Category Archives: Business

Business, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX Update

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A reported quote from Elon (no URL, yet):

We are close to figuring it out. It might have been formation of solid oxygen in the carbon over-wrap of one of the bottles in the upper stage tanks. If it was liquid it would have been squeezed out but under pressure it could have ignited with the carbon. This is the leading theory right now, but it is subject to confirmation. The other thing we discovered is that we can exactly replicate what happened on the launch pad if someone shoots the rocket. We don’t think that is likely this time around, but we are definitely going to have to take precautions against that in the future. We looked at who would want to blow up a SpaceX rocket. That turned out to be a long list. I think it is unlikely this time, but it is something we need to recognize as a real possibility in the future.” [Emphasis mine]

I think that the Arocket list had speculated about this early on.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Climate

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…is chaotic:

What is the import of Lorenz? Literally ALL of our collective data on historic “global atmospheric temperature” are known to be inaccurate to at least +/- 0.1 degrees C. No matter what initial value the dedicated people at NCAR/UCAR enter into the CESM for global atmospheric temperature, it will differ from reality (from actuality – the number that would be correct if it were possible to produce such a number) by many, many orders of magnitude greater than the one/one-trillionth of a degree difference used to initialize these 30 runs in the CESM-Large Ensemble. Does this really matter? In my opinion, it does not matter. It is easy to see that the tiniest of differences, even in a just one single initial value, produce 50-year projections that are as different from one another as is possible(see endnote 1). I do not know how many initial conditions values have to be entered to initialize the CESM – but certainly it is more than one. How much more different would the projections be if each of the initial values were altered, even just slightly?

This has always been pretty obvious to me. What does it mean? That we cannot model it into the future with any confidence whatsoever.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Storm

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On a personal note, we had our house (less than half a mile from the beach) shuttered yesterday, and it will probably be all right. It’s frustrating though, because we finally got it under contract this weekend, and it was supposed to be inspected for the buyer tomorrow. Doubt that will happen for a while now; no way to know how long they’ll be without power (and of course, the nightmare scenario is if it curves around and hits south Florida again). The worse problem is that Patricia’s son lives in Lake Worth, out by the turnpike, and has no shutters, so he’s desperately trying to find plywood or particle board for his windows. It’s looking to me like the winds will start from the east, then rotate around to the north as it passes by along the coast. And if it actually scrapes the land, it will be worse.

But the latest is that it’s still headed right at the Cape, and could even become a five when it hits tomorrow. If that happens, it will probably destroy the VAB, and other facilities, which are only rated for 125 mph winds. It would also probably wipe out much of the infrastructure at CCAFS, which would put both SpaceX and ULA out of business for low-inclination launches until it can be repaired. The only access to ISS (at least with any significant payload — one can dogleg out of Vandenberg, with a big performance penalty) would be from Wallops, via Orbital ATK. Hard to understate what a blow this would be in terms of our space capabilities. And it will raise questions about the future of NASA spaceflight, though Congress is likely to authorize the funding to rebuild, because without the VAB, they can’t even pretend that SLS will have any utility.

People have asked why the facilities weren’t designed to handle these kinds of winds. One of the reasons that the Cape was chosen is that, historically, it doesn’t see these kinds of storms, so designing for them would be like designing for a 200-year flood. But sometimes, 200-year floods happen.

[Update a while later]

Here’s a story from Maddie Stone at Gizmodo (though no, this storm wasn’t caused by “climate change”, but we can count on a lot of foolish people saying it was).

[Late-morning update]

And here we go: “‘Liberals’ already blaming Matthew on global warming.” [Scare quotes mine; they’re leftists, not liberals]

[Update mid afternoon]

Stephen Smith, who think’s he’s going to have to find a new job and move as a result, thinks that this is going to be apocalyptic for KSC. I think it’s very likely.

[Update a while later]

The storm seems to be further east than predicted, and I think Palm Beach County is out of serious trouble. Not sure what this means for the future track, in terms of where it makes landfall, or how much it affects the Cape.

[Update Friday morning]

Looks like they dodged a bullet. The storm stayed off shore, and they only saw winds less than a hundred mph (similar to Frances). Hearing there’s some damage to some roofs, but mostly came through intact.