Chris Gebhardt (who I met in real life at Vandenberg on Sunday) has the latest in progress in Commercial Crew.
TL;DR: All these numeric safety goals are utterly arbitrary and will be waived when necessary, as they were on Shuttle every single flight. https://t.co/p9JBD4WPlH
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) June 27, 2017
Eric Berger says it’s getting tougher and tougher to be an honest critic of the company. There comes a point at which dishonesty is all they have.
The issue, simmering for decades, is finally heating up. I haven’t read it yet, but Steve Freeland has a new paper out. An Australian law professor, he (as does his nation) supports the Moon Treaty (or did when I had beers with him a few years ago in Lincoln.
We just got back from Vandenberg (spent time wine tasting up there before coming back to LA). Elon has posted a sped-up video of the landing. Amazing how fast things happen at the end.
Our Honeywell died, so I’m looking at thermostat reviews, and holy moly can you spend a lot of money for a thermostat that does things I have no use for. I guess if I lived in an area of weather extremes, and had both air and heat, I might care about having a vacation option that would heat or cool the house before we got back from a trip, or the ability to control it from my phone, but I really really don’t want my house to be part of the Internet of things. We don’t have A/C, and it never goes below freezing here, so I can’t see any reason to not simply go to Home Depot and replace it with another cheap ($40) digital 7-day programmable thermostat.
Eric Berger has the story. As he says, reusability isn’t a fad, we’ve finally gotten to the point at which it’s clearly the future.
There is a little tension because Elon announced shortly before the launch that this would be the most challenging entry yet (probably to downplay expectations). It landed, but not quite on the bullseye. But close enough. This was the first rocket to land on both the east- and west-coast ASDSs. We’re planning to go up to Vandenberg Sunday for the Iridium launch. It should be better weather than the last time, in January. If successful, it will be two launches for the company almost within forty-eight hours. They’re finally getting to the launch tempo they need to work down their backlog.
…is the new sixty.
I’m glad that I don’t feel my age. I was having some new lower-back pain, probably sciatica, in the spring, that I was afraid was going to be a permanent feature of life, but it seems to have healed.
GE is building the world’s largest one:
The prototype Atlas printer, announced on Wednesday, can print objects up to one meter long using titanium, aluminum, and other metals instead of the plastics, resins, and filaments that many commercial and consumer 3D printers use. That means it could print an entire engine block for a car or truck, for example, replacing the specialized machines and tooling that are currently required to make those types of products in a factory.
GE said it plans to unveil the Atlas in November. The prototype can only print objects up to one meter in two directions, such as length and width, but once the production version is ready next year, it will be able to print objects up to one meter in any direction.
Seems like just the thing for cheap rocket engines.
This is pretty funny. NASA calls BS on it.
The sailor who chose to “save his kids” by dying. In my book, I point out that in the Navy, saving the ship, not “safety,” is the highest priority. There will be stories like this in the future about spaceflight.