21 thoughts on “Eerie Coincidence?”

  3. I commented over there. I’ll say here that the bad pyro firing harness installation that I saw was also an OSC product. It was a completely different product line, and as I pointed out; the installation ended up functioning nominally.

  4. Sabotage seems very unlikely to me. Even if human caused global warming was proven to be false to the degree that even the greenest zealot would be convinced, the environmental movement would not be effected because it really isn’t about global warming.

    How does this latest failure affect the prospects of Taurus II either on a technical or managerial level? Or maybe more importantly how will this hurt the public image of COTS and CCDEV?

  5. A new satellite will have the same problem the current ones have: It can’t retroactively yield temperature data prior to 1978. Discouraging, but not a plot.

    The part that still boggles me is the refusal to do the work necessary to combine the “instruments” they do have via cross-calibration to allow apples-to-apples comparisons with the pre-satellite period.
    Correlation studies to indicate “Yes! We get basically the same thing (after averaging geographically)!” are done. Station-by-station examination calibration to determine exactly how low of high an individual station is read versus the satellite – and – crucially, the total instrumental error (which has nothing to do with the 0.1C measurement error listed on the instrument itself).

  6. To agree with Al and take a slightly different take: it’s pretty easy to “calibrate” the data from the satellites than worry about the investigation findings from back-to-back launch failures. After all, OSC is highly incentivized to prevent a 3rd failure in 4 missions. Obviously, they weren’t successful, but if you were going in with the thought of trying to bypass their safety and security protocols; you’d have to think your chances were low. It would be easier to claim the sabotage was in selecting them as a launch platform (and that’s an unfair statement if you look at all of their product line and successes).

  7. Its ha-ha funny that both sides of the climate change debate are entertaining the thought of sabotage carried out by the OTHER side.

  9. Don’t worry, the CRU has already come up with a software workaround for the lost satellite – a subroutine that adds 0.015 degrees a year to each and every temperature reading in their database.

    The fix has been peer reviewed by panels of lawyers, Members of Parlaiment, and other technical experts and has been cleared in advance of any scientific malfeasance.

  11. On another note, I don’t necessarily see this adversely affecting Orbital’s COTS or CCDEV programs. The Taurus II has nothing whatsoever in common with the Taurus. Orbital has used the name association skilfully to date, getting extra credit from the range for having a “legacy” vehicle. It will now work against them to claim “Taurus legacy.”. But they can always claim that they were REALLY claiming “II legacy”…you know, like the highly reliable Titan “II” and Delta “II.”

    They could honestly and accurately state that the “II legacy” is every bit as meaningful as a “Taurus legacy” would have been…

  12. Occam’s razor suggests that the faring separation issue was misdiagnosed or otherwise inadequately understood by the OSC engineers after the OCO loss, and therefore not mitigated as they had hoped for with GLORY. Their flight rate is too low to make incremental improvements.

  13. MfK Says:
    March 8th, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    “On another note, I don’t necessarily see this adversely affecting Orbital’s COTS or CCDEV programs.”

    I hope not.

    It will be good for people to see that there are other companies besides SpaceX. If the Taurus II test later this year goes well, it will take some of the pressure off SpaceX but a failure by either will be a shared failure in the media.

  18. Well, I find the scenario you suggest wildly implausible. Really: a secret agent sneaks onto Vandenberg, up the gantry, applies duct tape (!) to a critical mechanism, all perfectly timed to avoid being noticed by the launch ops team, or caught on camera. Not once, but twice!

    Contrast with reality: over 1/4 of launch failures involve the separation system.

    Two of SpaceX’s launch failures inolved recontact during separation. Are you going to start spinning tales of NASA henchmen sabotaging these flights as well?

    And all of this speculation is posted without a shred of evidence. This is worse than “9/11 truthers”, who at least try to tie their wild theories to the existing evidence.

    Not to mention your scenario doesn’t accord with what we know about climate change enthusiasts — they are true believers. They will go their graves believing their climate models. The idea that they would be in mortal doubt of their theories and would thus be motivated to destroy a mission they believe will vindicate them makes no sense.

    Hence: “barking mad”.

    Or maybe just tongue-in-cheek, like my first comment. 😉

    BBB

  19. BBB,

    I agree that the incident is likely imcompetence of some sort. However, it doesn’t take a “secret agent” to sabotage the system. I think if anything, the sabotage was in continued selection of a launcher with a poor track record. What I don’t understand is why Rand thinks the data from the satellites would actually hurt the message of AGW folks. No other contrary data has really affected them. As we’ve noted here many times before; it’s a religion. Facts don’t trump beliefs in that case, and where there is some success, the story is modified to explain the aberration. I have no doubt that the data from the satellites would have been co-opted to actually further the AGW message.

  20. Bob, this is a perfect example of where you could gain some incite into why your reasoning often fails. Giving you the benefit of the doubt it’s possible you thought a reference to B.M. to be funny. In which case, you failed. We’re all guilty of that on occasion. But, if that was not your intent it demonstrates a comprehension problem that you should work on. Another thing we all need to work on. Beyond that, assuming an intelligent person didn’t understand a simple phrase (and most intelligent people, when they come across a word or phrase they don’t understand will and are capable of researching it without help) is rather insulting. Did you really mean to insult our host?

  21. BBB,

    I don’t think our host is in danger of becoming Glenn Beck. However, I note that while Beck’s speculation may not always be right it does serve the useful purpose of being close enough often enough to highlight things of concern we might otherwise miss.

    Speculation is a remarkably powerful tool that most people never use. SF readers get warm up lessons.

    Rand, have you been emoting and not telling us? 😉

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