Category Archives: Space History

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

End Of An Extravaganza

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John Derbyshire says that government human spaceflight was largely pointless, and likely to end soon.

I don’t actually find much in there with which to disagree (I’ve pointed out the Zheng He analogy myself) — we have gotten horrible value for the money spent over the past forty years, and I do think that the hope is for private space. Though if the Augustine Commission could recognize and articulate the value to the nation and planet of becoming truly space faring, for things like planetary defense, and put forth a realistic plan to do it, I suppose that it’s possible it will survive somehow, but it will have to have sufficient pork content, which will defeat the purpose. But it’s hard to see Constellation continuing to exist in its current form.

I’m actually working on (or at least supposed to be working on) a longish piece for the summer issue of The New Atlantis on this subject.

[Tuesday afternoon update]

I will say that I think that “pointless” is too strong a word — as I said, we have gotten quite a bit of value, but not enough to justify the expenditure. And in many ways, Apollo has actually set us back from progress in space, by establishing a failed government-development model that lives on to this day in the form of Constellation. I hope that the Augustine Commission can finally fix this, but I fear that it won’t.

History, Social Commentary, Space, Space History

Well, He Meant “…A Man…”

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…but he didn’t quite say it:

Riley and Olsson…concluded that Commander Armstrong and his family members do pronounce the word “a” in a discernible way.

And based on broadcasts from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the Moon, it is clear that the word “a” was easily transmitted to Earth without being obliterated.

But their analysis of the intonation of the phrase strongly suggests Commander Armstrong had intended to say “a man”. There is a rising pitch in the word “man” and a falling pitch when he says “mankind”.

According to Mr Olsson: “This indicates that he’s doing what we all do in our speech, he was contrasting using speech – indicating that he knows the difference between man and mankind and that he meant man as in ‘a man’ not ‘humanity’.”

I think it’s safe to say that this has been analyzed to death at this point. It’s only been forty years.

Political Commentary, Space, Space History

Six Years

It’s hard to believe, but the Columbia disintegrated, with seven crew, over the skies of Texas six years ago today. And our space policy remains as screwed up as ever.

[Update in the evening]

Clark Lindsey has links to some musical tributes to the disasters. Also, for those who missed the link on the earlier anniversaries this week, here are my thoughts a year ago on the cluster of space disasters at the end of January and early February.

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

Restructuring The Dream

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I was going to write about this latest attempt to resurrect the mythical “Apollo spirit” by former CNN science reporter Miles O’Brien. But fortunately, Paul Spudis gives him the history lesson so I don’t have to. Well, not just so I don’t have to — that’s just a nice side effect for me, because I’m busy.

As Paul notes, Mike Griffin and (to a lesser degree, even before Griffin) NASA’s biggest mistake is in assuming that we can just pick up where we left off with the unsustainable and unaffordable Apollo program and somehow sustain and afford it. NASA has to get much more innovative, think about how to use existing infrastructure that has other uses (which is why it should, at least initially, be EELV rather than Shuttle derived), encourage and involve the private sector to a much greater degree, and think marginal cost rather than development cost, or they’ll end up with another Shuttle, and station, regardless of what the mold lines of the vehicles look like.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unsurprisingly, Mark Whittington (who really ought to fix his permalinks so they don’t double the tag) is still guzzling the koolaid by the pitcher.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

Over at The Space Review (which now seems to be allowing comments, though there are none yet at this article), Stokes McMillan hopes that Kennedy’s first 100 days will be repeated by Obama.

Don’t count on it. In fact, don’t even hope for it, if it’s a repeat of Apollo. Apollo was a unique set of circumstances, and unlikely to repeat. In order for history to repeat, using the JFK model, would be for him to have some humiliating foreign policy event comparable to the Bay of Pigs (unfortunately, that one’s not at all unlikely…) and then another exogenous event that spurs us into another space race. The only thing that I could think of that would be comparable to the double blow of first being beaten into space four years later, and then beaten into a man in space in the first hundred days, would be a surprise manned Mars landing by (say) the Chinese. And even then, I wouldn’t bet on a revitalized American space program as a response.

Sorry, but compared to other administration perceived concerns (global warming, lack of health care, the economy, etc.) space simply isn’t important. And it hasn’t been for over forty years.

[Update a while later]

Don’t look to the Europeans to scare us into another space race. Space isn’t important there, either:

Sources close to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)/Advanced Reentry Vehicle (ARV) team are telling Hyperbola that the November 2008 ESA ministerial meeting outcome was seen as catastrophic for the agency’s hopes for ARV operating before the International Space Station (ISS) is de-orbited, even with a 2020 end of life target, and a follow-on manned version of ARV.

But there will be plenty of jobs, so it’s OK.