It will now have a seven-meter fairing.
This is another nail in the coffin of SLS.
Elon’s Rocket Failures
He’s released a spectacular mix tape of bloopers.
This is just crying out for a subtitled narrative, a la the Corporal Story.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here it is:
This is how you learn to fly rockets. NASA could never do this.
Hurricane Update
We’re now into our second full day without power. Fortunately, we’re flying back to CA tomorrow. Things are slowly getting back to normal in Palm Beach County, but there is still a curfew from dusk to dawn (it just ended for last night). Our ice has essentially melted, and we’re down to the last of our pre-storm food, but Publix are open, and hopefully they’ll start to re supply. We have several fallen limbs to cut up, but Home Depot is out of chain saws, and doesn’t know when they’ll be getting more (the storm moving up north is likely disrupting supply chains).
On the cat front, it seems to be a lymphoma, but an aggressive one. The bad news is that the tumors aren’t shrinking with the steroid treatment, but the good news is that they aren’t growing, either, and she seems to be stable and happy. We don’t get in until after the hospital closes tomorrow, but should be able to pick her up on Thursday and bring her home, for however long she ends up living.
[Thursday-morning update]
We got in about five last eveing, had dinner and went to bed. Feeling much better now, and it’s nice to be back in CA, despite the idiocy of the voters here. Had the first good night’s sleep in days, to cool temperatures and the sound of our new garden fountain outside our window. Going in this morning to bring Rerun home, and try to get things back, as much as possible around here, to normal.
It’s Gaia’s Vengeance
If Jose hits DC and NY, I blame them, for voting for Hillary. And for being anti-science on gender and race.
Jerry Pournelle
Rest in peace (I have no idea how to copy/paste on these damned finger painting devices, but Instapundit has a text from his son, Alex)). He was an amazing person with an amazing life. I last saw him when I dropped by Chaos Manor a couple years ago to give him a copy of my book, which he reviewed very nicely.
I’ll have more to say when I’ve survived the hurricane and gotten back to a real computer.
[Sunday-morning update, as the winds rise outside our Boynton Beach apartment]
Sarah Hoyt remembers someone she considered a friend and colleague.
When I stopped by to see him a couple years ago, we talked about what was happening with SpaceX and NASA in general, and reminisced about our long-time mutual friend Bill Haynes, whom he hadn’t been aware had been killed in an auto accident on Palos Verdes on his way to church a couple years earlier (both Buzz and I had delivered a eulogy, but I think that Jerry was too sick at the time). It was a tough conversation because his hearing was shot, both from the brain cancer that he’d survived, but long-term from being an artillery handler in Korea. When Roberta let me into the library, I had to figure out how to get his attention without startling him, because the bell wasn’t doing so. I was unsuccessful, but he had no problem once he realized the unexpected intruder was me.
Heading back to LA, probably Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, Irma and American Airlines willing. I hope I’ll be able to attend the service and see a lot of old (sadly, in both senses of the word) friends.
[Late-evening update on Sunday]
J. Neil Schumann has some remembrances, too. I suspect we’ll see a lot of this over the next few days.
[Monday-morning update]
Glenn Reynolds writes that, as a kid in the gloomy 70s, Jerry gave him (and many others) hope for a better future.
Battening Down
We’re in Boynton Beach, getting ready to board up our house in Lake Worth. Posting will be sparse because my only computer is my phone and Patricia’s iPod.
[Wednesday-evening update]
Here’s the sitrep. We’re staying on the third floor of a new apartment building a block from the Intracoastal (not on the island). It’s solid concrete, built to current Palm Beach County codes, with the only glass patio doors rated to 150 mph. We’re boarding up a house a few miles inland that probably couldn’t take a direct hit of a 4 or 5, but that seems unlikely. We came down here to prep it to sell, and Patricia’s son is living in it. We could bug out in theory (American is offering no-fee flight changes), but we don’t want to leave him in the lurch. Worst case for us is if it does come right up the middle of the peninsula, which would put us on the dirty side of the storm (our apartment windows are south facing), but I think we’ll be OK even in that event. We are well above any potential surge, as is our car (in fact, it’s a floor above us). Our current concern is finding gas before it hits. A lot of lines, and we’re a little below half. We’d really like to top off.
[Thursday-night update]
I went out and spent 45 minutes in line getting gas this morning. We’re storing water in bottles, and making ice and putting it in gallon zip locks in the freezer. We’ll move into fridge as necessary if we lose power. Fortunately, unlike most here, we only need hold out until we can get flights out next week when airports reopen after the storm.
[Friday-night update]
Bad news for Cuba and southwest Florida, good news for us. The storm has taken a turn to the south and west, scrubbing the upper west coast of the island, and heading for landfall perhaps near Naples, perhaps with reduced strength from the Cuba encounter. But it won’t have reduced it enough to spare Naples and Fort Myers a huge storm surge.
What it means for us is that, while we’ll still probably see hurricane-force winds, they will be much lower than previously anticipated, and nothing we can’t handle. The only bad news is that the northeast side of the storm, where we’ll now be, will have a lot of tornadic activity. No problem for us in the apartment building, but it puts the house at risk.
[Sunday-afternoon update]
Almost 5 PM EDT, and the winds are continuing to increase. We just lost power, most likely for the duration, until crew can start repairing after the storm. We’ll start to move accumulated ice from the freezer to the fridge.
On The Plane
Heading to West Palm Beach from LAX, via Charlotte. Probably no posting until manana.
Norm Augustine
A conversation with him. The transcription has a few problems, but it’s interesting. His thoughts on space tourism:
Much like the airlines once you get more people you got to fly the cheaper the flight, the tickets cost or the more tickets you could sell the cheaper it is to operate an airline and you get this happy, just the opposite of the death spiral that some people talk about. So I think that there are a lot of people today, and I don’t mean billionaires, who would pay a fair amount of money to uh… I don’t mean just go up on a rock and come back to L.A. I mean go into orbit for a day or two and look through telescopes and have lectures on space, experience weightlessness and get to get sick and all these great things. But I do think that that will be the change agent. I don’t see anything that’s going to reduce the cost of space transportation by a factor of 10 other than a much higher volume…
And if we can get people involved, and I think we can, in tourism it will make a lot of difference. I’ve had the good fortune to, I’m kind of an amateur explorer or whatever and I’ve been to the South Pole three times and the North Pole once I’ve rafted the Grand Canyon and I you know you go through this long list of stuff. And people say well you know not many people want to go into space. Who would want to do that? Well I think back when I rafted the Grand Canyon I think there were 14000 people a year going through the Grand Canyon on a raft at that time. If you’d ask Wesley Powell the first person to do if, what 75 years later 14000 people will be into the canyon he would say you’re crazy if you’d asked the Wright brothers that the population of Detroit gets on an airplane every day and complains because they’ve already seen the movie and the food’s bad. The Wright brothers would have thought you were bonkers or something. You know there are many other examples one can go through of that kind of thing and people do want to experience these things and I think that will be the biggest change agent of all.
I’ve been preaching this for three decades.
Our Cat
She’s eight years old. A couple months ago, we spent a grand to get her teeth cleaned. This morning, I paid $280 to find out that she probably has some sort of cancer. We’ll have to spend another $400 on an ultrasound to more accurately diagnose and determine next steps (which could include no more good money after bad).
[Evening update]
Patricia came home, and Rerun wanted to climb on her lap while she was on the computer.
We moved her to her favorite blanky from when she was six months old, and she started kneading it.
[Late evening update]
She ate some of her dinner, then crawled on my lap. Then I moved her to Patricia’s lap, and she was even more happy.
[Update Friday afternoon]
Yesterday, she got the ultrasound, and they did a biopsy of the tumors (yes, two, with an iffy-looking liver as well). The vet thinks it’s either lymphoma, which would be relatively good news, or carcinoma, which would be bad, because it’s basically inoperable. They won’t know until they get lab results next week from the tissue samples.
We’ve started her on prednisone on in case it’s lymphoma, in the hopes that it will reduce the sizes, and perhaps even result, best case, in complete remission. They also gave her an appetite stimulant. This morning, she ate some of her normal, not prescription, food, and seems a little better. We’re flying to Florida in the morning and will board her at the vet while we’re gone for a week or so, and they’ll keep an eye on her.
[Bumped]
A Beating In Berkeley
A good account from Matt Labash.