Clark Lindsey has been following the Pauls Breed attempt. Bottom line: no prizes today, but still a possibility tomorrow. We should all be pulling for them, a father/son team building rockets in their garage, in these days of the supremacy of the State.
Category Archives: Space
Non-Space Media Coverage
John Johnson, who I saw out at the test site in Mojave on Wednesday, has a story about the Masten feat at the LA Times today, illustrated with a photo by XCOR’s Mike Massee. My only problem with it is that he understates NASA costs:
NASA’s next-generation rocket, the Ares 1X, which was test-launched Tuesday, has cost tens of millions of dollars. Xoie and her predecessors have cost about $2 million.
Actually, while it’s technically true that Ares 1-X cost “tens of millions” (over forty tens of millions), it would be more accurate and less misleading to say that it cost hundreds of millions. Not to mention the fact that it flew Wednesday, not Tuesday. Tuesday was the originally scheduled launch date, but it was delayed until Wednesday.
So much for those much-vaunted “layers of editors and fact checkers” at the Dog Trainer.
The Earth Is Not Habitable
…to first order, any way. Some thoughts from Charlie Stross.
Following Masten
Ian Kluft is tweeting progress. Sounds like a much calmer day than the last two, which should be good for accuracy. I think that Armadillo got overconfident. As people noted in comments at Clark Lindsey’s place, they had another opportunity in September to go for a tighter landing, and declined it. They may end up regretting it, but only if Masten can shake whatever’s been jinxing them for the last couple days.
[Update at 10:10 AM PDT]
They should be flying in a minute or sofew minutes.
[Update at 10:20]
They took off and are hovering off their required three minutes before landing.
[11:25 update]
They’re refueling and preparing for the trip home. They landed about a foot from the target on the first flight. I don’t know how that compares to Armadillo’s flight, but I suspect it’s tighter.
[11:29 update]
The vehicle is fueled (alcohol). Now it just needs to be oxidized, with LOX.
[Update early afternoon]
I missed it, because I was in a meeting, but congratulations, Masten. They not only accomplished the goal, but they snatched first place from Armadillo.
John Carmack is understandably unhappy, but as he admits, he had a chance to better his score earlier, and didn’t take it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Alan Boyle has a fairly up-to-date story, including a preview of this afternoon’s first attempt by Unreasonable Rocket.
A Second Chance
Well, actually a fifth chance, when they were only supposed to get four. The judges have ruled that Masten can have one more shot this morning.
I can understand why Armadillo and Unreasonable Rocket might be upset about this, though Unreasonable Rocket has more of a legitimate gripe, since Armadillo benefited from lenient judges themselves last year when they won Level I.
Anyway, here’s hoping for success, finally. Clark has links to resources for following it.
NGLLC Day Two
Clark Lindsey is tracking progress up in Mojave today. The window presumably just opened.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Well, that’s it for Masten’s season. No chance to win Level II, but the second-place purse will remain on the table, unless the Pauls Breed can pull out a miracle in the next couple days. They apparently made the first three-minute flight, but had a fire on landing, and burned some sensor cables that they either had no replacements for, or insufficient time to replace within the window. But at least they’ll take the second-place for Level I (again, assuming that Unreasonable Rocket can’t beat their landing accuracy). Good luck to all contenders, now and in the future.
I will note that the 180-second test they did on Tuesday was tethered — Xoie had never flown in free flight, I assume because they simply ran out of time. But that shows why you have to do a full dress rehearsal (as Armadillo learned a couple years ago). It will be interesting to find out what caused the fire, if they can figure it out. Anyway, it’s a shame.
[Bumped]
Not So Great A Success
Apparently, in addition to the recontact after stage separation and tumbling second “stage,” the parachutes on the Corndog failed and damaged the cases of the first stage. But hey, what do you want for half a billion dollars? I mean, besides a whole new launch company and launch vehicle, as SpaceX managed to do for that amount.
[Update a few minutes later]
The obvious question, of course, is if the recontact damaged the chute system.
The Million-Dollar Race
Alan Boyle has a report on the current status of the NGLLC. I’d like to go back up to Mojave this morning, but I’ve got too much to do here today, with a deadline looming tomorrow. It’s going to be colder, too (it looks like it was close to freezing last night in the Antelope Valley), but the wind should be settling down, which will be better for Masten than yesterday, if they’ve sorted out their comm problems.
Anyway, good luck to all.
Success Of The Corndog
Clark Lindsey has some useful thoughts. As he notes, it would have been pretty amazing if this test had failed, considering what a trivial thing they were doing, and how much they spent on it. If it had failed, it would (or at least should) have been the end of NASA, or at least Marshall, as a credible developer of rockets (not that they should have such a reputation now, given the history of the past three decades). Another SpaceX could have been founded and another Falcon 9 developed for the cost of that test. Which tells you all you need to know about the cost effectiveness of the NASA jobs program.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jeff Manber says that it was the wrong test, at the wrong time.
[Thursday morning update]
Chair Force Engineer has some thoughts on the Potemkin Rocket:
While Ares I-X was a low-fidelity test of a bad rocket design, the test’s fundamental flaws should not detract in any way from the Ares I-X program personnel who devoted the last three years of their life to making this test a success. While I strongly believe that Ares I-X should have waited until the 5-segment SRB was available, Ares I-X still taught NASA personnel much about ground handling operations and ocean recovery for the Ares rockets.
It would be churlish to imply that people who work on a bad project are bad people, and I’ve never intended to do that. I know from personal experience in the industry that sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and the real tragedy is that so much talent, and not just taxpayers’ money, has been wasted on this program. It was a huge opportunity cost, in time, dollars and people. The people who work on it both happily, and otherwise, deserve plaudits for doing as good a job as they could under the circumstances. Let’s just hope that their talents can soon be turned to more useful ends.
The Nozette Story
The Washington Post has an extensive follow up.
I should note that when I earlier said that I’d known him for thirty years, I didn’t say that I’d been his friend for thirty years. I mention this because I got an email a few days ago from an editor of a Jewish publication in DC, based on that post, who wanted more info from me on the assumption that I was. I didn’t really know him that well — we met in Tucson when I was volunteering for L-5, and he had come back to the U of A to visit from MIT. I ran into him at conferences over the years, but that was pretty much it.
And yes, I haven’t left for Mojave yet. I’m hanging for another few minutes to see if the giant bottle rocket goes off in Florida. It’s currently scheduled for 6AM Pacific. I’ll still have time to beat the traffic over Sepulveda Pass if it’s on time.
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, just as I was typing that, they slipped to 9:15 EDT, with low confidence of a launch before 10:30. I can’t wait that long, so I guess I’ll miss it.