Government, Spaceflight, Spinoffs, and People

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To the outside observer, it seems like the U.S. Government treats the funding of NASA with the same care and understanding as they do the United States Postal Service. The outside observer would be wrong; it’s not handled nearly as well. And the USPS is going bankrupt…so that sort of gives you an idea of how bad the problem is. Continue reading 

Let’s Speed-up Spacecraft Development Without Rushing

June 4, 2010 liftoff Falcon 9 / Photo: Chris Thompson/SpaceX

Following the failure and crash of a Russian Progress M-12M cargo vehicle, there has been a lot of alarmist rhetoric about the future of the ISS as well as American spaceflight capability. Let’s take a step back to look at the situation without a “sky is falling” mentality. Continue reading 

The Necessity of Leaving Earth Within 2 Billion Years

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The timeline for human life is finite. If we don’t kill ourselves off, or totally deplete our planet, then we have only about 2+ billion years to find a way to continue on with our species. That’s much shorter than is often thought, so we clearly must adjust our timetables for the need to develop a means to not only live outside our solar system, but our galaxy. Continue reading