On full display.
And to answer his anticipated question, I read NASA Watch because I find it informative, despite things like this.
Category Archives: Space
Captain Video
Lileks has a review:
Now. Let’s think. The escape portion is the rear. It has no controls or power, according to Captain Video. Yet that’s where the engine was. So the escape pod is powerless and rudderless even though it has the engine, and that’s what you get into to escape. From onrushing asteroids. How? By disengaging from the front half, which cuts off the engines, which makes the escape capsule fall.
Captain Video and the Ranger landed on the planet when the gravity of Atoma took their escape capsule and laid it down gently about 14 feet from the front door of the evil bad guy’s lair. What a stroke of luck! They dress up as natives. Aliens always dress like 19th century Arabs with big futuristic guns.
It was amazingly bad, almost Plan-9-like.
Cygnus
Congratulations to Orbital Sciences for what looks to be a successful launch to ISS, so far.
Life On The ISS
Joel Achenbach has an interesting article about the station.
Sierra Nevada
Sirangelo showing video of latest SS2 flight. Exhaust plume from hybrid rocket still looks like a tire fire. They did put it out, though.
Falcon Launch Delay
Garrett Reisman just announced that they had to scrub their static test firing today, so this weekend’s launch will be delayed (maybe Tuesday, same day as next OSC launch).
Blue Origin
Looking for a coastal launch site for orbital flight. Orbital vehicle is two stage, with first stage reusable, flyback vertical landing (like SpaceX).
Developing 100,000 lbf thrust lox/hydrogen engine. Deep throttle capability to allow vertical landing.
Xenon
At lunch at #AIAASpace2013, NASA is proposing ten tons of it for propellant for the asteroid mission. World production is about a ton per year.
AIAA Space 2013
I’m down in San Diego attending the conference, and the setup is not particularly conducive to laptops or blogging.
The STEM “Crisis”
“If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers.”
“None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”
And even if there was, the notion that NASA would help it is ludicrous. Particularly if anyone thinks it’s going to do so by building rockets to nowhere.