I got an email from Jon Goff about this yesterday, but didn’t want to post until there was a public announcement.
Ok, now that it's on Facebook, I feel it's ok to mention the horrible news here on Twitter. I found out this morning that my good friend Bernard Kutter of ULA passed away last night from a heart attack.
This is a huge loss to the industry. He had a great deal of vision, that was squandered by the child abuse of ULA’s parent companies. Not sure he’s replaceable. My deepest condolences to all his friends and family.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, that was fast. This post is already number two on a DuckDuckGo search for “Bernard Kutter.” Funny thing is that Google has nothing on the death.
Here’s an overview of the state of the art of needed technologies to beam power to earth, from almost three decades ago, when I was working at Rockwell. I ran across it in trying to reduce the entropy of my office. It’s funny how little has changed.
Sorry about the rotation; that’s how it scanned into the PDF. Just rotate it with your browser.
A reader emailed me, asking why I hadn’t mentioned this weekend’s return of Endeavour from ISS (it will be splashing down in about three hours). I replied that there wasn’t much to talk about; the entire mission has been utterly nominal. At this point, like Elon, I’m much more interested in Starship. It would be great if it can take its first flight on the same day that Dragon returns with crew, though.
[Noon PDT update]
They’re in the water, and SpaceX’s job is done. It appears to have been a perfect flight.
[Update at 1230 PDT]
Where the hell was the Coast Guard? How did those private boats get so close to the capsule? I can’t believe they didn’t set up a perimeter. Meanwhile…