Spaceports everywhere!!

Okay, maybe not everywhere. But there are quite a few in the US according to Gizmodo in their article. 8 of them. I’m not as interested in “space tourism,” as I am in thinking this gives us some flexibility, if we’re smart about this, in replenishing satellite constellations. Not that I’d be against flying up […]

Kepler: looking at the bright side of life (in space)

The nice thing about government satellites, and perhaps satellites generally, is they are in a high demand field. And there’s not very many to go around (a lot of people call this high-demand/low density, or HD/LD). Then it makes sense someone is trying to figure out how Kepler can still be used. In this case, […]

Who will be the “ultimate space operator?”

Most people might agree the ultimate space operator is the astronaut (cosmonauts for those Russian fans). But according to this Slate article (posted today), the space operator will be robots. Fair enough. Satellites are a kind of robot, or at the very least, a drone. They have sensors, CPUs, power supplies, etc. Many things akin to […]

More of a good thing

AND THEY’RE OFF!! Now we have two US companies supplying the International Space Station with their own rockets and spacecraft. SpaceRef just posted this article about Orbital’s new rocket and its launch today. Go here for photos of the take-off. And to think we were concerned about a lack of US space launch capability earlier […]

Space matters, but other options help, too

This story has been going around the net for the past few days. And probably for many of you smart people out there, it’s probably an inevitable outcome of our government’s (the USA) infatuation with drones. But, just like my aside “The Poor Man’s LEO satellite” about the North Dakota balloons being used for imagery, […]