Category Archives: Technology and Society

Administrative, Technology and Society

Fdisk Problem

22 Comments

I want to back up to an older SSD, but when I open it to look at it with fdisk, I get the message: “fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdb: Invalid argument”

Any ideas?

[Update Monday morning]

I gave up on the drive, and went out and bought a new one at Best Buy.

[July 17th update]

So, I copied my Linux OS to the new drive using dd. But it won’t boot. It acts like its starting to boot, but the Fedora thing just spins ad infinitum. It won’t boot in the same desktop that I copied the OS from, or from the laptop. Any ideas?

[Bumped]

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

Space Solar Power

16 Comments

A good review on the state of the technology.

This doesn’t make much sense, though: “…the hardware itself will have to be deorbited when it reaches end-of-life. ‘ESA has a Clean Space Initiative. Anything that we’re sending to space, we have to think about the whole lifecycle, cradle to grave,’ Caplin said.”

It’s loony tunes to think that we’d deorbit something that size from GEO. It will be repurposed in some way in space, or at least go to a graveyard orbit.

Business, Law, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Falcon Failure

12 Comments

I can obviously understand the need for an investigation, and if SpaceX wants to do it with the FAA, that’s fine, but the FAA should have no say in when it flies again; that would be them doing mission assurance, which is not part of their charter. NASA, Jared Isaacman, or any of SpaceX’s other customers can decide when and whether they trust the vehicle, but FAA advisement should be just that. There was no public danger from this event (other than potential Starlink debris falling to earth), or reason to think there would be from any future similar failure.