Some useful thoughts on epistemology and psychology, in the context of climate science.
[Update a while later]
Related: Climate change in the land of Gruber/Obama, and Gaia as the opiate of the masses.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Commercial Spaceflight’s Terrible Last Week Of October
My thoughts on what it all means, over at PJMedia, with some bonus @ISPCS coverage and history.
The RD-180 Replacement
Congress won’t like this. Insufficient opportunities for graft.
Note the implicit acknowledgement that they’re going to be using Falcons.
Siebold’s Testimony
Sounds like he didn’t have any new information for the NTSB, but I’d still like to hear his description of the engine burn and vibration environment. Note, it doesn’t say he doesn’t remember the feathers being unlocked, but that he was unaware of it (i.e., cognizant of his experience right up until breakup).
[Update a few minutes later]
Andy Pasztor has the problematic history of the program. I haven’t read it yet.
[Update a while later]
OK, the WSJ piece seems to line up pretty well with my own understanding of the history. I talked to Jon Ostrower last week to give him some background, and he seems to have incorporated some of what I told him, though he didn’t quote me. Which is fine.
Congratulations To ESA
My twitter feed’s been exploding with tweets about the comet landing. Unfortunately, the harpoons apparently didn’t automatically deploy, so they don’t yet have a sure grab to the surface, which could make sampling operations difficult. The surface seems to be softer than expected. But they’re still working the problem.
This is good news for asteroid miners, though.
.@martinselvis2 @ESA_Rosetta Philae has returned volumes and many papers can already be written! This mission is GREAT for asteroid mining.
— Chris Lewicki (@interplanetary) November 12, 2014
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, hearing that they managed to anchor with the ice screws, so maybe harpoons are redundant now.
The Asteroid Retrieval Mission
Lee Billings describes the ARM policy mess.
It’s a mission they came up with for an overpriced, non-existent and unnecessary rocket looking for a mission. And note this rationale:
She and other NASA officials note that the advanced propulsion required for ARM would be enabling technology for a broad range of future missions and that ARM would be a crucial test for many deep-space activities crucial for someday reaching Mars. And it would do all this while keeping astronauts sufficiently close to home so that if something goes wrong, they could attempt an emergency return to Earth.
Safety is the highest priority.
Changing Junkyards
It’s not the way it used to be.
Longer ago than I care to think about (OK, four decades or so), I regularly visited a place out in Holly, MI to scrounge parts for my British sports cars. Every other time or so, when I’d go out, and come back with the part I needed, the owner (or manager) would ask me if I wanted a job. The last time I did it was in the nineties, when I went to a place on Hawthorne Blvd in Hawthorne to get a distributor for my Honda Accord, whose shaft had sheared off on the 405 in Orange County.
Virgin Galactic’s Part-Time VP Of Safety
This seems like something that the NTSB will find interesting.
Interstellar
Peter Suderman reviews his review.
[Update a while later]
And here‘s John Nolte’s review.
[Sunday-morning update]
Five reasons why Interstellar is a conservative film.
I think that it helps to view it as allegorical, and not try to take the science too seriously.
[Bumped]
Siebold Speaks?
Doesn’t sound like he’s going to be able to tell NTSB much about what happened. I’d like to get his impression of the vibration environment with the new engine.