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 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 […]

Another “Space Watch” article…

While I’ve been lying low content-wise on the site here, I’ve been staying pretty busy at work. One of the many fun things I get to do is to look up historic events leading up to the Apollo moon missions, and then write a little bit about the event for the Space Foundation’s “Space Watch” […]

Stage Two Engine Test

I wrote this “Apollo 50th Anniversary Moment” prior to the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium this year. While a lot of important things happened in April 1966 for the Apollo program, I thought the Saturn V second stage engine test was worth focusing on–especially since it helped with some wordplay. I think. And it’s kind of […]

Landing the Business of Launch

SpaceX was very confident that today’s successful landing would happen. Instead of hedging the outcome as they had in previous launches, statements from people within the company before the launch today indicated that today was the day. And today was their day. I’m assuming you’ve seen the footage of the Falcon 9’s first stage landing […]