With the upcoming launch today, Eric Berger writes that the surprise is not that it took so long, but that it happened at all.
Has Boeing done anything right, or well recently?
[Update a few minutes later]
Reading in the article about the “incident” at White Sands, I recall that I was sitting next to Chris Ferguson at an Apollo 49th-anniversary dinner at KSC a month or so afterward, and I said something like “I heard you had a little oopsie at WSMR.” He said, “You’re not supposed to know about that.” I’m sure that he wished that I (and others) didn’t know about that.
I think that this is bogus: ““The FAA, Department of Transportation, has been doing human spaceflight safety for many years…”
The FAA has never been responsible for human-spaceflight safety. In fact, under the learning period, it has no legislative authority to do so. It has never done mission assurance for either satellites or participants. Does Rich DalBello really subscribe to this statement?
It also begs the question that any federal agency should be responsible for the safety of commercial spaceflight participants, either on the way to orbit, on the way back, or in space. The debate we should be having is not which agency, but whether the federal government should have responsibility at all at this point in time. I don’t see how Article VI requires it. I’m tempted to write an op-ed.
Glenn Reynolds remembers Estes rockets. I share his hope that the new space age is motivating boys (and girls) to do more of this and less social media.