I’ll be on today, from 9:30 to 11 AM PST.
[Update a few minutes later]
The call-in number is 1-866-687-7223.
Category Archives: Business
Commercial Spaceflight’s Terrible Last Week Of October
My thoughts on what it all means, over at PJMedia, with some bonus @ISPCS coverage and history.
The RD-180 Replacement
Congress won’t like this. Insufficient opportunities for graft.
Note the implicit acknowledgement that they’re going to be using Falcons.
Siebold’s Testimony
Sounds like he didn’t have any new information for the NTSB, but I’d still like to hear his description of the engine burn and vibration environment. Note, it doesn’t say he doesn’t remember the feathers being unlocked, but that he was unaware of it (i.e., cognizant of his experience right up until breakup).
[Update a few minutes later]
Andy Pasztor has the problematic history of the program. I haven’t read it yet.
[Update a while later]
OK, the WSJ piece seems to line up pretty well with my own understanding of the history. I talked to Jon Ostrower last week to give him some background, and he seems to have incorporated some of what I told him, though he didn’t quote me. Which is fine.
Changing Junkyards
It’s not the way it used to be.
Longer ago than I care to think about (OK, four decades or so), I regularly visited a place out in Holly, MI to scrounge parts for my British sports cars. Every other time or so, when I’d go out, and come back with the part I needed, the owner (or manager) would ask me if I wanted a job. The last time I did it was in the nineties, when I went to a place on Hawthorne Blvd in Hawthorne to get a distributor for my Honda Accord, whose shaft had sheared off on the 405 in Orange County.
You Can Keep Your Plan And Your Doctor
An ObamaCare architect freely admits they had to lie to the voters to get the law passed. They assume that the voters are stupid, with some basis, since they continue to get re-elected. So it’s a shock to them when the ones who really care and know what’s going on show up at the polls, as they did last week.
Virgin Galactic’s Part-Time VP Of Safety
This seems like something that the NTSB will find interesting.
Siebold Speaks?
Doesn’t sound like he’s going to be able to tell NTSB much about what happened. I’d like to get his impression of the vibration environment with the new engine.
Another Green “Stimulus” Fail
Google and others want a taxpayer bail out for their desert bird roaster.
That looks like a nice bill for the new Congress to make Obama have to sign.
More at (appropriately) Powerline:
The sheer temerity of the request is almost outweighed by the unintended humor of their explanation for the failure of their project: the Sun isn’t shining as much as they thought it would. But I think they’re barking up the wrong tree: rather than ask for your money so they don’t have to use their money, they should ask the guy who said he would make the oceans recede, to order the Sun to stop slacking — rudely continuing to shine as it has for five billion years — and brighten up for Google, NRG, and Obama’s legacy.
What fools these mortals who support this insanity be.
In Which I’m Cited At ThinkProgress
I’m pretty sure this is a first.
I should note, I really don’t “worship” Branson. I have a lot of problems with him. My piece was more of a reaction to Kluger’s bashing than a defense of him per se.