Interview with Scott Pace in SciAm

There was an interesting interview done with NSC member Scott Pace that I thought gives some better ideas on what the US and in particular the NSC (National Space Council) is trying to facilitate.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-plotting-u-s-space-policy-with-white-house-adviser-scott-pace/

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America in Cis-Lunar Space

Recently TMRO did an episode on the National Space Council (NSC) event that had me thinking about America's role in space in the next decade. As a space fan, I'm disappointed in the overall direction the US has taken in the past 10 years in space. While I'm happy about the robotic missions NASA has done in the past decade , human spaceflight has gone nowhere in America. I'm aware that SLS (Space Launch System) is coming (possibly, I'm doubtful) but I feel that we need to develop SLS and at the same time grow commercial launch providers with purpose . Moon versus Mars For those that watched the NSC event, the intent is to get America on a "Moon, Mars" plan. For some online, there's a lot of disagreement about going to the Moon first before Mars. For the uneducated, I'll briefly go into the reasons why many feel the Moon is a distraction to Mars. Essentially the arguments boil down to the fact that the engineering problems for Mars are diff...

Draft Letter to the Vice President

Note: This post has been edited. I've been kicking around the idea of writing members of the National Space Council after hearing all the commentary from the last meeting. I've been busy but this morning I finally took a moment to draft a letter to the Vice President . I haven't sent this yet as I think I could do better. I'm trying to keep it to one page as I'm sure their office gets a ton of letters. Once I'm done I'll print it out and sign it and mail it in. Do I think that this will actually have any effect? I doubt it, but I always want to have the view in the future that at least I said something. EDIT: I sent the below letter to the office of the Vice President earlier this week. I've also written letters to other agencies on the NSC; I've included a copy of that letter as well following the one to the Vice President. That letter is basically the same minus some word changes. ------------------------- [ DRAFT ] To: The White H...

Space Books So Far, October 2017

I wanted to put my list of books I've got on Kindle that are space related so far in case others are looking for something to read. Non-Fiction Biographical Astronauts " Endurance " - Scott Kelly's account of his year in space " An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth " - Chris Hadfield's book Other " Von Braun " - the man who helped America in spaceflight (the other notable name being Goddard) " Failure Is Not An Option " Gene Kranz book over his time being flight director at NASA " Elon Musk " - tangentially related to space, obviously " The Right Kind Of Crazy " - engineer Adam Steltzner at NASA Planning For Space Spaceflight, Humans In Space " The Case For Mars " - Robert Zubrin's plan to get people to Mars " Packing For Mars " - A look at the various things humans would have to account for in a mission to Mars. It can get pretty hilarious at times....

Reach Into The Dark

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