Instapundit points to a WaPo article about asteroid hunters.

It’s a good article, and even points out that the popular notion of blowing them up with nukes doesn’t make much sense, but it doesn’t talk about it in the context of present space policy. In order to be able to control our fate with respect to extraterrestrial objects, we need to be a true spacefaring nation, with affordable reach not just beyond LEO to the moon, but to (in the president’s words over a year ago) “Mars and beyond,” with emphasis on the “beyond.”

That unfortunately implies a level of activity that isn’t allowed by the planned budgets for the VSE, at least if it’s done business-as-usual, using existing launchers, or derivatives of them. Conventional cost models indicate that there is budget for another Apollo-like program, sending a few astronauts to the moon once or twice a year, into the third decade of this century (and millenium). That might be enough for some (though I think that it’s not worth the money), but it surely isn’t a path to get us in a position to deal with these kinds of threats, which I think should be one of the major justifications for the program.

Not to sound like a broken record (you young whippersnappers can run to ask your folks what that phrase means), but we simply aren’t going to get the levels of activities necessary to drive down the costs to make things like this routine until we open up space to the market, whether the actual one, or an artificial one spurred by a recognition from NASA that they need to be getting a lot more for their money. If they go with the conventional aerospace wisdom, we’re very likely to end up with an expensive lunar base with insufficient activity to justify it for the next twenty years, instead of a space station like that. We’re also more likely to get clobbered, and be able to do nothing about it.

The paper that Sam is presenting at ISU is now available on line.

Guest blogger Sam Dinkin has a couple pieces at The Space Review today–an interview with Dave Criswell, co-inventor of the Lunar Power System (Bob Waldron, who used to work for me at Rockwell, is the other co-inventor), and an assessment of the global implications for the development of such a system.

I have to confess to being an LPS skeptic, but DoE has wasted a lot more money on a lot less promising things. In any event, the key to making any of these things happen, whatever their technological feasibility level, remains the cost of access to space.

I will be in North Dakota presenting a paper today and tomorrow so I won

Well, it sounds like Alan Binder’s book may be less interesting (or interesting in a different way) than I originally thought.

On page 722 he describes one NASA manager as an “incompetent jerk engineer”. On page 710 Binder refers to another NASA manager as a “arrogant, fat little bastard” and after repeating this compliment dozens of times, adds “pompous” to his tirade on page 728. On page 421 he refers to someone else as a “back stabbing SOB”. And so on. If I spent 5 more minutes I am sure I’d find more examples of gratuitous name calling.

Sounds like an editor was in order–in fact, badly needed. This is a shame, as I’d previously had a pretty high opinion of Dr. Binder.

Better luck next time, Thomas.

I was too busy to comment at the time, but when I saw this post at NASA Watch the other day, I said “Huh?”

In recent days [Courtney] Stadd has made it known to people that he would be interested in the position of Deputy Administrator – if asked.

My own sources indicate that Courtney could have had the administrator job, back before O’Keefe was picked, but didn’t want it because he couldn’t afford to take it, and didn’t want to become as consumed with it as he’d have had to in order to even hope to straighten out the agency. So why would he now be interested in playing second banana to Mike Griffin, when the workload would be just as high, and the pay and authority less? As Keith notes, however, Courtney has denied it (as I would have expected).

I was too busy to comment at the time, but when I saw this post at NASA Watch the other day, I said “Huh?”

In recent days [Courtney] Stadd has made it known to people that he would be interested in the position of Deputy Administrator – if asked.

My own sources indicate that Courtney could have had the administrator job, back before O’Keefe was picked, but didn’t want it because he couldn’t afford to take it, and didn’t want to become as consumed with it as he’d have had to in order to even hope to straighten out the agency. So why would he now be interested in playing second banana to Mike Griffin, when the workload would be just as high, and the pay and authority less? As Keith notes, however, Courtney has denied it (as I would have expected).

I was too busy to comment at the time, but when I saw this post at NASA Watch the other day, I said “Huh?”

In recent days [Courtney] Stadd has made it known to people that he would be interested in the position of Deputy Administrator – if asked.

My own sources indicate that Courtney could have had the administrator job, back before O’Keefe was picked, but didn’t want it because he couldn’t afford to take it, and didn’t want to become as consumed with it as he’d have had to in order to even hope to straighten out the agency. So why would he now be interested in playing second banana to Mike Griffin, when the workload would be just as high, and the pay and authority less? As Keith notes, however, Courtney has denied it (as I would have expected).

The spelling is deliberate. Mark Krikorian is upset that we’re going to shut it down, and thinks that it’s penny wise and pound foolish, given the low costs of continuing to listen to it. But I wonder how low the cost really is, and how high the value.

I haven’t paid much attention to it, because I’m not that big on space science, but I’ll bet that the costs cited to keep it going don’t include time on the DSN. Does anyone know how DSN time is allocated, and what the opportunity costs would be for Goldstone, Canberra et al to have to point at Voyager to listen to the tiny trickle of data that’s coming in at this point? I’d think that if they want to stop listening, that would be the reason, but I don’t know if there is any procedure or pricing policy set up for actually buying time on the big dishes, even if a non-profit foundation were set up to take it over. Anyone out there knowledgeable about this?