They did a full nine-engine static test of the Falcon 9 yesterday. No mention of burn duration, but I assume that it wasn’t a simulation of a full ascent. I also assume that they have run individual engines at full duration. If they launch Falcon 1 this weekend or early next week, it will have been a pretty momentous week for New Space, with the WK2 rollout, the rocket racer debut, and the SpaceX achievements.
Unresolved
Clark Lindsey has the press release from Scaled about last summer’s fatal accident. Short version, by my reading: we still don’t know what happened and probably never will, so we’re just going to be a lot more careful in the future.
I still think that they continue to overestimate the safety of hybrids, and that it wasn’t a great choice for propulsion. I suspect that if Burt were starting from scratch now, he’d go with a liquid, but shifting to one at this stage would involve too large of a redesign of the airframe.
We Knew This Was Coming (Part Two)
Is climate change racist?
Sometimes these people become parodies of themselves (as in the old gag New York Times headline: “World Ends–Women, Minorities Hit Hardest”).
I’m sure glad that this issue hasn’t been politicized.
Busy
I had to write a piece this morning on the Phoenix water tasting, and I’m getting ready to fly to LA on Sunday for a new (badly needed) consulting gig. I also have to go out and buy a new laptop this afternoon, so posting may be light.
The Audacity Of Arrogance
The conventional wisdom is that this election is Senator Obama’s to lose. Andrew Malcolm explains why he probably will:
Several strategists of both parties sense that Americans want to vote for Obama, but something is holding them back. Or several somethings, as we suggested up top.
Maybe Obama’s flips — his outspoken opposition to denouncing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright until he did; his promise to take public campaign financing, since broken; his eagerness to debate McCain in town halls, now abandoned; his apparent unwillingness to see progress in the Iraq troop surge, which he opposed and predicted would worsen sectarian violence?
Is there a simmering concern over arrogance by the Ivy League lawyer and mere candidate who so blithely patted the French president on the back for a well-done news conference? Asked the other day if he ever doubted himself, Obama replied smartly, “Never!” And grinned broadly. Sounded more like a 20-year-old than someone about to turn 47 next week.
I don’t pay much attention to polls before the conventions, but the fact that it is so close in the summer, when Dems are usually far ahead, has to be very worrisome to the Obama campaign.
Science As A Religion
And a fundamentalist one, at that:
When Salon interviewed me about my new book, “Saving Darwin,” I suggested that science doesn’t know everything, that there might be a reality beyond science, and that religion might be about God and not merely about the human quest for a nonexistent God. These remarks got me condemned to whatever hell Myers believes in.
Myers accused me of having “fantastic personal delusions” that could actually lead people astray. “I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter,” Myers wrote, “and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth. That’s harsh, I know … but he is undermining the core of rationalism we ought to be building, and I find his beliefs pernicious.”
Myers’ confident condemnations put me in mind of that great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who waxed eloquent in his famous 1741 speech, “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God,” about the miserable delusions that lead humans to reject the truth and spend eternity in hell. We still have preachers like Edwards today, of course; they can be found on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. But now we also have a new type of preacher, the Rev. PZ Myers.
And they don’t even recognize it in themselves. Dawkins and Myers and Hitchens are doing more harm than good for science in their evangelizing, I think.
We Knew This Was Coming
John Glenn is arguing for an extension of the Shuttle program. I don’t really give a rip what he thinks, but a lot of people on the Hill (particularly on the Democrat side) will take him seriously. The problem is that it’s not just a matter of coming up with more money. NASA has to do pad modifications at 39 A and B to accommodate the new vehicles, and they can’t do that if they continue to fly Shuttle. I suspect that it will also start to get pretty crowded in the VAB if they’re doing Ares and Shuttle simultaneously.
Sometimes, I think that the best thing that could happen to American space policy would be a Cat 5 hurricane hitting the Cape, and scraping it clean.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more from Robert Block at the Orlando Sentinel. Note the comment about there being no appetite on the Hill for a Shuttle extension.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Mark Whittington once again demonstrates his legendary prowess at reading miscomprehension. I agree with Jon (though I’m not going to vote for Bob Barr). As I said, probably the most effective (and perhaps necessary) step toward a revitalization of NASA would be a Cat 5 at the Cape. I don’t think that anything less can shake the space industrial complex up sufficiently to get any kind of new thinking or direction.
Missing The Point
Swashbucklers In Space
Alan Boyle has another report from Oshkosh (some people get the best gigs).
Griffin downplayed media reports about vibration problems with the Ares 1 rocket, saying that there were “half a dozen means to mitigate that” and that two top strategies would be selected for further study next month. “Let me put it this way: I hope this is the worst problem we have in developing a new system,” he said.
Of course he did. That doesn’t mean they aren’t true. I haven’t seen any ways to mitigate it that don’t involve a lot more weight and performance penalty on a vehicle that’s already out of margins. I too hope that it’s the worst problem they have, because if they have any that are worse, the program is in deep, deep kimchi.
Overhype?
Is this really as big a deal as NASA is making of it?
Data from recent missions to Mars has been building toward a confirmation of the presence of water ice. However, “this would be the first time we held it in our hands, so to speak,” says Bryan DeBates, a senior aerospace education specialist at the Space Foundation. Evidence from other locations in the solar system, including Earth’s moon, Saturn’s Enceladus moon and Jupiter’s Europa moon, have strongly hinted at the presence of water–NASA confirmed a liquid lake on Saturn’s Titan moon on Wednesday–but no direct observation of water has been made.
Haven’t we been pretty certain for years that there was ice on Mars (and outer planet moons, and comets)? What’s the big deal here? If there’s a story at all, it seems to me that it’s about the amount of water available, not the fact that we have “direct confirmation.”