The Man. On Space Review. [EDIT: About a month ago, but I only just read it.] This is just excellent. So many things I agree with, that go against the stupid myths of spaceflight and space policy. If you read one space policy interview this year, this should be it!
“NASA is an organization that is [...]
Archive for the ‘ESA’ Category
Jeff Greason
Posted in Architecture, Colonization, Depot, ESA, JAXA, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged NASA, Augustine, Depot, Greason on Thursday 2009.11.05 | Leave a Comment »
Reality and Future
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, Depot, ESA, Global, ISRU, Lunar, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged Augustine, Depot, HSF, Jeff Greason, NASA on Tuesday 2009.08.11 | 4 Comments »
Jeff Greason is a rational person who simply gets it. It is mind boggling how completely opposite from someone like Mike Griffin he is.
See Jeff’s presentation with the Augustine Panel.
Paraphrasing, “we could go to Mars with Ares V but we shouldn’t – cause we couldn’t stay anyway”. Exactly. That’s the problem with NASA. (or the [...]
Skylon
Posted in Architecture, ESA, Energy, Motivation, RLV:s, Science, Suborbital, Transportation, airplane, engines, industry, tagged liquid air, sabre, skylon, ssto, varvill on Tuesday 2009.03.03 | Leave a Comment »
Nice video explanation of the SABRE engine by Richard Varvill.
In a sense, it boils down to the problem of changing the hot fast low pressure intake air flow to a cold slow high pressure flow.
In the Sabre engine, techniques somewhat similar to liquid air plants are used: there is a compressor, that is coupled to [...]
The Third Way for Space Journalism
Posted in Demotivation, ESA, Journalism, NASA, Navelgazing, industry, tagged EADS, flight international, Galileo, Journalism, space journalism, Surrey on Tuesday 2008.11.25 | Leave a Comment »
Note, this text was originally posted as a comment on Rob Coppinger’s Hyperbola blog at flight international.
I hope there was more expansion in the “third way” for space journalism, at the moment it’s more like the big professional publications relaying NASA and ESA etc PAOs and company press releases, while blogs and forums are pushing [...]
Sometimes
Posted in Demotivation, ESA, Motivation, NASA, industry, tagged astronaut, kibo on Saturday 2008.10.18 | Leave a Comment »
…stuff like this makes me think it’d be cool to be an astronaut. But the 20 year waiting of on and off flight opportunities, constant staying away from your family, random accidents killing people, and the complete helplesness of the individual at the hands of a vast governmental organization just don’t [...]
On Contracting
Posted in Architecture, ESA, Motivation, industry, tagged contracting, EU, industry, military-industrial complex on Monday 2008.09.29 | 1 Comment »
Rand Simberg has discussion on some stuff that’s vital for an efficient spacefaring future. I feel those ideas of making fixed price contracts where the contractor bears all the risk are a bit oversimplified, but hold a lot of truth and usefulness. Motivation is a very important aspect of business and work, that I have [...]
Fed Up
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, ESA, ISRU, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Suborbital, tagged Armadillo, COTS, ESA, fed up, Future, NASA, RAGA, RLV, SpaceX, XCOR on Wednesday 2008.06.18 | 9 Comments »
I’m quite that just right now. It will pass. Perhaps.
There’s been some discussion in various places about both NASA and potential future launch vehicles. Everything’s just so static in a large sense. Completely hopeless. I’ll throw in the towel for now.
Almost nobody has the required long attention span or patience to make any useful progress [...]
ATV Docking Right Now
Posted in ESA, NASA, Spacecraft, tagged ATV, ISS, Jules Verne on Thursday 2008.04.03 | Leave a Comment »
ESA live video here and live blog here, NASASpaceflight.com live thread here. Distance now a few meters.
EDIT: Success! ATV is now docked to ISS. The live streaming video worked great perhaps for the first time ever. Now ESA has the Columbus lab and the ATV on the ISS. This success will probably raise space awareness throughout Europe, I hope the media will note it.
First ATV nearing ISS
Posted in Depot, ESA, NASA, Spacecraft, tagged ATV, docking, ESA, ISS on Monday 2008.03.31 | Leave a Comment »
The first European Autonomous Transfer Vehicle is nearing the International Space Station as I write this. It’s demo day 2 and it will go to 250 meters distance. Docking will be a few days later.
ESA has a live blog here.
NASASpaceflight.com has a live thread here. Someone just posted a screen capture:
There’s video at NASA TVas well as ESA’s blog.
Hope all goes well. This is a bit of a competence test for ESA and the European space industry (well, those who are in this [...]
European Lunar Program Alternatives
Posted in Architecture, Colonization, Depot, ESA, ISRU, Lunar, tagged AES, ESA on Tuesday 2008.03.11 | Leave a Comment »
ESA’s Architecture for Exploration Study (AES) is overviewed in Lunar Base Quarterly 1/2008 (EDIT: to be clear, the Quarterly was released in January):
Lots of Ariane 5, Angara and Soyuz launches with space docking, a space station in Earth-Lunar L1 and many new crewed and non-crewed craft and capabilities.
They had a red team / blue team [...]
