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No Country for Young Men

Richard Fernandez hits on something that bothers me about the mindset of the country: No Country for Young Men

The big giveaway is we as a civilization don’t want to go to the planets any more, because the old don’t want to go anywhere. Imagine clambering into spaceships! The very idea gives us the shivers. […]

Deferred Dreams of Mars

A not particularly revelatory look at NASA’s ever-deferred humans-to-Mars efforts: The Deferred Dreams of Mars

Still worth a read, even if it is mostly a recitation of the conventional wisdom on the topic – not to be harsh on Brian Bergstein, it’s just that there’s nothing really new in what he has written. Apart from […]

About That Washington Examiner Hit-Piece on SpaceX…

Rand Simberg thoroughly dismantles it: An Examiner Hit Piece on SpaceX

No quotes, because his response is wedded to excerpts from the original and is best read in full (i.e.: Read the Whole Thing™).

As I mentioned on Twitter (and then didn’t have time to follow up on myself), I heard some scuttlebutt about this […]

Yet Another Russian Space Plan

This time, it’s building a permanent presence on the Moon.

Just add money.

SpaceX Dragon Docks to ISS

Cool. Let’s hope this is just the first of many – SpaceX’s Dragon craft makes historic hookup with space station:

Once the fix was made, Dragon returned to the 30-meter checkpoint and moved in for the final approach. When the craft reached a distance of 10 meters (33 feet), NASA astronaut Don Pettit used the […]

SpaceX Gets Approval for ISS Flight

Good news – NASA clears SpaceX for trial run to space station:

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 […]

Bigelow Still in the Game, Backs Commercial Crew

Bigelow supports the new commercial-focused NASA manned-space policy. Not surprisingly, because it also helps their own business model — which, I think, is the best part of the new policy. Flights to ISS might pay the bills, but it’s the expansion into new areas of business independent of NASA that will make commercial crew services […]

Not Much Opportunity for Shuttle Extension

I’m at Michoud this week on business, and had the opportunity to visit the factory today for the first time in nearly a year.

What a change ten months can make.

While last year, the dome tooling was still mostly in place (a few of the mechanical assembly pedestals had been pulled up), most of […]

Yet More Hayek on NASA

One of the nice things of having few other temptations over the holidays (and spending a lot of time in airports and airplanes) was that there was time to read a few more chapters of Hayek’s Constitution of Freedom, a project I’ve been working on in fits and starts since March 2003.

This passage on […]

Purple Press

Reading excerpts from the time-warped Chinese press release about the launch of Shenzhou 7, I was reminded of the strange similarity between their official propaganda and – of all things – bodice-ripper romance novels:

After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring […]

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