With the new administration’s Space Council meeting for the first time this week (or soon), it’s natural to look back at the comings and goings of US space policy. A casual observer might assign a shape to the blurry happenings and seemingly important pronouncements about the direction for NASA over the years. If you have … Continue reading Space Councils, events, technology, and NASA are all evolving – but towards what?

After a specific scale, our intuition fails us. Whatever is so much larger, farther, or faster than our day-to-day experience is quickly incomprehensible. This is so for the scale of NASA. As if degrees of the unimaginable are possible, the scale of the global space economy beyond NASA is larger by over a factor of … Continue reading The scale of NASA, the global space economy, and commercial space to come

The familiar refrain "it's impossible to keep up with so much happening" has come to the space sector. Though this could be said in all walks of life. As we join the club, it's a good time to ask "why space"? Our aerospace industry is not unique, carried along in a wave, wondering if there … Continue reading Commercial space stations begin shifting the conversation to “why space”?

I'd like to do the math. One day, years from now but seeming too soon, the International Space Station will come to an end. But this ending will also be a story about beginnings. NASA having led the way, learning to live and work in space, others will follow, building on what was learned. If … Continue reading Commercial space stations and NASA savings – would you like to do the math?

Back in 2007, the NASA plan was to go back to the Moon by 2020. This is not to confuse anyone with current plans to return to the Moon by 2024, which might be 2028 or sometime later. Rather, this was the older plan as NASA launched its Shuttles on their last missions. Except there … Continue reading Planning, for space exploration, development, and commerce

The label read, "Natural and Artificial Flavors Added." So, I put it back. Artificial, we've been told, is just not good for you. We are almost at the same place with artificial intelligence. Alarm bells go off there as well, except in the form of Nobel laureates prognosticating about the dangers of A.I. There are … Continue reading Natural and Artificial Flavors Added

Sometimes less is more. This also applies to data. Too long ago to say when without sounding ancient, I came upon a holy grail of launch price data. Many Bothans died to bring us this information. The more extensive, second spreadsheet, not the first one. We had known about the existence of the data, shown … Continue reading When less is more

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 Ishmael.” Why should I call you Ishmael? Most people would say, “My name is Ishmael.” What are you hiding?  Of course, the first version sounds more intriguing. … Continue reading The unreliable narrator

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

"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