With latest docking to ISS, privatizing spaceflight approaches maturity

Overcoming a thruster nozzle problem in-flight would be difficult even for NASA in its glory days, and the fact that SpaceX did so this week and still managed to deliver supplies to the International Space Station is a major--if much belated--giant step forward for privatized spaceflight.

Put that together with Dennis Tito's civilian Mars mission now in the planning, and you have a case that government is not only not strictly necessary for manned space exploration, but may be one of the reasons we haven't gotten any farther than we have, even though we've had the technology to return to the Moon, plant space stations at the Lagrange points, or go to Mars ... literally for nearly two decades now.

Comments

tom said…

In the 1st edition of The High Frontier (1977), Gerald K O'Niell argued pretty persuasively that we had the necessary technology in the 70's. That would be nearly 4 decades.

In more recent editions, the only thing he said he would have changed in hindsight was that he had relied on governments, rather than the free market, to make his space colonies a reality.

March 4, 2013 at 1:52 AM

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba

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