Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Launch of SpaceX's private Inspiration4 mission slips by 24 hours

Friday, September 10, 2021

Categories: ASCF News National Preparedness

Source: https://www.space.com/spacex-inspiration4-launch-slips-24-hours

The Inspiration4 crew, from left: Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux. (Image credit: John Kraus/Inspiration4)

Inspiration4, SpaceX's first all-civilian mission, will launch at least a day late.

The three-day mission will now launch from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida no earlier than 8 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 15 (1200 GMT Thursday, Sept. 16) due to a combination of weather conditions and technical requirements, Inspiration4 said Friday (Sept. 10) in a mission update.

Inspiration4 is a private mission to Earth orbit purchased by Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments. He'll be joined on the flight by Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski.

Mission managers met Thursday (Sept. 9) to perform a standard flight readiness review before flight, along with receiving an initial weather briefing. The decision was made after looking at weather conditions at the launch site, ascent area and landing sites along with "the readiness of the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft, associated ground systems, recovery assets and other key elements of SpaceX's human spaceflight system," the update stated.

The new date, the update added, "will allow additional time for final preparations, vehicle checkouts and data reviews. SpaceX and Inspiration4 will narrow down the launch window to five hours approximately three days before liftoff."

There are a few other milestones that must be met before the crew of four rocket to Earth orbit. The Inspiration4 release indicated that more work on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is still a fairly new vehicle after its first crewed flight in 2020, is forthcoming. The spacecraft was successfully mated with its Falcon 9 rocket and is now expected to have "an integrated static fire test targeted for this weekend," ahead of the launch.

The Crew Dragon being used is a vehicle named "Resilience," which also flew on SpaceX's Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station for NASA. Resilience will make a solo journey this time, flying higher than the ISS this time before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The all-civilian crew has had six months of training since the names were announced in March.

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