19 thoughts on “Going Off The Air”

  1. Just curious: What else is there to say about space property rights other than “If you build it, it’s yours?”

    Is the focus on spectrum use? On orbit use?

  2. I suppose for there to be a conflict over territory or property, there has to be some sort of finite limited resource.

    I can see a limit on frequency and directionality. Maybe on orbits depending on how prolific constellation builders get.

    Hard to see zero-sum limits to “aleph-1 tons of incomprehensibly dead regolith”, or “places to park things in an infinite void”

      1. This is where many swamp dwellers will find out who really wields power in Washington. Who has tickets and who doesn’t? Who has really good tickets? Who is giving tickets away? Who is getting those tickets?

        “Steve Scalise took a bullet on a baseball field. He’s bound to have some freebies. What about Rand Paul? He was there too. I bet George W has tickets, but Ellen probably got them. Anybody got her number? Boeing just got an SLS contract. Call Bridenstein and see if he can wrangle some box seats from Boeing.”

        1. You know they want it to be a east coast series. Well, at least since they can’t rack up the airline miles between NY and LA.

  4. Off topic. “NASA will award Boeing a cost-plus contract for up to 10 SLS rockets”

    Article at Arstechnica

    1. An interesting comment from Wickwick said:

      Shelby and Boeing don’t care. This contract will be completed regardless of the politics of it or Boeing will sue the hell out of the US government. This is an insurance policy against the political winds changing in the future in exactly such an event.

      Edit: This contract also needs to work its way through now, before SuperHeavy ever flies. Because the instant that’s the case, NASA can’t sole-source this contract. And no matter how you try to rig the evaluation process, Boeing wouldn’t win a contested award.

      I think NASA could still sole-source the contract with the usual mumbo-jumbo, since there’s not a good way to stick an Orion on top of a Starship and Orion is critical for flying a crew to Mars via the Lunar Gateway, blah blah blah.

      But the point is probably valid. Lock in the money before Pence and the Senate are oohing and aahing over a Starship launch and wondering aloud if maybe NASA should use it for future missions instead of the still-uncontracted SLS.

        1. Well, I had a plan that involved painting a Starship to look like an SLS, with Rocketdyne supplying paper mache RS-25’s and Thiokol adding cardboard boosters with smoke generators. NASA could spread half the SLS money to keep everyone quiet, and spend the other half on something useful. Sure, it would be fraud, but fraud that would accomplish the primary mission, on a more aggressive schedule, and at a vastly lower cost.

          It’s pretty bad when your flagship project is, by all measures, actually worse than fraud.

    2. The only good thing here is that alternatives are cheap enough that NASA can still do somethings even though SLS is only good for burning billions.

      1. I don’t disagree, but right about now, I think CNN’s lawyers ought to write glowingly for Rand on his case.

  6. I’ve been off the air myself for a couple of weeks. I don’t know where else to put any of this, so I may as well leave it here.

    I was diagnosed with lung cancer almost exactly two years ago and it’s been spreading recently. After a series of falls at home, I went to the hospital on Oct. 9, and then to a rehab facility on the 19th which is where I currently am. I’ve been incommunicado throughout this time but my sister and her husband sent me a laptop which I just got today. I’ve never used a laptop, WiFi, or a trackpad or whatever you call this &^#$ input device. I miss my desktop. Oh well, I can use the practice typing on this unfamiliar contraption.

    A friend has been stopping by the house, feeding the cat, and bringing me stuff. One book she brought was “To Reach the High Frontier” by Roger D. Launius and Dennis R. Jenkins. It was published in 2002. I must have bought it years ago and read it, but forgot about it.

    What’s interesting about it is the timing of publication. There are chapters about attempts to develop reusable rockets, but “SpaceX” and “Blue Origin” do not appear. SpaceX presumably existed only on the proverbial cocktail napkin at that time.

    There is a chapter about small launch vehicles with a lament that there does not seem to be enough of a market for small payloads to make them economically viable. The term “cubesat” is not found in the book.

    In short, the book was written just as some very important changes were occurring in the world of spaceflight that would transform the whole scene. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to read it again and appreciate it in a way I didn’t the first time. It’s much like an update of Eugene M. Emme’s 1964 “The History of Rocket Technology” which I also happen to have and have begun re-reading.

    As an aside, I need to learn more about the Delta family of rockets. At the dawn of the Space Age, the Russians were able to build a rocket large enough to be able to launch pretty much anything they wanted. By contrast, the U.S. was forced to be resourceful to wring every bit of performance out of the rockets we built, as well as miniaturizing spacecraft and components. It is nothing short of amazing how the Thor IRBM coupled with the tiny Vanguard second and third stages evolved into one of the greatest and most successful launch vehicles in the entire history of the Space Age.

  7. Man, that was nerve-wracking. I thought I was going to lose that comment several times. I simply do not understand how to navigate with a trackpad or whatever it’s called. I’ve only ever used a mouse.

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