John Carmack has a new post up describing what he thinks is the reason for the Pixel failure a few weeks ago at the LLC.
Our systems run the propellant valves through a set of relays controlled by a watchdog microcontroller, which drives the valves closed if the main computer doesn’t continuously toggle a keep-alive signal bit. We found that with the valves on the bench, we could get interruptions to the current when we tapped on the relays in the electronics box. We believe that acoustic vibrations from the operating rocket engine could cause the contacts on the relay to intermittently lose contact.
A couple points. First, this demonstrates the need to test components in their operating environment. But more importantly, these are the kinds of things that you learn only with a lot of experience and testing, something that NASA can’t afford to do with their vehicles because a) they throw them away after each flight and b) they’re as expensive as hell. That’s why reusable vehicles, and approaches like Armadillo’s and XCOR’s hold the key to both low cost, and reliability, goals that NASA will never achieve with their current approach.
“These are grim economic times for everyone, but even more so for non-profit toy manufacturers in the Snow Belt,” said Kringle. “Our accountants have indicated that we are on track to exhaust our reserves of cash and magical pixie fairydust by December 23. Oh deary me.”
Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26.
“We believe this proposal shows that management and labor can work together to craft a reasonable, financially responsible short-term survival plan,” said McGiggles. “After the new Congress is seated in January, we would be happy to return to present a long-term package to get us through April.”
Kringle warned that failure to approve the plan would have dire global economic consequences.
“Oh goodness,” said an emotional Kringle, fumbling with his glasses, “think of all the children who will wake up sad and angry and confused on Christmas morning, with nothing in their stockings. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be their parents. Or a someone answering your switchboards on December 26.”
Where will the madness end?
Of course, if Santa isn’t too big to fail, who is?
That’s the latest rumor for SecDOT. I’m looking at his committee assignments from when he was in Congress, and see nothing to indicate any expertise or knowledge of transportation issues. The only relevance that the NYT points out is that he’s overseen pork transportation projects on the Appropriations Committee (my characterization, not theirs). And he’s a Republican. But he’s from Illinois. And he’s of Arabic (Christian) descent.
Is this just a token to show bipartisanship by the incoming administration? I have no idea what this implies (if anything) for space transportation regulation. I’d be willing to be that he’s never given it a moment’s thought, which can be both good and bad. It’s good in the sense that he won’t come in with any agenda, but he’ll have to be educated. I’d like to know if he has any natural tendencies when it comes to regulation in general.
[Thursday morning update]
Here’s more on LaHood. Apparently he does have some history in dealing with aviation/airport issues, but nothing about space or spaceports.
Here’s a before and after of the demolition of the old AC Spark Plug plant this year on Dort Highway in Flint. The view is toward the southeast.
I didn’t work there. I worked in the oil filter plant farther east on Davison Road, that isn’t in this picture. But I lived just a few blocks from there for the first decade or so of my life. That road that bisects the plant is Averill, and I lived two blocks north and two blocks east of the intersection of Davison Road and Averill.. If you follow Davison Road a few miles east, you end up in Michael Moore’s home town of the same name. The engineering building, where my uncle worked, can be seen in the top picture, on the corner of Averill and Davison (and the Red Rooster, one of the best restaurants in town, that I only ate at once, was across Averill). My father worked in the HQ building on Dort Highway (which was also called Dixie Highway — it came down from Bay City and Saginaw, and continued south to Detroit, and thence all the way to Florida), in personnel.
Anyway, it’s all history now. It’s hard to imagine the town without that facility — it was there all my life until now.
I’d almost forgotten, but it’s the anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight. Five years ago, on the centennial (which was one year before Burt Rutan won the X-Prize), I wrote three pieces on the event here, here, and here.
I want to thank our mutual friend John Rogers, who’s been a mentor and friend to me since I was 10-years-old. He gave my sister and I the opportunity to start a great school in the Southside of Chicago, and that has become a model for success in urban education.
I know it’s a nit, but after all the Bush bashing for the past eight years, I can’t resist.
We don’t know the extent of the investigation into Blagojevich’s allegedly corrupt dealings. Have witnesses been brought before a grand jury? We don’t know. If so, who are they? We don’t know. What witnesses have been interviewed by FBI agents working for Fitzgerald? We don’t know. Do Fitzgerald and his investigators have any doubts about the truthfulness of those who have talked? We don’t know.
But we do know that something big is going on. “There is a lot of investigation that still needs to be done,” Rob Grant, who is the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Chicago, told reporters at the news conference announcing the Blagojevich charges last week. “There are critical interviews that we have to do and cooperation we need to get from different people.” At the same press conference, Fitzgerald himself added, “We have a tremendous amount of information gained from the wiretap and bugs that occurred over the last month and a half or so….One of the things we want to do with this investigation is to track out the different schemes and conspiracies to find out which ones were carried out or not and who might be involved in that or not. And that’s something we haven’t done yet. Now that we’ve gone overt, we’ll be interviewing people and figuring that out.”
One of the things Fitzgerald and his fellow prosecutors and FBI agents will be doing is trying to determine who is telling the whole truth and who is not. “There’s always a danger that people will make a mistake, get it wrong. There’s human frailty. They may also lie,” says Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who was a vocal critic of Fitzgerald’s handling of the Plame affair. “Fitzgerald will try to do perjury traps, because that is what he does.”
As he notes, just remember the Plame case (also by Fitzgerald), where there was a conviction for perjury, with no underlying crime.