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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in ITAR, Politics, Space Policy on Feb 16th, 2011
I know I’ve written about this topic before, but I think it’s worth bringing it up again. When you combine the stupidity of ITAR as it exists with the difficulty of getting even a green-card for your typical foreign engineering student studying in the US, you get a particularly pathetic situation. While they’re in school, [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in NASA, Space Policy on Aug 25th, 2010
I know I shouldn’t feed the troll, but Mark Whittington is sometimes amusing. On his blog, he quoted a commenter to NASAWatch: A commenter named Robert B. has a great answer: Congress doesn’t trust NASA’s administrators to follow the will of Congress. The admins have proven that they will use the letter of the law [...]
Read Full Post »
They misnamed the bill though. Should’ve been called “Found a Pork Program (un)Worthy of its Host Nation”. I find it amusing that so many of the opponents of Obama’s proposed space plan are so happy with this, when it doesn’t actually resolve most of the things they said were wrong with his policy. To whit: [...]
Read Full Post »
I was going to write another article about the administration’s new NASA plan, but while catching up on email and articles from while I was in Oregon, I see that “Rusty” Schweickart already said what I wanted to. And he put it better than I would’ve (emphasis mine): Our current situation is akin to being [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in NASA, Politics, Snark, Space Policy on Apr 16th, 2010
I know I shouldn’t take anything Mark Whittington writes seriously, but I want to write about a stupid meme that smarter people than Mark have also been bandying about–that somehow Obama’s budget proposal would surrender our leadership in space to the Russians and Chinese. I’m going to dignify this silliness with an attempt at a [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »