All posts by Rand Simberg

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

At Smallsat

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This is my first trip to this venerable conference, which for decades was held in Logan, UT, where the university there, Utah State, was a hotbed of this developing technology as a result of innovative faculty. This year it’s at the convention center in Salt Lake City, and it’s huge, as would befit this burgeoning industry. There’s a cavernous exhibit hall with hundreds of exhibitors.

My concern is that the industry may be in a bubble. I’m seeing several vendors for some of the technologies, and it’s not clear to me that they’ll all survive, or how they’ll compete. But that’s the dynamic nature of new tech.

History, Space, Space History

Jim Lovell

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I think there are only five left, four of whom walked on the Moon. Lovell was the only one who circled it twice, but never set foot on it. It’s getting increasingly possible that they’ll all be gone before another person does, thanks to Congress and feckless administrations over the decades.

[Update a while later]

Bob Zimmerman has an obituary.

[Saturday-afternoon update]

Here’s the obit from the New York Times. I don’t think this is right, though: “In a nation battered by domestic turmoil and devastated by Vietnam War casualties, the safe return of the astronauts lifted American spirits and renewed attention to the space program, which had drifted in the aftermath of the first two manned landings on the moon.”

Not really. In fact, it was a wake-up call that if they continued to do lunar missions, it was not unlikely that they would lose a crew, and Apollo 13 was part of the impetus to not fly 18 and 19.