our antique (sixties era) electric stove was about an hour behind.

Computers had to be restarted, natch.

After doing so, I was using my desktop (my primary work machine) for about a half an hour (the one in which I’d recently replaced the motherboard), when it decided to reboot itself, seemingly spontaneously.

Then, after the reboot, right after login, and the desktop coming up, it did so again.

After repeating this two or three times, it bluescreened. This was similar to the symptoms before I replaced the mobo the last time. Except that this time, after finishing writing whatever cryptic diagnostics it was sending to that future, in which the technology might exist to revive it, it didn’t reboot–it just shut down.

And wouldn’t restart. Poking the power button was availless.

So, now I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with the thing now. I may have a power supply problem, but I may also just need to upgrade to a better board.

Anyway, I’ll be working on the laptop for the nonce.

[Late afternoon update]

Dang.

I was hoping that it was the power supply, but I just tried another one, with the same result. The power switch is fine, based on a test with an ohm-meter, and shorting the terminals on the motherboard doesn’t give any action, either.

I still need to verify that the supply I swapped is good, but it looks like there’s a problem with the mobo. I just bought it about a month ago, and it’s probably on warranty, but I only paid thirty-some bucks for it, so it may be best to simply upgrade and get a more modern one.

Oh, as for the suggestion in comments to unplug everything from the board except the video card? That’s already my configuration. Everything else (sound, ethernet, etc.) is built into the board.

Space

To Boldly Go

Captain Kirk is finally going into space for real. Along with 7000 other people. If those numbers are right, then that’s about one and a half billion dollars in pledges. Not bad for a planned investment of a couple hundred million on Branson’s part.

So much for the giggle factor about space tourism.

Here’s one Enterprise captain who probably won’t be going, though. And he spouts the usual idiocy:

In an interview with BBC World Service radio, Stewart said he backed unmanned missions such as Nasa’s Mars rover Opportunity and the UK’s Beagle 2 mission.

But he said he did not believe the human race was ready to begin thinking about beaming down on other planets.

“As I get older my unease at the time and the money that has to be spent on projects putting human beings back to the moon, and on to another planet, is so enormous,” he said.

“And it would take up so many resources, which I personally feel should be directed at our own planet.”

Interviewed by the World Update programme, he added: “Humankind has just not simply become sufficiently evolved to now leave this planet, take itself out to space and began establishing more of us out there.

“I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilisations out on to other planets – even though they may be utterly uninhabited.”

I wonder when he’ll think that we’re sufficiently evolved? Perhaps after we’ve become socialists, as apparently the federation had become by the time of The Next Generation.

Weird

No Squirrel To Save Him

A moose died after being hung fifty feet above the ground on a power line.

The workers believe the moose may have come across the sagging and swaying wires and decided to challenge the power line to a fight, as bull moose are known to do during the rut, or mating season.

“My guess is he was in full rut and probably seen that line moving out there,” and decided to fight, said Marvin Pickens, line construction manager for City Electric in Anchorage.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!