Other People’s Money–How the DoD Spends Yours On Space

What you’re about to read are my opinions, based on experiences with government, both as the government military and as a contractor. I am also taking the history of DoD space acquisitions, including relevant Government Accountability Office reports, into account to inform my opinion. My contention is: whatever the Department of Defense is saying they’re planning with […]

Low-cost Mars Probe Hack: Jugaad To Be Kidding Me

Americans pride themselves on entrepreneurship, independence, ingenuity, and can-do traits. And there’s historical and current evidence of those traits to support that pride. The Indians, however, seem to be quickly adopting these “American” traits, but at less expense. Or maybe the traits have always been present in India, but something was suppressing them for a long […]

SpaceX News: An F9R video and Letters from Senator McCain

Here are two little “love letters” from Senator McCain. One is to the Secretary of the Air Force, the other to the Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG). The gist of both is that he takes issue with the United States Air Force’s arguments for cutting down the number of available launches in the EELV contract […]

SpaceX and the ULA: Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla?

Maybe it’s more David and Goliath, but I prefer the imagery of two rocket manufacturers duking it out as Japanese Kaijin, “Pacific Rim”-style. But who is who? This latest Spacenews.com post hosts the written exchanges between SpaceX’s Elon Musk, and United Launch Alliance’s Michael Gass. These questions and answers were requested by the Senate Committee on Approprations’ […]

Smallsats, Cubesats, and Chipsats: Klein, Aber Oho!

Nope, you aren’t seeing things. There’s some German in the title there. The phrase essentially means small but mighty (like my wife). And the phrase describes, in a nutshell, the explosive growth and growing capabilities of these miniature mighty man-made moons. Nature.com has a fairly good write-up about the history and current state of Cubesats. It’s exciting […]