Here’s a pretty good article on what’s going on, but I found this graf amusing:
The Antares rocket has been waiting patiently since last month in its processing facility at MARS.
My emphasis.
Don’t anthropomorphize rockets. They hate when you do that.
Anyone out there familiar with targeting strategy in the fifties and sixties? I’m assuming that multiple missiles were aimed at single targets, for redundancy, at least for critical targets. True or false?
[Evening update]
Folks, I honestly appreciate all of the info in comments, but I should have said that I need citable (i.e., non-classified) sources. They will go into footnotes.
Over at Open Market, I’ve roundly fisked the latest display of ignorance from a supposed conservative on the new space policy. It’s sad that one of Breitbart’s sites would publish such nonsense. The real “Solyndra in Space” is SLS.
[Update a few minutes later]
I see that Thomas James has shredded it as well.
My thoughts on Neil Armstrong, over at PJMedia.
That’s a shame — he was only 82, which isn’t that old these days. No word of the cause of death. I’d heard that he’d been doing well since his recent heart surgery, so either there were later complications, or he just happened to succumb to something else.
The irony, of course, as it notes in the bio, is that he never wanted to be an icon, and generally shunned the publicity. In any event, ad astra, and resquiescat in pace.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, my Facebook wall is all Neil, all the time.
This is worry-making stuff, and the kind of thing that Bill Joy was worried about. We’re going to have to come up with personal defenses for it. It will be an arms race. It’s also a reason to get space opened up ASAP.
…for deep-space propulsion.
We need to be shifting funds from new unneeded NASA rockets to things like this, if we really want to get beyond earth orbit.
…by looking to the opening of the American West. A very good piece, by a British astrophysicist. I met Professor Elvis at GLEX a couple months ago.
No, the bill was not “weakened.” It was eviscerated to the point of uselessness, by the Consumer Attorneys of California. The word should go out to the industry that in its current form, if passed, it’s basically a fraud, in that it does nothing significant to reduce liability for launch services providers. As Doug says, we can try again next year, and this time be ready to push back harder against the CAC.
Isn’t it amusingly stupid how he is unable to write the phrase “commercial crew” without using the word “subsidy”?
What’s funniest of all, of course, is that he seems to actually believe that space policy will be a significant, or even debated issue in this election.
[Afternoon update]
Awwwww, isn’t that cute? Mark still fantasizes both that I have a “chain,” and that I ever “leap the length” of it. It seems to be one of his favorite expressions. That’s the autism, rather than the Tourette’s.
[Update on Tuesday morning]
I know what metaphors are, Mark. I was simply pointing out that your attempt at it was insane, and bore no resemblance to reality.