No, not this kind, but close to. It may be that due to Mr Barack Hussein Obama reducing the American manned space programme into a list of airy promises, we may be seeing the dawning of the age of specialised spacecraft.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Space taxi
No, not this kind, but close to. It may be that due to Mr Barack Hussein Obama reducing the American manned space programme into a list of airy promises, we may be seeing the dawning of the age of specialised spacecraft.
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Nothing necessarily wrong with this as it stands, I think. I remember a post here a few weeks ago about the android robot for exploring the moon, and I think that it and this small-scale, specialized equipment may be part of the same theme. Both allow development of components that can be used in more ambitious expeditions, while fitting into a greatly reduced budget---the moon-bot saving for instance, not only on shipping life support equipment and expendables out of Earth's gravity well, but on redundant systems, because no human lives are at risk. Later, when Hussein Husseinovich joins Carter playing golf at the Americans-are-stupid-for-not-reelecting-me club, and a more sympathetic administration comes along with budget to expand beyond a skeleton crew, NASA will have several technologies ready to develop. Or maybe even fully developed components ready to bolt together and go.
There's a lot of smart engineers at NASA. (Pity that many of them are likely to be released into the wild to compete with me for engineering jobs.)
Much as I disagree with The One, I can't really complain about NASA having it's stranglehold on space launch infrastructure broken. It was always a socialistic enterprise, and couldn't be self sustaining in any economic sense. Let the market take over and maybe we'll get something that actually works for a reasonable price.
Jason, I hope you're right. In any case, this appears to be an experiment that we're going to try. Unlike making enemies of friends and giving actual enemies something to laugh about, or crippling the national economy and defense capabilities, this one can be tried with little risk. So, hurrah to Husseinovich on this---he's found something he can break only a little bit, and then if he does break it, it will be easy to fix!
I agree with you chaps on the result, but I still have reservations because The One is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. If he'd said that he was dismantling the government/industry hybrid that has become such a dead hand on the American space programme since Apollo ended and he was encouraging private industry to do for space travel what it did for air travel in the first half of the 20th century, I'd be completely in favour. However, knowing what we do of the man and his prejudices, I believe that his real reason for cancelling Orion is because Mr Obama finds his country's preeminence in space distasteful and the vague promises and bromides he delivered in Florida were just a way of, he hopes, minimising the damage in November.
Black President = Asteroid.
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