Category Archives: Technology and Society

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

Holdren And NASA

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Jeff Kluger has an interview with the Science Adviser. This is obviously not true:

There are certain fundamentals that everyone who looks at the challenges of space exploration [recognizes]: a heavy lift rocket is one of them, a crew capsule is another.

Not everyone. And even if we saw that as fundamental, it doesn’t mean they should be developed, owned and operated by NASA.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Today’s Launch Attempt

48 Comments

SpaceX and Orbcomm have put out a press kit. A successful landing (along with Blue Origin’s recent successful flight) would be a nice early Christmas present to space enthusiasts.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Congrats to SpaceX obviously. Here are some nice photos of the landing. Here is Tim Fernholtz’s story.

[Update mid morning]

Here’s a detailed technical explanation from Spaceflight101, and Lee Billings has the story as well.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

Today’s SpaceX Launch

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…has been postponed. Elon tweeted that their Monte Carlo runs had indicated a slightly higher probability of landing success tomorrow, and Orbcomm said that they wanted to continue to analyze static-fire data and allow an extra day to pre-chill the LOX. Someone at NASASpaceflight indicated that it might be that, though launch conditions are slightly worse tomorrow (80% chances of good weather as opposed to 90% today), it might be less wind, with less convection to warm the oxidizer. as Jonathan McDowell points out, this may be the first time they’ve ever delayed a launch to improve the chances of a landing, but the customer seems fine with it. As I noted to him, every aircraft operator takes into account landing conditions prior to takeoff.