Last week in San Francisco, at the ISS R&D conference, I asked Erika Wagner how many more test flights before one with test passengers, and she wouldn’t say. But this article says only a couple more. I wouldn’t think they’d need a lot more testing after that last abort test.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Office Of Commercial Space Transportation
Norm Bowles has built a web site with its history. I haven’t looked through it yet.
BFR
SpaceX is hiring.
BFR And Space Solar Power
Thoughts from Brian Wang. Keith Henson has been pushing Skylon for this for some time. As noted in comments, for a project of that scale, it would probably make more sense to use lunar materials than to launch it all from earth.
The Space Frontier Act
It’s nice to see bipartisan action on this useful bill, but I don’t see it as doing much about the frontier. And I’m glad that they’re finally taking OCST out of the FAA, something I’ve been advocating for a quarter of a century, ever since Gore buried it there.
Gay Pr0n
I don’t know why it would be surprising that women like watching it. As the article notes, most pr0n is made for men, and not particularly debonair men. If I never again see fellatio in pr0n, it would be too soon. I really do think that the proliferation of terrible pr0n is a cause of a lot of sexual dissatisfaction among millennials, many of whom likely don’t know what good sex is, because they don’t understand how unrealistic most pr0n is.
[Via Instapundit, who has the obvious explanation from a former girlfriend]
The Latest NASA OIG Report
I haven’t read it yet, but I question the assumptions.
Terraforming Mars
There’s not enough CO2 there. Doesn’t seem like a problem to me; just import carbon and oxygen (and hydrogen) from carbonaceous asteroids in the belt. And of course, they have to throw this in:
If you believe it’s possible to terraform Mars, you also must believe in human-caused climate change, because it’s the same process. Even if it’s impossible to terraform Mars, it’s clearly possible to areoform the mid-latitudes of Earth. Because people are doing it.
Ummmmm…no. We’re not.
Meanwhile, Tim Fernholz says we’re going to have to be careful to not contaminate the water there.
Russian Jamming
They’re testing their latest weaponry on us in Syria:
“All of a sudden your communications won’t work, or you can’t call for fire, or you can’t warn of incoming fires because your radars have been jammed and they can’t detect anything,” said Laurie Moe Buckhout, a retired Army colonel who specializes in electronic warfare.
“[It] can be far more deadly than kinetics simply because it can negate one’s ability to defend one’s self,” she said.
But we’re also learning from it. Great story from Lara Seligman.
Coming Into Port
Pauline Acaline got some nice telephotos of JRTI and Mr. Steven coming into the port of Los Angeles after retrieving the latest Falcon 9 Block 5 and half of the fairing. It’s amazing how clean those rockets are coming back with the new design.