Comments for Rocketforge

Comment on Obama’s Conservative Plan for American Leadership in Space by Aleksey Matyushev

Aleksey Matyushev — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:23:55 +0000

Sorry it took me so long to publish it (I haven’t checked a lot of the site for a while). But here is a link of the posted article on our website…http://openae.org/business-news/65-news-why-not-fund-the-program-of-record .

It will remain on our front page for a little while and then categorized under news on our website. Thanks for letting me publish it!

There is also a couple more articles that with your permission I want to publish as well (all with the link back of course!)

All the best,
Aleksey

Comment on The more Congress is involved in space the more it becomes made of FAIL by Aleksey Matyushev

Aleksey Matyushev — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:23:08 +0000

It will remain on our front page for a little while and then categorized under news on our website. Thanks for letting me publish it!

There is also a couple more articles that with your permission I want to publish as well (all with the link back of course!)

All the best,
Aleksey

Comment on The more Congress is involved in space the more it becomes made of FAIL by Trent Waddington

Trent Waddington — Sat, 22 May 2010 09:11:09 +0000

It’s amazing that after nearly 5 months there’s virtually no forward progress. Nearly everything you’ve said here is still relevant.

Comment on Low Cost/Low Energy NEO Mission? by Mike Lorrey

Mike Lorrey — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:18:30 +0000

How hard would it be to make a microchip sized version of VASIMR?

The cube BETTER have borg cube labels stuck to its sides…

Ok, take three cubes in a PPOD, one cube is fuel, one is the electric propulsion and solar power, and the third cube is the instruments and brains. You should be able to deploy 120 cm2 of solar cells for say, 10 watts. Use it to charge a supercapacitor that would burst power the nano-VASIMR during perigee, you should be able to make an eccentric enough orbit over time that at some point L1 will capture it at apogee. From there you can go wherever pretty easily.

Comment on Obama’s Conservative Plan for American Leadership in Space by Mike Lorrey

Mike Lorrey — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:46:05 +0000

I have to agree with you, its something I said when the plan was announced, this is the sort of plan that every republican would have endorsed (other than ATK mouthpieces like Dick Cheney) if Bush had come out with it, and would have gotten him crucified by the dems and the liberal press for “intentionally gutting the legacy of JFK” etc etc etc. Daily Kos would scream about it being PROOF, PROOF!!!! that Bush was an extremist idealogue.

That it took Obama to come out with it is akin to the whole “Only Nixon could go to China” sort of thesis.

Personally I think he did it only to light a fire under democrats to fully fund a resurgent and bloated NASA with all the budget it could ever want for every pet program the ICBM-industrial complex could ever desire, but thats just my paranoia talking. Then again, how much of NASA’s manned spaceflight budget gets spent in blue states?

One thing I have to correct you on: the budget for Constellation was NEVER underfunded. It matched the original “safer, simpler, sooner” budget numbers that ATK’s astroturf group proposed the Constellation program on. What happened since then was that Griffin got aholt of it and bloated Orion out, his “Apollo on Viagra” caused the Ares I upper stage to bloat out, which required a whole redesign of the upper stage engine, and also required the first stage go from 4 to 5 segments. Viagra indeed for the tallest launch vehicle since Saturn 5. Now we know what Griffin really meant.

Griffin’s bloating is what ruined Constellation. He should have been fired sooner, we’d have gone back to the original plan sooner, the budget would have gone back to normal… but no, that would require NASA to trim its workforce. Ghu forfend that a government union position get axed once created. That would violate one of the Conservation Laws, I’m not sure which…

Either way, I’m very very happy to see the current plan. I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more shuttle missions to narrow the gap, and NASA should be fast tracking development funds for Launch Abort Systems for Dragon and whatever other private manned capsules need it.

I’m even more amused to see the Air Force now trying to claim that cancellation of Constellation is going to make EELV rockets TWICE as expensive!!! As if a cost plus contract PLUS a “too big to fail” annual zero-loss guarantee isn’t enough corporate welfare to subsidize ULA, now allegedly they think we’ll need to pay for more overhead at the EELV companies? This is where the term “downsize management” comes in… well, I’m sure Elon was laughing at that one too, and rubbing his fingers at the prospect of competing against a ULA with suddenly doubled costs…

Comment on Low Cost/Low Energy NEO Mission? by NStrange

NStrange — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:25:36 +0000

I’ve seen studies where they put a small spacecraft with Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) on an ESPA ring and they can get it to many NEOs and even Mars.

Comment on Advice To Graduates On Getting Into Aerospace by Aleksey

Aleksey — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:10:53 +0000

Thanks for the wonderful article Michael!

I’m graduating in May 2010 (BS AE), and I wish my ENG101 teacher would have sat me down, starred me in the eye, and made me sign a paper saying that I will do at least 4 of these things before graduating; truly invaluable information. Thanks for the post!

I’m part of an online aerospace community, and I was wondering if we could publish this article on openAE.org (your name will go on as the author)? Let me know at aleksey@openae.org .

Comment on Obama’s Conservative Plan for American Leadership in Space by It’s The End Of the World As We Know It | MarsBlog.net

It’s The End Of the World As We Know It | MarsBlog.net — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:45:02 +0000

[...] think Michael Mealing comes closest to my own attitude towards this development: President Obama’s new policy for NASA [...]

Comment on Obama’s Conservative Plan for American Leadership in Space by Doug

Doug — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:21:21 +0000

Sounds like a bridge to nowhere. Lets suck some of our free market commercial aerospace companies into an aimless, goalless, meandering, space program dedicated to endless LEO based ISS boondoggle stymied muck. So we chuck a focused moon based program for a no goal LEO program. Then let’s build a new multi-billion dollar HLV without a destination to send its payload to (a bridge to nowhere). Actually HLV is bribe money and jobs for votes to get southern congressmen to buy into the new plan. Amazing how many of those anti HLV private space supporters now favor HLV being that they might now profit under the new plan. ULA showed how to do a commercial return to the moon and moon base by 2020 without HLV and within the existing budget. Seems we kind of overlooked that win-win scenario…hmmmm????? NASA needs to go commercial but this goalless scenario is not the way to go about it. I to am a free market Libertarian and this flex program is a Trogan Horse. I’m not willing to sell out our manned space program for this going nowhere LEO based smoken mirrors bribe based hogwash. Give a me lean, mean commercial based focus driving goal like return to the moon ULA style and chuck HLV plus ISS and I’m in.

Comment on Obama’s Conservative Plan for American Leadership in Space by Brian Swiderski

Brian Swiderski — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:55:21 +0000

The “conservative” plan would be to do whatever Senator Shelby says, and support the entrenched military-industrial business interests that suckle at the public teat while delivering minimally (or not at all) toward the goal of spacefaring civilization.

This plan is clearly liberal/progressive: It is intended to advance the state of the country and humanity by trying new ideas that make sense despite being contrary to orthodoxy, and does so by contributing public money to the effort rather than merely removing the public sector entirely.

Now, if he had adopted this plan because a televangelist told him to; or because some neoconservative nutcase said it would help in the hunt for Martian WMDs; or because Elon Musk bribed him; THEN you could at least say he was acting as a conservative. But this plan is about as conservative as Rush Limbaugh is American.