The latest, from Anatoly Zak.
If they don’t know why the explosion occurred, they won’t be able to fly until they figure it out. Also, if I were NASA, I’d still be nervous about the May 26th Soyuz flight.
Category Archives: Business
#Gamergate
Some thoughts on journalistic ethics.
Merlin 1-D
#ExplorationDelendaEst No, it’s not an engine designed for “human space exploration.” It’s an engine designed for human spaceflight. I had a mini-rant about this at Space Access Saturday. #
Carly Fiorina
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.
If I had to choose between Carly Fiorina and a robot infused with Hitler’s DNA running under the slogan "KILL ALL HUMANS"…I’d vote robot.
— Lee Hutchinson (@Lee_Ars) May 4, 2015
Mainly because the robot would just kill us and be done with it. Carly would make it ***hurt.***
— Lee Hutchinson (@Lee_Ars) May 4, 2015
Police Unions
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.
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.
Amending The Space Act
Dana Rohrabacher has introduced his proposed legislation to amend the Space Act, in order to redirect NASA toward space settlement and development.
Space Access
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.
Blue Origin
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.
The RD-180 Replacement
Basically, as it is with NASA and SLS, Congress is forcing the Air Force to waste money on an engine that ULA doesn’t want, or need.