Clark Lindsey has a summary.
[Late afternoon update]
Apparently, the range has finally signed off on the Flight Termination System, so they’re good to go tomorrow.
Category Archives: Business
The Flint Reporting Project
Gordon Young is trying to fund some reporting of one of our premiere post-industrial cities (and my home town). It’s sad to see how far it’s fallen from my childhood days.
The Moon Needs Women
..and men. Paul Breed says there’s a lesson about robotics to be learned from the oil leak (no, it’s not a “spill”).
More Of The Left’s War On Science
The “sustainable agriculture” movement is senselessly starving people.
The Range Goes Green
…for SpaceX. And they’ve rolled it out to the pad, and erected it.
It’s now less than forty-eight hours until their first opportunity, at 8 AM Pacific. On later flights, when they have to go to ISS, they’ll have a tight launch window (ten minutes more or less, depending on how much performance margin they have), but for the first couple flights at least, there’s no target they’re aiming at in space, so they can go any time within the window provide by the range (four hours, I think, on each day). As Clark notes, while I won’t be surprised if they’re successful (nor will I be surprised if they’re not, on this first launch), I will be surprised if they actually launch at 8 AM on Friday. I suspect that they’ll be operating on a hair trigger when it comes to anomalies that can delay them. There is a lot riding on success (and for those defending the old regime, a lot riding on their failure).
Another Green Dream
…turns Brown. Electric cars are bad for the environment. Diesel hybrids are best.
Bureaucratic Sabotage
…or how Dilbert won the war. Though actually, credit has to go to the pointy-haired boss.
I think this also explains a lot about why we haven’t made much progress in space.
Virginia Postrel
An interesting discussion of Obama’s glamour problem, and the perversities of health care.
Cooperation
John Hare has some interesting speculations on how a Masten/XCOR team might reduce costs to orbit.
XCOR Update
I’m seeing tweets from the ISDC that Jeff Greason is saying Lynx rollout and flight tests are about a year from now.
This is interesting:
XCOR has plans to develop an orbital vehicle.
Jeff has been saying that he has some ideas along those lines. I wonder how much he’s revealing publicly?
[Update a while later]
A lot more XCOR tweets over at Space Transport News.