All posts by Rand Simberg

Administrative, Business, General, Space, Technology and Society

Bloggus Interruptus

Leave a comment

It’s been a crazy week, at Space Tech Expo in Anaheim on Wednesday and Thursday, then a red eye to DC on Thursday night, and no sleep until last night. On top of that, I failed to pack my keyboard with my laptop, which in addition to being a laptop, has several wonky keys, including “e,” so it’s quite tedious to type on it. So between that and busy at ISDC, probably not much posting until I’m back in the office on Tuesday.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Whoa!

56 Comments

This, on a static fire, is a major setback for commercial space in general, and Blue Origin in particular. More anon.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Eric Berger has the latest.

It strikes me a that this may have been a demonstration of the recently discovered explosive potential of LOX/methane, which Dugway tests showed was equivalent to TNT.

[Friday-morning update]

Stephen Green has the latest at PJMedia.

We’ll see how fast they can recover, but it certainly puts more pressure on SpaceX to get through their mishap investigation and get back to testing.

[Update a while later]

I knew Krafft when I was at Rockwell, because we had him on retainer as a consultant.

[Early-afternoon update]

Eric Berger: Why last night’s event was so catastrophic.

It’s sure a headache for Jared. At this point, Gwynne Shotwell is more important to American space activities than either the NASA administrator or General Saltzman.

[Update a few minutes later]

An aerial survey of the damage:

Business, Law, Political Commentary, Space

How Did Version 3 Do?

2 Comments

An interesting video:

Unsurprisingly, the FAA is going to require a mishap investigation before the next flight, but SpaceX is certainly already engaged in it.