I often don’t link to these, because I often find them to be carnivals of space science and astronomy, but Ken Murphy has a very linky special edition from the recent ISDC, including a budding young talent.
Category Archives: Space
You First, Pete
Lileks, on Peter Singer and other misanthropes.
I don’t believe that there’s any inherent good in having people on earth. We’re fond of ourselves, but that’s about it.
Uh huh. Well, here’s a question I find more interesting than Singer’s threnodies: if there was no sentient life on Earth, would Nature still be beautiful? Everyone loves the beauty of Nature, after all. Everyone agrees it’s a Good and Wonderful Thing, although some think some spiritual experience can be distilled from its contemplation. I don’t – I sense the inconceivable depths of time, the wonders of natural systems, and find aesthetic pleasures if they mesh with my own preferences, i.e., I like the colors of a sunset, but do not like the face of a spider. There is no moral component to beauty, no ethics in a great forest. I like them, but they are not my Brother or Mother anymore than the bear considers me a distant relative. I prefer a certain amount of distance from Nature, as in the form of walls and roofs and clothing and medicine and so on, and if this makes our lives “disconnected” from Nature, then talk to the beaver, who gnaws down trees and dams streams. But we cannot disconnect with Nature; we’re part of it. We’re just the clever part that figured out how to arm ourselves against its indifference.
We pay Nature the compliment of being Beautiful, but that’s a hard-fought luxury. Nature requires the application of judgment to be beautiful. It requires people.
That’s just as true off planet as on.
The New Frontier
Orphans Of Apollo had its official LA premier down in San Pedro Friday night, and Rick Tumlinson gave an impromptu talk.
Stupid Commentary On Bigelow
Was this supposed to make any sense?
Robert T. Bigelow, of Bigelow Aerospace and the Budget motel chain, believes he can build the space stations, and others will be able to fly paying customers, including NASA astronauts, into orbit—all for less money than NASA and other government space agencies currently pay to transport and host spacemen and spacewomen.
Truthdig is not entirely convinced this is such a good idea. In a year of oil spills, runaway Toyotas and toxic happy meals, we’re not so sure about turning over exploration of the final frontier—and transportation of our astronauts—to private profiteers.
Apparently the word “profit” remains a dirty word to some. Which is why it continues to amaze that this new policy came out of the Obama administration.
And of course, we know how scrupulous that “non-profit,” NASA is about flight safety. Why, it’s only killed fourteen astronauts in the past quarter century.
[Update a few minutes later]
The other dumb thing about this is the notion that any space activity is “exploration.” This is one of the ignorant straw-man shibboleths of the bashers of the new plan (notably, by the moronic commenter “DCSCA” over at Space Politics) — that “exploration” is being turned over to private enterprise, which they claim won’t work, because it’s not profitable. But all that the plan actually calls for is to get NASA out of the business of transportation to LEO, so that they can finally focus on real exploration.
A Side Helping Of Crow
My opinion piece on the recent SpaceX success is up at AOL News.
More SpaceX News
Clark Lindsey has a lot of links.
[Update a few minutes later]
I said yesterday that they had a chute failure. But what I’m hearing now is that the stage broke up on entry, rather than when it hit the ocean, so the failure to open chutes was an effect of the vehicle breakup, and not the cause. That’s too bad, because a failure of chutes to deploy would be a lot easier thing to fix. I wonder how much of a setback this is to the goal of first-stage reusability?
Elon’s Telecon
Clark has a great roundup of the tweets.
Congratulations To SpaceX
We don’t know if they’ve successfully achieved orbit, but they were well on their way when we lost contact, and this was a pretty successful first flight even if something goes wrong at the end. It won’t quiet the people whining about “hobbyists,” and “toy rockets,” but they were always idiots.
It was particularly impressive that they had a successful launch within two hours of an ignition abort. I don’t think anyone else in the business can recycle that fast.
I’m hearing that they had a minor roll problem with the second stage. That actually reassures me — the flight was looking too good for a first flight. It’s nice to catch something to fix — that’s what test flights are for. And it seems to be robust, because the guidance system seems to have gotten them to the designated orbit even with the problem.
[Update a few minutes later]
The SpaceFlightNow webcast is showing Bolden saying something, but I don’t have audio.
[Update at 12:30 Pacific]
The Youtubes are going up.
And my email to Gwynne and her reply:
Hundreds and Thank you!
—–Original Message—–
From: Rand Simberg
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2010 8:55 AM
To: Gwynne Shotwell
Subject: CongratulationsYou’ll be getting a lot of emails like this, I’ll bet.
It’s a new world. And many more.
It will be very interesting to see how this affects the debate, if at all.
[Update mid afternoon]
Apparently the chutes didn’t open on the first stage. I don’t know if that means it will be unrecoverable, but it won’t be in good shape. “Debris field” doesn’t sound good. One more thing to wring the bugs out of.
[Update a few minutes later]
First-stage chute deployment is one of the things that they didn’t test, I think. At least until today. I suspect they just decided that the cheapest way to test it would be on the first flight, instead of spending extra money on a drop test, which wouldn’t be practical from the separation altitude anyway. It’s just a cost issue, and not mission critical. They’ll have plenty of flights to sort it out.
About Half An Hour Till Launch
Clark has a bunch of links, including webcasts, for the SpaceX launch, now scheduled for 11:20 AM Eastern. The last text I got from Florida Today indicates that weather is green, but there are some cumulus building to the west (typical for this time of year, which is one of the reasons the Cape actually isn’t that great a location for a launch site).
[Update a few minutes later]
They’re holding at T minus 15 minutes. Not clear what they’re waiting for to resume the count. The SpaceX webcast is here.
OK, just heard that it’s a range hold while they verify telemetry.
[Update at 12:06 PM EDT]
Still on a range hold. The webcast at SpaceX has dropped off. They still have three hours of window today.
[Update at 12:20 PM EDT]
I don’t know what’s happened to the SpaceX webcast, but SpaceFlightNow is covering it, with Miles O’Brien.
spaceflightnow on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
[Bumped]
[Update at 12:45 PM EDT]
We seem to be making negative progress. I just got a text that says the clock has been reset to T minus 27:30, with no new launch time. So we’re at least a half hour away. But at least the radar’s looking OK. But that doesn’t show anvil clouds.
[Update at 1 PM EDT]
OK, the count is now back at T minus 29, but they’re also saying there may be a boat in the box. I’ve never understood why we allow that to hold a launch. It’s just Darwin in action, and it allows protesters to disrupt launches.
OK, it looks like the hold is back to 15.
[Update at 1:15 PM EDT]
OK, they’ve picked up the count, with a launch at 1:30.
[Update at 1:30 PM]
Abort prior to ignition. They still have an hour and a half to recycle, if they figure out why.
[Update at 13:41 EDT]
SpaceX is saying that it was a shutdown right after ignition. No word yet on the possibilities of recycling today. They probably won’t know until they know what the problem was.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mission control is reporting that there was an “out-of-limit start-up parameter.” That could be lots of things. How do they solve it? How far out of limit was it? Do they widen the limits a little, or what? If it’s an actual hardware problem, I don’t see how they go today. They have less than an hour left.
[Update at 14:30 EDT]
They only have about fifteen minutes left to restart the count.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They’re doing a poll.
OK, clear to go. 2:45 attempt. This will be the last one today.
[Update a few minutes before launch]
They’re saying that they’re accepting whatever the parameter issue was.
[Update shortly after liftoff]
Looking good so far less than a minute in.
OK, just went through Max Q.
It’s interesting to see the “corner” on the rocket exhaust from the square cluster configuration.
OK, they just staged. Looked clean to me, and they have a second-stage ignition.
The SpaceX Telecon
Clark Lindsey has a summary.
[Late afternoon update]
Apparently, the range has finally signed off on the Flight Termination System, so they’re good to go tomorrow.