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• Commented on Rocket Motors to Nowhere?

  It also requires that Orion (referred to as Multipurpose Crew Vehicle) must be fully Beyond-LEO capable, not a stripped-down CRV So what's "Beyond-LEO capable"? Travel to an E-M L1 space station? Moon orbiting? Command module to a Moon lander? Travel...

• Commented on Buzz Says Send English Speakers to Mars

  But Canada is part of the US, right? ;-) I think it's simplistic to say the language problem disappears for a crew selected from those countries. For example, some English-speaking Europeans or Chinese are easier for me to understand than...

• Commented on Kepler Discovers Two Planets Transiting Same Star

  They get a lot of data from the shape of the dip in the luminosity. The overall length of the transit, the curve describing the edges of the dip - it's all enough to get a rough idea of what...

• Commented on Kepler Discovers Two Planets Transiting Same Star

  tinker and Zvezdichko, you're a tough audience - I think too tough. Maybe it's the high bar set by the successful RV community. This is indeed the first known case of two (and maybe three) transiting planets around the same...

• Commented on Kepler Discovers Two Planets Transiting Same Star

  What do I win? My daughter would offer "one MILLION gallons of... air." ;-)...

• Commented on Should Congress Design the Next Big Booster?

  This is worse than BushSpace and all the -Spaces that came before. Not only are we handcuffing the US budget to an old and VERY COSTLY way of creating and operating launch services, we are now letting congresscritters constrain the...

• Commented on Kepler Discovers Two Planets Transiting Same Star

  SpaceCowboy is right, 3 focal planes out of 42 show degraded noise performance, usable but not to spec. Because of the 4 times/year clocking of the telescope, that means 12 fields out of 42 have one bad orientation per year,...

• Commented on Video: Using Cellphones as Payloads

  Thanks, Matthew. I didn't mean to be critical of spinning tumbling rockets. I mainly don't know anything about them. I figured spin was either designed-in, or not designed-out, as you said. I'd guess few if any non-commercial rockets are attitude-controlled,...

• Commented on Video: Using Cellphones as Payloads

  I'm curious about the launch, launch vehicle, and flight data. Can anybody tell us the story that goes with all this spinning and tumbling? Where was the launch? What class of rocket was this? Was there an air traffic TFR...

• Commented on Kepler Mess: We Could Certainly Use Carl Sagan Right Now

  Tiny speech in a tiny venue, poorly chosen terminology, biggest topic in space astronomy, and bravo, tempest in a teacup. Keith, finding another habitable, even inhabited planet like Earth is also a yearning and a passion of mine. I can...

• Commented on Kepler Co-I Sasselov Blames Media For Misunderstanding

  Keith's 27 Jul 8:58 pm EDT update: there is now a lengthier post by Sasselov here. I only learned about it from an alert reader. Keith, in the Kepler news announcement, at the bottom, it gives that same link. Perhaps...

• Commented on Kepler Co-I Sasselov Blames Media For Misunderstanding

  Hey, I can use the Drake Equation too. One hundred million stars... Times... Three hundred percent chance there are alien civilizations.. Oh my God! There are two other civilizations right here! And I used math to prove it, so it...

• Commented on Kepler Team Needs To Take PR 101

  Let's keep this in perspective here. 1) As tentative and preliminary as it is, this information has never been available before. A year ago, we didn't know within a factor 10-100 what number would be on this PPT chart. (Although...

• Commented on STS-135 Is Almost A Certainty

  STS is a beautiful thing, but it eats its own children's dinner. The next crew launch vehicle will not be developed without cash, and it's currently budget-limited; less cash means later completion. Therefore each STS flight inevitably delays the beginning...

• Commented on Kepler Co-Investigator Spills The Beans: Lots of Earth-like Planets

  Even the numbers here are incomplete, because they must represent only short-period planet candidates (i.e. very hot), and because at least a few of them will turn out to be non-planet phenomena after scrutiny. In 3 years, when the final...

• Commented on Keeping Our Eyes On The Prize

  Heavy lift is not the magic key. ANY lift you can touch and watch and participate in will inspire. Example: planes of all sizes inspire; even fast trains inspire. The problem JoeCooper complained about is real, and I like the...

• Commented on STS-135 Is Almost A Certainty

  Let's say it'll cost a billion dollars to keep 5000 people employed for another year. What material good comes from that? Another visit to ISS with a manifest that we don't even have a rough draft of yet? Feeling good...

• Commented on Full Draft Text of House NASA Authorization Legislation

  Congress should not say, "whatever you do going forward, it must incorporate the hardware and designs of CxP, or look like STS, because we don't want to lose the sunk cost." They *can* say that, but it's harmful micro-management. It's...

• Commented on A Missed Opportunity (Update)

  Cessna, you're right that Obama fell down on advocating for his plan, but it was a good plan with holes. The transition to commercial HSF, on-orbit assembly for BEO, and HSF-robotic synergy is truly visionary, and it's the right way...

• Commented on Letter: Armstrong, Cernan, and Lovell Support NASA Authorization

  The truth is, We are moonbound again under this plan, and other destinations as well. There was no serious commitment to doing something right now from ObamaSpace towards BEO goals. The truth is, we are not moonbound any more than...

• Commented on Full Draft Text of House NASA Authorization Legislation

  *Why* must we "[build] on the investments made to date in the Orion, Ares I, and heavy lift projects and other activities of the exploration program in existence prior to fiscal year 2011 rather than discarding them?" It's not proven...

• Commented on A Missed Opportunity (Update)

  It'd be nice to see the whole article without a subscription. (Sigh). I'm too much of a cheapskate. But generally I agree that the new bill takes the wind out of commercial crew's sails, and apparently sets up the government...

• Commented on House Wants To Kill CRuSR

  Before this language was inserted in the draft, NASA review panels could decide whether to accept a proposal to use a CRuSR launch for a given payload. With this language, the panel is prevented from selecting it, by law, without...

• Commented on House Wants To Kill CRuSR

  I don't understand this. It's an absolute pittance, and as far as I can tell it threatens no-one. There's no broad-brush engineering or science argument against it; just the usual question of whether it's the best approach to the problem,...

• Commented on Astronauts Send Letter in Support of Commercial Crew

  Cessna #1: If I fly on an airliner, do I pay large amounts of money to get the aircraft designed and off the ground? Or do I just buy a ticket? Actually, yes, you do support the 787 development whenever...

• Commented on Astronauts Send Letter in Support of Commercial Crew

  Competition from CxP is not the point, and that's not why CxP should be dutifully ended. The reason for ending CxP is that it's a detour from and a burden against the future we should have. The development cost is...

• Commented on Video: It's nice to know that America still builds rockets

  Yes, yes, fast car = rocket, I get it. But this ad (which interleaves endless clips of Saturn V) also implies that this is the last American rocket, and that is patently false: we have other super-fast testosterone-soaked muscle cars...

• Commented on A Chance To Tell The President's Sci &Tech Advisors What You Think

  Very nice post, GREverett; long-view insight, and overall correct. It's hard for people to give up CxP, but it's really our fathers' space program updated: Moon-or-bust using government rockets. Our children's HSF program should look more like modern commercial aviation,...

• Commented on Wide Range of Reactions To Bolden's Al Jazeera Interview

  Spacester -- calm down, breathe deeply, stop panicking. NASA isn't being gutted. The HSF part of its mission is being redefined -- leaning more on commercially developed launch vehicles and releasing the government monopoly. It's the transition to the Commercial...

• Commented on Cernan Calls On Bolden To Resign

  This is really just group-think on network television. Cernan's demand is rooted in premises and conclusions that are all worthy of debate, but not settled. (Shouldn't they get Buzz and the other 6-7 astronauts on their side first?) Therefore his...