Last year NASA put out a solicitation for companies to perform exploration architecture tradestudies incorporating Heavy Lift vehicles and potential advanced propulsion and in-space technologies. This was in support of NASA’s internal studies on the topic. I put a proposal in for that solicitation shortly after leaving Masten, but didn’t have enough credibility as a [...]
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Posted in Business, Commercial Space, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, NEOs, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Law, Space Policy on Jun 10th, 2011
I finally got around to watching Jeff Greason’s ISDC talk last night (youtube link here), and it has got me thinking. In an effort to actually get some blog posts going again, I’m going to break this up into chunks to try and keep things short. Jeff made the point that you can look at [...]
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Keith Cowing posted an interesting notice over on SpaceRef today. Basically NASA is using authority in one bill to remove a restriction in their acquisition regulations on doing “anchor tenant” type contracts. Anchor tenancy agreements have been talked about in the past as a way of making it easier to close the business case on [...]
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Posted in NASA, Snark, Space Exploration on Feb 22nd, 2011
Here’s another fun, somewhat provocative comment, made by a member of aRocket: All of this discussion assumes that space exploration is, of itself, a valuable goal. As I see it, the only real deliverable of space exploration is that it keeps that VERY SMALL percentage of the population not content with beer and football entertained. [...]
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Posted in Launch Vehicles, NASA, Space Policy on Feb 18th, 2011
From NASAWatch/Spaceref: “While it is true that prudent investments in science and technology will almost certainly yield future economic gains and will allow our knowledge economy to grow, it is also true that these gains can be thwarted by poor decision-making,” Chairman Hall said. “Americans expect and deserve better. With our unemployment hovering at over [...]
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So, according to Rob Coppinger, USA has proposed to operate the Shuttle “commercially” as part of their CCDEV proposal. For a cool, $1.5B/yr over the next six years, they’ll provide two shuttle flights per year. Personally, I think this is mostly a terrible idea. While offering fixed-price services, and moving to FAA regs is nice, [...]
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Posted in NASA, Politics, Snark, Space Policy, SpaceX on Feb 1st, 2011
So, a group of rocket engineers starts making claims about how they’re going to revolutionize the industry and deliver a vehicle for far less than has been the traditional norm. When asked how they are going to do this, they talk about stuff like “vertical integration”, “keeping stuff simple”, using a “clean-sheet approach”, and “borrowing [...]
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I know all of you have been just dying to hear what I think about the Nautilus-X MMSEV vehicle that’s been discussed all over the blogosphere in recent days. Ok, probably not, but I figured I ought to get my opinions on record anyway. I’ll start with my positive impressions first. Most importantly, I like [...]
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Posted in NASA on Jan 17th, 2011
If they follow through with their intent mentioned earlier today to try and force an honest competition for the SLS booster system, that’s great news. One of my single biggest pet peeves about CxP was that NASA, behind closed doors, and without open input from industry (other than ATK) comes up with a plan that [...]
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So, most of you in the space policy world have heard about NASA’s report back to Congress about how it wants to build an Ares-V classic HLV, but that Congress wasn’t giving them enough time or money, and Congress’ dignified response that “Nu Uh! You can too!” That exchange was annoying, but utterly predictable. What [...]
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