Category Archives: Business

Business, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Carly Fiorina

19 Comments

This is brutal.

As I noted on Twitter, there’s a visceral hatred of her by many in the tech community, even among people otherwise willing to vote for a Republican. But she’ll make a good attack dog on Hillary.

Business, Economics, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Police Unions

The problem with them.

It’s not just police unions — public-employee unions in general are an abomination. The teachers’ and prison-guard unions are a huge part of the disaster that is California government (not to mention its educational system). Roosevelt had the right idea in wanting to make them illegal.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Want a lawless police force? Federalize it.

Al Sharpton is an idiot, and should be an embarrassment to any news network, but it’s MSNBC.

Business, Space

Back In LA

It was great to see everyone at Space Access after the hiatus last year. It was also nice to see quite a few enthusiastic young people. More thoughts anon, but I’m beat from the drive, and insufficient sleep.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Space Access

12 Comments

I’ve arrived at the conference. Looks like a great turnout, and a lot of familiar faces. A lot of seem to be getting older. Will Pomerantz gave an overview of future plans for Virgin Galactic, and took a lot of questions at the end. Still unclear what the future of propulsion is for SS1, though he said he thinks that they’re going back to rubber. Follow Doug Messier (@spacecom) for more details. Many of the questions were his.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Blue Origin

25 Comments

…returns to flight:

Powered by a BE-3 engine, the spacecraft flew to 307,000 feet, the edge of space, and returned smoothly to the ground. The company said it was able to recover the reusable spacecraft./blockquote>

I believe that the BE-3 is the smaller version of the BE-4 that will power the new ULA rocket. So it’s a LOX/LNG vehicle. They didn’t recover the propulsion system, but don’t seem concerned about it. Like SpaceX, now that they’re flying again, they’ll continually improve. A very auspicious event as I get ready to drive to Phoenix this morning for the Space Access conference, which starts this afternoon.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Progress

32 Comments

Apparently, after yesterday’s successful comsat launch by SpaceX, the Russian cargo mission to ISS is failing, or has failed. Wrong orbit, undeployed antennae on Kurs, spinning or tumbling, unable to contact from ground-station passes. With Cygnus still out of business, if they can’t deterrmine root cause, this puts all the responsibility on SpaceX to resupply in June. If that mission fails, they may have to think (once again) about abandoning ship, after a decade and a half of continuous occupation. And once again, this demonstrates the need for redundancy and resiliency, and why it would he stupid (as Palazzo, and Shelby, and others continue to push for) to go to a single provider for commercial crew. It’s also a reminder that, even after all these decades, spaceflight is not routine.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, hearing now that the initial TLEs were incorrect, and the orbit is all right. That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to get to the station, though, given the control/communications issues.

[Update a while later]

Here‘s what looks like the manifest for the mission. It’s looking unlikely that it will be delivered.

[Early afternoon update]

OK, looks like the initial TLE was correct. It’s got a low perigee, and won’t last more than a day without a boost. I wonder if this will turn out to be a booster, or separation problem?

[Update a while later]

Interfax is now reporting a problem with the third stage. Which means Soyuz flights are iffy again, until they figure out what happened.

[Update mid-afternoon]

OK, now they’re saying that the original TLE was wrong, and it’s not far from the correct orbit. And that the prime suspect is now the primary flight computer.

[Wednesday-morning update]

It’s sounding pretty bad. They can’t contact it, it’s out of propellant, and it will enter in a few days. The JSpOC is tracking almost four dozen pieces, yet to be cataloged. Sounds like something happened at the end of the third-stage burn, or at separation. And it’s not clear what the implications are for Soyuz flights.

[Update a few minutes later]

Anatoly Zak has a pretty comprehensive report.

[Update a while later]

Jeff Foust describes the issues with resupply, and how much margin they have.

I’d note that while no one other than me is talking about it, this is likely to delay the next Soyuz flight, currently scheduled for May 26th, if they haven’t resolved it by then.