Geoffrey

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• Commented on Rocket Motors to Nowhere?

  "But I have to ask why on Earth is NASA proceeding to invest time and money in testing boosters that may have no role in the future of human spaceflight." I suppose maybe be because Congress has informed NASA that...

• Commented on Concerns Raised Over House NASA Authorization Bill

  Not a whole lot of Nobel prize winners under fifty, I'm afraid. It would be nice if there were. Editor's note: agreed - but I'd be curious to see what recent winners of a Westinghouse Prize would have to say...

• Commented on NASA's Electrodynamic Tether Propulsion Demonstration Mission

  Excellent! After years of being ignored, it's great to see that it looks like there's a chance that some tether concepts for advanced propulsion might actually flown!...

• Commented on Getting Out of the Gravity Well on One Thin Dime

  I am also quite disappointed that the congress seems to be cutting the research part out of the budget. Research had been stripped from NASA back in the VSE days, to pay first for Space Station and then for Constellation...

• Commented on House Wants To Kill CRuSR

  Hmmm. From the CRuSR page linked in the Keith Cowing post above, it looks like it's not only piloted vehicles being considered, but also unpiloted reusable vehicles. Seems reasonable to me that, in the long term, these may be cheaper...

• Commented on Dryden Seeks Ethnically Diverse Cylons

  Yeah, I think this is kind of dumb. If you want presenters who look humans, hire humans. If you want to use robots, that's way cool-- but let them look like robots. Make a robot that looks like Robonaut, for...

• Commented on Senate Rejects Obama's Space Plan

  Ouch. From the overview, this one sounds like the worst of both worlds. It doesn't seem to fund the Ares (which the Augustine committee pointed out would need a funding increase to fly, not a funding decrease)-- but it also...

• Commented on Asteroid Lutetia Revealed by Rosetta

  Superb. Well done, Rosetta team. I am eagerly awaiting the data from the infrared spectrometer!...

• Commented on NASA OIG is Not Pleased With ZeroG

  Robert Oler says that the resale value of the NASA C-9 would be "about 1 million dollars," or a little more if the engines are good. According to this web site: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jan/HQ_C0801_Zero_G_contract.html the NASA contract with ZeroG was for five...

• Commented on NASA OIG is Not Pleased With ZeroG

  "But NASA (the government) had to buy the C-9, outfit it, etc. it was not free. Someone (you and I) paid for the plane. The plane's purchase costs never figure in what it takes NASA to operate it" And, correctly,...

• Commented on Did NSS Try To Stiffle PeTA - or is PeTA Making Things Up?

  My experience with PETA is that if they say the sun rises in the east, I would want to have this statement verified before believing it. It seems to me that their agenda is to do whatever it takes to...

• Commented on Watching Falcons

  The new administration's space plan relies on a commercial space industry that does not yet exist for commercial transportation of astronauts to the space station. Falcon 9 is going to be first launch of the first booster (and so far,...

• Commented on This is How Urban News Myths Start

  Looks like the Wall Street Journal could use a fact checker!...

• Commented on Space Policy: New Message, Old Voices

  I'd love to see more younger voices at NASA. Unfortunately, the NASA I work for has gone from hiring freezes to downsizing to a "new, leaner NASA" for the last two decades. NASA's main thrust seems to be to REDUCE...

• Commented on Space Policy: Lack of Details and Lots of Differing Opinions

  I'm afraid that stopping one direction is much easier than agreeing on a new one....

• Commented on Twittering Pictures From Orbit

  dan.dawson: I notice that the last post in the comments section on the link you gave states: "That letter is fake people. Damn."...

• Commented on More Sour Grapes From Scott Horowitz

  I admire Space-X's ability to fail three times in a row, and each time to get back on the pad, learn the lessons to be learned, and keep on moving ahead. The courage to fail, and the fortitude to keep...

• Commented on You Can't Have It Both Ways, Mike

  The NASA COTS program to develop cargo transport to Space Station is the one of best things NASA has done in years, and I am dreadfully afraid that this new plan is going to bollox it up completely. It has...

• Commented on The Ares 1 Cancellation Backlash Begins - Before It Is Even Announced

  I'm not a particular fan of Ares, I'm not a particular enemy of Ares, but I hate the way NASA programs change directions with every change in political winds. Please, please, just stick with one approach for long enough to...

• Commented on Paradigm Shift Ahead for Human Space Flight

  Wow, if the WSJ article is right, they're picking an option that combines the worst features of all the possible choices. They're going to go commercial because they've been told that it's going to be cheaper in the long run--...

• Commented on Commercial Spaceflight Federation Takes Aim at ASAP's Report

  I'd love it if NASA were allowed to take risks again. But I don't think that's going to happen. Everybody ways NASA should accept risk, right up to the point where there's a failure. The risks they took in Project...

• Commented on Allegations Surface Regarding NASA Climate Data Manipulation

  Manatees always hang around electrical powerplant hot-water outflow in winter-- or at least they have for the thirty-odd years I've had family in Florida. That's nothing new. (I recommend Crystal River for winter manatee-watching, by the way)....

• Commented on Video: History of Two Worlds on Orbit

  "The STS-130 crew will carry both rocks into orbit and will permanently install them in the new node "Tranquility" that they will attach to the space station." That's the dumbest idea I've heard in a long time. I can think...

• Commented on NASA's Finances Are Still Hurting

  "The material weakness in FY09 audit were due to NASA's inability to meet accounting requirements by setting an asset value on the Shuttle and Space Station programs." Good lord, the "problem" that they're talking about is that NASA's financial system...

• Commented on Congressional Hearing on Safety

  The only way to guarantee perfect safety is to never fly anything....

• Commented on Video: Avatar, Augmented Reality, and NASA

  Why bother learning math when you have a calculator at hand? Calculators don't do math; they do arithmetic. That is "doing math" to about the same degree that penmanship is doing writing....

• Commented on Video: Avatar, Augmented Reality, and NASA

  OK, maybe he didn't rant about it, but I'll sign up for a mini-rant about Buzz Lightyear, Planet 51, and the Star Wars light saber on the Shuttle. My mini-rant is that this kind of stuff is fine, as long...

• Commented on Shields Up! NewSpace Is Under Attack

  Reading through it, it's a "news" release that contains no news, but is simply a (almost undisguised) call for money. This isn't news-- it's advertising....

• Commented on One-Off Rockets

  The Space Frontier Foundation is basically a mouthpiece for Tumlinson to do gratuitous NASA-bashing. Basically, whatever it is, if NASA is involved, they're against it. I'm not sure I'd name the Ares-1X the "invention of the year," but the hyperbole...

• Commented on HSPD-12 Update

  eep wrote: "I had to do the same background check when I started working at the FAA in early 2001" No, you didn't. 2001 was years before HSPD-12....