Business, Space, Technology and Society

Falcon Heavy

19 Comments

This should be easy, they said. Just glue three Falcon 9s together, they said:

Musk said the rocket cores for Falcon Heavy’s first flight are two to three months away from completion. He emphasized that the first launch will carry a lot of risk, and as such, SpaceX doesn’t plan to carry a valuable payload or payloads with it.

“We will probably fly something really silly on Falcon Heavy because it is quite a high risk mission,” he said.

I’m glad to see that they’re finally coming close. It’s an important development, both technically and politically. Also, the claimed LEO payload is now up to 64 tonnes, so it’s almost the capability of SLS Block 1B.

[Update early afternoon]

If we want bigger telescopes or to go to Mars, we need heavy lift, “experts” say.

Nonsense.

Business, Economics, Technology and Society

Graphene

12 Comments

Is there anything it can’t do? OK, probably, but this is pretty cool:

“Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology,” Rahul Nair, professor of material physics at the University of Manchester, said in a statement.

Previously researchers were unable to remove common salts using the graphene filtering technique, instead removing small nanoparticles and organic molecules.

“This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sleeve sizes,” Nair added.

It will probably have useful purefying properties in general, but this would be useful for California as well as the Third World.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Russia?

4 Comments

No, “the pony in the manure is the corruption of our intelligence officials.”

It’s both appalling and amusing to watch the Democrat operatives with bylines in the media attempt to “cover” this story (as in, in the immortal words of Iowahawk, hold a pillow over it until it stops moving).

[Update a couple minutes later]

It’s worth reading the Victor Davis Hanson piece that Clarice cites. Sure, after all the lies about Benghazi and the deserter, I totally believe Susan Rice now. As noted, if Obama was Nixon, she’d be one of his “plumbers.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

Rice, Obama’s hatchet woman, proves Lord Acton right again.

[Update a while later]

Why is CNN trying to refute a story it refuses to cover?

[Update another while later]

Susan Rice’s unmasking: A Watergate-style scandal:

Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies.

The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it.

If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.

Oopsie. What did the president know, and when did he know it? Will Susan Rice wear orange to protect him?

[Update late morning]

More links and thoughts from Glenn Reynolds.

[Update early afternoon]

Susan Rice has no defense. Only one I can think of is “I was ordered by the president,” but that one doesn’t pass the Nuremberg test.

[Update a while later]

A Watergate-level scandal? Looks like it to me, particularly if they can find a link to Obama. Of course, the IRS scandal should have been as well. Obama did what Nixon could only dream of doing.

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