Category Archives: Business

More On The SpaceX Anomaly

…from Alan Boyle. I don’t think this is quite right, though:

What caused the engine’s sudden pressure release, which was apparently strong enough to blow off the fairing?

I think this is a misstatement of the issue. I could be wrong, because we’re still awaiting clarification from SpaceX, but my understanding is that when they shut the engine down, and there was no pressure field coming from the nozzle, the differential pressure resulting from Max Q resulted in it “imploding” inward and breaking off (and perhaps taking the nozzle with it, but that’s less clear). All that is clear is that SpaceX claims that the powerhead itself wasn’t damaged, because they continued to receive telemetry from it.

I should note that if this is the case, it eliminates any earlier concerns about the upper-stage engine causing a catastrophic failure, though questions remain about about why Orbcomm is in the wrong orbit. This is clearly a second-stage issue.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the current story from Joe Pappalardo at Popular Mechanics. I’ll probably be elaborating on it after getting more info from SpaceX.

Ruh Roh

GM may yet have to go through a real bankruptcy:

Well, what do you know, the Obama Administration didn’t reveal all the details to the judge. Is anyone surprised that this gang of Chicago thugs decided that the judge didn’t need to know the sweetheart deal that would save their union buddies?

It sounds like Judge Gerber is ready to reopen the whole thing, essentially forcing GM into a real bankruptcy, including having to pay back the $27 billion to the Treasury… which, given that they only have about $30 billion on hand, could spell the end of GM.

Or at least the end of the sweetheart deal.

More SpaceX Launch Problems

A BBC reporter is reporting that the Orbcomm was deployed into a wrong orbit, as a result of a failure of the upper stage to restart. More at New Space Watch. This is actually a more serious problem than the first-stage failure, from a business standpoint, since it was actually a mission failure for the secondary payload. Next question: is Dragon in an orbit that can still rendezvous with the ISS? How much propellant reserve do they have?

[Update a while later]

SpaceX is sticking by their story that the engine didn’t explode, and that it was a fairing rupture after a controlled shutdown (though there was no initial discussion of the fairing issue). I have no reason to doubt it.

The Neo-Puritans

of both parties:

For the half hearted worldling like myself, who can never quite summon up all the moral fiber necessary for a grimly earnest New England crusade, all forms of Puritanism are suspect. But unlike the “Christianists under the bed” crowd over at the Daily Dish, I’m less worried about the puritanism of the right than the puritanism of the left these days. First, because American society is so firmly set against old fashioned right-wing prudishness, Romney’s “conservative” puritanism is probably a lesser threat to the freedoms of the people than the secular puritanism of the enlightened left. Public acceptance of homosexuality is likely to increase, for example, no matter who takes office next January; even after eight grim years of two Romney terms, you are still going to be able to see bare breasted women on “Boardwalk Empire” and “Game of Thrones.” Romney and the right are fighting the tide on many of these issues, so any efforts on their part to force more moral conformity on the population are unlikely to go all that far.

The other reason I worry less about the right’s tendency toward moralist dictatorship is federalism: the left likes its regulation at the national level and thinks the Federal government should set the tone for the whole country. The right on the other hand makes more room for the states. If we must be governed by meddling nanny state puritans, I would rather live in a country that had fifty petty moralistic dictatorships rather than one big one; I’d at least have a chance of finding a place where my favorite foods and amusements wouldn’t be banned by law. Surely there will be one state somewhere in this republic that will let me put some extra salt on my freedom fries.

Professor Mead doesn’t expand on the theme of this as being one of the folkways described in Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, but ever since reading that book it has always been clear that the “progressives” are the current incarnation of the Puritan tradition that came over from East Anglia in the seventeenth century. It was very clear that Hillary fell into that camp (whereas Bill was a redneck). But I had never thought before of the Mormons as being an offshoot of it. It makes sense. They’re not descended from Quakers, or the Cavaliers, and certainly not the Scots-Irish. So there are some similarities between Obama and Romney, but for the reasons that he mentions in the quote above, I’m much less concerned about Romney in that regard.

This discussion reminds me of my post from years ago about why we should worry much more about Leftist urges to control us than that of the social-issues right. Will Wilkinson disputed it at the time (though the specific example he used of Ashcroft’s fear of a marble tit turned out to be a Democrat urban myth). I wonder what he thinks now, given the economic disaster confronting us from the Democrat depradations of the last six years?

The Heinlein Quote, Visualized

Bad Luck

Here’s the quote, for those unfamiliar: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.

Oh, and just to remind that not only do tax-rate cuts not cause financial crises and recessions, but the wars didn’t cause the deficit or debt increase.

Wars Didn't Cause Deficits

It’s a shame that Kelly Ayotte didn’t have that chart handy yesterday when Governor O’Malley spewed his stupid ignorance. Or lie. Or whatever it was.

The SpaceX Launch Anomaly

I just got back from dinner, but apparently people have begun discussing it in comments at this relatively unrelated thread.

I don’t know much about it, so all I’ll say is that if they had a first-stage engine problem, it proves out their design capability to have mission success with engine out.

Clark Lindsey has some notes from the post-launch press conference.

[Update a few minutes later]

I would go further, and state explicitly that this increases my confidence in their vehicle. It was an inadvertent flight test of a capability that they would hope they don’t have to use, but now know that it works.

[Update a few minutes later]

Never mind my first response to Paul Breed in comments. Apparently it wasn’t just an engine shutdown — a first-stage engine exploded.

That puts a different complexion on things.

Now the question is, what is different about that Merlin than the one on the second stage, other than nozzle size? Well, there’s the environment. It occurred during Max Q, so the second stage wouldn’t have to worry about that.

If it had happened on the second stage, would it have just resulted in a lost of thrust (that is, does the second stage have a similar shrapnel protector) or would the stage itself have exploded?

If the former, it would probably be survivable (that is, payload or crew recovered) without an abort system, though a mission failure, so a concern for payload customers. If the latter, it might have happened too quickly for an abort system to be activated. It all depends on how much warning they had that the engine was going south. But obviously this would be of concern for commercial crew. Of course, as discussed in comments, this engine version will be retired after the next flight, currently scheduled for January, so if that one goes all right (and they certainly won’t fly until they understand what happened to this one), it will have retired with a 98% demonstrated reliability, and the Merlin 1D will have a clean slate on the following flight.

[Monday morning update]

Charles Lurio notes in email that one difference besides nozzle size (and environment) between upper and lower stage engines is the lack of active cooling in the nozzle of the latter. This would only be significant if the failure was caused by a problem in one of the cooling channels.