It’s scheduled to fly tomorrow morning. Wonder how many more flights they plan before test passengers?
Category Archives: Space
115 Years Of Powered, Controlled Flight
Fifteen years ago, on the centennial anniversary of the Wright’s first flight, I wrote three separate essays on it. One was at National Review, a second was at Fox News (though I can’t find it; the original blog post can be found here), I think, and a third was at what was then TechCentralStation, but that one seems to have succumbed to link rot. If anyone can find it, I’d appreciate it (I think the title was “Airplane Scientists”).
It’s also the fifteenth anniversary of the first time that SpaceShipOne went supersonic. Burt liked to do things on anniversaries.
[Afternoon update]
John Breen found it.
[Update a while later]
#OnThisDay in 1903, the Wright Brothers made their first flight with a powered aircraft. pic.twitter.com/0uJI6HZiSf
— Marina Amaral (@marinamaral2) December 17, 2018
Psychological Hibernation
I suspect that if we settle space, we’ll see a lot of this sort of thing in some of the environments.
Back To Space
Virgin Galactic just completed the first flight of SpaceShipTwo to space, if one considers the boundary to be 80 kilometers (it reportedly got to 82). At the Galloway Symposium last week, Jonathan McDowell made a good case that this, not the traditional Karman line of 100 km, is the right altitude. If one accepts that, it is the first flight of humans to space from American soil since the Shuttle retired over seven years ago. Here’s hoping that Blue Origin does the same thing next year (except they’re designed to get to 100 km).
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s Emilee Speck’s story.
[Update a while later]
Link to the McDowell paper should be working now, sorry.
[Update a while later]
Tim Fernholz has a story up now.
[Update a few minutes later]
And here’s a story from CNN‘s Jackie Wattles.
My footage of engine burn pic.twitter.com/IlQIcmNclY
— Jackie Wattles (@jackiewattles) December 13, 2018
Safe, Simple, Soon
NASA just had a setback in their ambitious project to make a reusable engine expendable.
An RS-25 engine just had a significant anomaly during a test fire at @NASAStennis. The test was aborted just seconds in. pic.twitter.com/77A0d8XyXK
— Michael Baylor (@nextspaceflight) December 12, 2018
Tanya Harrison
Here’s an interview with her, about her disability. I’ve met her; she’s great. I hope they can come up with better treatments, or a cure.
Tory Bruno
Eric Berger interviewed him at Spacecom about Vulcan and other things. Here‘s part 1.
A Lunar Colony
Bob Zubrin {?!) and Homer Hickam say we have the technology; let’s do it.
Update a while later]
Dennis Wingo: The elephant and the moon. (Not new, but first time I’d seen it.)
Geminids
It should be a good year for watching the meteor shower, if you can handle the temperatures.
Vacation
We decided to drive up to Santa Ynez for a weekend holiday wine tour. We left last night in hopes of getting up here in time for the Delta IV launch out of Vandenberg, but it was scrubbed for a technical issue. The good news is that it’s rescheduled for an earlier launch tonight (1006), and we’ll still be up here. The weather is clear, and it should be good viewing of a night launch if it goes. It’s the first time in many months that we’ve traveled just for pleasure, with no business. Back to the grind on Monday.
[Update after the launch scrub]
Well, that was disappointing. We had a great spot on Ocean Avenue to view, a clear sky, and it aborted seven seconds before liftoff. No word on cause yet.