An enormous space telescope. I was writing about this sort of thing four decades ago, and it’s finally on the verge of fruition.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Strange Computer Problem
When I started using the machine this morning, it seemed to be running like molasses in January. I tried rebooting, and it took forever to boot, and then wouldn’t let me log in. I fired up a clean Fedora from a stick, and fscked my drives. The /home hard drive had a lot of errors on it, that got fixed, but there was no problem with the SSD where my OS resides. Then I rebooted. It took a long time, but finally came up. Everything continues to load and run slow. Nothing seems to be bogging down the CPU, and there is plenty of free memory. Any ideas what the problem could be?
Continue reading Strange Computer ProblemSN10
They’ve completed final checkouts before today’s flight.
[Evening update]
I had an afternoon engagement that prevented me from seeing the flight, but the commenters seem to have the situation well in hand.
Rocket Lab
Why Peter Beck ate his hat.
On Eating Meat
More junk nutritional science.
Space Tango
They’re planning their own orbital research facility.
Anti-Racism Corporate Training
Take the ten-second course from the Babylon Bee.
Climate Change
Boondoggle upon boondoggle.
The Rot At The Times
I wish I were surprised by this:
“But Donald,” Dean said, “you’ve lost the newsroom. A lot of your colleagues are hurt. A lot of them won’t work with you. Thank you for writing the apology. But we’d like you to consider adding to it that you’re leaving.”
“WHAT?” I said loudly. “ARE YOU KIDDING? You want me to leave after 40-plus years? Over this? You know this is bullshit. You know you looked into it and I didn’t do the things they said I did, I wasn’t some crazy racist, I was just answering the kids’ questions.”
“Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom. People won’t work with you.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Since when do we get to choose who we work with?”
“Donald, you’ve had a great year, you’re still up for a Pulitzer.”
If Baquet had had a pair, he’d have told any of these children in adult bodies who didn’t want to work with him that they were welcome to seek other employment.
New Glenn
The schedule has slipped until the end of next year.
Not getting the Air Force contract seems like an excuse to me. Either Bezos is serious, or he isn’t. If he is, he’ll spend whatever it takes to start getting revenue. The longer he delays, the farther ahead Elon will be. In fact, if he wants to keep up, he’ll start work on New Armstrong now.
[Tuesday update]
A bridge too far?
[Bumped]