Jon Ostrower and Gavin Werbeloff have done us the service of putting together a status spreadsheet.
[Thursday-morning update]
Are we really in danger? Probably not.
[Bumped]
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Echopraxia
Ferociously intellectual pulp fiction.
Sounds like fun. I may check it out
Artificial Intelligence
Will it literally kill us with kindness? Paging @elonmusk.
A New Heart-Attack Drug
This seems statistically significant, but (as with statins) I’m always leery of side effects of things like it. And there’s no mention of them.
“Accelerating” SLS
Bill Nelson wants to speed it up (to where it was before) by wasting even more taxpayer money on it.
Go There To Buy The Lube
…stay there for the customer reviews:
As UPS discretely unloaded my 55 gallon drum, the driver accidentally spilled it into my driveway. Any amount of cars can now fit into the garage.
Probably not safe for work, if you can’t laugh discreetly.
James Clerk Maxwell
In Which I Disagree With @Instapundit
I agree that neurosuspension is better than nothing, but I disagree that whole body is for suckers. This is a topic that’s been going on for years in cryonics discussions.
We simply don’t know how much of our identity is in our body, as opposed to simply our brains. For instance, I suspect that there is a lot of distributed motor intelligence in athletes and musicians — when I play an instrument (or for that matter, simply type on a keyboard) I have a sense that my hands aren’t being directly controlled by the brain, but are rather receiving higher-level commands issued by the brain that are implemented at a lower level, based on local memory. I don’t know that to be the case, but if you can afford to keep the whole body, it might end up being worth not having to reacquire old skills.
The Coalition For Big Expensive Rockets
I agree with Stephen Fleming about this press release.
Every word in the second paragraph of this release is a lie. (With the possible exception of "the" and "and.") #space http://t.co/yTwUvQZDbP
— Stephen Fleming (@StephenFleming) August 30, 2014
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:
The new #NASA megarocket is going to be big and LOUD! http://t.co/3DMZIZX7N6 pic.twitter.com/JSQIr8rCIw
— NTS (@nts) August 30, 2014
My response:
@nts Who knew that LOUD was a figure of merit for launch systems?
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 30, 2014
The SpaceX Vehicle Loss
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?