This is a good illustration of how misunderstood the concept of “capitalism” is, and why we should prefer some other word to express the concept of a system of free markets.
[Late Sunday night update]
More thoughts at Volokh, with lots of good comments. Particularly on the distinction between Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
[Bumped]
…they’re talking about themselves:
Those unentranced by the magic flute have an obligation to remember what happened; to keep the history books free of revisionism so that by shame and memory those pied pipers who led a generation astray can never return unchallenged to sound their witching tune again. But for the children already lost to the dark we can only wish that wherever they have gone, they’ve found what they were looking for.
It’s unlikely. What they’re looking for doesn’t exist, and never will.
Clark Lindsey has been following the Pauls Breed attempt. Bottom line: no prizes today, but still a possibility tomorrow. We should all be pulling for them, a father/son team building rockets in their garage, in these days of the supremacy of the State.
Ian Kluft is tweeting progress. Sounds like a much calmer day than the last two, which should be good for accuracy. I think that Armadillo got overconfident. As people noted in comments at Clark Lindsey’s place, they had another opportunity in September to go for a tighter landing, and declined it. They may end up regretting it, but only if Masten can shake whatever’s been jinxing them for the last couple days.
[Update at 10:10 AM PDT]
They should be flying in a minute or sofew minutes.
[Update at 10:20]
They took off and are hovering off their required three minutes before landing.
[11:25 update]
They’re refueling and preparing for the trip home. They landed about a foot from the target on the first flight. I don’t know how that compares to Armadillo’s flight, but I suspect it’s tighter.
[11:29 update]
The vehicle is fueled (alcohol). Now it just needs to be oxidized, with LOX.
[Update early afternoon]
I missed it, because I was in a meeting, but congratulations, Masten. They not only accomplished the goal, but they snatched first place from Armadillo.
John Carmack is understandably unhappy, but as he admits, he had a chance to better his score earlier, and didn’t take it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Alan Boyle has a fairly up-to-date story, including a preview of this afternoon’s first attempt by Unreasonable Rocket.
Well, actually a fifth chance, when they were only supposed to get four. The judges have ruled that Masten can have one more shot this morning.
I can understand why Armadillo and Unreasonable Rocket might be upset about this, though Unreasonable Rocket has more of a legitimate gripe, since Armadillo benefited from lenient judges themselves last year when they won Level I.
Anyway, here’s hoping for success, finally. Clark has links to resources for following it.
I just realized that it was eighty years ago that the stock-market crash occurred, setting off the initial recession that Hoover and Roosevelt turned into the Great Depression. And we don’t seem to have learned the lesson. In fact, George Soros is spending millions to ensure that we don’t. Thanks, George!
[Update a few minutes later]
A little relevant history.
Clark Lindsey is tracking progress up in Mojave today. The window presumably just opened.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Well, that’s it for Masten’s season. No chance to win Level II, but the second-place purse will remain on the table, unless the Pauls Breed can pull out a miracle in the next couple days. They apparently made the first three-minute flight, but had a fire on landing, and burned some sensor cables that they either had no replacements for, or insufficient time to replace within the window. But at least they’ll take the second-place for Level I (again, assuming that Unreasonable Rocket can’t beat their landing accuracy). Good luck to all contenders, now and in the future.
I will note that the 180-second test they did on Tuesday was tethered — Xoie had never flown in free flight, I assume because they simply ran out of time. But that shows why you have to do a full dress rehearsal (as Armadillo learned a couple years ago). It will be interesting to find out what caused the fire, if they can figure it out. Anyway, it’s a shame.
[Bumped]
The administration is overstating jobs “created or saved” by orders of magnitude.
Clark Lindsey has some useful thoughts. As he notes, it would have been pretty amazing if this test had failed, considering what a trivial thing they were doing, and how much they spent on it. If it had failed, it would (or at least should) have been the end of NASA, or at least Marshall, as a credible developer of rockets (not that they should have such a reputation now, given the history of the past three decades). Another SpaceX could have been founded and another Falcon 9 developed for the cost of that test. Which tells you all you need to know about the cost effectiveness of the NASA jobs program.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jeff Manber says that it was the wrong test, at the wrong time.
[Thursday morning update]
Chair Force Engineer has some thoughts on the Potemkin Rocket:
While Ares I-X was a low-fidelity test of a bad rocket design, the test’s fundamental flaws should not detract in any way from the Ares I-X program personnel who devoted the last three years of their life to making this test a success. While I strongly believe that Ares I-X should have waited until the 5-segment SRB was available, Ares I-X still taught NASA personnel much about ground handling operations and ocean recovery for the Ares rockets.
It would be churlish to imply that people who work on a bad project are bad people, and I’ve never intended to do that. I know from personal experience in the industry that sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and the real tragedy is that so much talent, and not just taxpayers’ money, has been wasted on this program. It was a huge opportunity cost, in time, dollars and people. The people who work on it both happily, and otherwise, deserve plaudits for doing as good a job as they could under the circumstances. Let’s just hope that their talents can soon be turned to more useful ends.