April 25, 2017 Zimmerman Space Show podcast
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My two hour appearance with David Livingston on the Space Show last night is now available and can be downloaded as a podcast here.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
My two hour appearance with David Livingston on the Space Show last night is now available and can be downloaded as a podcast here.
I think your approach to space re-regulation would be very helpful for space exploration, but also that it is quite realistic. The president (any president) understands law, and at least this one understands economics. Instead of making decisions about destination and vehicle, a new legal framework for space exploration is something a president can understand very well. (The drawback with a knowledgeable president is that he can have his own opinion about it :-)
Concerning how early a reusable vertically landed rocket could’ve been developed, I think it would be no harder than the space shuttle. Its boosters were indeed reused much as if they had been independent first stages. If GPS really is required for guiding the rocket during its landing leg, and for precision landing on dry land, then it might not have been done until about 1990. I think the shuttle was von Braun’s “fault”. He liked to put wings on spaceships. Glide landings seems to have been popular in German aerospace, maybe because of its successes in landing troops early in the war, and because it was used for the remarkable rocket aircraft Me 163 Comet in the end.
Some say SLS/Orion has cost “only” $23 billion. I suppose that’s if one doesn’t include the Constellation years. It still doesn’t help! It is orders of magnitudes more expensive than the private alternatives.