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tater

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    Administrator Isaacman?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by tater

    1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

    Hmm, that's eye opening. The Isaccman connections feel a little more solid but this definitely reduces my concern.

    Well, he bought a bunch of launches from SpaceX, so he's certainly a customer, then again, so is NASA a customer. There has been talk on X about him being an investor, but back during Inspiration 4, the specific story he told was that he managed to get a tour of SpaceX, then explicitly asked about investing—but was told that was not an option, and then they suggested he could move spaceflight forward in other ways, like buying launches... which he then did.

    Senator Nelson (and Representative Bridenstine) both obviously had interactions with defense contractors/lobbyists while in office, and lobbyists always come with satchels of money (my wife brings a check when she visits our Congressional delegation to lobby for her surgical association—the check is small, so she only ever talks to some clueless 20-something staffer, to talk to the actual rep she'd need a steamer truck full of cash).

    1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

    I was less talking about the congressional budget and more contract decision making - E.G. Congress funds a lander, NASA has to choose who to give the contract to. However I seem to have misremembered who has the authority to sign off on those decisions. For some reason I was under the impression that it was the administrator, but upon further examination, it does not appear like that is the case. Thank you for correcting my misconceptions.

    Yeah, it was Kathy Lueders who pulled the trigger on HLS, not Bridenstine. She was a few steps below the Administrator. She was an Associate Admin for something or other at NASA (she's now at SpaceX in TX).

    These choices have always been political since NASA was a thing... in the back room sense of political. Rewarding people, or picking friends you think will move the agenda—or just picking friends you think have an interest, like Nelson.

    Cancelling SLS (Berger now says he thinks that's a 75% chance) means the Administrator going to war with Marshall, along with perhaps elements of KSC—as well as supporters in Congress. NASA is very center-orientated, with the different centers having very different interests. It'll be interesting to see what if anything he changes—and the Administration likely wants to see something huge/cool/best/biggest/whatever done in the next 4 years ;) , so maybe SLS/Orion survives somehow.

    Administrator Isaacman?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    21 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

    Mr. Isaccman has had two once in a lifetime experiences because of SpaceX with another two on the way. Putting him in a place where he has some amount of power over one of SpaceX's largest revenue streams and American space policy in general, well, at the very least that is a massive conflict of interest and should be setting off alarm bells, though by itself is not immediately a showstopper. And that is before even getting into how Elon's new committee position arguably gives him a knife at the throat of the regulatory agencies that have impeded, justly or not, SpaceX and his other companies.

    With all due respect, this is completely unconcerning.

    Ballast (Nelson) is literally the author of SLS, and has had political interactions (contributions) from involved parties for years. If connection to defense contractors (even as a customer of a contractor, which is this example) was disqualifying for NASA Admin or Sec Def, or FAA, or any number of other gov positions—literally none of those positions would have been filled since... forever.

    24 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

    It does not sit right for me for one company to possibly have so much control over the government agencies that fund and regulate it.

    It gets funded by Congress, not the NASA Admin. The Admin merely pursues the policy agenda for space that the President advocates.

    26 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

    He at least in passing has acknowledged climate change as a problem in a 2022 tweet (google being dumb and I am having trouble finding anything more if it exists) so we are already one step better than Bridenstine, and he turned out to do a pretty good job.

    Bridenstine was the best NASA Admin in decades, honestly.

    Administrator Isaacman?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

    I'd rather see scientists in such positions.

    I prefer someone who understand politics, and/or running organizations, actually.

    Science and engineering have virtually nothing to do with the reality the job which is large scale politics (Congress, etc), and the smaller scale politics of center vs center (different NASA centers have dissimilar interests).

     

    Stoke Space

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    50 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

    Now the Canadarm is cool in that it can basically walk around on the station from position to position. It also need to be very reliable as its very hard to fix in space. 
    not sure if Tesla makes their own robots or buys them? I guess is an combination.

    Doesn't need to cost a billion $.

    Yeah, they make their own robots ;)

    Spoiler

     

     

     

    ObStoke:

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    Stoke Space

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    Canadarm is to commercial robot arms as SLS is to commercial launch vehicles.

    The arm for Gateway has a contract cost of ~$1B.

    Pretty sure Tesla could make one cheaper—even if they had to design and build their own motors. And design it to run autonomously. And mass produce them.

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    3 hours ago, AckSed said:

    The key thing I'm interested in here: Zubrin's refutation of the meme-complex that the Mars colony, and the entire motivation for SpaceX (and Blue Origin's aspirations of an O'Neill cylinder), is a way for all the billionaires to leave Earth and the proles behind to our fate. Which is straight out of Ben Elton's satirical Stark.

    Granted, I haven't seen it lately, but it was entrenched in my circle of friends just a year ago, because (the feeling went) there must be a motive that lines up for all this effort. Now it's switched to, "Work in the mines for the megacorps on Mars and die."

    This claim I see online all the time has always been absurd—and in the case of Mars, Musk states it explicitly. It will be dangerous and hard. It's not some sort of space resort. Bezos says it a different way—he says Earth us the best planet, and we will move humans to space to preserve Earth.

    Both are true.

    Tesla Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by tater

    This demo is teleoperated—they have rigs where people wear VR headsets, and detectors to watch their hands move—the VR is a camera view from the robot head. Since the DOF of the arm/hand is very human, it makes it easy to do these kinds of demos—but it also means humans moving can be training data for the automated part.

    Vaya Space

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by tater

    So they had an SBIR, now seeking SBIR Phase II. A ton of contractors here in NM (Sid Gutierrez, the Vast founder lives a few doors down from a buddy of mine here in ABQ) live off SBIRs. Think the max for Phase II is ~$1.2M, so chump change.

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