SLS–Play Out the Line? Or Cut Bait?

I happened upon this editorial today: NASA’s New Rocket Is Huge but so Is Its Budget It’s an article from “The National Interest,” so approach it with a little skepticism. As with these kinds of writing, there’s some truth and some spin. Relative to nearly everything else government, NASA’s budget is not that big at […]

May 25, 2018: Weekly Spatial Resolutions

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has invited Australia’s new space agency to help it reach the moon Since Blue Origin is used to testing rockets in godforsaken places, the Australian Outback is probably a logical place for the company’s considerations in plans to launch rockets. I don’t know if Australians should be excited, because “space tourism” […]

May 18, 2018: Weekly Spatial Resolutions

The Mystery of the ‘SpaceBees’ Just Got Even Weirder We’ve talked about the SpaceBees issue a few times on our podcast, “The Mission Readiness Review.” In case you don’t know, Swarm Technologies, a Silicon Valley startup, launched some very small satellites for a few federal agencies on an Indian rocket early this year. But […]

Fast Food, USAF, Teams, and Motivation, Part 3

How does an organization’s leaders lose the trust, confidence, and demotivate motivated individuals in one fell swoop? Normally, that sort of thing would take time and a series of circumstances, but for me, one big, rotten deal happened to a friend of mine–in the name of the “morale and well-being of the crew force.” On […]

Tracing the Tangled Web

In a previous post, I asked a question that might help point to other trends, technologies, and politics that could play a role in figuring out a general direction for the space industry. And that considering those, rather than just focusing on the space industry, might be extremely instructive. What is going on, and how […]