The latest issue of The Space Review is up a day late (I assume due to the holiday yesterday) but it was worth waiting for. I'm too busy to post much, but go read about Oklahoma spaceports by Jeff Foust, an old study on asteroid deflection by Dwayne Day, a cautionary note to space entrepreneurs about patents from Sam Dinkin, and a report from Taylor Dinerman on the prospects for a new space military service to supercede the Air Force.

There is no place to comment at The Space Review site (and I'm not sure there should be--it's more of a journal than a blog), so I'll comment here.

I read Taylor Dinnerman's piece on a military space force and I think he misread a few things. For one thing, he writes "One interesting question is why are the Navy and Marines proposing this now?" But all he is referring to is a single article written by a retired Marine Corps major. That's not a formal proposal by a long stretch.

In addition, he calls GPS and Milstar "invaluable national assts," but in the next sentence states that SBIRs "is an example of a vital national program that was mishandled and underfunded by the Air Force space procurement people." But one could say almost the same thing for GPS and Milstar as well...

It's Taylor Dinerman, Dr. Day, not Dinnerman, or Lunchman...

Think of it as the place you eat, rather than the meal itself--I've made the same error myself.

My mistake. I was eating a sandwich when I wrote that and it just seemed to fit.

Mr. Dinerman does raise a valid and important point, which is that the Navy does indeed distrust the Air Force when it comes to providing space services, and with good reason. It was the Navy that developed the Leasat concept with Hughes back in the 1980s, where the service leased satellites rather than bought them. The Navy has actually run much more innovative contracts than the Air Force on a lot of space projects. It's worth noting that the Navy originated the idea of paying for delivery, as opposed to paying for the entire product. The first UHF-Follow On satellite was not placed in proper orbit and the Navy therefore did not have to pay Hughes for it. Had this been an Air Force program, the taxpayers would have paid for both the failed rocket and satellite.

The problem that he mentions--that the Air Force has been named "executive agent for space" and none of the other services trust it to carry out those duties--is actually an old one that fades and erupts again and again. In fact, back in the late 1950s, DARPA was created to oversee military space programs. It failed at this and one obvious choice was to allow the Air Force to take over all military space. The Navy objected strenuously at that time as well.

While most space enthusiasts are focused either on private space efforts or NASA, there is a lot going on in the milspace field that is very disconcerting. The Air Force's SBIRS-High missile warning system is a huge mess, several years behind schedule and a whopping 450% over budget, and this is affecting everything else that is going on. Congress does not trust the Air Force to take on any new programs like Space Based Radar, and the Navy is naturally worried about allowing the Air Force to have too much authority in handling their requirements. Milspace in many ways is in turmoil.

Actually, this week's issue wasn't a full day late: the articles were online around 12 noon EDT Monday, about six hours or so later than usual. (Yes, the holiday was to blame.) I guess some readers are now conditioned to see each issue appear at exactly the same time...

As for adding a comments section to the publication, it's something I'm considering, but probably won't have the time to implement in the immediate future.

Jeff, the easiest way to do that might be to set up a Space Review blog (if you're running Moveable Type, this is almost trivially easy, since you already have Space Politics set up), then create a brief (or even empty) post for each article, and link to it from that article.

Re: a comments section--I am actually opposed to it in the case of The Space Review, unless Jeff maintains editorial control.

The reason is that (hopefully I am not assuming too much here) it is clear that The Space Review is _not_ a traditional blog. It has contributors and standards, and everything goes past Jeff. It has a higher level of professionalism. I consider it to essentially be an online journal.

Frankly, comments sections can be full of a lot of useless crap. This is true even for www.spacepolitics.com (anybody who reads the comments there will know what I mean).

What I think would be good for The Space Review would be some kind of formalized commentary section where Jeff has pre-posting review. But at least it would allow some near-real-time comments. Thus it could still maintain its reputation as a more formal forum of carefully-written opinion and analysis, but adopt a little more spontaneity.

Re: a comments section--I am actually opposed to it in the case of The Space Review, unless Jeff maintains editorial control.

The reason is that (hopefully I am not assuming too much here) it is clear that The Space Review is _not_ a traditional blog. It has contributors and standards, and everything goes past Jeff. It has a higher level of professionalism. I consider it to essentially be an online journal.

Frankly, comments sections can be full of a lot of useless crap. This is true even for www.spacepolitics.com (anybody who reads the comments there will know what I mean).

What I think would be good for The Space Review would be some kind of formalized commentary section where Jeff has pre-posting review. But at least it would allow some near-real-time comments. Thus it could still maintain its reputation as a more formal forum of carefully-written opinion and analysis, but adopt a little more spontaneity.

Creating a TSR blog is an interesting idea, although not necessarily trivial (Space Politics is on a separate server, and now that Movable Type has essentially gone commercial, may require spending some money.) Having a letters to the editor section—which is essentially what Dwayne Day is describing—might work better. I'll think about doing something like that in my copious free time.

It is the schizophrenic "the dog told me to say this" messages that appear on spacepolitics.com (you know which ones I am referring to) that would bring down TSR. So a true commentary section there would not be a good idea.

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