I noted several years ago that SpaceX had made landing boosters routine, so much so that it was news not when they landed, but when they failed. On this morning’s flight, there was news.
It was a long-lived booster, with twenty-three flights under its belt. It will be very interesting to see what caused it, and if it was fatigue. When I was at the Cape three weeks ago, I was told that the original goal for reuse was ten flights, but with multiple boosters exceeding twenty, the new goal was forty. We’ll see if there is some life-limiting issue that can’t be maintained around.
[Late-morning update]
This is ridiculous.
This statement from the FAA says it’s requiring an investigation stemming from the Falcon 9 booster hard landing last night. “A return to flight” would come after a completed investigation, so it looks like Polaris Dawn may have to wait a while longer if I’m reading this all… pic.twitter.com/aiUjfeVCdb
I could understand their saying “No RTLS until you figure out what happened.” But to stand down launches over a landing failure? How can they justify that?
Everyone has noted that this will be the highest-altitude flight since Apollo, but all of the Apollo astronauts were men. Menon and Gillis will hold the altitude record for women after this, until a woman goes to the moon (which may or not be on Artemis, given the ongoing boondoggle).
Lord help us, the new cost estimate of NASA’s Mobile Launcher-2 project is now a mind-boggling $2.7 billion.https://t.co/KE7WZEtcQ5
I agree that the most significant aspect of this is that there have still been no nukes. I wonder if Putin is concerned that either they’re no longer functional, or that he can’t trust his underlings to use them.
The acrid scent of panic might have been expected among the limp-wristed, totalitarian faithful. And, in fact, beneath the amusing cologne of anti-Trump bluster, the panic was indeed discernible.
But there was also that trademark smooth-as-a-suppository (as Saul Bellow put it) suaveness, exemplified, for instance, by former Obama strategist David Axelrod.
“Robert F. Kennedy Sr.,” Axelrod posted shortly after the deed was done, “would have been appalled to see his son cut a deal to drop out for [t]he race and endorse Trump.”
Imagine: someone agrees to drop out of a race at the last minute and support a rival candidate! As the commentator Ned Ryan put it in response to Axelrod’s snippy post: “You suddenly seem offended by someone cutting a deal to drop out of the race and endorse someone else.”
…has been reassigned. A lot of speculation as to the reason and timing in this thread.
It’s kind of wild that the NASA official who is arguably most responsible for SpaceX getting a commercial crew contract a decade ago is getting pushed out at the same time Dragon saves the agency’s astronauts.https://t.co/IwPeRs1x8T
It’s unclear to me whether he is being blamed for Starliner, or if this is Boeing’s revenge for the NASA decision to rescue with Crew Dragon. But if the latter, it would have been pressure coming from Boeing’s friends on the Hill.
With all the talk a decade ago about how SpaceX wouldn’t deliver and how prudent it was to give the lion’s share of the funds to Boeing, there should be plenty of crow to go around.
[Update a few minutes later]
Boeing was paid billions more than SpaceX to be seven years late on a mission it could not complete . . . And will now be rescued from total disaster by SpaceX
Some may be wondering what I think about the Starliner decision in the context of my book and our need to be willing to accept higher levels of risk. The point of the book was not that we should be reckless, but that the risk must match the reward.
There was no payoff in risking the astronaut's lives to come home in a flawed vehicle, other than to Boeing's pride (which would be an empty vessel by now if they had a smidgen of self awareness) and their bottom line.