The House Science Committee’s space subcommittee will be holding a hearing this coming Wednesday, April 20 on “Future Market for Commercial Space”. The hearing, at the very least, promises some prominent names:
Panel I
- Mr. Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites, LLC; and
- Mr. Will Whitehorn, President, Virgin Galactic.
Panel II
- Mr. Elon Musk, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Space Exploration Technologies;
- Mr. John Vinter, Chief Executive Officer, International Space Brokers Group;
- Dr. Molly Macauley, Senior Fellow and Director of Academic Programs, Resources for the Future; and
- Mr. Wolfgang Demisch, President, Demisch Associates, LLC.
The hearing starts at 9:30 am EDT and, as usual, will be webcast.
Is a passenger in a commercial rocket different than a passenger in a government rocket? Is an Astronaut different from a person in a commercial rocket or not in a commercial rocket, say in a car? No smoking in the rocket. No smoking in the commercial jet. Smoking is still OK in the car but more and more mommies get MADD about drinking and driving. How culture and the ethical boundaries change over time – or do they?
Either way, opposite of Columbus who did not “explore” going to the Canary Islands, and then departed bravely, the modern humans must be very brave just to achieve LEO in a non-exploratory fashion. And just what is there to explore, other than the obvious need to preserve life to and from LEO? In fact President Bush stated after the feeding tube frenza that our society’s culture needs to be more … what were his exact words… well essentially to adhere to the sanctity of life.
Thus NASA could promote the President’s vision by developing and crash dummy testing once again like Apollo but unlike the sanctity-unsanitary badly in need of Scuttling Shuttle did not, the next vehicle.
Seems to me there is a good 20 years or thereabouts of “exploration” to be done to simply achieve a live human to and from LEO. Sounds boring, but it is exciting to the engineer – and once in place the moon and Mars will fall like dominoes. We need to step back to the point where the shuttle failed and, if at second we don’t succeed, then try, try again. We failed, could fail again, but can’t fail much worse. At worse we can only fail better. Following the feeding tube, intuition reveals this is the customers vision and desire. Why are we considering shoving humans back into the jalopy? Utilitarian laziness? Little wonder so many Americans are obese.
Shame on the politicians who tried to shove the feeding tube legislation in overnight who for decades have ignored the ethics of human space flight. Shame, shame, shame.
So many small steps forwards for mankind in auto air bags, other inventions, and crash dummy testing, and such a large step back for a lost administration from Apollo to shuttle.
The sooner we get into space, the sooner we will have trillions and quadrillions of people to regulate until they are safe from all threats to life. Better to not conceive them at all so they can never die?
To intentionally not conceive them at all so they can never die? I do not think contraception is the moral issue at hand. Nor the issue of flying a pregnant woman at some stage of fetal development. But I would think the vocal conservative politicians who are adamantly against abortion and who want to put a feeding tube into the legislative branch to force feed sanctity of quasi-life laws into effect overnight would also agree a fully grown and developed adult born and enjoying life fetus needs similar legislation on public roads, planes, trains, and rockets.
Where is a good godfather to advise the newly appointed Griffin? Issue or no issue, a few folks getting bumped off in a rocket gets publicity and shuts down NASA for two years and counting. Like killing cops … it s just plain bad for business.
Today one House Science Democrat remarked we are in the second space age. Really? Then tell me, is the right stuff era finally over? I figured it would die with Columbia, but I did not understand the utilitarian rigidity we Americans face. Can we ever incorporate the Apollo 13 unlearned lessons and move on? We can fail again, but not much worse. It can only get better.
correction…republican stated we are in the second space age. But really with the shuttle we were and still are in danger. The shuttle is not safe and never will be. We would like to think we are in a right stuff era and a lots of stuff era, but we are in a no cold war justification era. If as Carl Sagan said, survival is the justification, then we can begin by surviving the passengers to and from LEO. It is a modern dilemma the opposite of what Columbus faced. Until we improve getting folks to and from LEO alive, I’ll make a prediction: hordes of people going to and from space ain’t gonna happen until it is much safer than 1 in 62.5. Another prediction: until a million humans live on Antartica, a thousand humans won’t live on either the moon or Mars.