14 thoughts on “What Was Old Is New Again”

      1. I think Musk understands that settlement of Mars would be the greatest possible boon to the exploration of Mars, even if exploration isn’t a priority for him personally.

  2. Government space agencies, having reached a condition of what one might as well call terminal decadence, have obviously long since lost all but trace amounts of the Apollo-era Right Stuff. What remains is the sole property of its salaried astronauts.

    Michael Lopez-Alegria of Ax-1 will go down in history as the first commercial space pilot. As was true of many of the generations of commercial aircraft pilots that preceded him, he learned his trade on the government dime, then found lucrative work in the private sector. More will follow.

    Cannon is right to identify Jared Isaacman as an even more consequential pathbreaker. As soon as news of the Polaris Project broke, my first thought was, “He’s got the bug.”

    Isaacman is now perhaps the only man in the world able to consequentially push Elon Musk. I don’t think either a mission built around fully depressurizing a Crew Dragon 2 or tethered spacewalks from same was anywhere on SpaceX’s dance card until Isaacman showed up, cash-in-hand.

    Even more significant than the two Crew Dragon 2-based Polaris missions will be Polaris 3, the first crewed mission of Starship. Sure, Maezawa has long had Dear Moon in the pipe, but Musk has still spoken in terms of doing “hundreds” of Starship launches before putting a crew on one. I think Isaacman has now prevailed upon Musk to pare that program of preliminaries back to the low 2-digits or perhaps even to a single-digit figure.

    And I don’t believe Isaacman’s personal bucket list now ends with Polaris 3. Isaacman, I am convinced, wants to walk on the Moon and will push SpaceX to prepare all the wherewithal – including lunar-capable EVA suits – needed to accomplish that.

    Isaacman may even fancy himself being the 13th Moonwalker, following Cernan after more than a half-century of interregnum. That certainly seems increasingly possible as Starship relentlessly advances and NASA continues to stumble.

    Isaacman could even trivially see to the much repeated NASA goal of putting the first woman and first person of color on Luna by either taking Sian Proctor along or adding a person or persons with the requisite physiognomy/ies from the NASA astronaut roster to his crew. Or perhaps Simone Biles or Serena Williams.

    If Isaacman still has any money left after all that, perhaps he will also choose to lead the first SpaceX manned expedition to Mars.

    1. I hope so, I truly do. I keep looking at the bureaucratic happy horse pucky being increasingly piled up on SpaceX and wonder how much is genuine and how much is corruption.

      1. The federal government has turned against Musk, much the same way it did the Tea Party and pro-life groups under Obama. The federal government won’t tolerate people making fun of Biden, Warren, Hillary, and Progressive Marxism, so they use government to persecute dissidents, even if it is one of the richest men in the world.

        Until we get whistleblowers and people resigning, it’s safe to say our federal workforce is corrupt.

        1. Until we get whistleblowers and people resigning, it’s safe to say our federal workforce is corrupt.
          To me, it appears we have all three. It’s not clear the first two have anything to do with fixing the third.

      2. The most authentically genuine is the corruption.

        But how effective that corruption can be will probably be known within 10 days. If the FAA is going to move its environmental report delivery date back another month, we should hear about that in seven days or less. If such a fourth delay happens, the case for outright corruption must then still await actual SpaceX readiness to conduct an orbital launch test. I figure that to be NET Memorial Day.

        If the FAA actually delivers a report on April 29, as currently promised, and it calls for a new environmental impact statement than I think one can confidently conclude that the fix is very much in. A finding of FONSI or FONSI with mitigations would indicate the corruption to have been unavailing even if real.

  4. It seems that if NASA could explore Moon and Mars, they could reduce future conflict [and death and mayhem in general].
    But I think the strongest argument for NASA exploring Moon and Mars, is for the continued existence of NASA.
    Or seems to me, NASA is engaged in suicide.
    It seems bureaucracy, never die, but they always trying to commit suicide. But NASA seems that could manage to commit suicide.
    Anyhow, if someone goes to Moon and finds some mineable lunar water. It seems no one is crazy enough to sent NASA there to mine it.
    But finding mineable lunar water does not mean lunar water will be immediately mined.
    It required in order to mine it, but when it will mined is a different question.
    If NASA was exploring Mars [or Musk was exploring Mars] it seems lunar water might be mined sooner as compared to later.
    But if NASA fails to explore the Moon, someone else does it, there is less reason, NASA should explore Mars. Good news might be Congress does some Mars explorational prize type stuff.
    But NASA starts looking like an unnecessary arm.
    So, it possible NASA has already failed and it’s suicide was a success.
    I don’t regard that as good news.
    I rather NASA not commit suicide- despite it’s efforts to do so. And in terms space activity, do you just want the FAA?
    Because FAA is currently not doing well in terms of the Starship launch, thing.

    1. When NASA invented a portfolio for ‘earth sciences’ instead of space exploration, they found a never-ending ricebowl to gorge at.

      The US already had earth sciences agencies – NOAA, USGS, etc. Get NASA back to looking at space, with serious people (How about Rand as NASA administrator…or better yet, IG?) in charge.

      1. I think NASA is running out of time.

        And it’s not really just due to SpaceX/Musk, rather it’s just generally, things are changing.
        Maybe NASA has another 10 years to fail explore the Moon, but seems to me, that it’s less time than this.
        One might blame Musk for starting it, but it seems the cats are out of the bag.

  5. Well, let’s bring this back to the changing paradigm brought to us by SH/SS. The link speaks to a romanticized view of science and exploration. Sure, grand voyages made in vehicles at a scale we don’t have now can/will take place but that stuff is hard. Isn’t it much easier to raise money for projects of a smaller ambition?

    There will be excess launch capacity and not everything done in space needs to be the product of a decadal science survey or eccentric billionaires.

    There are a lot of little things that will take place and over time, these little things will add up to more discoveries in the cycle of discovery than the bigger projects simply because more questions will be answered.

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