Category Archives: Technology and Society

Administrative, Business, Technology and Society

Computer Problems

17 Comments

Did a kernel upgrade in Fedora yesterday. Rebooted today. Wouldn’t boot, had errors. Rather than simple reboot, I decided to shut the whole machine down, then turn it on again. Now it’s dead.

Guess I’ll try swapping the power supply first. If that doesn’t work, sounds like a motherboard or CPU problem.

[Update a few minutes later]

Aaaaaaand, I can’t find any spare supplies. Have to run over to Fry’s to buy one, that probably isn’t the problem…

[Update after returning from Fry’s]

Welp, before I opened the new PS, I tried firing it up again. It booted without complaint. I guess I scared it with the new PS. #HappyHalloween

Seriously, though, it’s probably still a symptom of an incipient problem, probably from overheating.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

NASA’s Risk Aversion

6 Comments

Remember when they were insisting on new-car-smell Dragons for CRS missions? Well, they’ve now approved flight-proven boosters. As I’ve long said, there will come a day when customers will demand a discount to fly on an unproven vehicle.

[Update a while later]

With today’s launch, SpaceX will double its record for annual launches.

[Update half an hour before launch]

You can follow launch and landing at the webcast.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Elon’s Plans

84 Comments

Doug Messier has a critique, with which I largely agree. He does seem to be laser focused on solving the transportation problem (which was the first one he encountered when he tried to implement his initial Mars plans). I emailed him years ago about the fact that we have no idea whether or not we can conceive/gestate in 0.4g. His response was basically, “that’s not my problem right now.”

But this blinkered mindset may not ultimately serve him well in terms of his long-term goal. It would be tragic for him if he solved the transportation problem, but not the biological one, and his dreams of Mars colonies ended up being still born, despite the cost reduction of transportation there.