The Military Space Operator–After the Military

Transitioning as The New Civilian When I left the U.S. Air Force, I was a space operator. After working in the military space world for 11 years, it seemed very obvious to me and the Air Force, that I was a space operator, but not to anyone in the civilian world. I spent nearly six […]

Losing Proposition: Cutting USAF Space Operations

The United States Air Force (USAF) looks to be on the verge of admitting it can’t spend the money on its own people to operate its own satellites. They are considering some piecemeal options for moving contractors into what were military positions. This SpaceNews post describes four studies the USAF will be contracting out to figure out if […]

SpaceX’s Own Spaceport Will Not Affect NASA or DoD Operations, Part 2

This post is the completion of a short analysis I started yesterday about why NASA’s and the DoD’s launch operations will not be affected by SpaceX’s choice to build and use a launch operations center in Brownsville, Texas. It was prompted because of a post The Space Review put up on their site Monday, which suggested […]

SpaceX’s Own Spaceport Will Not Affect NASA or DoD Operations, Part 1

Yesterday, I expanded on a Space Review post of the possible reasons Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) is moving launch operations to Texas. The company believes it will conduct about 12 launches a year from its own space launch complexes near Brownsville, Texas. Such a launch rate is more than triple SpaceX’s 2013 launch rate of 3 […]

Five Reasons SpaceX Wants to Launch from Texas

Edward Ellegood wrote a very good post on The Space Review yesterday about why SpaceX is moving launch operations to Texas. Back in August, I also posted some conjecture about SpaceX’s reasons for moving launch operations to Texas. But Ellegood goes into a bit more detail than I did, so it might be a worthwhile […]