At least not yet. Doug is right: It’s Bezos versus Branson (and XCOR).
Yes, it's Bezos versus Branson (and XCOR). The tortoise has pulled into the lead in the suborbital game. https://t.co/XNqDcl4jDx
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) December 23, 2015
The quote from the Virgin Galactic employee is brutal.
Trump isn’t a video recruiting tool, but Barack Obama is.
As Safire said, Hillary is a congenital liar. And she’s always gotten away with it, because the media and her supporters don’t care.
Jerry Grey says that we will have to rely on it for a while longer. This is a very good history. Interestingly, he stays out of the AR1/BE-4 fight, and makes no specific recommendation of what should replace it, only that something should.
I love the opening of this piece from James Dean:
In more than 65 years of launches from these shores, a rocket landing anywhere near its launch pads meant something had gone terribly wrong.
Not anymore.
Nope.
[Update a few minutes later]
He quotes Elon as saying that the rocket “costs” sixty million, but isn’t that the price? It has to cost less than that for them to make a profit. And I don’t think they’d want to reveal the actual cost, for business reasons, but it would be nice to know just how much margin they have, and how much they can reduce the price if it’s fully reusable.
[Update a few more minutes later]
And here we have an article from Mike Wall, where he quotes Elon as saying it cost $16M to build (if true, that gives them a huge profit margin and room to drop prices in the face of any competition). I saw others reporting that on Twitter on Monday, but no one really clarified if he said “sixty” or “sixteen.” It would be nice to get the actual number.
[Update a while later]
[Update a couple minutes later]
And Jessica Orwig’s.
[Update a couple minutes later]
[Afternoon update]
Here‘s SpaceflightNow’s take on it.
Yesterday’s space success makes Bob Zimmerman optimistic about the future.
…caught in a new climate-data scandal?
Scientists don’t operate in secret, or hide their work.
A touching Christmas story.
RIP:
Avi Davis, president and founder of the American Freedom Alliance, passed away peacefully early Monday morning at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was surrounded by friends and loved ones.
Davis suffered a heart attack 11 days ago while cycling. He was placed in an induced coma as doctors ran a series of tests to determine his brain function, but ultimately he was unable to recover. He leaves behind two sons, Mati and Amiad, both his parents, Betty and Jack, a sister Yvette, and brothers Yoni and Shimmi. He was just 57 years old.
Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon said: “Avi Davis was a good man. A fighter, a patriot, a man who understood the conservative movement first needs to win in the marketplace of ideas. The country lost a leader, Breitbart News lost a friend.”
Sad news. I met him last summer at the Magna Carta event he put together in Westwood. Sobering, because he’s younger than me.
This is pretty funny. How an insurance company lost its mascot to Internet porn.