The End Is Scheduled For the ISS

As a new and exciting era of space exploration begins with the James Webb Space Telescope, another ends. The International Space Station has a definitive end of life, scheduled for a controlled deorbiting in 2031. However, it won't be easing into retirement, with NASA planning a full load of science in the next 9 years. Yeah, those goals are a bit opaque at this point, in the general "do science for the benefit of humanity" sense, but it's not going to be like Skylab which sort of sat around unused for the majority of its time up in space.

A big question for the post-ISS future: What comes next? NASA is betting on commercial space station, which is ... ambitious. Private space flight is definitely something that exists, but an entire space station? I wouldn't be surprised to see that 2031 date pushed back a bit, since NASA said they definitely want some overlap between the first commercial station going up and the ISS coming down. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the only space stations being commercially owned. These private space companies aren't owned by the greatest of people.

SpaceX Wants to Send People Around the Moon in 2018

It's certainly an ambitious plan. Extremely ambitious, considering the manned version of the Dragon spacecraft SpaceX uses hasn't even flown in space yet. Stupidly, insanely ambitious, considering the Falcon Heavy rocket that would be used has also not actually flown yet.

I'm not saying that commercial space flight is a bad thing, it is in all likelihood the future of space travel. What I'm saying is that space is not a nice place, and rushing spacecraft development is not likely to end well for any passengers. Space travel will always carry a certain danger, but rushing development to fit a deadline is just stupid, and will not work. That said, I don't think that's going to happen. No, if this little trip happens at all, it'll be 2020 at the earliest. Even if the rocket and the spacecraft are ready for flight, it still needs FAA approval to fly, and the FAA is a government organization. And government organizations don't know the meaning of the word "quick".

Propulsion from Nothing is Still...Probably Nothing

Several months ago, I posted on this blog. Several months before that, I wrote about how there was supposedly some new means of propulsion that, well, wasn't actually propulsion. It seemed incredibly dubious then, so imagine my surprise when this story reared its ugly head once again in the past week or so. 

If you go through that, you might notice mention of the word "superluminary", or fancy science talk for faster than light. Yes, it wasn't enough for this theorized propulsion system to be highly implausible, we had to go a step further and make this thing a warp drive. Yes, that's basically what they're claiming, and of course, news sites ran with it. You can't come with 30 miles of mentioning warp drive and not expect people to go crazy.

There have certainly been voices of reason since the news broke. And that's good. While this new drive has apparently been subjected to slightly more rigorous experimentation, there are two very important facts that must be brought to the front. One, this news was basically self-published. There was no peer-review, nothing to stop them from basically fabricating their results. Two, science depends on repeatability. Once is a coincidence. Until at least one other independent organization can duplicate the results, we have to assume that this extraordinary claim is incorrect in some way. Again, don't get me wrong, I'd love it if this ended up all working out. I just don't think it will.

Orion Test Launch Coming Soon

The first space flight of the new Orion crew capsule is scheduled for this week. It's about time we got this thing going, we've been without manned space capability for too long. And while the space shuttle was cool and all, we haven't had any sort of capability beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo, and that was 40 years ago. Space flight is no cheaper, we have just as many space stations orbiting the planet, and we are about as close to traveling to other planets now as we were then. Hopefully this doesn't get cancelled, like every other time NASA has tried to move the manned space program along with any kind of ambition. We can only hope. This flight will be unmanned, but if all goes well, astronauts should soon be on their way beyond Earth and out into the solar system.

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All Space Flight is Important

This past week has not been a good one for space exploration's public image. Two rockets down, with one man dead. Frankly, considering the vehicle, I can't believe the second man on that ship lived. I'm sure it's caused a lot of people to question the validity and the entire point of space travel. To the regular person, it doesn't seem worth it. I know I've talked about this plenty before, and I'm sure I'll talk about it again. SpaceShipTwo was a space tourism vessel, and in terms of importance, well, there are more important things. However, I don't want people associating that with all space flight.

This is an article about how in a few years, NASA will be bringing most of its planetary space probe missions to an end. After that, we'll be left with very little in the way of new and exciting information about the planets. I've noticed a picture of Titan's lakes circulating through the internet today, in a few years, spectacular images like this will be no more. Manned space flight is important, but so is unmanned. Space probes go where we cannot, they can go further, longer, and they can do it for far less money. Landing a man on Mars may get all the press, but sending a probe to sail on Ligeia Mare, or to drill through Europa's icy crust to the ocean beneath would be just as epic a milestone, and would probably return even more spectacular results.

In an unrelated bit of news, I've got a couple of longer, more involved posts in the works, and hopefully I can get them out this week. They'll be different from my normal fare, so...yes. That will be happening, I guess.

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Commercial Space Flight is Coming

As of 2011, the United States has no manned space vehicle. The only way we can send astronauts to the International Space Station is by hitching a ride on a Soyuz, and seeing that tensions with Russia are kind of high, this is not a brilliant situation.  NASA is focused right now on Orion and the Space Launch System, a big giant rocket meant to send astronauts past low Earth orbit. However, low Earth orbit operations are obviously not going to stop, and so, NASA has turned to commercial space flight and ships built by private companies.

There won't be just one, SpaceX and Boeing will each build, launch, and maintain their own spacecraft, operating out of Cape Kennedy Space Center. They will be reusable, and meant for travel to and from the ISS. While this won't be happening tomorrow, space flights should commence in 2017. This is fantastic news for manned space flight, getting more and more ships out there will bring the cost of space flight down, and it allows NASA to devote more money and resources into manned flight to the Moon, to asteroids, and to Mars.