Speechless
Posted in NASA on Feb 1st, 2010
Holy Crap! Obama’s NASA Budget Proposal is Amazing! For once in my life, I think I’m actually speechless for now.
Category Archive for 'NASA'
More Random “Lunar One-Way-to-Stay” Thoughts: A Business Case?
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Space Development, Space Transportation on Jan 21st, 2010
The more I think about the Lunar One-Way-to-Stay concept, the more intriguing it is. Fundamentally, it’s one of the only ways with existing transportation systems to get the cost of early lunar experimentation anywhere near low-enough to be useful and interesting. Ultimately, for thriving two-way cislunar commerce, you need tugs, and depots, and high-flightrate RLVs. [...]
Test Flights Rumor
Posted in NASA on Jan 13th, 2010
One of the more disconcerting rumors mentioned in Florida Today’s article about Obama’s plans for NASA, is the idea of “annual test flights” at KSC, to retain workforce skills. These tests were compared to Ares I-X, and made it sound as though they thought these test flights would be a continuation of the Ares-I program [...]
Why Not Just Fund the Program of Record?
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, NEOs, Politics, Space Development, Space Policy on Dec 14th, 2009
Amid all the recent discussion of the Augustine Committee’s results, Mark Whittington asks a question that a lot of people in Congress seem to be asking: “Why not just pay for the current program since any new program is going to cost more money anyway?” To elaborate, the line of reasoning goes that if the [...]
Good News for Centennial Challenges?
Posted in NASA on Dec 11th, 2009
Dave pointed out to me earlier today that it looks like Centennial Challenges is finally going to get more funding this year (see http://docs.house.gov/rules/omni2010/hr3288cr_divb_jes.pdf on page 182 about 3/4 of the way to the bottom). The new amount is the full $4M that the Obama Administration asked for earlier this year. While this is only [...]
Comment on Brett Alexander’s Congressional Testimony
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, Launch Vehicles, NASA, SpaceX on Dec 3rd, 2009
I didn’t have a chance to watch either of the House subcommittee hearings today, so I’m grateful that Clark linked to the testimonies of the various witnesses. I really enjoyed reading Brett’s testimony, and thought one of his points in particular is worth repeating. To me one of the more interesting points is found at [...]
This is poor taste, but too funny not to pass along (I apologize in advance to CxP workers reading this). Upon hearing about another CxP element that’s been supposedly defunded, a NASASpaceFlight.com member (Lawntonlookirs) expressed his frustration by creating the following, slightly modified mission patch for Constellation:
I listened in a bit on yesterday’s Augustine Committee discussion. The debate at the end between Bo and the others reminded me of a point I’ve made a bunch of times on this blog–that when you’re talking about exploration missions, ascent reliability is only a small component of the overall risk. Since I’ve been doing [...]
Great Question
Posted in NASA on Sep 25th, 2009
Continuing my trend of outsourcing most of my blogging to others with more time on their hands, here’s a great question [from a guy named SpaceXULA] on NASASpaceflight.com: You must ask yourself this question. “Given that NASA is national prestige program purely funded by deficit spending, do you feel a 30% increase in NASA’s budget, [...]
One of the Most Amazing 25 Minutes in (Recent) NASA History [Updated]
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Policy, Space Transportation, Technology on Jul 30th, 2009
Or at least that’s how Stephen Flemming put it on Twitter regarding Jeff Greason’s presentation at the Augustine Committee meeting today in Florida. To be fair, the rest of the subgroup also did an amazing job, especially Chris Chyba’s wrapup near the the end, where he made the case forcefully that becoming a spacefaring civilization [...]