Scott Pace gave an important speech that is sure to upset many in the international space community at the Galloway Symposium a couple weeks ago. Laura Montgomery comments.
Speaking of Henry Hertzfeld, every time I see him, for over a couple decades now, we argue about the viability of reducing the cost of launch through reusability of rockets. I wonder what he’s thinking these days?
RIP, Lutz Kayser.
I don’t know if anyone’s written a definitive history of OTRAG, but it did inspire (at least for a while) John Carmack and Armadillo.
Bob Zimmerman has a familiar problem, one that I and many friends do (Leonard David’s is particularly acute, after half a century of space reporting). My own archives, such as they are, go back almost four decades.
This is the first rocket launch out of Camden, Georgia in many decades.
Hot of the press… amazing video of our launch today at @CamdenSpaceport pic.twitter.com/QBtPlCs8zs
— VECTOR (@vectorspacesys) August 3, 2017
I accidentally started a Twitter conversation with Sandy Mazza as a result of this nice piece on markets being enabled by lower-cost launch, including space burial. I noted to her that it made no sense for the California Department of Public Health to be regulating it, and then mentioned that they shouldn’t have anything to do with cryonics, either. In the course of the discussion, I dug up an old piece I wrote for Cryonics Magazine back in 1990 (ctrl-F “Simberg” to find it). Given that things are finally looking promising for reducing cost of access to space in general, and likely the moon as well, I decided I’d resurrect it here. Note that I’ve been talking about the need for markets to drive down launch costs for three decades. Note also that it’s somewhat dated, in terms of its discussion of the NASP and American Rocket.
Get together with friends and celebrate the 48th anniversary tonight. Bill Simon and I will be on The Space Show at 7 PM Pacific to discuss it.
[Update a while later]
Here’s what I wrote on the 40th anniversary. It still holds up pretty well, I think.
[Update early afternoon]
There’s a new version of the ceremony on line now.
[Late-afternoon update]
Seeing comments out there on the Interwebs that Nixon canceled Apollo. No, it happened in 1967, by Congress. Before he was elected. For those of you unfamiliar with the post-Apollo history under Nixon, John Logsdon’s latest book is a good read. Funded by Bill Anders, it’s probably the definitive history at this point. He’s currently working on the space history of the Reagan administration, which I wrote about at the time of Reagan’s passing.
[Friday-morning update]
The Space Show we did last night has been archived.
Today is the anniversary of the first spaceflight of SpaceShipOne. At the time, everyone expected its successor to be flying passengers before the decade was out. As we now know, that was over-optimistic, for a variety of reasons. But here are my blog posts from the event at the time.
There was an interesting conference in New York last week (that I would have liked to attend if it had been in my budget). It’s still hard to raise money for it, because modern philanthropists don’t know the history
[Update a while later]
Sorry, added missing link.
After several years, the documentary is finally out. Jeff Foust has a review.
I also remained on the cutting-room floor. It sounds like it’s a good history, but as Jeff notes, vague on what to fight for now.
From me, in a podcast with Anthony Colangelo.