Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX Failure Effects

22 Comments

They have a long list of customers left in the lurch.

[Update a few minutes later]

Another story, from Eric Berger, with political implications.

[Afternoon update]

New details emerge:

The Falcon 9 was at an altitude of approximately 45 km and traveling in excess of 5,000 km per hour when a problem developed in the second stage. SpaceRef can confirm from sources within SpaceX that the Falcon 9 first stage performed nominally i.e. as expected. Indeed, if you watch launch video, you can see that first stage continues to function steady and stable even while the front end of the rocket was destroying itself. That in and of itself is impressive.

According to SpaceX sources telemetry received from the Dragon spacecraft showed that it too was functioning normally after the mishap occurred and this telemetry continued to be sent back from Dragon for a significant period of time.

Despite an earlier statement from NASA to the contrary, SpaceX sources now confirm that the U.S. Air Force Range Safety Officer did initiate a destruct command but that this command was sent 70 seconds after the mishap occurred, as a formal matter of process. There was nothing left to destroy at that point.

That’s probably what confused Senator Nelson, when he said this morning that the Air Force had destroyed the vehicle.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Falcon Failure

66 Comments

I overslept. Just got up and saw my Twitter feed.

My immediate thought: This makes is a lot harder to sell my thesis that we need to start flying crew ASAP. I haven’t changed my mind, but I’ve never claimed that it would be safe to do so, just that it was important to do so. My second thought: Would the launch abort system have worked for this event? I really am surprised at this.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unfortunately, it happened before stage separation, so they didn’t get to even attempt a landing.

[Update a couple minutes later]

[Update a few minutes later]

Second question (per Henry Vanderbilt’s comment): Could capsule have separated absent an LAS? Was the Dragon destroyed by range safety itself?

[Update a while later]

Some video, sent by my book editor.

[Evening update]

Thoughts and history from Stephen Smith:

Humanity reached the Moon in 1969, yet failures and fatalities still happen. They always will.

Today I met a 12-year old from a Colorado middle school who had an experiment aboard SpaceX CRS-7. I told her I was sorry she lost her experiment, but she was undeterred. Grinning from ear to ear, she said, “We’ll build another one and do it again!”

As he notes, so will SpaceX.

[Update a few minutes later]

A good balanced take from the WaPo.

Business, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Why Apple Pulled Civil War Games From Its App Store

3 Comments

Because it was afraid of the Internet:

No rational person would complain that there were Civil War sims. No sensible person would believe that society would be improved by demanding their removal. No emotionally stable person could think that they were safer now because someone, somewhere, would not get updates to a game they purchased that allowed them to fight as the Union Army but contained the sight of the Confederate flag. Anyone who would believe these things is tethered to reality by a frayed strand of dental floss, and while they may live in a comfy bubble where everyone believes the same things and has at least two friends who are doing very important work in the field of instructional graffiti, most people are stable enough to resist the siren call of the Stars and Bars, even in the form of a picture on a phone.

But. The loud people may complain. The company would have to explain. An explanation would be seen as a justification.

Of course there are nuances to this; Apple is working with developers to use a different, earlier flag, according to some reports. Because that’s the issue, right? Finding an acceptable flag to represent a slave state? As I noted elsewhere, the app store still has a game that lets you simulate the USSR, including an in-app purchase that lets you fine-tune your oppression settings. One could say this is okay because the USSR was an equal-opportunity killer, just as the repression settings in “Tropico” are hunky and / or dory because you’re putting the screws to your own people. If that’s the case, then they have decided that American Slavery is not only a unique historical event, but something whose magnitude and uniqueness sets it apart from every other act of state oppression and governmental violation of human rights. The enslavement of an entire population is not offensive, per se, because it’s color-blind.

I mean, sure, go ahead, make that argument. And if that’s the case, then my Roman Slave Merchant Sim should get brisk approval, because the Romans didn’t care who they enslaved, and also had the option to buy your way out. They practically invented the in-app purchase, in a way.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The OPM Data Breach

6 Comments

So, apparently they’ve been lying under oath about it.

I wish I were surprised. I’m old enough to remember a time when people actually got in trouble for that.

[Update a while later]

How and why the OPM got hit with the biggest hack of all time.

[Update a few minutes later]

From comments:

Oh, it’s worse than that, though I realize it’s hard to imagine.

Consider: root access doesn’t just let you read the information. It lets you replace valid information with whatever you want. It lets you insert records into the data. In other words, it lets you create an SF-86 and background investigation for anyone. It lets you insert your own agents into the security records.

Including, I might add, agents of yours who might be hired to work at OPM. Which means that not only is that database blown, it must be considered corrupt – the information in it can’t be trusted because it may have been altered. That in turn means it needs to get wiped and go back to bare metal, then be reloaded from paper records. If they still have those records. And even if they do that, they can’t necessarily trust the records of the people doing this reloading.

This is what happens when you put incompetent political hacks in positions of great responsibility. And there’s no accountability.

[Update a few minutes later]

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

Andy Weir On Elon Musk

6 Comments

Ashlee Vance had a conversation with him:

I love that NASA is working on new technologies and new stuff, but it just seems way more expensive than alternatives. You’re talking about spending $20 billion on a booster to put 150,000kg in orbit. Meanwhile, SpaceX intends to put 53,000kg into space for $100 million per booster. You could buy three of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets for $300 million, then spend $1 billion to assemble whatever heavy thing you wanted to put in space, and keep the other $8 billion. It just seems like this huge discrepancy in expenses. Governments don’t always do the economically viable thing, right? There’s a lot of politics involved.

You don’t say.