17 thoughts on “The Age Of Commercial Spaceflight Begins”

1. A few jaw-dropping opposing viewpoints:

   http://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/10/the-hobby-rocket-must-die

   http://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/10/the-obscene-spending-displays-of-space-clowns

   …courtesy of the Lifeboat Foundation.

   1. It’s Gary Church. What do you expect?

      1. I got the links from the Arocket mailing list. I’ve never heard of Church before. Is he notorious in space circles for this sort of thing? He comes across as a somewhat more civil Elifritz.

         1. Yes. He posts a lot at Spudis’ blog. He used to pollute the comments section at Space Politics, but I guess he got tired of being beaten up there. I’ve sent Eric Klien an email asking him why he’s blogging at Lifeboat.

      2. Who is Gary Church anyway?

   2. Pretty funny stuff. I checked the various proposed launch schedules for the SLS, and saving all of humanity from an asteroid wasn’t on the list. Someone in the Senate needs to pencil that in for August 2021, perhaps on a Thursday.

      Handy fact: The planned SLS flight rate can be compared to the statistical asteroid impact rate without resorting to scientific notation.

   3. What a moron. I can’t even begin to describe my disgust at that lousy excuse for a post that guy made.

2. Looks like they decided to deorbit the Orbcomm satellite that was put in the wrong orbit. Fortunately they got the necessary test data from it first to verify the systems on board so they could move forward with the constellation.

   http://www.orbcomm.com/Collateral/Documents/English-US/OG2%20Prototype.pdf

   It also looks like they using the wrong orbit to justify filing for the insurance on it so it appears they will get to keep their cake and eat it too. 🙂

   1. In theory, insurance is never supposed to improve you beyond initial conditions. [Wink. Wink.] But, if the conditions are met in the contract they have to pay. They certainly aren’t going to give the money paid by the customer back if the conditions are not met.

      That hobby rocket diatribe was just too much.

3. Look at this hit piece. It starts by suggesting…

   The rocket lost power from one of its nine engines shortly after its Sunday launch and only delivered 882 of the promised 1,800 pounds of resupply cargo for the space station.

   …that one had anything to do with the other. I’m pretty sure NASA decided what went up (not counting ice cream.)

   1. Maybe he thinks they threw the difference overboard to lighten the load, you know, like on those airships in the old movies 🙂

   2. The only way I can explain that is to suggest that 1,000 pounds of the ice cream melted. 🙁

      Or maybe some of the cargo was in pounds mass and some was in pounds force, which of course dropped to zero. 🙂

      1. I saw that via Insty or something and new there’d be some good comments here.

      2. So that’s where that dark matter went!!!

   3. They were planning on bringing an engine to the ISS, but the pesky thing fell off.

   4. What is this The Onion?

4. I saw this last night and linked it in an unrelated thread because I just couldn’t help it. That there is funny.

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