Chris Bergin has the story on current status of modifications at the Cape. Launch “as early as next summer.”
Let’s hope.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: ESA and Arianespace seem to have settled on the design of their next obsolete launch system.
If this is valid, it would have application not to just life extension, but to space travel as well.
It is a rejection of climate-change hysteria.
We may work up the gumption to go see it this weekend.
[Update a while later]
Related thoughts from Mark Steyn.
It launched 45 years ago today. It was hit by lightning twice, but ground controller John Aaron quickly told the astronauts how to get the systems back on line. Amy Shira Teitel is doing real-time tweeting of the mission.
[Update a while later]
What it was like to be an Apollo flight controller.
Over at Av Week.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hmmmmm…this seems a little off:
“…is not to be moved into the unlock position until acceleration has reached Mach 1.4.”
Mach 1.4 is a velocity, not an acceleration. I know what they mean, but this kind of sloppiness in writing a procedure doesn’t look good.
I’ll be on today, from 9:30 to 11 AM PST.
[Update a few minutes later]
The call-in number is 1-866-687-7223.
My thoughts on what it all means, over at PJMedia, with some bonus @ISPCS coverage and history.
Congress won’t like this. Insufficient opportunities for graft.
Note the implicit acknowledgement that they’re going to be using Falcons.
Sounds like he didn’t have any new information for the NTSB, but I’d still like to hear his description of the engine burn and vibration environment. Note, it doesn’t say he doesn’t remember the feathers being unlocked, but that he was unaware of it (i.e., cognizant of his experience right up until breakup).
[Update a few minutes later]
Andy Pasztor has the problematic history of the program. I haven’t read it yet.
[Update a while later]
OK, the WSJ piece seems to line up pretty well with my own understanding of the history. I talked to Jon Ostrower last week to give him some background, and he seems to have incorporated some of what I told him, though he didn’t quote me. Which is fine.