Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Economics, Law, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Blue Origin

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They’re filing a lawsuit against the USAF over launch procurement.

I don’t understand why the Air Force wouldn’t want more than two launch providers.

[Afternoon update]

I have some thoughts on Twitter, based on some of the comments here.

First, since people are saying that Blue Origin should demonstrate the ability to develop an orbital rocket, it’s fair to say that so should ULA. They’re flying vehicles developed by other companies over two decades ago.

Arguably, only two teams with recent orbital launcher development experience are SpaceX and NGIS (by acquiring Orbital ATK). Vulcan and New Glenn both currently remain paper rockets. At this point in time, SpaceX has the most experienced launch-development team on the planet.

And while NGIS does have the Antares experience, that won’t necessarily apply to their new vehicle. Even if it was a good idea, no one has successfully developed an orbital launcher based on a large segmented solid rocket. We know that Ares I had teething issues. And of course, this all ignores the reusability factor.

I assume that ULA still wants to recover engines, but that won’t make them competitive with Falcon series, let alone a successful Starship program. At least Blue plans booster reuse.

And ULA will remain hobbled by its parents’ unwillingness to allow it to spend sufficient resources on Vulcan development (and forget ACES). So the trajectory is that, if only two providers, Blue Origin and SpaceX are the way for the USAF to bet.

Also, both Blue Origin and SpaceX will have large commercial markets. Because it probably won’t be cost competitive, Vulcan probably won’t. But there are political reasons for the blue suits (if they remain in charge of launch procurement) to want to keep ULA alive.

If I were the head of Pentagon procurement, I’d go talk to the FECFTC about forcing a divestiture of ULA from its parents, not just on legitimate charges of child abuse, but because of the huge changes that have occurred in the launch market since 2006. But USAF seems to be stuck in the past, when it comes to procuring launches.

[Tuesday-morning update]

A nice history of the RD-180 and how it’s about to be superceded by both BE-4 and Raptor. The days of Russian dominance in rocket propulsion have come to an end.

[Bumped]

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Lies, Damned Lies…

9 Comments

…and gun-shooting statistics:

For a variety of reasons having to do with social and economic factors the firearms murder rate went down. What the current debate really seems to be about is whether rapid-fire guns increase the frequency of a special kind of crime called mass shootings. However, this is a somewhat artificial category. Mass shootings are a subset of the larger phenomenon of mass killings, sometimes referred to as rampage killings. “A rampage involves the (attempted) killing of multiple persons at least partly in public space by a single physically present perpetrator using (potentially) deadly weapons in a single event without any cooling-off period.”

It is one killer, one place, one time, many victims in a setting outside of war. The data collected on this type of even notes the type of weapon used, which is not always a firearm. It is mass killings that one would want to reduce, not just mass shootings.

The brothers in the Boston Marathon bombing didn’t use guns. As with the “War on Terror,” this is the insanity of going after inanimate objects, instead of the would-be murderers.

[Monday-morning update]

Six ways Bill Clinton lies about the “assault weapons” ban.

To be fair, though, Bill Clinton lies about a lot of things.