Slashdot Mirror
Commercial Space: Spirit of Apollo Or Spirit of Solyndra?
MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Chaikin, the author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, believes that the spirit of Apollo no longer resides at NASA, but rather in the nascent commercial space companies such as SpaceX. This assessment is disputed by many, who see in the Obama administration program of government subsidies for commercial space the spirit of Solyndra."
They deliver stuff that works. They also don't have Chinese competition (at least for US customers). Solyndra had a bit of an Iridium-style problem, where the market got undercut by other sources.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
I generally see Mark Whittington as being the chief cheerleader for the "let's do Apollo again" school of space flight. There's nothing wrong with that, except that NASA has pretty definitively proven over a period of decades that it's too bureaucratic, too sclerotic, and too much organized as a patronage/jobs organization to do anything big in manned space flight. Even were that not the case, it's a shame that Whittington continually elides the fact that the commercial space contracts — both cargo and crew — only pay out when specific milestones are achieved, and they pay fixed amounts for those milestones. In other words, this isn't Solyndra, where money is just thrown down the drain with no expectation of success; that actually better describes NASA's normal manned space flight program than it does the commercial space companies.
I think Chaikin's right, and that the entrepreneurial spirit that characterized NASA in the 1960s now resides in the private space companies. And as a bitter critic of the Obama administration on pretty much every other point, I nonetheless have to say that this is the one area where they've definitely improved on the Republicans.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
You clearly don't understand how dangerous it is to put someone in space, even with every precaution we can think of. Maybe you've forgotten the 17 deaths that have occurred so far?
Going to space isn't like assaulting Omaha beach. Throwing more cannon fodder out in unsafe vehicles that are likely to fail will not overcome or wear down space and allow later people to make it through.
Considering that Deke Slayton was heavily involved with the construction of the Conestoga rocket system in the 1980's, I'd say he certainly has a foot in both the early days of Apollo (even being one of the original Mercury seven), and in some ways one of the very early pioneers of commercial rocketry. He embodies perhaps the whole of what was once upon a time NASA of a long ago era and what could have become of commercial spaceflight.... if America will only let it happen.
Yeah, the spirit of Deke Slayton would be of particular interest at the moment, and it would be good to invoke him in any such discussion of the intersections of NASA's past glories and what is happening now for spaceflight in America today.
Or it could be that there's nothing at all on the Moon, it's far away, deadly and hostile? Is there a big market for radiation blasted vacuums?
It's not really about commercial vs private, they've framed it that way to simplify the debate for the public. This is about fixed firm contacts versus cost plus contracts. And if the early results are any indication, fixed firm is much better.
The Obama administration has a lot of problematic policies related to tech (Solyndra, Yucca Mountain, green energy, etc.) but as far as NASA and space is concerned, they for once have the right idea of buying services from the private sector.
Congress is the group that wants the return to the old NASA, primarily because that keeps the money flowing to the old NASA centers.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
SpaceX only had ONE (partially) successful flight. Nothing more. All others were fatal failures with loss of the cargo. And the one where the cargo made it to orbit, it put the spacecraft (satellite) in an orbit lower than the target orbit and the secondary (test) cargo failed miserably.
On the last "test" flight, the nose cone (where the cargo was supposed to be) fell off in mid-flight and the vehicle auto-destroy itself. But SpaceX put out a claim that the flight was a complete success. The ONLY test of the "Dragon" capsule was a success according to the company .... but they failed to tell people that the vehicle crash landed and was destroyed on impact because the "re-entry" system failed to activate.
SpaceX talks the talk, but so far has shown that they CAN'T deliver anything safely.
The more the merrier. But unless we find more resources, such as in space, this planet isn't going to sustain this many damn people. Especially as they wish to start raising their lifestyle up the carbon footprint scale. We are dragging our feet at planetary atmosphere scrubbing technology. It's right in front of us in our bongs, but we haven't been smart enough to realize it. Hemp will scrub the shit out of carbon in our atmosphere, give us petroleum, feed us, give us construction materials, paper, clothes, etc, but we are hampered by "church lady mentality", corrupt politicians, stupid politicians, drug money interests, the prison industry's need to keep people in their jails for stupid shit, etc, etc.
I don't know if we as a species are going to make it. Trying to get us to go in the right direction is like herding cats.
We should be out populating the solar system, then galaxy, then universe. Of course human population should rise, but Earth's population should slack off at some point. We need new worlds, even if we have to build them until we can find them.
Take the Red Pill.