Category Archives: Technology and Society

It turns out that it’s probably Chinese.

But people wanted to believe it because SpaceX.

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

Elon’s Thursday Starship Presentation

February 11, 2022 Rand Simberg 72 Comments

What Eric Berger is hoping to learn.

[Thursday update]

It’s at 2100 EST, on Youtube.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Bob Zimmerman will be live streaming it as well.

[Friday-morning update]

Here is Eric Berger’s report.

What I heard last night that was new to me (maybe he’s said this before) was that it was less than a million per flight on the margin, and it could deliver 150 tons to LEO (I had thought the number was a hundred tons). That’s a fifty percent increase, and a one-third reduction in cost per pound.

[Late-afternoon update]

A report from NASA Spaceflight.

[Bumped]

[Saturday-morning update]

More on Musk at Politico, in which Yours Truly is quoted and cited.

Economics, General Science, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

First Light

February 11, 2022 Rand Simberg 5 Comments

I’m glad that Webb is working, but I continue to believe it was a mistake.

[Update a while later]

To clarify, I think it was a mistake to do it in the way it was done, but now that it’s operational, obviously it would be a mistake to abandon it now.

Business, Economics, Humor, Space, Technology and Society

Elon

February 9, 2022 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

…seems to be taking the loss well.

Easy satellite come, easy satellite go. https://t.co/0yDkUYY9G5
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) February 9, 2022

Business, Technology and Society, Weird

The Fragility Of Complex Technology

February 9, 2022 Rand Simberg 22 Comments

This is amazing.

[Update a while later]

Note that this seemed to be an accident of inadvertent file naming, but FM subcarriers carry all sorts of info (like real-time traffic, weather, or alerts). Imagine the kinds of malicious things one could do with this, because the automakers haven’t bullet proofed their code. Particularly with self-driving cars and kill switches. There should be a firewall between a car’s radio and the rest of the avionics (as I think they do for aircraft entertainment systems).