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• Commented on USA Lays Off Almost 1,400 People

  Not to sound insensitive but when I got laid off from IBM in the early '90s with the other 10,000 employees in upstate NY I don't recall any Congressmen or Senators trying to save my job. Maybe we can blame...

• Commented on SpaceX Wins Half Billion Dollar Deal With Iridium

  "Desch further commented, "SpaceX also offered dedicated Iridium NEXT launch slots within its manifest, which currently has 24 Falcon 9 flights scheduled ahead of us..." I always have been rooting for SpaceX. But that's 240 Merlin engines, all of which...

• Commented on Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle Idea Is Still Alive

  So I guess Mack Henderson is one of "anonymous" NASA employees, dare I say it at the risk of inviting the wrath of Constellation, Direct advocates? His IL or inline sure looks like what the Direct folks have been advocating...

• Commented on Watching Falcons

  I'm rooting for both SpaceX and Orbital. But on the note that the Atlas V has Russian engines, I believe that Orbital is also using leftover rocket engines that were originally going to be used by Kistler. Why is it...

• Commented on COTS Commercial Crew Transportation RFI Released

  Could be but don't you think Aerojet would advertise it as "new and improved"? I suspect this is just a form of corporate welfare. Hopefully we aren't funding GM to test the Vega engine for it's 2015 car models. But...

• Commented on COTS Commercial Crew Transportation RFI Released

  Just saw this today on SpaceDaily.com "Aerojet Validates Engine Design For Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle". http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Aerojet_Validates_Engine_Design_For_Orion_Crew_Exploration_Vehicle_999.html A couple things that are interesting. The article states that the "The R-1E currently provides in-space propulsion for the space shuttle and has a...

• Commented on COTS Commercial Crew Transportation RFI Released

  Everyone constantly ignores the obvious solution to LEO, specifically the ISS. They are sitting on display in the Smithsonian and are called the Apollo Command Module. We don't need anything on "steriods" to support the ISS. The Apollo CM was...

• Commented on Draft NASA HLV BAA Released

  Thanks for the reference. I went back and re-read it. Did anyone else see what was wrong with it? Item "2. High-Power Electric Propulsion System..." is something that NASA gave away because they didn't want to work on it. So...

• Commented on Griffin: Obama Space Policy = Drivel

  Griffin's comment on Commercial Crew “Some $6 billion are allocated in the president’s budget to develop commercial space flight," Griffin said. "I want this deal. I want somebody to give me billions of dollars up front for me to go...

• Commented on Critics With Inconsistent Arguments

  I find it really annoying when I read things in papers like the Houston Chronicle where the facts are conveniently omitted. The little fact that in the 105 Soyuz missions, there have been TWO loss of crew accidents. Yes the...

• Commented on NASA To Participate in Toyota Accelerator Probe

  If you weren't so ignorant I guess Americans should be offended. The Space Shuttle is a vastly superior spacecraft than the Soyuz. Please explain why the Soyuz has had the same number of loss of crew accidents, 2, as the...

• Commented on NASA To Participate in Toyota Accelerator Probe

  Yeah, I'm sure our astronauts preparing for their ballistic re-entry on the Ruskie Soyuz will sleep a lot better knowing that the Toyota Hybrids are safe!...

• Commented on NASA To Participate in Toyota Accelerator Probe

  I'm a little puzzled by this. Why wouldn't the NTSB handle this investigation. They investigate aircraft accidents with complex fly-by-wire systems. Wouldn't they have the expertise to investigate the drive-by-wire automotive systems. On a side note, when I first heard...

• Commented on Tug of War Over Commercial Space Safety?

  What a stupid comment. If a company such as SpaceX provides the capsule and the pilot, they are the managers. The same as when NASA buys a seat on the Soyuz. End of discussion. Or should the COTS crew just...

• Commented on Today's Space Policy Feedback

  If they were paying attention to the space program they would have insisted a couple years ago to save jobs by extending the Shuttle retirement until the U.S. had a tested alternative. NASA wouldn't have had the money to waste...

• Commented on Buzz Aldrin's Take On What Needs to be Done - Update

  "The advantage of such a system-all cargo sidemount-is that it is a heavy lifter that has the least need for changes to the existing Shuttle facilities..." Uh, while the VAB and shuttle processing facility is still unchanged, there is only...

• Commented on New NASA Policy = Higher USAF Launch Costs?

  If the launch vehicle is safer won't the customers be saving money on launch insurance? If it is a government launch and there is no launch insurance wouldn't a safer launch vehicle be better and more cost effective than losing...

• Commented on New NASA Policy = Higher USAF Launch Costs?

  Your reasoning doesn't make sense. By your reasoning when an auto company decides to end production of a model of car all other models cost will go up. Haven't seen this happen in the free market. Most of the proposed...

• Commented on New NASA Policy = Higher USAF Launch Costs?

  Your reasoning doesn't make sense. By your reasoning when an auto company decides to end production of a model of car all other models cost will go up. Haven't seen this happen in the free market. Most of the proposed...

• Commented on New NASA Policy = Higher USAF Launch Costs?

  Did the Undersecretary provide any context other than the quote? If not then he should be fired. I think what he means is that ULA and ATK has a monopoly with the defense department and they will make their money...

• Commented on More Shuttle Flights? Just Send Money

  Has anyone in these Congressional hearing posed the question asking if the ISS can be resupplied adequately with only the Progress, ATV and HTV? Everybody is focusing on the fact that we are losing human launch capability but ignoring the...

• Commented on Astronaut Office Thoughts on Going Commercial

  What is the difference between experimental and commercial aircraft as far as control that the FAA has? As far as SpaceX, if they are successful with the COTS Dragon and make some profit on this that they plow back into...

• Commented on More Water on the Moon

  You are correct. How many hundreds or thousands of square miles/kilometers are these craters spread over. At approximately 8.35 pounds per gallon this is only 155,688 gallons of water. I would bet that if someone did an analysis it would...

• Commented on Human Rating A Spacecraft

  Pretty obvious even for a nerd. The more restrictions and standards and triple and quadruple redundancy you require, the more layers of checking, rechecking and triple checking that you add the more something costs. This is not to say that...

• Commented on Human Rating A Spacecraft

  LOL! I didn't pick that up. Isn't conversion from English to metric units a recurring NASA problem? Like satellites crashing into Mars? Maybe have to tighten the standard on that....

• Commented on NASA's Most Important Asset, Gerry Griffin, 31 December 1996

  I wonder if Gerry Griffin ever worked for IBM? "Our employees are our greatest asset." That was their phrase right up to the point that they started the layoffs back in the early 90's. And I'm speaking from experience as...

• Commented on Human Rating A Spacecraft

  My first thought while reading this was the same as Mark Simpson's. Please point us to the website for the Russian space agency's man rating documentation for the Soyuz. Do the Russians adhere to the 40,000+ standards. Oh, that's right....

• Commented on Another Orion Parachute Problem - Still No Word

  Typical comment. The topic is about not hearing anything from a U.S. agency and people try to deflect the criticism by bringing up SpaceX a private company. Not to mention the fact that SpaceX has broadcast their failures and successes...

• Commented on Public-private Partnership Honeymoon Coming?

  I just don't understand the support for the Constellation program and the disdain for SpaceX that I see in many of the posts on on this article and others on Nasawatch. Boeing, Lockheed, (and the monopolies that they created USA...

• Commented on Another Orion Parachute Problem - Still No Word

  Maybe the $2.5 billion closeout costs doesn't include NASA PAO posting negative Constellation info....