Henry Spencer
Henry Spencer
Henry Spenceris a Canadian computer programmer and space enthusiast. He wrote "regex", a widely used software library for regular expressions, and co-wrote C News, a Usenet server program. He also wrote The Ten Commandments for C Programmers. He is coauthor, with David Lawrence, of the book Managing Usenet. While working at the University of Toronto he ran the first active Usenet site outside the U.S., starting in 1981. His records from that period were eventually acquired by Google to provide...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
CountryCanada
The Orion capsule uses an escape system quite like that of the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s and 70s: an 'escape tower' containing a solid-fuel rocket that will pull it up and away from Ares I in a pinch.
Trying to build a spaceship by making an aeroplane fly faster and higher is like trying to build an aeroplane by making locomotives faster and lighter - with a lot of effort, perhaps you could get something that more or less works, but it really isn't the right way to proceed.
Progress requires setbacks; the only sure way to avoid failure is not to try.
Liquid oxygen is one of the cheapest manufactured substances on Earth. In large quantities, it costs pennies per kilogram - cheaper than milk or beer.
Rocket engines generally are simpler than jet engines, not more complicated.
Sometimes people wonder why aeroplanes are so cheap and rockets are so expensive. Even the most superficial comparison shows one obvious difference: aeroplane engines use outside air to burn their fuel, while rockets have to carry their own oxidisers along.
Claiming that solid rockets are necessary for a heavy-lift launcher is obvious nonsense.
Foul-ups in testing are not uncommon, especially when the test setup is being tried for the first time.
If your goal is to change the world, you can't start by doing things the same old way because it sells better.
In a small spacecraft, it was hard for the other two guys to sleep when the on-duty man was talking to Mission Control regularly.
Is manned space exploration important? Yes - not least because it simply works much better than sending robots.
Since SpaceX's very beginnings, they have talked about recovering and reusing at least the first stages of their rockets.
Solid-fuel rockets can't easily be shut down on command.
Spaceflight, especially in the Mercury spacecraft, clearly wasn't going to be much like flying an airplane.