Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Coalition For Big Expensive Rockets

14 Comments

I agree with Stephen Fleming about this press release.

I’ve been pointing out all of the nonsensical, engineering-illiterate praise for SLS on Twitter. “Most powerful,” “fastest” etc. I loved this one today:

My response:

Business, Space, Technology and Society

The SpaceX Vehicle Loss

6 Comments

Apparently it was a blocked sensor port:

“I can tell you that it certainly looks like it was basically a single-point failure that existed on that test article that does not exist on the Falcon 9,” Reisman said. “We think it was a failure of a single sensor, and Falcon 9 has multiple sensors in its algorithm that it uses. So if the same failure occurred on the Falcon 9 it would not affect the mission in any way.”

The sensor failure in one of the three Merlin 1D engines on the Falcon 9R caused the vehicle to stray from its intended flight path, triggering an automatic self-destruct command to ensure it did not threaten nearby people and property.

Reisman said an operational Falcon 9 flight, which uses nine first stage engines, could overcome the loss of an engine. On the three-engine Falcon 9R, such redundancy does not exist.

But still no announcement of a new launch date for AsiaSat 6?

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

Public School As Child Abuse

1 Comment

And overpriced colleges as young-adult abuse:

The student was given two options: face an “administrative panel” whose decision would be final and unable to be appealed (but suspension or expulsion not an option) or face a Student Conduct Panel, which would leave room for appeal but put suspension/expulsion back on the table.

The administration’s “bright line” for determining guilt is (I AM NOT KIDDING) whether the incident “more likely than not” occurred. Any discussion about whether the shouted joke “more likely than not” should have resulted in having the book thrown at the student apparently isn’t up for discussion.

If either panel finds the student “more likely than not” guilty of making an offensive, one-line joke, she pays the administrative fees and deals with whatever punishment is decided. If declared “more likely than not” not guilty, no one pays anything, not even the couple whose existence was rendered ghastly and nightmarish by a couple of seconds of careless window shouting nearly three months ago.

Don’t give your money to these people. Especially don’t go into undischargeable debt to give money to these people.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Euro

There is no easy exit from it:

Yes, we’re back to our old friend path dependence. As I noted the other day, the fact that you can avoid some sort of terrible fate by stopping something before it starts does not mean that you can later achieve the same salutary effects by ceasing whatever stupid thing you have done. It would have been painless just to not have the euro. But it will be painful indeed to get rid of it.

It won’t end well. And path dependence is why it’s going to be such a mess to unravel the disaster that is ObamaCare as well.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Future

9 Comments

It could work, if we let it.

I do think that driverless cars are going to make things like high-speed rail (particularly California’s plan) look even more monumentally stupid in retrospect than it does now (and that’s a high bar). But history teaches us that it’s very difficult to predict the societal side effects of technological advances.