Aerospace America, a publication of the AIAA, had a number of interesting items this month.
After 20 years of manoeuvring by corrupt politicians and lobbyists, none of whom gave a damn about the country, we finally have a solid contract out for a new aircraft refuelling fleet. The existing fleet is mostly based on the Boeing 707 of the 1950’s…
The NanoSail D2 payload, which failed to deploy in November… suddenly deployed. Needless to say the engineers involved are rather ecstatic. Now we will get some data back on using solar sails in space. It is about time.
An old friend of mine, Scott Pace, now director of the GWU Space Policy Institute argued the Republican Space Socialist line in an interview. From another source (Rand Simberg) I have heard that another old friend, Jim Muncy, who is a long time Republican Conservative spoke of how the role reversal of the parties on capitalist space development caused his head to explode. Jim started off his career working for Newt Gingrich as a staffer and in the Reagan White House under Presidential Science Advisor George Keyworth.
Another item mentioned as an aside that the vaunted Chinese high speed rail system was thrown together by using substandard rail bedding on long stretches which will now have a very limited lifetime. Left unsaid is that this will probably lead to some very spectacular crashes and mass casualties followed by show trials of the people who were pushed to complete their state assigned quotas…
From other news sources: a company in Mojave has come up with a replacement for Hydrazine that is 5% the cost, so nontoxic you can pour it on the ground and I believe even has a better ISP… Look Ma, no bunny suits!
No link to the Scott Pace interview?
Also, it is unclear from your blurb whether Dr. Pace argued for or against the Republican Socialist line. From hearing him myself, my first instinct is to say “against”.
Purely a dead tree publication. And yes Scott has been backing the ‘space is too important to trust entirely to the private sector’ meme which is Washingtonspeak for ‘jobz&pork’. And yes, Scott is taking a lot of crap about it from me and a lot of other old friends of his. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good guy and I’ve known him for 25 years. He’s just on the wrong side of this debate and we’ll not let him forget it.