Small Launch Technologies -- politics as usual in the Space Arena (or in other news, nothing ever changes)?
Article Link: | Ars Technica Website
Now this gets interesting. @DocM, @Draggendrop, @jjkusaf, @FloatingFatMan, you'll love this. It starts off as a rant on Politics and unnecessary expenditures, but it gets into some really meaty stuff about the "Low-Weight Payload Launchers" and what's happening with them -- and the players in the game. I didn't know about some of them, and there's one in the mix who has a really interesting idea about how to go about things. Check it out ...
We now have numerous small sat launchers, in various stages of development. These launchers are mainly "newspace", which are smart, quick and able to innovate immediately.
IMHO, the days of NASA designing launchers, should be over. The bureaucratic design does not afford the levels of innovation, that a newspace venture can do. NASA is outstanding at probe design and spurring innovation in industry, which has, ironically, been responsible for the birth of newspace by giving valuable
