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NASA has their own inflation rate used for budgeting long-term projects, and it trends much higher than the US national inflation rate. The reason is obvious when you think about it: back in the 1950s, many common commercial products were handmade, with domestic labour, but are now mass-produced with cheap overseas labor and advanced labor-saving technologies (depending on the type of product). But just like in the 1950s, NASA still builds things largely by hand, generally in small numbers, and with a highly skilled domestic workforce.

The reason is obvious: they used their inflation rate as a key part of computing the costing of the next iteration of contracts. This created a feedback which greatly increased the cost of contracts and the resulting computed inflation rate over time.

This has led to wildly overpriced contracts. For example, a NASA group computed (see discussion of the "appendix") the traditional costing for a hypothetical NASA contract which would have built the Falcon 9 (including development of the Falcon I and three rocket engine designs). They arrived at a figure of $4.0 billion (this is for the bid, we're not even to cost overruns that occur after a contract is awarded). The actual SpaceX development cost as vetted by a NASA audit? $390 million.

My take at this time is that NASA's inflation index (the New Start Inflation Index is unintentionally pure fiction as part of a feedback dynamic that has greatly increased the cost of NASA activities.

Another huge institutional bias towards project failure is the ridiculously high costing algorithms for government contracts. For example, NASA did a study (see discussion of the "final appendix") of SpaceX's development of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets. Basically, for around $400 million SpaceX developed those rockets - NASA audited their books to verify that figure. Now, if NASA were to issue a cost plus contract to build that rocket, they would have used their normal costing algorithm. That yields an initial cost of $4b billion (we're not even to the stage where the cost gets inflated by a factor of two due to cost overruns). They had a second algorithm (which as I understand it, is not yet in use) which would have resulted in a lower costing of $1.7 billion.

Notice how the actual costs are way, way lower than the initial contract costing? Then toss in the cost overruns and you have a system that is badly out of whack with the actual costs and value of the desired outcome.

This is in large part why I believe that by having the US federal government do something, you lose an order of magnitude in effectiveness of the money spent.

"Collapse" means suddenly crumble, cease to exist.

Well, it means the former not the latter. A collapsed building is still a building.

Can you really imagine the ecological / economical limits described here to eliminate every sort of organized production on Earth?

It doesn't have to eliminate every bit of production. We had a pretty substantial mess just from a recent real estate crisis.

And if you look at the historical examples given in the story, they didn't actually collapse suddenly. The scenario given is that things got progressively worse with the people in charge not doing enough or often making things worse.

For example, the Roman empire was in deep trouble in the third century. One of its effects was to severely damage various bits of infrastructure both physical and legal. For example, the trade network that the Romans had set up never became as safe as it had been. Also, the mess had created considerable inflation and the previously mentioned shift to concentration of wealth to large land owners.

They also overlook the adaptability of demand when the supply shortens, and the number of disruptive technologies appearing every day, rendering moot any such "if the trend continues" analysis.

The problem here is that the markets and other infrastructure which enables transactions between demand and supply is what can fail.

For example, I've heard it predicted that once Obamacare gets fully implemented it'll stop future drug development over our lifetimes. I guess the idea is that somehow all drug development throughout the world only happens in the US due to companies or something. Obviously, the prediction is a bit overwrought, but that sort of thing is what leads to long term disruptions between supply and demand.

So, you think your projections are better, or more informed?

More informed? Perhaps not, but definitely better. From that link (to a March 2010 story) I wrote the following:

What's really ugly about this is that the CBO is on Obama's side (via Democrat control of Congress). It's likely that the CBO has had to make a number of rosy assumptions (like accepting the administration's claim that war costs will drop to $50 billion per year over the long term) that lessen the estimated size of the deficits.

Googling around it appears that the cost of funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is just shy of $100 billion.

Also, compare the CBO's 2010 projection to its 2009 projection. The deficits for FY 2010 and 2011 have increased substantially. That isn't GWB's fault.

At this point, I'm betting that we won't see an Obama budget with a deficit below a trillion dollars and the relatively low figures for 2012-2015 will turn out to be completely unrealistic without some serious budget cutting or an extremely vigorous economy.

The 2012-2013 fiscal year didn't look so bad with a deficit about $140 billion greater than projections, but I was right on the previous two fiscal years. We'll see about the next two years.

For remarks, I don't see significant spending reductions or tax increases for the next couple of years. In addition, I think increased war spending (both Iraq and Afghanistan are getting a bit worse at this point) and Obamacare (the considerable health insurance subsidy and revenue reduction due to turmoil from the employer mandate) will load the deficit.

Obamacare is a big uncertainty for me at the moment. Currently, I believe it will fail hard, but over what time frame remains to be seen. I'm leaning towards 10 years before the problems get bad enough that the law is completely changed (not necessarily in a good way) rather than just incrementally fixed.

You miss the point of my reference to things like SpaceX. They got to orbit fairly cheaply because 95% of the work was done already and could simply be applied. Sunk cost indeed, but the point is if you measured the TOTAL cost of going to orbit reliably and relatively cheaply by what SpaceX spent then you would underestimate the total investmeny by a factor of 20 (at least, I'm pulling that number, it is probably much higher). Thus any argument that by analogy if NASA needs $1 trillion to go to Mars that SpaceX needs only say $100 billion to do the same thing is fatally flawed because it is not an analogous situation (IE NASA has been to orbit already, but not to Mars). As for sending men to Mars there are no sunk costs, 95% or more of the cost required is ahead of us, so it makes perfectly good sense to consider whether we should spend those funds.

It's worth noting here that a NASA group got access to SpaceX financial numbers and estimated that SpaceX developed the Falcon 1 and 9, three engine designs, and half a dozen launches on about ten times less than NASA would have contracted the bid for.

So instead of a factor of 20 or whatever, divide that by ten.

My opinion is that we can drop two orders of magnitude off your cost estimate for a Mars mission, if a) we don't use a national space program, and b) we don't have "international cooperation". Each of those factors adds a zero to the cost of doing things. Ten billion dollars is still a bit too much for a single manned mission to Mars so I think we'll have to wait till it's a bit cheaper than that.

"NASA has shown that it isn't even remotely interested in doing cheap space flight" because the powers at be have decided to privatize that aspect of the process.

Back in 1984, I might add. And it's proven to be a good idea since.

My point was given X launch vehicle specs who can produce a system to safely deliver hardware to space for Y amount of dollars. You will see no price improvement from commercial space flight companies until A) you see multiple companies doing it regularly and competing for a wide customer base. B) There is surplus payload capacity available on most vehicles entering orbit. As of now the only thing accomplished was subcontracting out for profit something once handled in house by NASA while also basically subsidizing space x to allow them to develop the hardware and techniques on the tax payers dollar.

Point A) is wrong. There are three US companies with orbital launch capabilities and four or five foreign commercial space launch organizations as well. The competition and the market is there, even if it's not as vigorous and large as we would like.

And point B) is irrelevant. It is rare that a payload exactly fills a vehicle, and there's all sorts of tricks for what to do with that wasted space and mass, including just ballast and secondary payloads. But such issues are irrelevant to whether or not NASA should be in the launch business. One merely needs to look at the entire history of NASA to see that it has never launched a cheap vehicle. Never since its birth in 1957!

SpaceX has in the span of less than ten years and less than half a billion dollars achieved things that would take NASA, under tradition government costing methods, about ten times as much to do (that link discusses a NASA study which apparently got a deep look at what SpaceX actually spent on developing three rocket engines, Falcon 1 and 9 rockets, and about half a dozen launch attempts).

To summarize that last sentence (since there is a lot there), SpaceX has already demonstrated that it can develop rockets for an order of magnitude less than NASA can. This already happened. That is why I claimed in my previous post that you are already being proven wrong bit by bit.

With Mann being a public figure, it will certainly be an uphill battle for him to require anything from Simberg or Styne. 1st amendment protections of freedom of speech may be enough to protect them from even bothering to disclose anything at all, particularly if all they are stating is personal opinion.

Furthermore, you are presuming that there is some kind of connection to the energy industry when you have absolutely no idea what they do and who they are. Mark Steyn is a conservative commentator who has occasionally filled in for Rush Limbaugh as a guest host on Limbaugh's show, and writes his own blog as well as participates in on-line discussions of various kinds.

Rand Simberg is really more along the same line as Mark Steyn and Rush Limbaugh as he has been making generally conservative POV commentary with his blog, Transterrestrial Musings. It has become increasingly political although much of his earlier commentary had little to do with politics but rather with space policy and following things like the Ansari X-Prize or talking about NASA. He used to work for Rockwell International and did some engineering work on the Space Shuttle, as well as other similar kinds of projects. Climate science and discussions are just a very minor part of his commentary, but he certainly has been vocal about the issues surrounding climate science. At best, you can call him a skeptic. Rand Simberg has written quite a bit in magazines like Popular Science or Wired recently, and has pretty much become a full time freelance writer.

For those two, I think you would be very hard pressed to see them taking any money from the energy industry, except for perhaps some modest advertising revenue for their websites that is not aimed specifically at influencing their opinions. Neither one is really anything more than spouting off what other conservative political pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck have been saying for years as well. They are perhaps a little more vulnerable because they are not as widely published as those major pundits and don't have nearly so much money, but that doesn't change who they are. It certainly is disingenuous to claim that there is a connection of these guys to "big oil" or other "energy producing companies" without any sort of evidence to back up the assertion.

Under methodology #1, the cost model predicted that the Falcon 9 would cost $4.0 billion based on a traditional approach. Under methodology #2, NAFCOM predicted $1.7 billion when the inputs were adjusted to a more commercial development approach. Thus, the predicted the cost to develop the Falcon 9 if done by NASA would have been between $1.7 billion and $4.0 billion.

SpaceX has publicly indicated that the development cost for Falcon 9 launch vehicle was approximately $300 million. Additionally, approximately $90 million was spent developing the Falcon 1 launch vehicle which did contribute to some extent to the Falcon 9, for a total of $390 million. NASA has verified these costs.

So by "traditional methodology," it was roughly ten times more costly and even by a more refined approach, it was more than a factor of 4 more expensive. And this ignores any inflation in program costs.

Well, we could have had the Ares V, which would have lifted 200 tons to LEO, but Obama canceled it. Of course, since Obama is the anointed one, we all have to pretend this is a good thing and spout rhetoric like, "Ares was expensive"

The Ares V was a bait-and-switch. You spend the big bucks for the Ares V and you get... the Ares I. There were numerous deep problems with the program, but this was one of the biggest. You didn't actually get development towards an Ares V until many years into development.

Second, the Ares I is a redundant rocket (which duplicates the Delta IV Heavy and near future Atlas V Heavy). This was the reason I opposed the Ares program almost from the day it was announced. NASA has a terrible record (mainly from the 70s through 90s) of killing competition when it's allowed to interfere or compete with commercial companies. It would be extremely unhealthy to allow NASA to compete with the 20-25 ton launch vehicles that we currently have. IMHO, the first competitive victim was the separate Delta and Atlas launch groups which were merged into the United Launch Alliance (ULA) at the end of 2006. If NASA had announced it were aggressively using the Delta IV and Atlas V for manned missions, then it is my belief that this merger wouldn't have occurred. As a final remark on this point, supposed through the beginning of 2010, NASA spent $9 billion on the Constellation program. That money would have been enough to pay for roughly 20 Delta IV Heavy launches. Of course, NASA would have needed to spend money on a crew vehicle and "man-rating" the Delta IV Heavy (my understanding is that they'd be about a billion dollars each to do), but they could have been a hell of a lot further along in a real space program, if they had chosen the Delta IV Heavy as the manned vehicle. The Atlas V Heavy was that far off either. They probably could have had two manned vehicles in the Ares I range by now for the money spent on Constellation development.

Third, the choice of the ATK (a brand of Alliant Techsystems) solid rocket motor (SRM) for the first stage led to numerous very serious engineering problems. First, there was the problem of thrust oscillation. The rocket had an oscillation mode close to the frequency of eddies in the rocket chamber in the SRM. The Shuttle also had to worry about this mode, but it had a clever mechanism (the way the solid rocket boosters were attached to the rest of the Shuttle "stack") that damped those vibrations. The Ares I couldn't use that mechanism because the SRM was in line with the rest of the rocket rather than attached tenuously on the side. The program was fixable, but only by adding mass to the rocket and cutting into the performance of the overall system.

There was also the problem of no room to expand. The first stage was made as large as it possibly could. There was no way to make it longer or wider (the length was structurally as far as they could push it, the width was limited by how wide the booster could be and still squeeze through a particular train tunnel). These two issues, plus the inability to develop a cheap, disposable Space Shuttle main engine (SSME) meant that the rocket was over successive revisions experiencing a gradual decline in designed performance. This led to numerous redesigns of the Orion capsule. A big culprit of these redesigns was bad management. The Apollo program also had problems with people not meeting their specifications. They put it together seamlessly because the various managers and designers (particularly, Wernher von Braun and the Marshal Space Flight Center team) anticipated these problems and had the freedom to overengineer their systems. This chapter describes a key choice:

Rosen apparently took the lead in pressing for the fifth engine, consistent with his obstinate push for a "big rocket." The MSFC contingent during the meetings included Wi

Personally, although it takes a lot of time, I like to review my compiler's source before it compiles a program, including that of the source of the compiler compiling the compiler from source. In the post 9/11 world, I believe that inspecting the Lex and YACC source is the only way that we can prevent al-Qaida from constructing compiler-compilers that will be free of textual images of the prophet Muhammad. In the spirit of the World Wide Web, I will provide you with the threat as a link, and leave you to decide whether this is really silly paranoia

the thing im really excited about is if spacex can get to the point where reusing the first stage merely involves fishing it out of the atlantic after it parachutes down, putting it back on the launch pad, and fuelling it back up.

I was really impressed by this bit of the teleconference notes linked in the summary, which shows just how dedicated Elon Musk is about reusability:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=27574

I asked him if they knew yet why the first stage didn't survive entry, or if they would have to wait for another flight to get better data (because they didn't get the microwave imaging data they wanted). He said that they still didn't know, and might not figure it out until they try again. I followed up, asking if he could conceive of a time that they might just give up on it, and pull the recovery systems out to give them more payload. I was surprised at the vehemence of his answer (paraphrasing): "We will never give up! Never! Reusability is one of the most important goals. If we become the biggest launch company in the world, making money hand over fist, but we're still not reusable, I will consider us to have failed." I told him that I was very gratified to hear that, because I like reusability.

The future of space, at least in the near term, doesn't look so great for astronauts.

If you haven't seen it already, I'd definitely suggest reading through this piece by aerospace engineer Rand Simberg (of transterrestrial.com) over at the NRO, titled, "Obama's Space Program: More Conservative than Bush's -- America has never had a space policy more visionary or more friendly to private enterprise." Of course, the National Review has plenty of issues, but the piece itself is quite well-written and a strong defense of the new plan for NASA:

http://article.nationalreview.com/432073/obamas-space-program-more-conservative-than-bushs/rand-simberg

The new plan gives us redundant capabilities to get people to orbit, and competition among the multiple providers will drive down prices not just for NASA but for everyone, including those who want to use Bob Bigelow's orbital facilities for business or pleasure. It will develop, finally, the technologies needed to reduce the costs of going beyond Earth orbit as well. It will open up space not just for NASA astronauts but for all, Americans and others, to seek their own dreams there. It may be intrinsically unconservative to have a federal human-spaceflight program in the first place, but politics would seem to dictate that it's going to continue. If so, don't we want to see that money spent on a more effective, more conservative, and fundamentally American approach to opening up space? If so, then Obama's space program beats the previous one, which was based on the anachronistic Apollo model.

The new policy isn't perfect. I would have preferred that the president not be so openly dismissive of the moon. "Been there, done that" is not a sound basis for selection of goals. Besides, we barely scratched the surface and haven't yet done a proper assessment of the possibilities of using its resources for further reductions in transportation costs (something that the VSE got right -- unfortunately, the technology was starved by Mike Griffin's Ares overruns). But that doesn't matter right now. If we can finally get on with the business of letting private industry take on the (literally) mundane task of getting people only 200 miles above and let NASA focus on new technologies, there is plenty of time over the next few years to decide exactly where to go from there -- and Barack Obama will not be involved in that decision. The important thing is that we had to euthanize NASA's expensive, unneeded new rockets and move on to the more critical development of opening up space. We're now on a path to do so, assuming that Obama's plan survives Congress.

Many don't trust President Obama to execute this policy along these lines. Neither do I, necessarily. But I'd rather have good policy poorly executed than poor policy well executed. The execution can always be improved later. Do I believe that Obama really cares as much about human spaceflight as he said in his speech at the Cape? No, and I think that's a good thing. I think he sees NASA as a problem he inherited from George W. Bush, and in that, he is right for once. He assigned to the problem people who do care about getting humans into space and, like Bush, he now wants to move on to other matters. Really, we should fear the day he gets interested in spaceflight; that will be the day that private enterprise is no longer trusted to conduct it. Let's hope that day never comes. In the meantime, remember that when government does the right thing, it doesn't matter whether it's done for the wrong reason. Whatever the motivations behind it, this is a much more visionary space policy than we've ever had before.

I propose that the primary goal be to learn[1] about space colonization, and a perm moon-base is a good place to start. They would be space pioneers, and everyone knows pioneers risk arrows in their backs. This is a role Americans can relate to and would accept risk for because our ancestors faced the same situation. (Even "Native Americans" made a risky migration out of Asia. There are no true "Native Americans".)

I liked what the author of the article had to say about building an Arlington-like space cemetery to emphasize this. Here's a more elaborate version of that from the same author from this piece (which I strongly suggest reading) on making spaceflight more accessible to the rest of us:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=21248

There is no such thing as safe. Despite the fantasies of Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) types at NASA, âoesafeâ and âoeunsafeâ are not binary conditions. There is no ultimate safety, this side of the grave. All we can do is to make things as safe as reasonable, and that includes reasonable expense. NASA has spent untold billions in an attempt to make things âoesafeâ over the decades, and they killed seventeen astronauts. Maybe they could have spent a lot less money, and perhaps killed a few more astronauts, but made a lot more progress. Burt Rutan said a few years ago that if weâ(TM)re not killing people, weâ(TM)re not pushing hard enough. If our attitude toward the space frontier is that we must strive to never ever lose anyone, it will remain closed. If our ancestors who opened the west, or who came from Europe, had had such an attitude, we would still be over there, and there would have been no California space industry to get us to the moon forty years ago. It has never been âoesafeâ to open a frontier, and this frontier is the harshest one that weâ(TM)ve ever faced, but fortunately, we have sufficiently advanced technology to allow us to do it anyway, and probably with much less loss of life than any previous one. But people die every day doing a lot less worthwhile things than opening a frontier.

Before Mercury, the test pilots who flew in that program used to attend funerals of their colleagues, who had made smoking craters in the desert, on a frequent basis. But no one else knew about them, or cared much. They were just doing their jobâ"developing the technologies and weapons that we needed to win an existential war. When they got out of their test aircraft and climbed into a Mercury capsule, they knew it was risky, but it was a lot less so than their previous job.

A frequent commenter on my blog has suggested that to avoid future national sob parties, such as occurred after Challenger and Columbia, we should set aside a special cemetery like Arlington, in a well-publicized ceremony, and declare that this was where all those who would lose their lives in our planned opening of the solar system would be laid to rest. And to make it big, just to make the point. There is in fact an astronaut memorial mirror at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center, with the names of those lost so far, and plenty of squares for more. A visionary president would point that out with the announcement of the new policy.

SpaceX is going to fly people on its Dragon, and itâ(TM)s going to make it as safe as it can afford to and still have a market for it, but I doubt that they will âoehuman rateâ it, and I see no need for ULA to do so with its launcher, either. No one, after all, âoehuman ratesâ an airplane. What ULA needs to do is to modify the design to make them reasonably safe, and contra the recent Aerospace Corporation report Iâ(TM)m confident that they can do that for a lot less than thirty-five billion dollars and in less than seven years, which is a pretty low bar to beat Ares I. If

There is a process called "man-rating" which means that you certify a particular launch vehicle to be able to carry a capsule containing people. The process is sort of like ISO9000 or whatever.

Aerospace engineer Rand Simberg's post on man-rating is worth a read. I don't think man-rating is what you (or most people) think it is.

Bottom line: you might have to replace or redesign parts of the rocket in order to make it man-rated. And what I was told is that it might actually be more expensive to man-rate a Delta IV heavy, than to simply design a man-rated rocket like Ares from the ground up.

The Ares I currently has a projected cost of $35 billion (and rising). There's absolutely no way it would cost that much to reliably transport humans on a Delta IV. On top of that, the Ares I has needed exemptions on many of the safety requirements which it wasn't able to meet.

According to this presentation made to the Augustine commission, building a new pad and upgrading the Delta IV Heavy to transport Orion would cost around $1.3 billion total with recurring costs of $300 million a launch. Transporting a manned capsule on a Atlas V or SpaceX Falcon 9 would have a fixed cost of around half a billion with recurring costs ~$130 million.

With numbers like that, there's absolutely no reason to go with the Ares I, especially considering how many safety concerns it has. Heck, you could fund -all- of the alternatives, launch several unmanned payloads, and pay for manned trips on whichever one performs most reliably, and it would -still- cost an order of magnitude less than the Ares I. If there's worries that the other launch vehicles might experience cost inflation, just use a fixed-price contract with milestone-based payments, like has been done with COTS.

It takes roughly an order of magnitude more delta-V to get to a stable orbit than to just "get into space" like SpaceShip1 did.

I ran the calculation some time ago. SpaceShipOne had roughly a quarter (for motor alone) to a third (for motor and launch from vehicle traveling almost at the speed of sound) of the necessary delta v. The final speed at the peak is only part of it. You also needed delta v to reach that height and some delta v was lost due to gravity losses.

That's why the idea of using a reusable vehicle (let alone a MAN RATED reusable vehicle) just to launch cargo is about as stupid as using a Lamborghini to move cattle - IMHO NASA should have built 2 systems: a man-rated shuttle just for moving people and a disposable cargo vehicle that shared many of the components of the shuttle to move freight - yes, you might have been "throwing away" big chunks of your cargo vehicle every launch, but the cost (in terms of "weight-that-isn't-cargo" as well as in terms of money) of re-usability vs. the cost of throwing it away is such that throwing it away makes more sense. I don't try to "re-use" snot-filled facial tissues as it doesn't make fiscal sense - same thing for ships.

While this has a lot of appeal, it's worth remembering that a lot of payloads are higher value and more delicate than human passengers. What that means is that "man-rating" just isn't that important. A cargo vehicle which handles expensive payloads will have most man-rating requirements (at least the ones that make sense). Even the abort modes traditionally found with manned vehicles could be used to save a $5 billion satellite.

Rand Simberg asks why express it in terms of percentage of GDP rather than in terms of percentage of federal budget?. The budget is something that the president has some control over...

While I personally think space-based solar power is quite cool, unfortunately I'm not so sure the numbers quite work out for any time in the near future. My suspicion is that this announcement is primarily for PR reasons, and PG&E has no plans of actually following through. Some analysis from aerospace engineer (and space advocate) Rand Simberg:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=18069

I just canâ(TM)t see how. Unless there are going to be many satellites, the system has to be in GEO to provide baseload power to any given region on earth. They talk about putting up a 200 MW system with âoefour or fiveâ âoeheavy liftâ launches (where this is apparently defined as 25 tons).

Suppose the conversion efficiency of the cells is a generous 30%, the DC-MW conversion is 90%, the transmission efficiency is 90% and the MW-AC conversion efficiency is 90% (generous numbers all, I think). That gives an overall efficiency of 22% from sunlight to the grid. The solar constant in space is 1.4kW/m2, so that means you need 650,000 square meters of panels to deliver 200 MW to the grid. Suppose you can build the cells (including necessary structure to maintain stiffness) for half a kilo per square meter. That means that just for the solar panels alone, you have a payload of 325 metric tons. Generously assuming that their payload of 25 tons is to GEO (if itâ(TM)s to LEO, itâ(TM)s probably less than ten tons in GEO), that would require over a dozen launches for the solar panels alone.

That doesnâ(TM)t include the mass of the conversion electronics, basic satellite housekeeping systems (attitude control, etc.) and the transmitting antenna, which has to be huge to get that much power that distance at a safe power density.

So even ignoring the other issues (e.g. regulatory, safety studies, etc.) that Clark mentions, I think this is completely bogus until I see their numbers. And probably even then.

This quote from a piece by aerospace engineer Rand Simberg from a couple years ago lays out the issue well, I think:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=15913

Which really gets to the point of the matter. Our national reaction to the loss of a shuttle crew, viewed by the proverbial anthropologistâ(TM)s Martian (or perhaps better yet, a Vulcan), would seem irrational. After all, we risk, and lose, people in all kinds of endeavors, every day. We send soldiers out to brave IEDs and RPGs in Iraq. We watch firefighters go into burning buildings. Even in more mundane, relatively safe activities, people die â" in mines, in construction, in commercial fishing. Why is it that we get so upset when we lose astronauts, who are ostensibly exploring the final frontier, arguably as dangerous a job as they come? One Internet wag has noted that, âoe...to judge by the fuss that gets made when a few of them die, astronauts clearly are priceless national assets â" exactly the sort of people you should not be risking in an experimental-class vehicle.â

What upset people so much about the deaths in Columbia, I think, was not that they died, but that they died in such a seemingly trivial yet expensive pursuit. They werenâ(TM)t exploring the universeâ"they were boring a multi-hundred-thousand-mile-long hole in the vacuum a couple hundred miles above the planet, with childrenâ(TM)s science-fair experiments. We were upset because space isnâ(TM)t important, and we considered the astronautsâ(TM) lives more important than the mission. If they had been exploring another hostile, alien planet, and died, we would have been saddened, but not shocked â" it happens in the movies all the time. If they had been on a mission to divert an asteroid, preventing it from hitting the planet (a la the movie Armageddon, albeit with more correspondence to the reality of physics), we would have mourned, but also been inured to their loss as true national heroes in the service of their country (and planet). It would be recognized that what they were doing was of national importance, just as is the job of every soldier and Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What those who criticize Dr. Griffinâ(TM)s decision to move forward with the launch are implicitly saying is that the astronautsâ(TM) lives, and the vehicle, arenâ(TM)t worth the mission, and that they have, in fact, infinite value relative to it. Every month that we delay the return to flight costs hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, with an army of shuttle technicians sitting around, their skills getting rusty (which brings its own risks). Moreover, no matter how much more time and money is spent in trying to reduce the risk, âoesafeâ will always be a relative, not an absolute term. If completing the station, if finishing this particular mission, is worth anything, itâ(TM)s worth doing sooner, rather than later, so we can sooner free up the resources for more adventurous activities that are (or at least should be) perceived as being worth the risk of life. Paul Dietz, a frequent commenter to my blog, has noted that if we really wanted to indicate national seriousness about opening up the space frontier, we would, starting right now, with great fanfare, set up a dedicated national cemetery for those who would be expected to lose their lives in that long-term endeavor, and provide it with lots of acreage.

Those who fear to risk the lives of willing, volunteer astronauts are really saying that there is nothing to be done in space that is worth the risk. This is, of course, a symptom of the fact that even with the announcement of the presidentâ(TM)s new policy two and a half years ago, we still have never really had a national debate, or decided what weâ(TM)re trying to accomplish on the high frontier. Until we do, decisions will continue to be driven by pork, politics, and emotion that have little to do with actual

I hope it doesn't apply to Steven Chu, but another thing to keep in mind is that as scientists and engineers we often have a tendency to have favored pet projects, which we'll often obsess over and pound away at even after it's apparent that the project is a poor use of resources. For a recent big example, there's NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who had designed the Ares rocket pet project before he became head of NASA. He's now pouring tons of NASA resources into the project, killing off the good science and technology projects which had previously had those resources. Even though it's now looking the like the Ares is an inherently bad design, instead of admitting it he's instead commanding his subordinates to do everything they can to defend his project from members of Obama's transition team who think Ares resources may be better used on other NASA projects.

Again, hopefully David Chu will turn out better than Griffin, but we'll have to be watchful.

The Ares V is certainly cool from a "bigger, shinier" perspective, but not so good from the perspective of wanting to reduce our immense launch costs to something even marginally more manageable. A big part of the (somewhat shoddy) reasoning for going with a shuttle-derived system was that it would be able to make use of currently-existing facilities and infrastructure. It's now looking like the Ares V is getting to be too large to use those facilities, so NASA will have to revamp its facilities, raising the cost even more.

In general, it was pretty peculiar of NASA to not devise a launch system which would take advantage of what we've learned (the hard way) from the ISS and use in-orbit assembly, which would've allowed NASA to use the already-existing launchers available from the private sector. Instead, NASA decided to compete against the private sector and create a new family of Ares boosters, basically from scratch.

Here's some interesting commentary from a couple of knowledgeable folks within the aerospace industry:

http://chairforceengineer.blogspot.com/2008/06/directly-seeing-light.html

In a recent post, I discussed the weight issues associated with Ares V (probably to be renamed Ares VI if the extra RS-68 engine is slipped in.) The rocket is growing to address performance shortfalls, but it has become too heavy for the existing crawlers, too heavy for the existing launch pad, and too heavy for the hard stand on which the mobile launcher sits. I suggested that NASA should have initially determined weight and size limits on their rocket, based on the existing infrastructure, and limited the weight and size of Ares V to fit within those requirements. If that rocket were insufficient to meet the lift requirements for Project Constellation, use two heavy-lifters instead of one heavy-lifter and one crew launcher.

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/2008/03/out_takes.html

As noted, the vehicle has come a long way from the originally advertised "Shuttle-derived" system that was supposed to save us so much money and time, and utilize the existing Shuttle infrastructure (though the latter was always a politically-induced pork-driven bug, not a feature, if one wanted to actually lower launch costs). It (like Ares I) is now essentially a new vehicle, including components, though if Ares I ever comes to fruition, Ares V will probably be at least in part derived from it. ...

So, they're going to launch the Orion, with crew, on an Ares I, and hope that they can get a successful Ares V mission off within four days, because they can't afford the duration. They build this mondo grosso launch vehicle to avoid having to do multiple launches, and yet, they not only have dual launch, but it's one on a tight window. And if they can't get the launch off on time, the lunar mission is scrubbed, and the crew comes back home from LEO, having wasted the cost of an Ares I launch (and an Orion, if they end up not making it reusable).

This is an affordable, resilient, sustainable infrastructure?

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/2008/06/thoughts_on_the.html

The rationale for the heavy lifter has always been to avoid the complication of orbital assembly (apparently, the false lesson learned from our success with assembling ISS is that we should throw away all that experience, and take an entirely different approach for VSE). But it's already a "launch and half" mission, needing both Ares 1 and Ares 56, so they're not even avoiding it--they're only minimizing it. And even if the lunar mission doesn't outgrow the Ares 6, it won't be able to do a Mars mission in a single launch. So if we need to learn to do orbital assembly (and long-term

The Ares V is certainly cool from a "bigger, shinier" perspective, but not so good from the perspective of wanting to reduce our immense launch costs to something even marginally more manageable. A big part of the (somewhat shoddy) reasoning for going with a shuttle-derived system was that it would be able to make use of currently-existing facilities and infrastructure. It's now looking like the Ares V is getting to be too large to use those facilities, so NASA will have to revamp its facilities, raising the cost even more.

In general, it was pretty peculiar of NASA to not devise a launch system which would take advantage of what we've learned (the hard way) from the ISS and use in-orbit assembly, which would've allowed NASA to use the already-existing launchers available from the private sector. Instead, NASA decided to compete against the private sector and create a new family of Ares boosters, basically from scratch.

Here's some interesting commentary from a couple of knowledgeable folks within the aerospace industry:

http://chairforceengineer.blogspot.com/2008/06/directly-seeing-light.html

In a recent post, I discussed the weight issues associated with Ares V (probably to be renamed Ares VI if the extra RS-68 engine is slipped in.) The rocket is growing to address performance shortfalls, but it has become too heavy for the existing crawlers, too heavy for the existing launch pad, and too heavy for the hard stand on which the mobile launcher sits. I suggested that NASA should have initially determined weight and size limits on their rocket, based on the existing infrastructure, and limited the weight and size of Ares V to fit within those requirements. If that rocket were insufficient to meet the lift requirements for Project Constellation, use two heavy-lifters instead of one heavy-lifter and one crew launcher.

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/2008/03/out_takes.html

As noted, the vehicle has come a long way from the originally advertised "Shuttle-derived" system that was supposed to save us so much money and time, and utilize the existing Shuttle infrastructure (though the latter was always a politically-induced pork-driven bug, not a feature, if one wanted to actually lower launch costs). It (like Ares I) is now essentially a new vehicle, including components, though if Ares I ever comes to fruition, Ares V will probably be at least in part derived from it. ...

So, they're going to launch the Orion, with crew, on an Ares I, and hope that they can get a successful Ares V mission off within four days, because they can't afford the duration. They build this mondo grosso launch vehicle to avoid having to do multiple launches, and yet, they not only have dual launch, but it's one on a tight window. And if they can't get the launch off on time, the lunar mission is scrubbed, and the crew comes back home from LEO, having wasted the cost of an Ares I launch (and an Orion, if they end up not making it reusable).

This is an affordable, resilient, sustainable infrastructure?

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/2008/06/thoughts_on_the.html

The rationale for the heavy lifter has always been to avoid the complication of orbital assembly (apparently, the false lesson learned from our success with assembling ISS is that we should throw away all that experience, and take an entirely different approach for VSE). But it's already a "launch and half" mission, needing both Ares 1 and Ares 56, so they're not even avoiding it--they're only minimizing it. And even if the lunar mission doesn't outgrow the Ares 6, it won't be able to do a Mars mission in a single launch. So if we need to learn to do orbital assembly (and long-term

• Transterrestrial liveblogging of press conference
  
• Transterrestrial liveblogging conference presentation
  
• RLV News liveblogging conference presentation

• Transterrestrial liveblogging of press conference
  
• Transterrestrial liveblogging conference presentation
  
• RLV News liveblogging conference presentation

Until then though, let's let the governments "waste" their money by developing them themselves, ok?

Erm, that's actually what NASA is doing: They're spending several billion dollars on cost-plus contracts to have the Ares rockets developed according to their specifications. COTS is basically a side-bet, with them spending a total of $500 million (which will only get paid if the companies meet pre-specified milestones) on the chance that private industry will be able to develop their own rockets which can meet NASA's needs.

The funny thing is, it's looking like the side-bet is doing better than the house's bet right now. SpaceX already has a few test flights under their belt; they didn't make it to orbit, but they have a good idea of what the problems were and fixed them. They also had a multi-engine test firing in preparation for their medium/heavy-lift Falcon 9 rocket earlier this week. Meanwhile, it's looking like Ares is running into some fundamental design problems; there are of course possible fixes, but they may very well end up having such a large weight penalty that the usefulness of Ares will be largely impacted.

So yeah, it looks like (as you desire) the government is wasting more than enough money to develop a solution themselves, but it's looking quite fortunate that they also took a small chance on private industry.

What exactly is the issue? The problem is that any structure has a resonant frequency at which it naturally vibrates. If you excite the structure at that frequency, you can develop a positive-feedback system that will literally shake it apart (the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the classic example).

Solid rocket motors don't run particularly smoothly (compared to well-designed or even poorly designed liquids) and large solid motors provide a very rough ride. Everyone who has ever ridden the Shuttle to orbit has commented on how much smoother the ride gets after staging the SRBs.

Now, one way to mitigate this is to damp it out with a large mass. The Shuttle does this by its nature, because even though it has two of the things, they are not directly attached to the orbiter--they are attached to a large external tank with one and a half million pounds of liquid propellants in it, and it can absorb a lot of the vibration. Moreover, the large mass has a frequency that doesn't resonate with the vibration.

As I understand it (and I could be wrong, and I'm not working Ares, but this is based on discussions, many off the record and all on background with insiders on the program), there is a very real concern that the upper stage on top of the SRB in "the Stick" will be excited at a resonant frequency, but that even if not, the stage will be too small to damp the vibrations of the huge SRB below.

If this is the case, there is no simple solution. You can't arbitrarily change the mass of the upper stage--that is determined by the mission requirement. Any solution is going to involve damping systems independent of the basic structure that are sure to add weight to a launch vehicle that is already, according to most reports, underperforming. Or it will involve beefing up the structure of the upper stage and the Orion itself so that they can sustain the acoustic vibration loads. In the case of the latter, it is already overweight, with low margins.

So this constitutes a major program risk, that could result in either cancellation, or a complete redesign (that no longer represents the original concept, because the problem is fundamentally intrinsic to it).

Now, let's take apart the response a little:

Thrust oscillation is...a risk. It is being reviewed, and a mitigation plan is being developed. NASA is committed to resolve this issue prior to the Ares I Project's preliminary design review, currently scheduled for late 2008.

The problem is that NASA can "commit" to resolve it until the cows come home, but if it's not resolvable, it's not resolvable. They can't rescind the laws of physics, and we're approaching a couple of anniversaries of times when they attempted to do that, with tragic results.

Now this next part is (to put it mildly) annoying:

NASA has given careful consideration to many different launch concepts (shuttle-derived, evolved expendable launch vehicle, etc.) over several years. This activity culminated with release of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005. Since then, the baseline architecture has been improved to decrease life cycle costs significantly.

NASA's analysis backs up the fact that the Ares family enables the safest, least expensive launch architecture to meet requirements for missions to the International Space Station, the moon and Mars. NASA is not contemplating alternatives to the current approach.

The problem is that NASA didn't give "careful consideration" to the previous analyses after Mike Griffin came in. As far as can be determined, all of the analysis performed under Admiral Steidle's multiple CE&R contracts, performe

Keep in mind that astronauts do most of their "flying" in T-38's (two seaters that are often likened to "astronaut taxis"). It's quite possible that the specific incidents revolve around T-38 use.

Some commentary from aerospace engineer Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings seems to partially confirm this:

I haven't said anything about the "drunk astronauts" story, but I do think that it epitomizes the atrocious state of reporting on space (and any technical subject), in which it becomes sensationalized and drained of reality. Everyone assumes that the two incidents referred to were Shuttle launches, when the word I get is that it was a T-38 and a Soyuz flight. And of course it has become inflated from two (anecdotal) incidents to everyone doing shooters before each Shuttle flight. The real story, as Jim Oberg points out in this interview with a terminally clueless BBC reporter, is the special treatment of astronauts, and the (lack of sufficient) power of the flight surgeons (at least in their minds) to ground them. Of course, this is a tough problem, as we saw in the Nowak case.

There is a natural antipathy between the astronauts and the flight surgeons. From an astronaut's point of view, an encounter with the latter can't have a good outcome. At best, it can be a neutral one. The default is that one's flight readiness is go. A flight surgeon can't improve that--they can only change it for the worse. If one is sick enough to need to get permission to go, it's unlikely to happen, since there are many trained backups, even for a given mission, who are fine. Recall Apollo XIII, when Ken Mattingly had to be replaced by Jack Swigert because he had merely been exposed to German measles, due to concern that he might come down with it during the mission. He ended up not getting them, and while the decision made sense, he had to feel frustrated (though obviously not as much as he would have had the mission been successful).

It's not a new problem, and it's not one likely to go away, but it would help if the media would treat it seriously. Not to mention soberly.

This is why it is wrong for your second amendment rights to end at the boundary of a school. Nothing is preventing from people illegally bringing guns on to campus. The same argument applies, well, anywhere.

Just to fill everybody in, the campus is designated a "gun-free zone." There was a state bill last year to change this, but it didn't make it out of subcommittee.

Of course, in all likelihood, we'll end up seeing even more restrictions that feel good but end up in more people being hurt. There have already been talking heads on TV advocating "making university buildings into lock-down prisons, with no classroom windows, and wanding of everyone going in and out."

Wait, people don't die on Earth? What about pollution related illnesses, industrial accidents, famine created by land misuse, natural disasters compounded by faulty infrastructure and administrative mismanagement? The physical risk is rarely to the people with the power and/or money, why would it be any different in space?

None of these contribute to human death in a significant way. You can lose an entire space colony, if they screw up. The costs from getting it wrong are much higher in space.

Your suggestion is cyclical, and ignores hundreds of existing incentives for increased recycling on Earth.

There's only one. The value of recycling material X is greater than the cost. Most of the Earth-side waste stream simply isn't worth recycling. In Earth orbit, every scrap of matter and every breath of air currently costs $2500 or more per kg to put up there. Even with massive declines in the cost of getting stuff into Earth orbit, it is doubtful that the price will decline below $10 (in current dollars) per kilogram.

Only if by value, you mean money, in which case your statement is little more than a tautology. Besides, I can put a bunch of money in a slot machine, or into Britney Spears CDs, but if I get nothing in return, there is no value to my investment.

Money is the universal measure of value. Also, you do get something in return so your point is invalid there. Even at worst, the slot machine or the CD entertains you (the point of entertainment after all).

Higher than what? Than it is now? It will be, if were carting steel to and from space. Whenever there is increased usage, the price increases. This is shown every summer when gasoline prices increase, for example. Or do you mean, perhaps higher than the price last year, ten, twenty years ago? It is higher, and continues to grow. And the resources themselves continue to be exhausted. And since we're talking about a venture that would take several decades to achieve, the cost and availability of resources becomes a bigger issue.

Tourism and entertainment in general strikes me as low cost activities that are unlikely to change merely because raw materials become somewhat more expensive. The CD doesn't take much in raw materials. Neither does pulling the lever on the jackpot. Such things as lights, flashy concerts, etc may appear to be expensive, but these costs are divided among a huge number of customers. In comparison, space tourism is similar. Little of the cost is the raw materials. Even if every rocket had to buy appropriate carbon offsets, it would add little to the cost. Most of the cost is tied to insurance, the cost of making the vehicle, and range costs (from government owned launch sites). Fuel costs are on the order of 1% of the cost of a vehicle. And carbon offset costs would be similar though smaller simply because fuel is the primary contributor to carbon emission (not necessarily directly, liquid hydrogen currently is extracted from methane gas) and carbon offset costs are IMHO less than the value of the fuel being burned.

These issues will not disappear just because we're doing things in space. Corruption, mismanagement, economic problems, legal issues, etc., are human issues, and will therefore follow people and their endeavors into space. It's just a change of venue. It doesn't change the means or motivation of these people concerned.

As far as the "greater problems" I cited, my point was that these are being fixed (without recourse to space technology) not as problems that were being "escaped" by a move into space. I don't see many of the big human problems being solved by a move into space. But Man's footprint on Earth can be solved in this way.

Where and to what extent is this wealth of resources and energy that you describe available in space? Are we going to start mining the moon? Regarding regulations, your suggestio

Check out Rand Simberg for an alternative view of things, by someone with relevant expertise. Bob is a physicist. Rand is a former aerospace engineer. Who do you think has a better handle on technical details of space exploration? Space != Science. Science is best done in person, not remotely, but I admit it may not be as cost effective for some technical projects. However, if the long term purpose is to put people out there, it makes a lot of sense to get people out there so you can study the effects on people.

I second the dschmelzer's recommendation of RLV and Space Transport News. A more easy-to-remember URL for them is http://rlvnews.com/. For other good sites to monitor for private spaceflight news, there's a number of links in the right column of the RLV News page. I personally prefer Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log and Transterrestrial Musings.

With the election system of the US, it's always 2 parties with nobody having thet slightest chance to muscle in, at best in local elections

This problem of always having to go with the lesser of two evils constantly frustrates me. I rather like this proposal by Rand Simberg over at Transterrestrial Musings:

I'd love to see ballots printed with "None of the above" as an option. If that option wins the election, we start over, with no incumbents, and new primaries. Call it the American form of lack-of-confidence vote.

It turns out that there's a "Voters for None of the Above" organization dedicated to this, but they seem to be mostly inactive:

http://www.nota.org/

From their page:

How would a binding "None of the Above" on the ballot work?

In any state with a permanent, binding "None of the Above" on the ballot, the list of candidates for each office would be followed by the votable line "NOTA - For a new election", or something similar. If NOTA gets more votes than any candidate for the office, then no one is elected to that office; instead, a follow-up by-election with new candidates must be held to fill that office, until a candidate wins a plurality of votes among all other candidates including "None of the Above." "None of the Above" on the ballot has many thoughtful advocates, including The Wall Street Journal and Ralph Nader. Nevada has had a non-binding NOTA on the ballot since 1976. (See NOTA bills and laws for a list of all NOTA bills and laws. See NOTA options for the full range of binding and non-binding NOTA Voter Consent ballot options.)

Why are Voter Consent Ballot Options, such as a permanent, binding "None of the Above" on the ballot, a good idea?

* All legitimate consent requires the ability to withhold consent; "None of the Above" gives the voter the ballot option to withhold consent from an election to office, just as voters can cast a "No" vote on a ballot question.
* Would end the "must hire" elections where voters are often forced to vote for the least unacceptable candidate, the all too familiar "lesser evil."
* A candidate must obtain voter consent to be elected, even if running unopposed.
* Voters would decide the fate of the political parties' choices, instead of the parties deciding the voters' choices.
* It should reduce negative campaigning by encouraging candidates to campaign for their own candidacy rather than against their opponent's candidacy.
* Many voters and non voters, who now register their disapproval of all candidates for an office by not voting, could cast a meaningful vote.
* The meaning of elections should become more clear, since voters would no longer be tempted to vote for a presumed losing candidate, with whom they really do not agree, as a protest vote.
* Establishes flexible, voter controlled term limits of one term for every office, as the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended.
* Campaign contributors who give to all candidates to insure "access" would no longer be sure they backed the winner; in general, buying elections should become a more uncertain enterprise.
* Improves checks and balances between voters and political parties, especially needed in jurisdictions with one dominant political party or nearly identical alternatives.
* Political parties would nominate candidates knowing those candidates must be a better choice for voters than "None of the Above."
* Follow-up by-elections are far less costly than electing unacceptable candidates to office.

No, no look here: @:-)

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/006492.ht ml#006492

Looking through the article and several of the comments here, there doesn't seem to be much of a focus on the "big picture" lessons from the Challenger accident. There's a recent post Rand Simberg made at Transterrestrial Musings which sums up some of my own thoughts on the matter:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/006406.ht ml

It's twenty years today since Challenger was lost with all aboard. It was the first real blow to NASA's confidence in its ability to advance us in space, or that our space policy was sound. It finally shattered illusions about twenty-four flights a year, to which the agency had been clinging up until that event, but it wasn't severe enough to really make a major change in direction. That took the loss of Columbia, three years ago this coming Tuesday.

Unfortunately, while that resulted finally in a policy decision to retire the ill-fated Shuttle program, the agency seems to have learned the wrong lessons from it--they should have come to realize that we need more diversity in space transport, and it cannot be a purely government endeavor. Instead, harkening back to their glory days of the sixties, the conclusion seems to be that, somehow (and inexplicably) the way to affordability and sustainability is exactly the approach that was unaffordable and unsustainable the last time we did it.

But one has to grant that Apollo was safe, and probably the new system will be more so than the Shuttle was. But safety shouldn't be the highest goal of the program. Opening frontiers has always been dangerous, and it's childish to think that this new one should be any different. The tragedy of Challenger and Columbia wasn't that we lost astronauts. The tragedy was that we lost them at such high cost, and for missions of such trivial value.

This is the other false lesson learned from Challenger (and Columbia)--that the American people won't accept the loss of astronauts. But we've shown throughout our history that we're willing to accept the loss of brave men and women (even in recent history) as long as it is in a worthy cause. But NASA's goal seems to be to create yet another appallingly expensive infrastructure whose focus is on recapitulating the achievements of four decades (five decades, by the time they eventually manage it, assuming they keep to their stated schedule) ago.

Will the American people be inspired by that? I can't say--I only know that I am not.

Would they be inspired by a more ambitious program, a riskier program that involved many more people going into space at more affordable costs, even if (or perhaps because) it is a greater hazard to the lives of the explorers? I surely would. But it seems unlikely that we're going to get that from the current plan, or planners.

Any comments on the following analyses? Transterrestrial Musings
Space Access Update #112

It appears the inhabitants of Tempel-1 are lawsuit-happy as well.

Although I somewhat agree with his conclusion, Derbyshire relies on a number of fallacies to get there. The following sites all do a fairly good job of pointing out the errors in Derbyshire's information and logic:

Curmudgeons Corner
RLV News
Transterrestrial Musings: Derb's Rant

I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.

* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary

As seen on Transterrestrial Musings, spacepolitics.com, and RLV News:

Just got this message Jeff Greason of XCOR Aerospace that the current legislation to assist the development of the suborbital spaceflight industry has been distorted by Senate staffers into something that will instead smother the industry in the cradle:

There is a last-minute move by some staffers in the Senate to heavily amend HR 3752. The amendments would completely change the charter of the office of commercial space transportation (AST), placing the safety of the crew and passengers on equal footing with the safety of the uninvolved public. Since that is well beyond present technology, it would effectively stop development of the industry in the U.S.. It is too late to fix the bill before the session adjourns, but not too late to stop it. If you or people you know have connections to any Senator, please ask them to put a "hold" on HR 3752. That prevents it from passing by unanimous consent. We may have less than 24 hours.

If the bill is "held" there may be opportunity to fix it in a post-election session -- but if not, we would still rather the bill die than pass with these poison-pill amendments.

If your Senator is on the Commerce Committee, that's even better: http://commerce.senate.gov/about/membership.html

Personally, I'm in favor of having the AST in charge of the safety of the uninvolved public on the ground, as the bill was originally worded. However, I think that the last-minute changes to have the same agency regulate the safety of crew and passengers (and require the corresponding mountains of paperwork) would be an excellent way to kill off the budding US space tourism industry.

MSNBC has a more in-depth article on this.

As reported on several space-related news sites, including RLV News and Transterrestrial musings:

There is a last-minute move by some staffers in the Senate to heavily amend HR 3752. The amendments would completely change the charter of the office of commercial space transportation (AST), placing the safety of the crew and passengers on equal footing with the safety of the uninvolved public. Since that is well beyond present technology, it would effectively stop development of the industry in the U.S.. It is too late to fix the bill before the session adjourns, but not too late to stop it. If you or people you know have connections to any Senator, please ask them to put a "hold" on HR 3752. That prevents it from passing by unanimous consent. We may have less than 24 hours.

If the bill is "held" there may be opportunity to fix it in a post-election session -- but if not, we would still rather the bill die than pass with these poison-pill amendments.

According to the most recent information, staffers in the Senate are trying to amend the bill so that it requires the same safety for people in the vehicle as on the ground. If that goes through, it kills space tourism in America dead. See this. If people want to stop this they are going to need to call their Senators quickly and oppose it.

According to the most recent information, staffers in the Senate are trying to amend the bill so that it requires the same safety for people in the vehicle as on the ground. If that goes through, it kills space tourism in America dead. See this. If people want to stop this they are going to need to call their Senators quickly and oppose it.

> Where is this "Global Test" defined?

Right here.

> With Bush giving Kerry a hard time for his "Global Test" remark

On a related topic, I think I've found that Global Test ;-)

LOS ANGELES (APUPI) June 20, 2004

Standing in front of the Los Angeles Times building on Spring Street and surrounded by aides, President Bush put forth a new and long-overdue proposal today, to the cheers of thousands of long-suffering readers of that paper, to start to repair the tragic situation with the American journalism system. He called it "No Reporter Left Behind."

"For too many years have we seen the sad evidence accumulating that our nation's media outlets and journalism schools simply aren't achieving what they must for our nation to maintain its first-place ranking in freedom of speech and a properly informed public," he declared. "Compared to journalists of a few decades ago, today's reporters show an increasing inability to comprehend simple English or basic statistics, to exercise logic, or to even recognize that they're Americans."

"Now, many accuse the media of bias against my administration, but I don't believe that. I'm here to change the tone in Washington and the nation, and I refuse to engage in such accusations. I'm sure that journalists are well meaning. As a compassionate conservative, it's clear to me that they simply haven't been given the education and training that they so desperately need, and we need to help them and their hardworking editors."

The president went on to illustrate the growing problem. [Read more

LOS ANGELES (APUPI) June 20, 2004

Standing in front of the Los Angeles Times building on Spring Street and surrounded by aides, President Bush put forth a new and long-overdue proposal today, to the cheers of thousands of long-suffering readers of that paper, to start to repair the tragic situation with the American journalism system. He called it "No Reporter Left Behind."

"For too many years have we seen the sad evidence accumulating that our nation's media outlets and journalism schools simply aren't achieving what they must for our nation to maintain its first-place ranking in freedom of speech and a properly informed public," he declared. "Compared to journalists of a few decades ago, today's reporters show an increasing inability to comprehend simple English or basic statistics, to exercise logic, or to even recognize that they're Americans."

"Now, many accuse the media of bias against my administration, but I don't believe that. I'm here to change the tone in Washington and the nation, and I refuse to engage in such accusations. I'm sure that journalists are well meaning. As a compassionate conservative, it's clear to me that they simply haven't been given the education and training that they so desperately need, and we need to help them and their hardworking editors."

The president went on to illustrate the growing problem. [Read more