Broken American Space Policy exclamation point…

I wrote a longer than anticipated series about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA–and darn it, I just noticed it’s Oceanic and not Oceanographic) problems in getting just one satellite up into space. The NOAA’s problems are so bad, they had to have an Independent Review Team get into their business, note the problems, […]

Eighteen years after its start, SBIRS still not quite replaces DSP (or, the Air Force gets less by spending more)

Sad but true. According to this post on Spaceflightnow.com’s site, prime contractor Lockheed Martin and its customer, the United States Air Force (USAF), are slowly and expensively achieving a goal. That is, they are replacing older USAF Defense Support Program (DSP–and more DSP info here) satellites with Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) GEO satellites. The SBIRS GEO-2 satellite is officially operating as […]

I don’t think Hell has frozen over (yet)

Under the exasperated sighs of “Riiiiight” and “Surrrre,” Boeing has proudly announced on November 8 a “partnership” (read “monopoly”) with the United States Air Force (USAF). This partnership is supposed to help everyone involved to reduce “supply chain costs.” As I’ve noted before, the government and military’s acquisitions systems are broken. This system affects the […]

Amateur hour with Zulu time–Part 4

This post only means to show some of the “weirdness” some government agencies go through as they run their programs. It is not meant besmirch any reputation of any agency or person. Anyone who doesn’t take any of this with the grain of salt it deserves, maybe should think seriously about yoga. But just so you […]

Space junk tracking and collecting

Two articles for the price of one in this aside. The Australians have figured out they can use their widefield array to help track debris orbiting the Earth, and that’s elaborated on (a little bit) in this article. This will help by adding another asset to the space situational awareness problem. It’s a bigger problem if […]