A nice round up of what’s happening from Sarah Cruddas. I hadn’t realized that Space Angels had a branch in Europe.
Meanwhile, XCOR has moved half its staff to Midland, and one of their engineers now estimates 6-9 months to first flight. They must still be having wing-delivery issues.
Have they found a “master genetic switch” to turn off fat storage?
That data should have never been on that server. The fact that it was is solid, indisputable evidence of the commission of multiple crimes. The only question is who all committed them.
I’m not sure what to make of this article on their switch to small-sat launches. I don’t think they want to give the impression that they’re backing off on the tourism goal. I will say I found this comment of George’s a little ironic:
This service compares to Pegasus, Virgin Galactic’s rival in the satellite launch market. “Nasa is the only real customer for Pegasus,” claims Whitesides. “It typically buys a Pegasus once every two years at a price of around $50m for a payload in the order of magnitude of 250kg. We offer the same payload at a fifth of the cost.”
Other start-ups entering the industry make similar claims. New Zealand-based Rocket Lab’s flagship engine, Electron, is designed to send payloads of 100kg into space for just $4.9m, while Texan outfit Firefly Space Systems claims that it will offer “the lowest launch cost in its class”.
Whitesides pooh-poohs the idea that these new outfits will undercut his rates: “It’s easy to say that you’ll charge a price for a product before a product is built. We have assembled a group of people that have built rockets in the recent past and what we will offer will be unprecedented in terms of cost and access.”
Emphasis added.
And this is a weird statement:
Unlike SpaceShipTwo, which has been designed in partnership with Scaled Composites, LauncherOne belongs exclusively to Virgin Galactic and could prove an intellectual property goldmine.
I don’t think IP is an issue here. Either they’ll have a launcher that the market finds useful at the price, or they won’t.
This looks to be an interesting event. I’d like to go, but it may conflict with other things (like the IAC in Jerusalem, if I attend that).
A lab accident quadruples battery life.
This reminds me of the discovery of vulcanized rubber.
This seems like a good reason not to enable Cortana:
Section 7b – or “Updates to the Services or Software, and Changes to These Terms” – of Microsoft’s Services EULA stipulates that it “may automatically check your version of the software and download software update or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices.”
And they decide what is and isn’t “authorized.”
I doubt it, but Space Daily is reporting that. It’s a misleading headline and picture, though. They aren’t really resurrecting Buran. Looks like they plan on a fly-back first stage.
Here’s now to fly it by the FAA rules.
I’ve been thinking about picking up a cheap quadcopter just to play with, but probably not one big enough to require filing a flight plan.
[Late-morning update]
Man versus drone versus the law:
I personally like some of the quirkier aspects of old English law. I think limiting self-help against drones to thrown T-shirts would make a wonderful common law rule. If you can take it down by throwing a T-shirt at it, then it’s too damn close. If not, then tough luck.
“Excellent. We could call it the rule of ‘quod tangit tunicula.'”
Heh.
Do they all still exist?
The Denver based company that Hillary hired to watch over her server, Platte River Networks, says it is highly likely that a full backup of all of Hillary’s emails was made from her old server before it was wiped clean. This calls into question how truthful Hillary has been with the voters and law enforcement.
You don’t say.
Platte River networks is not a suspect in any crime and is cooperating fully with the FBI. Hillary must hate that.
Yes.
[Monday-morning update]
Just pardon Hillary now:
Not only would a pardon have legal consequences. It would have political ones. It would be a tacit endorsement of Clinton, a message to Biden not to run. Scrutiny of Clinton would fade. A few news outlets might continue to dig around—we at the Washington Free Beacon will never, ever stop—but most reporters, who’d rather not be writing about this scandal anyway, would turn elsewhere.
Obama would look magnanimous. The country would be spared years of Clinton drama it doesn’t want. A pardon would be a final display of Obama’s moral superiority to the woman he defeated long ago—exactly the sort of self-righteous gesture that most appeals to him.
As Elizabeth Price Foley notes, he’s not being serious, of course, but it is fun to tweak this gang of corrupt thieves and liars. As Nixon said, he gave his enemies the weapons they needed to destroy him. So has Hillary. And I suspect, at this point, one of those enemies is Barack Obama.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Former CIA operative: “You or I would be fired and maybe jailed for this.”
It’s almost as though, in these peoples’ minds, the greater the responsibility, the least the accountability.
[Update a while later]
Surprise! The discovery of thousands of emails that the State Department denied the existence of in 2013:
…this has to be either willful incompetence or a conscious effort to obstruct a court order. If they missed a few responsive e-mails, I’d chalk it up to incompetence; if they missed the most responsive e-mails in an avalanche of data, willful incompetence might still be a good explanation. This looks much more like obstruction of justice, and perhaps the judge in this case may be persuaded to haul State Department officials into court to testify under oath about it. The court can start with John Kerry and start working downward.
At least we still have a judicial branch. It doesn’t seem like we have a Justice Department any more.
If she’s not prosecuted for this, a lot of people who have been will have a good equal-protection case for clemency.
[Update a while later]
Who down-domained the information?
As noted, whoever it is should be questioned. Maybe with conditional immunity.