Business, Space, Technology and Society

IFT-3

29 Comments

Launch time has slipped, now in a little over half an hour.

https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1768254684504936574?s=20

[Post-flight update]

My immediate thoughts: Booster didn’t survive, but it did seem to make it to the ocean intact, so that’s a step forward. They’ll probably figure out why they didn’t get a proper relight of the center Raptors, but that’s not important to a customer, any more than whether a Falcon booster comes home does.

As for Starship, they can clearly get into orbit, and open the payload bay doors, which is necessary to deploy a payload. But they didn’t demonstrate on-orbit engine relight, and until they do that, the ship can’t be considered operational, because it has to be able to deorbit, even if it can’t survive entry, so it doesn’t become a navigation hazard. They also seem to have an issue with attitude control, unless they planned that continual roll during coast (and that may have contributed to the failed entry as well), and absent that, they can’t deploy satellites. Until they solve those two issues, they can’t consider it operational. But I think that this was a huge step forward, and after another test in which they do relight the engines on orbit, and can demonstrate attitude control, they can start deploying satellites (likely Starlink initially).

[Update late morning]

Here‘s Marina Koren’s take.

[Update a while later]

OK, technically, they didn’t make orbit, but they certainly achieved orbital speed (as planned). They didn’t circularize because they didn’t intend to.

[Friday-morning update]

Here‘s Eric Berger’s take. He says that the roll was not planned, and it was why they didn’t attempt the relight.

[Bumped]

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Lawsuit Update

13 Comments

We have filed our motion to reverse the verdict.

[Update Thursday morning]

National Review has filed a motion for reimbursement of legal expenses of a million dollars.

There is an article at the Journal about the case, but it’s behind a paywall, so I haven’t read it yet.

[Afternoon update]

Here‘s the Journal article. The reporter is a science reporter, not a legal reporter, so the tone isn’t surprising.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Road To Ceasefire

15 Comments

…lies through the Rafah offensive.

The military strategy for Hamas’ October 7 attack was to create the largest scale of atrocity possible and survive Israel’s counterattack. Then, having survived, it intended to build up for many more October 7 attacks, all with the aim of achieving its grand strategic goal: the destruction of Israel and the death of the Jewish people.

Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas political leader, stated as much, saying, “Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country … the Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, third, and fourth. Will we pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it.”

Hamas’s hope is that repeated attacks like October 7 will eventually break the will of the Israeli population. To do that, Hamas would need to survive the war.

The solution is simple, then. Don’t allow them to survive the war.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!