SciAm has a list of all the recent launch failures.
Note that for the past three and a half years, every single one (including last night’s) was built in Russia or the Ukraine. And the last two American ones (not counting last night’s) were both Orbital (separation problem on Taurus). Prior to that, the last American one was the Falcon 1 test program, which should really count, since it was in fact a test program. Orbital has no experience with liquid propulsion, which is why they outsourced it to Ukraine. That appears to have been a mistake.
[Update a while later]
Orbital’s stock is down 17% this morning.
[Update a while later, just before Atlas V launch]
Eric Berger’s thoughts on the implications. I agree that it’s not that big a deal, but I hope it accelerates and end to our reliance on Russian hardware.
The latest Fedora 20 update seem to have broken it. It attempts to launch, and then dies with: /usr/bin/soffice: line 121: 6490 Bus error (core dumped) “$sd_prog/$sd_binary” “$@”
This is not good. I need that program. I may have to install Libre Office until it gets resolved.
Christopher Nolan’s epic new sci-fi film Interstellar has received measured acclaim from critics, who have praised its ambitious scale and effects but were less convinced about the story.
They just scrubbed the Antares launch of Cygnus to ISS, because the range was red due to a boat downrange. Am I the only person who thinks that this rule is stupid, and needs to be revised? As I said on Twitter, I don’t care if there’s an armada of boats in the box, as long as someone is flying a banner “AT OWN RISK.” Holding up a flight over this is insane. It’s the kind of hypercaution that keeps us from making more rapid progress in space.
Physical threats against women are unacceptable, but it’s not clear who has been doing that, and being threatened doesn’t magically place you beyond criticism, though the Left would like to wrap her in moral outrage as a noble victim.
Boomer octogenarians in 2030 have “too many hard miles on their chassis” to fully benefit, but younger people may have trouble imagining the onetime prevalence of sickness and death.
I won’t be quite that old, but I think that there’s a good possibility that even for octo/nonoganerians there will be potential reversal of damage, and rejuvenation by then. And current government policies based on Scenario 1 (i.e., pretty much business as usual) are doomed to bankruptcy.