Blue Origin’s 2025 all-women spaceflight sparked controversy, with critics decrying its cost and environmental impact. Despite backlash, space tourism’s economic potential could lower costs and make space accessible, driving innovation and a multi-planetary future.
NS-26 and Polaris Dawn: Polar Opposites or Siblings?: Frank White explores the striking contrasts and unexpected similarities between Blue Origin’s NS-26 and SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn missions. Despite their differing mission profiles, both reflect the evolving landscape of private spaceflight.
NASA opts to bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home on a Crew Dragon instead of Boeing’s troubled Starliner. Focusing on safety, NASA continues working with Boeing to resolve Starliner’s issues and meet its ISS contract obligations.
Exploring the delicate balance between the space industry’s short-term challenges and its long-term vision of human expansion into the solar system.
If you have ever experienced a disability on Earth, whether permanent or temporary, you know that the social and physical environment around you can help or hinder your involvement in everyday life.
If you are no longer on Earth, what is a disability? Because you’re weightless, you no longer need those appendages, any more than a dolphin does.
We don’t often think of ourselves, of humanity, as a species, but that is what we are, the product of billions of years of evolution on a small planet at the edge of a galaxy in an immense universe.
As a species, we face a decision, one that has been long in coming, but now stares us in the face and cannot be avoided.
Recently, Rhonda Stevenson, President and CEO of Above: Space Development Corporation, suggested that I talk with Andre Bormanis and Dan Hawk as part of this blogging series. What a delightful conversation it was! Andre is a member of OAC’s Board of Advisors and is a science consultant for the Star Trek inspired show, The Orville. Dan was featured in a previous blog that I wrote, called “A Seat at the Table.” He is a member of the Oneida Nation, part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and founder of the United First Nations Planetary Defense.
The context is not “Earth versus Space,” but “Earth in space.” We are creating safe harbors for the future ‘star sailors’ of this ‘new ocean’ of space.
Frank White, author of the Overview Effect, and OAC advisory board member asks, “Why Space?”
You must be logged in to post a comment.