USAF Plans For Reusable Booster

Groan.  Wasn’t the shuttle a reusable booster?  Didn’t EELV promise cost savings? Here’s the link to the Aviation Week article… When I read about savings of over 50%, I think about EELV and the cost savings it was asserted to create.  EELV was a massive ‘cost avoidance’ program, that is, by creating and using new [...]

Show Me The Space-Money!

In a profoundly optimistic and interesting set of prognostications, Spaceflight Now reports on the outlook for the space industry.  In short, most of it looks mighty fine.  Here are some of the highlights forecast for the world-wide space industry. Regarding meteorological and terrestrial observation satellites: Revenues at $1B in 2009 and could quadruple in a few [...]

U.S. Space Regression?

What exactly is the “space race” anyway? And are we really losing it or are others just catching up? This is often called reverting to the mean.  Reverting to the mean can be caused by a number of factors.  ITAR is one of those factors, and the government’s intervention has distorted the market regarding the [...]

NASA Administrator Says U.S. Risks Losing Leadership Role in Space

There is no revelation here. The issue rather is what to do about the problem. Issue identification we have skills at; problem resolution and implementation, not so much. This thrash has been going on since 1998, plus or minus about two years.

Ash Carter Nails It

Regarding the defense industry, AT&L’s Ash Carter provides a totally on-target money quote (emphasis added): “At the end of the day we are totally dependent on that defense industry. The government doesn’t make our weapons, private industry makes our weapons.” The goal of acquisition is for the government to get what it needs, when it needs [...]

U.S. Space Leadership: Reverting to the Mean?

The phrase ‘reverting to the mean’ is often used in the financial industry to address the nearly-inevitable likelihood that a fund or stock’s spectacular success over the long term (think ponzi-scheme king Bernie Madoff) is simply unsustainable. Reverting to the mean is viewed with such certainty it is sometimes linked two other high-probability events, death [...]

ITAR and the Law of Unintended Condequences

ITAR–the International Traffic in Arms Regulation–is the guidance intended to keep U.S. businesses from selling potential adversaries the proverbial ropes from which they would hang us. To say the least, ITAR is a business-unfriendly, rule intensive, and cumbersome process. Now it seems ITAR is up for a wire brushing. Within the defense industry, ITAR has [...]