Space exploration and development – it's more than numbers
The schedule from a few days after I first reported for work at NASA Kennedy Space Center. It was called the "KICS" for Kennedy Integrated Control Schedule. There is the movie “The Sixth Sense,” and there are NASA cost estimates. I am not sure which is a better example of the unreliable narrator. “Call me … Continue reading The unreliable narrator
The distribution of NASA employees by age in 1993 (blue line) versus today (red line). Raw data: NASA. The award said it was amazing what I could accomplish, "with an endless supply of NASA interns." This much was true, as they did great work. I mentored many students in their summers at the Kennedy Space … Continue reading NASA – TNG
Passing the word around. This years NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium is open to the public. You can register here. "All are invited to attend this Symposium which will introduce NIAC Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III Fellows’ multidisciplinary research. NIAC concepts cover a wide range of innovations in a diverse range of … Continue reading NIAC September 21-23, 2021 – Virtual Event
We knew the valley of death was up ahead, as we had been there many times before. Most wouldn’t make it. Well, to be truthful, we knew nearly none would make it. The valley of death was not a place though, so much as a phase. Wild ideas, new technology and all those exciting, innovative … Continue reading The valley of death
It turns out rocket launches, a possible boil water notice here in Orlando, and hospitals caring for patients with COVID are all connected. Right now, it's about liquid oxygen, but it would not be surprising to find more connections, like in any system. Oddly and often in projects, "it's a system" was an observation that … Continue reading It’s a system
"The gift shop is down that way, toward the lobby, past the spacesuit." These are not the directions anyone can give a visitor lost among a run of offices and cubicles. You get away with this in the Kennedy Space Center Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout building, home today to the Orion spacecraft, home once … Continue reading The call, spacesuits, and everything else
There are flying machines that simply stick in the mind, a Concorde, a Shuttle, a Valkyrie XB-70, or a Boeing 747. One machine that hardly flew but does this trick is the 1920s German Dornier X airliner, an early and massive flying boat with 12 engines. Its wings had a crawl space so the crew … Continue reading Contrasts
The up-front cost of US spacecraft for cargo and crew, "cost-plus" (Apollo, Orion), and as partnerships/commercial (the rest). The saying “getting your wings clipped” took on a new meaning. It was 2002, and the plan for even a partially reusable replacement for the Space Shuttle now seemed a bridge too far. The debate had already … Continue reading Not in our stars
Time is supposed to be the way the universe keeps everything from happening all at once. My wife and I were in London in 2016, and we made a point to see The Fighting Temeraire by Joseph Mallord William Turner. London has endless museums. So for a time, we were taking it all in with … Continue reading Parallels
A variation on a concept from the 2015 Evolvable Lunar Architecture Study and the 2011 NASA Propellant Depot study. Step 1-launch a near empty stage with a lander attached. Step 2-"tanker" stages fill this stage, sized here for a trip to the Moon. Step 3-launch crew to rendezvous with the stage and mate with the … Continue reading Please phrase your answer in the form of a question
Being average is great until it's not. For an engineer or scientist, a predictably average data point means the task is complete. We even count how many data points are a certain distance from what we wanted, our job being to make sure nearly none of the points in the herd stray too far. There … Continue reading Here there be dragons
Depending on the news, “new space” is commercial, innovative, well-funded by billionaires and changing the world. The site of a Falcon 9 booster returning to land after being flown eight times tells a story of change, a revolution that as predicted is being televised, in high definition. Crews that are not NASA astronauts have now … Continue reading New space, a Rorschach test
Flight rate, NASA and space exploration US launches over time and by launcher, from the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981 through the LauncherOne launch June 30, 2021. We needed launches. Lots of launches. That much was clear, even if how to get there was not. It seemed it was always the same meeting, about … Continue reading A picture worth a thousand words
Before “commercial space” there was “cost-plus space”. It was in this Byzantine world that whistle blower Ernie Fitzgerald said back in the 1960s “There are only two phases of a program. The first is ‘It’s too early to tell.’ The second ‘It’s too late to stop.’” While today’s trending topics in space exploration are about … Continue reading Revisiting commercial space and NASA
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,In proving foresight may be vain:The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley,An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!Robert Burns, On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785. This was not my first rodeo. Word had spread that I … Continue reading The best laid schemes of NASA
