I know you’re as surprised as I am to learn the Clinton’s used taxpayer dollars to subsidize their personal slush fund aka the Clinton Global Initiative.
This Morning’s Pad Incident
It seems to be news, so most of you probably heard that there was an explosion on the pad at LC-40 this morning, leading up to a static test fire for the upcoming launch of the AMOS satellite.
What we know so far: No one was injured, but the bird (a $200M payload) was lost. It’s a setback for Spacecom, which was about to be purchased by China pending a successful deployment. It happened prior to ignition, and SpaceX is calling it a “pad anomaly,” so it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rocket itself. But it will be a setback in SpaceX’s aggressive fall schedule until they determine the cause and how to prevent it in the future, and repair the pad.
It’s worth noting that they won’t be launching crew from that pad, but from 39B. But Phil McAlister and Kathy Lueders will want to know if the abort system would have saved crew had they been on top of the rocket. The immediate interesting question to me is whether or not they had any warning. The rocket itself has failure onset detection systems to trigger an abort, but it’s unclear if the pad itself does, and how much warning they would have had to pull the D-ring on the Dracos. Phil and Kathy had also better brace for a very stupid Congressional hearing, and we can all expect to hear a lot of illogical nonsense about how SpaceX should forget about Mars, and how this proves that reusable rockets don’t work.
[Update a couple minutes later]
One point as follow up to that last graf: SpaceX had been requesting to fuel with crew aboard, and NASA had been considering it. That’s probably out the window now.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
There were nine more flights scheduled this year. That was always unlikely, but it’s certainly not going to happen now.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, this is timely. The OIG has released a status report on commercial crew certification.
[Update a couple minutes later]
How this will affect Spacecom. Shares are down with the news. I’d call it a buying opportunity.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
Also worth noting that it’s been a bad couple days for launch. Long March had a failure yesterday, and the Chinese have been mum about it (as usual).
[Update a few minutes later]
Jeff Foust already has a story about the potential ripple effects for SpaceX, SES, and the rest of the affected industry.
[Update a few minutes later]
And here‘s Loren Grush’s story.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And from Miri Kramer.
[Update a while later]
The only good news to come out of this. https://t.co/mpnoJwuBZm
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) September 1, 2016
[Update a few minutes later]
Joe Pappalardo probably has the best take at this point.
[Update a while later]
Well, this is bad news.
Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2016
[Update a while later]
Aaaaaand here’s the video. I’ve heard that people felt it in Orlando. It may have been the largest explosion at the Cape in history.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is great news, if true.
It sounds like that there was
But I’m surprised they fuel the payload on the pad. I thought that storables were filled during integration.
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, not such good news. Jon Goff reminded me that they use hydrazine for ACS in the upper stage. Though I’d still think they’d fuel that during horizontal integration, not on the pad.
[Late-morning update]
Here’s the full OIG report on Commercial Crew that just happened to come out today. I’ll probably do a separate blog post on it. I would note that the primary reason that it continues to slip, and that NASA has no apparently problem taking six months to do a two-week review, is that space, and American access to it, isn’t important.
[Update at noon]
[Late-afternoon update]
@jsmuir_ @SafeNotAnOption @PaulDalyROI @spacecom @stevenyoungsfn @wingod pic.twitter.com/TLDHgQN9Ge
— Astro Mouse (@AstroMiceRule) September 1, 2016
Why Didn’t She Destroy All Of The Benghazi Emails?
Because in addition to being corrupt liars, utterly indifferent to national security, she and her team are incompetent dolts. But that shouldn’t be news to anyone who’s been paying attention for the past quarter century. Which is unfortunately far too many people.
Is there any point at which the Democrats finally come to realize that she and they just aren’t up to the job? They can’t even do a decent cover up.
Any VLC Mavens In The House?
I’ve set it up on my linux server to…well…serve audio/video via apache in a browser tab. Other machines on the LAN (including a Windows machine) can see it, and even control it (i.e., pause, start, etc.), but as the clock ticks along, no audio or video comes through on them, in either Firefox or Chrome.
Any ideas?
The University Of Chicago And Free Speech
Ken White has a better version of the letter to incoming frosh.
Yes. Despite the cries from the Left about “discrimination!!!11!,” freedom of association is important. But it doesn’t give you the right to censor a classroom or campus talk.
Dementia
A new breakthrough drug to halt it in its tracks?
Faster, please.
Of course, there’s always this: “Despite it being a small sample there appeared to be a slowing of cognitive decline and functional decline. The group with a high degree of amyloid removal were basically stable. If we could reproduce this it would be terrific.”
Yes. Yes it would.
Back In CA
We flew home yesterday. I hadn’t been here in six weeks or so. Trying to catch up, and I’ll have to go back to FL. We have an agent there whom we feel like we can finally trust, but there are some things to be done that only I can do, in terms of determining dispensation of things in the house should it sell (she is fairly confident that it will, with the spruce up, and repricing). Hope to be back to blogging today, but when you’re away for a month and a half, there are a lot of things to take care of at home first.
Getting Over “Apolloism”
I’m heading back to California tomorrow, for the first time in about six weeks (the longest I’ve been away from home since I moved back in 2009), but meanwhile, my long-awaited piece in The New Atlantis is on line.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, that’s just a preview, unless you’re a subscriber. The full piece will be free on line in the future, but I’m not sure when.
Yes, I Am MIA
Thanks for the concerned emails, but I am alive, despite the lack of posts (and tweets). This week has been the final throes of getting the house ready to sell, and we’re doing open houses this weekend.
[Monday-morning update]
We got several bids on the house, but none high enough to accept. Now that it’s in showable condition, we’re going to continue to list by owner. I’m going back to CA tomorrow (after six weeks of not being home) but I’ll be back. We’re probably going to add a laundry room. Millennials seem to want that. Doing laundry in the garage was good enough for us, but apparently not for them.
Was It Between Golf Rounds?
Barack Obama sends a memo to Louisiana officials to not discriminate in the distribution of federal funds.
This is the worst natural disaster since Sandy. If Bush was on the links during it, imagine the howls from the media.
Which brings me to another sore point. I think the demand that presidents should show up to a disaster to “feel peoples’ pain” is emotional and stupid. It’s not part of a president’s job description, and like many terrible traditions, it was started by Bill Clinton, after the idiotic media outrage over the GHWB response to Andrew. But I just wish that the media would be consistent, and not hypocritical, in modulating their outrage depending on which political party is in the White House.