Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX’s Latest “Failure”

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Thoughts on why it was a spectacular success, from Bob Zimmerman.

By the way, the podcast of my talk on The Space Show is available.

Also, I’ll be on John Batchelor’s Hotel Mars segment tonight, at 6:30 PM PDT.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the video, though it doesn’t show the tipping over.

[Afternoon update]

OK, here’s the best video yet. Looks like they may not get much back. Note the top thruster trying to keep it vertical, but lacking adequate thrust.

[Update a few minutes later]

Whoops. If you missed it, you missed it. They just made it private. But I think plenty of people saw it, so not sure what the point of hiding it is now.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, I’ve update with a new one that seems to have come back on line.

[Late-afternoon update]

Slow motion, color corrected. This looks official (I got it from Elon, via Amanda Stiles).

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

An Epistemological Question

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Ron Bailey wonders what it would take to convince you that AGW was occurring.

Roy Spencer responds.

I agree that Ron is a smart guy, but I do think there’s some of this going on:

I hate to impute motives, but I really have to wonder if he is succumbing to peer pressure, since believing anything that smacks of denial-ism is really frowned upon in the intellectual circles I’m sure Ron is part of.

I think it’s compounded by the fact that it’s hard enough to change your mind once. It would be kind of embarrassing to revert back to skepticism. The key point, of course, is that Ron doesn’t necessarily believe that the problem demands any particular policy solution.