Space exploration and development – more than numbers
If you have been to Grand Central Station in New York City through the mid to late 1970s and as recently as last week, discovering you are in a transport hub where a welcome wander comes easily, the sense is about contrast. The hub peaked in the late 1940s, beginning a decline soon after. The … Continue reading Transitions (Part II), Grand Central, and the Kennedy Space Center VAB
It’s easy to imagine a long list of reasons transitions cause distress and terminal distraction. Evolution passed along in us only so much appetite for risk, novelty, and shifts away from the familiar. Is that mysterious cave calling? Become lunch. Alternately, too much of a taste for stability could prove fatal, too. Leave those well-known … Continue reading Transitions, NASA, and next steps
As the year ends, the numerals ahead may feel future-ish, as if we leaped across time, traveling faster than we should or want. Twenty-twenty-four. How did that happen? Events far back seem solid, the middle is blurred, and the future fills with our expectations. This year, two SpaceX Starships launched on the heels of NASA’s … Continue reading 2023 end-of-year post
Can Europe catch up after SpaceX and the emergence of a newly vibrant US commercial space sector? How? It’s the mid-1990s, attendees lingering in the expansive lobby as the day’s conference presentations concluded, everyone glad to make new acquaintances and hand out business cards (remember those?) Among the introductions and salutations, there is a representative … Continue reading Europe, ESA, the EU, and the space sector – where to next?
At their best, graphs are pictures worth a thousand words, or better yet, art communicating only a few words but with deep meaning. But in a world of infographics, we also get visuals causing confusion and stirring debates well past that aspirational word count. In the spirit of trying to be more of the former … Continue reading Three graphs and a truck
If you follow the space sector, and maybe even if you don’t, the unavoidable impression is there’s so much happening fast. Space stuff and that AI shows up at every party. The days when only an occasional Shuttle mission, Hubble picture, or a Mars rover made headlines are in our rearview mirror. Today, it’s always … Continue reading Space, playing the long game
Space system projects experience all the same phases of life as living organisms, from the cradle to the grave. Uncannily alike, too, even before birth, creators may write down a project’s lifeless but necessary instructions. It’s not hardware yet, it’s your creation’s DNA building blocks made of ideas. Sadly, a seedling may not sprout due … Continue reading About Starships and life cycles, but more too
This map updates a much older version from Kennedy Space Center (available here) for the recent news of the Space Force allocating three historic launch pads to four companies (Relativity, ABL Space Systems, Stoke Space, and Vaya Space.) How time flies. Once long ago NASA looked at Kennedy Space Center and the Cape as a … Continue reading It’s getting awful crowded out there – Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
(With acknowledgments to David Brin, blogging at Contrary Brin, and a thank you for his feedback as I wrote this.) Across my many years witnessing and participating in space marvels, too often my awe of the moment got rudely shoved aside by wondering what comes next. Some just can’t resist that temptation to look ahead, … Continue reading Revisiting the near future of human spaceflight
Advocacy for innovation is always challenging, with much written about difficulties like the valley of death. There is one barrier that does not get much attention, though. We forget the future is always outnumbered in the here and now. Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft, which will demonstrate a nuclear … Continue reading Reusing, refueling, partnering – and going nuclear
There is an old joke in NASA, “a million here, a million there, before you know it, you might have real money.” It’s probably a line in any business grown large enough to develop an unhealthy disrespect for money. Yet our more serious discussions enforced the same idea. Could NASA nudge industry this way or … Continue reading NASA: Making markets, not rockets?
A paper of mine was published last week in the New Space Journal, “Ingredients and Anticipated Results for Characterizing and Assessing NASA and U.S. Department of Defense Partnerships and Commercial Programs.” Yes, that’s a mouthful. I often write about what’s next for NASA, the commercial space sector, and how these must move ahead together. My … Continue reading A checklist for commercial space and NASA
Early September saw some good news in the space sector, but not of the usual sort that quickly goes viral. The University of California San Diego received a gift of $150M to fund the Sanford Stem Cell Institute. Their valuable work with stem cells already includes years of research in Earth orbit. Yet news like … Continue reading Space benefits, stem cells, and why we’re just getting started
Graphs with a lot of space launch data can be a bit of a Rorschach test, including the part about seeing angels or demons. The lonely data point, on the other hand, is easy to employ to jump to about any answer, and nowadays, there is no lack of these unique space sector events. In … Continue reading Commercial launch trends – what do you see?
Frustration oozes from the pages of “Escaping Gravity,” and rightly so. Seemingly at odds, but only if you’re not in the business of space exploration, there is also a determination to carry on and leave a positive impact throughout the memoir of Lori Garver, Deputy NASA Administrator from 2009 to 2013. If you have come … Continue reading A book review – “Escaping Gravity” by Lori Garver
Zapata Talks NASA 