Category Archives: Business

Administrative, Business, Space

Of All The Times To Lose My Internet Connection

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I got up this morning, and had no bandwidth, so I missed the SpaceX webcast, but I watched the launch on Fox News. Poking around some, now that I’m back on line, I see that they went into orbit. I’m assuming that it was a clean insertion (no unanticipated roll, as there was in June). Now comes the fun part. It’s supposed to do just a couple orbits, so it should be entering and coming down in the Pacific late morning, PST. Congratulations to SpaceX on mission success to date.

[Update at 9:17 PST]

Alan Boyle has a story. I’ll probably have one at AOL News later, but I want to wait to see how the entry/recovery goes (by the way, one of my pet peeves is the word “reenter,” which everyone uses, but implies that it has entered before — only the Shuttle has ever done that…).

[Update a few minutes later]

At the request of a commenter, here’s one of the first Youtubes out.

[Update shortly after deorbit burn]

Here’s more video.

OK, I’m hearing that drogue and all three main chutes have deployed. Still no word on first-stage recovery. Anyone else heard anything?

Business, Space

The Latest From SpaceX

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I just got an email from Stephanie Bednarek:

The demonstration launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft has been rescheduled for no earlier than Wednesday, December 8. The delay is due to a crack in the engine nozzle on the rocket’s second Stage that was discovered during a routine review of close-out photos of the rocket on Monday. More information on the launch schedule will be announced when available.

This will be the first-ever test flight of a Dragon spacecraft, an entirely new spacecraft designed in the last decade, and only the second test flight of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. It also marks the first time a commercial company is attempting to re-enter a spacecraft from orbit. As noted in a recent Wall Street Journal Article:

“Placing the vehicle into a such an orbit at speeds exceeding 17,000 miles per hour, then maneuvering through a fiery reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean will require a flawless trajectory, a reliable heat shield and finally, perfect operation of the redundant parachutes.”

This will also be the first flight under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop commercial supply services to the International Space Station. After the Space Shuttle retires, SpaceX will fly at least 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Resupply Services contract for NASA. The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft were designed to one day carry astronauts; both the COTS and CRS missions will yield valuable flight experience toward this goal. An informational fact sheet on the COTS program is attached for your reference.

This has been a strong government-commercial partnership. SpaceX has only come this far by building upon the incredible achievements of NASA, having NASA as an anchor tenant for launch, and receiving expert advice and mentorship throughout the development process. With the savings NASA will see by using SpaceX for low-Earth transportation, billions of dollars are freed up for other activities such as accelerating exploration efforts that go beyond low-Earth orbit, advanced telescopes and Earth science missions.

SpaceX plans to broadcast the entire launch live at www.spacex.com. NASA TV will also provide coverage.

So, it could still happen tomorrow. Best of luck.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Res Ipsa Loquitur

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Well, not entirely. Ed Morrissey has some thoughts.

This is what happens when you put in place either economic incompetents, people who actively want to wreck the economy for their own political ends, or both. There are, after all, people who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.

[Update a few minutes later]

Liberal math:

John Kerry was extolling the stimulus effects of unemployment benefits, as in more money returns to the economy for each dollar paid out to the unemployed. If so, why not simply put us all on unemployment benefits and watch the economy grow?

Or perhaps Kerry could advocate a national boat sales tax to collect the sort of revenue that he so carefully had tried to avoid. Or perhaps he might look carefully at zillionaire family trusts and the billions they divert from the strapped federal Treasury. Or perhaps he could take away the tax deductions on third or fourth homes above a certain square footage, maybe ending the deduction for property taxes on multiple homes?

My point? Why do Democrats always go after the orthodontist, electrical contractor, or insurance agency owner, and never the Buffetts, Kerrys, or Gateses? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett will defer more money from the federal Treasury by avoiding inheritance taxes (to channel their profits into their foundations) than all the billions lost this year by keeping tax cuts for small businesses.

Part of the problem is that these new aristocrats aren’t really liberals.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Pearl Harbor, Apollo 17, and Dragon

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What do they all have in common? Well, as it turns out, not as much as I thought, or at least hoped, when I wrote this post at The Corner, because we now know that SpaceX won’t be flying tomorrow, due to a nozzle issue on the second stage. But the main points of it stand.

By the way, if they can change out a nozzle with only an additional two-day delay, that’s pretty remarkable. That kind of problem on the Shuttle could mean weeks. As I noted in comments over at Clark Lindsey’s, though, I wonder how many spares they have for upper-stage nozzles? If it were a first-stage nozzle, it would probably be no problem, because with nine engines, they have to really be cranking them out. But the single engine on the firstsecond stage, while using the same powerhead, has a different nozzle, because it has a higher expansion ratio for vacuum operations. But presumably, they have at least one in Florida, or if not, it’s a one-day trip from Hawthorne.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Turn Off The Lights In Cancun

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The global warming party is over:

Who now remembers Smoot-Hawley, Quemoy and Matsu, and the Teapot Dome? But these were once issues on which the survival of the known world rested. The only global-warming news of this week was the announcement that the House Select Committee on Global Warming would die with the 111th Congress. Mrs. Pelosi established the committee three years ago to beat the eardrums of one and all, a platform for endless argle-bargle about the causes and effects of climate change. The result was the proposed job-killing national energy tax, but with the Republican sweep, there’s no longer an appetite for killing jobs.

Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the chairman of the doomed committee, organized one final event this week, a splashy daylong exercise in gasbaggery starring the usual suspects assigned to drone on for most of the day about the coming global-warming disasters, the melting of the North Pole and the rising of the seas that would make Denver, Omaha and Kansas City seaside resorts. Wesley Clark was the only former presidential candidate to accept an invitation, and he was a no-show. The star witness of the afternoon session was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an “environmental attorney” who talked about how “clean energy” is nicer than the other kind. Mr. Markey himself, as bored as everyone else, didn’t bother to return after lunch.

The members of the committee can now retire with their scrapbooks of clippings to recall the happy days of hearings about global warming (some of them before “global warming” became “climate change” and “liberals” became “progressives”), about how clean energy could replace smelly oil wells and provide Democrats with the means to enact sweeping climate-change legislation. Who could have foreseen that the only “sweeping” would be the sweeping out of so many Democrats?

Well, actually, absent massive voter fraud, it was pretty much inevitable.

[Afternoon update]

Some interesting climate-related Wikileaks, with a promise of more to come. I wonder how Assange feels about having exposed these corrupt con artists?