For those wondering why posting has been light, I woke up with a summer head cold on Monday. I spent a lot of yesterday taking it easy and napping, but last night I slept pretty well, and I’m mostly dried up today.
7 thoughts on “Back On The Air”
Comments are closed.
Glad you’re better. Kind of curious about your arm, has it healed as quickly as you thought it would?
It’s still a little tender, but functional.
You might have missed the Orion abort system max-Q test.
They used a boilerplate capsule without attitude control or parachutes, saying they needed the aerodynamic data pronto. After years and years of delay, suddenly they’re in a rush.
They certainly do need to thoroughly test the abort system because for years to come, every SLS launch will be a test of an untried rocket or a new upper stage, so of all the new vehicles, I vote the Orion abort button “most likely to be pressed.”
I didn’t watch it, but I was aware of it.
It went up on a reworked Peacemaker engine, separated, swapped ends, and came down. They didn’t show it impacting the ocean at 300 mph. For a $256 million dollar test, I’d have zoomed in on that part just to add to the stock of future video clips of violent RUDs.
For less money, SpaceX could send two Teslas past the orbit of Mars.
I’ve seen stills of it coming down. Lawn dart.
Well, that raises serious safety issues about the abort system. Suppose there’s some innocent baby whale just swimming along, enjoying a fine summer day, and then thwack – harpooned from the sky. What they’ve built is obviously way more dangerous than a lawn dart, which we banned because they weren’t safe.
They need a destruct system for the abort system to blow the spent tower into small safe pieces, or they should separate it from the shroud so that it falls sideways, or they should add a big parachute, but not one so big that it lands on the capsule, a rescue helicopter, or on some poor frogman who was just trying to do his job.