Clark Lindsey has the latest roundup, featuring SN8.
Category Archives: Business
Orion
Six years after its maiden (and only) flight, Eric Berger has some thoughts.
[Update a few minutes later]
From a comment over there:
Probably the most salient points:
A mockup lacking many critical systems flew into space once, six years ago.
The next test flight is basically another mockup, lacking even life support systems.
The first full-up complete vehicle launch is supposed to be with crew trusting their lives to a vehicle which has never been flight tested with systems complete, and also a similarly never-flown service module. Because for all the expense and mass, Orion doesn’t have much duration without a service module.
NASA safety culture at work. Mountains of paperwork instead of actual testing on actual hardware.
Just getting this far on Orion has been 15 years and $24B.
Ridiculous pork capsule to match a ridiculous pork rocket in the SLS.
Yup. It’s a Potemkin space program.
Buttigieg
What does he know about transportation?
I wonder if he knows anything, or cares about space? He’ll be ultimately in charge of launch licensing.
The New Mad Left
Where did it come from?
California’s Business-Climate Deniers
At what point, if any, will Sacramento get the message?
Computer Update
Welp, I gave up on rescuing that installation, and built a new one with the latest version on a spare 250G SSD. It only took me a couple hours to reinstall most of the software I need, including my virtual Windows machine, which is a lot less time than I wasted trying to get the other one to boot. I also built a shell script to make it easier next time (and we know there will be a next time).
The College Debt Debate
…is a culture-war battle.
Related: Schumer wants Biden to transfer wealth from auto mechanics to Harvard grads.
Oopsie
The First High-Altitude Starship Test
…coming this week.
Regardless of the outcome, it will be exciting.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
It could be as soon as Friday.
[Bumped]
[Tuesday-morning update]
Today seems to be the day. It’s being covered by NASA Spaceflight.
[Bumped again]
[1440 PST update]
Raptor abort. They aren’t going partway to space today.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
Fuel is loading, T-26 minutes to launch.
[Bumped]
[Post-flight update]
Well, that was kind of spectacular. As I said, guaranteed to be exciting. The exhaust looked a little weird toward the end. It was greenish, as though it was maybe running fuel rich. If so, Perhaps the thrust wasn’t up to spec, and insufficient to control the landing on final.
[Update a while later]
Elon said that the header tank pressure was low on landing. I’m guessing that this maybe resulted in bubbles in the cooling channels, overheating of the nozzle, and injecting copper into the flow, for that green effect. And reduced thrust, of course, which is why they came in too fast.
[Update Thursday afternoon]
Am I the only person who thinks it would be pretty unpleasant to be in the nose of that thing at final (even with a successful landing)?
Computer Problems, Continued
This post and comments were getting to be too much, so I’m starting a new one.
So when we last left our intrepid hero, he couldn’t reinstall grub because the shell wouldn’t talk to the Internet.
So I rebooted the live USB again, and after I did so, I could ping the net. So I went to this suggested page, and tried to do what it said, but his lsblk issues this tree:
Continue reading Computer Problems, Continued