Over at NBC, where Yours Truly is quoted.
[Sunday-morning update]
Here’s Tariq Malik’s story. Note this (for some in comments):
“With research and development projects, detecting vehicle anomalies during the testing is the purpose of the program,” SpaceX representatives wrote. “Today’s test was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test.”
Makes sense to me.
I’m at the Tall Ship Festival, but hearing that they lost a vehicle, maybe Grasshopper. Fortunately, with their production line, shouldn’t take long to replace.
[Late-evening update, after getting back from Port of LA]
Yes, I was using the informal “Grasshopper” to refer to SpaceX VTVL R&D test vehicles. It was the F-9R, version 1. Gywnne had said last year she was actually disappointed that they never lost the initial Grasshopper, because it meant they hadn’t been pushing the envelope enough. Looks like they solved that problem today.
Oh, and they had a successful static fire at the Cape today of the vehicle for next week’s Asiasat launch.
[Update a while later]
OK, Jeff Foust has the story up at New Space Journal.
Research in meteoritic agriculture.
Just imagine how much progress we could make if we could redirect funds from unneeded “powerful” rockets to more things like this.
Here is the traditional career track for someone employed in journalism: first, you are a writer. If you hang on, and don’t wash out, and manage not to get laid off, and don’t alienate too many people, at some point you will be promoted to an editor position. It is really a two-step career journey, in the writing world. Writing, then editing. You don’t have to accept a promotion to an editing position of course. You don’t have to send your kids to college and pay a mortgage, necessarily. If you want to get regular promotions and raises, you will, for the most part, accept the fact that your path takes you away from writing and into editing, in some form. The number of pure writing positions that offer salaries as high as top editing positions is vanishingly small. Most well-paid writers are celebrities in the writing world. That is how few of them there are.
Here is the problem with this career path: writing and editing are two completely different skills. There are good writers who are terrible editors. (Indeed, some of the worst editors are good writers!) There are good editors who lack the creativity and antisocial personality disorders that would make them great writers. This is okay. This is natural. It is thoroughly unremarkable for an industry to have different positions that require different skill sets. The problem in the writing world is that, in order to move up, the writer must stop doing what he did well in the first place and transition into an editing job that he may or may not have any aptitude for.
Engineering has a similar problem, in that if you want to advance, you often have to go into management, even though a lot of good engineers are terrible managers.
Speaking of modest proposals, check out this totalitarian feminist:
I believe we must remove men from the community and place them in their own specific sections of society, akin to subsidised or state-funded reservations, so they can be redefined. We can make not only men safer, but women as well. By subsidising said reservations through the state we can provide men with activities, healthcare, entertainment, shelter, protection, and everything that one could ever require in life. This will remove conventional inequality from society. By reducing the number of men to 10 percent of the total population, their socio-biovalue will be raised. They will live out their lives happily and safely, and male disposability will be a thing of the past.
I can’t wait.
I agree that “we” (if by that he means NASA) are not on a path to Mars, but this is nonsense:
“The answer is because we are not a spacefaring nation,” Griffin asserted. “The bottom line, for me, is that we have better stuff in museums than we have in operations today. I can’t think of another technical discipline in which that statement would be true.”
Really? What do we have in museums that’s better than a Falcon 9, particularly if it becomes partially or fully reusable? What are his criteria for “better”? More (Tim the Tool Man) Power?
I do agree that we’re not a spacefaring nation, though. But neither Constellation or SLS/Orion are on a path to make us one.
[Update a few minutes later]
We’ve blown ten billion dollars on Orion so far, with billions more to go before it flies (if it ever does).
Greg Autry has a good overview of the current state of play:
All three commercial efforts should be funded. However, if the program must be reduced, it should be noted that both SpaceX and SNC are committed to pursuing a private market in space regardless of NASA support. Boeing’s panel representative expressed a lack of interest in continuing without government funding and in a cynical attempt to prod Congress the firm publicly announced looming layoffs. Professional investors only bet on teams that truly believe in their future returns and never on firms for which outside investment is the only goal. NASA must begin to think like an investor in America’s future.
Good luck with that.
This is a very disappointing article at Breitbart. I don’t know who Chriss Street is, but he’s grossly misinformed (to be polite).
Doug Messier pays a visit to Mike Adams’s memorial.