To encourage commercial cargo runs, NASA has hired SpaceX and a second company, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to fly cargo to the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 countries, which orbits about 240 miles above Earth.
A successful test flight by SpaceX — as well as a similar run by Orbital scheduled for next year — would begin restoring U.S. access to the station, which is expected to remain operational until at least 2020.
As others have pointed out, space policy is the one area where the Obama administration seems to be getting things more or less right – and that’s all the more amazing for it involving commercial endeavors. (It’s early, of course – if and when these commercial startups hit their stride, that will be when the federal government starts taxing and regulating them out of business like every other successful industry.)
Glenn Reynolds posts a bit about 2005 YU55, a 1300ft asteroid scheduled to pass within the orbital radius of the Moon this coming November. Observes Reynolds in response to a reader comment about “doing something”:
Yes, “Spacewatch” is about noticing this kind of thing. Doing something about it is someone else’s problem, alas. Maybe once the Falcon Heavy is flying . . .
Hmm… Falcon Heavy…with a LEO payload of 120,000lbs, and a core diameter of 3.66m and a fairing diameter of 5.2m.
It’s pretty amazing what you can do (and how rapidly you can do it) when you’re not bogged down by ever-shifting customer desirements, stifling “best practices”, departmental fiefdoms, and rocket scientist Senators:
There were probably more reasons for the cancellation than were publicly admitted to than just the engine difficulties. But if that’s all there was, it’s interesting to note (as others have) that SpaceX’s original Merlin-1 engine is in the same thrust class as Fastrac. And Merlin-1 has actually flown.
Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the Obama administration’s space policy tends to the commercial. Or that Obama and Musk seem to be pals.
I actually don’t expect X-34 to fly (if they haven’t been stored properly for the past ten years, the refurbishment costs will probably be uneconomical). But I sure would like to be pleasantly surprised.
It’s amusing, though, that a company founded by a dot-com millionaire can’t seem to get a webcast video to work properly. But I suppose there were other, more important concerns this morning.
Oddly enough, the launch was originally scheduled (the aborted attempt) at the same time as the biweekly all-hands teleconference with the LM Orion management team — otherwise known as the “everything is fine, don’t panic” meeting. I missed the first part of the meeting, but the portion I sat in on was dominated by voices sounding like relatives of Milton from “Office Space”, asking tediously detailed and irritatingly petulant questions about layoff notices, benefit rollovers, job transfers and other HR matters “for when the time comes”. A very strange juxtaposition.
One of the good things about the Falcon 9 success is that it will help still some of the critical voices speaking out against commercial crew and cargo, and newspace in general. Or if not still them, at least force them to find something else to complain about regarding newspace, much as successful missile defense intercepts forced critics who claimed it was physically impossible to pull off an intercept to find some other rationalization for their opposition. Had the launch failed, it would have been much more difficult to establish credibility for newspace — with this success, however, the industry can probably tolerate a few less than successful follow-on launches before losing the credibility established by SpaceX.
… If no USG option to deliver cargo and crew to LEO is to be developed following the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the U.S. risks the failure to sustain and utilize a unique facility with a sunk cost of $55 billion on the U.S. side, and nearly $20 billion of international partner investment in addition.Why is Dr. Griffin so concerned about the ISS when he got rid of most of the ISS science and non-assembly engineering?
Why is he so concerned about the ISS when his exploration plan requires the ISS to be abandoned in 2016? If the commercial COTS cargo services do not get built, Griffin’s plan already leaves us with no ability to get cargo and crew to the ISS until 2017-2019, after the ISS is abandoned! Even if the ISS is kept until 2020, and funding appears out of the blue to both support ISS and develop Ares I/Orion at a “brisk” pace, having Ares I/Orion in, say, 2018 does not make that much a difference. Plus, let’s be clear: keeping that schedule is highly unlikely given the funding needs of the ISS.
The notion of abandoning the ISS just five years after completing it has been getting a lot of attention lately, but I have to wonder, what does “abandon” really mean? If the international partners wanted to continue funding and servicing and using it for…umm…whatever ISS is actually used for beyond being a self-licking lollipop, would NASA permit it?
More interestingly, if NASA decides to terminate its own involvement with ISS, and a private company wants to make use of the station for space tourism or other commercial purposes, would NASA stand in the way? Or would it mulishly insist on deorbiting the station despite (or to spite) the offer of commercial utilization? After the fiasco with Mir, it’s a valid question.
For the first time in twelve years of working various manned space programs, I finally made my first business trip to KSC last week.
The second-best part? Having extra time after meetings were over and a suitable facility pass to drive around to the various facilities and get lots of pictures.
The best part? Getting up-close to all three orbiters while all three are still in operational condition.
I’ll post a sampling here as soon as I get the pictures sorted and uploaded to Flickr, including shots of SpaceX’s pad, Ares-1X, and a couple of before/after comparisons with my grandparents’ slides from their visit to KSC in 1965.
Hmm…Kimbal Musk (brother of Elon and commenter on SpaceX launches) is a board member of Progress Now Action, one of the billionaire-funded political action groups at the core of the “Colorado Model” for “progressive” takeovers of red states:
A young girl sets out to prove herself by resolving a long-forgotten mystery. But when she gets close to the truth, what she thought was a harmless adventure becomes a threat to the future of the independent commercial settlements on Mars.
