Spaceflight Now has the video released by the NTSB.
[Update a while later]
Wayne Hale: Pilot error is never the root cause.
[Afternoon update]
Dough Messier has broken down the crucial seconds frame by frame.
Blood Vessels
Some evidence that they can actually improve with age. Interesting.
Carly Fiorina
…makes her first foreign-policy speech.
She is one of the most, if not the most impressive and clearest speakers in the race. As Andrew notes, she handles herself and unscripted questions very well, no umms or aahs.
NASA Advisory Council, Day Two
I’m going to switch from listening to NTSB meeting to hear the status on exploration systems at 9 AM PDT. Phil McAlister will be discussing Commercial Crew status later this morning. I would note that in this morning’s meeting in the House, Chairman Culberson was very enthusiastic (as expected) about the Europa mission, but he still insanely imagines that SLS is the solution to it.
The NTSB Meeting On SpaceShipTwo
I’m listening in live now, but Leonard David already has a story up.
[Update a few minutes later]
Doug Messier has the executive summary. Full report won’t be available for a couple weeks.
[Update a while later]
Temporary adjournment to wordsmith final findings. Sumwalt wants to make clear that while it was pilot error (Finding 1), it was an institutional failure at Scaled that made it possible for such an error to be catastrophic. There also seems to be some (IMO, undue) criticism of FAA-AST, and talk of “political pressure” to prematurely issue licenses/waivers. People (including NTSB) need to understand that AST currently has no statutory authority to regulate safety of the spaceflight participants, including crew, and they are chronically under-resourced to carry out the responsibilities that they are authorized to do. In fact, George should be careful what he wishes for, because if the learning period expires this fall, he still won’t have the budget he needs to expand his authority.
One thing that’s not clear yet (to me): If part of the problem was inability to read instruments due to vibration under thrust. If there was a digital readout, that (and other critical information) should be replaced with an actual Mach meter.
[Late-afternoon update]
Here‘s Jeff Foust’s report.
Live In NH, NV, NY Or MO?
The first panel features four senators — Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. All four were original sponsors of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act introduced in 2014, and all four are sponsors on the updated version introduced earlier this year.
CASA will surely be the focus of their panel, which is a shame because the bill is devoid of due process protections for accused students. When the bill was first introduced in 2014, I sent six questions to each of the original sponsors. Of the four sitting on the panel this Wednesday, only Ayotte’s office responded — and the response ignored a question about due process. A series of follow-up questions were never answered.
Neither Heller nor McCaskill’s office ever responded to the original questions. A staffer from Gillibrand’s office called me back but was uninterested in answering questions; instead, the staffer merely gave me an overview of the bill. . . .
Those are the eight people who will be addressing campus sexual assault on Wednesday. It is highly unlikely that even one of them will suggest that the draconian measures being thrust upon universities are fundamentally unfair and biased. Not one person is there to suggest that maybe colleges shouldn’t be adjudicating felonies. Not one person is there to suggest that if colleges do continue to adjudicate felonies, then they need to provide students the same protections an actual court of law would provide.
If you wanted to destroy academia, you couldn’t do a better job of what these people are doing. I expect this kind of thing from the Democrats, but it’s sad to see that, apparently, neither party gives a damn about actual justice or due process.
The Left
…embraces the logic of fascism.
No surprise to anyone familiar with the history, since fascism is leftism.
Light Posting
I’ve been on a telecon all day on the NASA Advisory Council meeting at JPL. Some very interesting discussion on launch and technology issues. I’m generally impressed with the tech plans, except for the absence of serious ISRU.
El Nino
It’s refreshing to see an AP/NYT story that doesn’t try to blame it on SUVs.
Politicos Put Graft Before Progress
While this is a good general topic, nowhere is it more true than in human spaceflight:
Sometimes the new competition wins anyway. Uber has been good at generating a large base of mobile customers, then using them to pressure politicians: When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went after Uber, Uber used its app to let its users pressure de Blasio.
Happy Uber customer Kate Upton weighed in, producing more pushback than de Blasio could withstand — especially when it turned out he’d gotten over $550,000 in donations from taxicab interests.
Other services aren’t so lucky, and the ability to do an end run around regulators, though welcome, isn’t universal. And if, on top of setting up your lemonade stand, you need licenses, permits, lobbyists and subsidies to make it, not many new lemonade stands will get started. That’s good news for existing lemonade stands, and for the politicians they support, but it’s bad news for everyone else.
Including people who actually want to affordably accomplish things in space.