May 10, 2017 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold. With today’s podcast we add to the sad tale of SLS the story of the dropped oxygen tank.
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Tag: freedom
Assistant principal who harassed pro-life protesters resigns
The assistant principal of a Pennsylvania high school who harassed several teenage pro-life demonstrators has turned in his resignation.
The key here is the teacher’s admission that he was totally wrong:
Last Friday the administrator appeared at a school district hearing after which he was suspended without pay. The district said Ruff indicated at the hearing that he might resign but requested more time to review the charges, which included violating the protesters First Amendment rights, said Michael Levin, the attorney representing the district.
“Dr. Ruff has acknowledged that the demonstrators had a right to be on a public sidewalk,” the news release said. “He acknowledged that his conduct cannot be defended or condoned, and he deeply regretted his actions as displayed on the video. This school district will not interfere with the rights of anyone to express themselves.”
He might have been a very good teacher. He might still become a very good teacher. What is important is that if and when he teaches in the future, he does so respecting the opinions of others. As Cromwell said, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
Japan begins testing new rocket engine
Capitalism in space: Japan has begun testing the rocket engine it will use in its next generation rocket.
The H-III will succeed the country’s current H-series rockets, H-IIA and H-IIB. The rocket will use commercially available components and a fuselage that can be mass produced, lowering launch costs to about half of the current price tag of approximately 10 billion yen ($88.6 million). The new, more powerful engine will allow the H-III to carry a midsize to large satellite weighing up to 6.5 tons — 60% more than the H-IIA.
If I understand this correctly, a launch with this new rocket will cost about $45 million, which will make it very competitive with SpaceX. At the same time, it is not as powerful, which means it will not serve the exact same customer base. Instead, its capacity makes it a direct competitor to India’s GSLV Mark III rocket.
SpaceX completes first static fire test of Falcon Heavy core stage
Capitalism in space: SpaceX this week successfully completed the first static fire engine test of the core stage of its Falcon Heavy rocket.
In a tweet, the company said that it completed the first static fire of the core stage of the rocket at the company’s McGregor, Texas, test site last week. The company did not disclose the precise date of the test or its duration. The company included in the tweet a video showing about 15 seconds of the test.
The Falcon Heavy uses three Falcon 9 first stages, or cores, along with an upper stage, an approach similar to United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 Heavy. The two side booster cores for the first launch will be previously-flown Falcon 9 first stages, but the center core will be a new stage, modified to accommodate the side boosters.
The first launch is scheduled for sometime in the late summer, early fall.
Georgia governor signs spaceport bill
Capitlism in space: The governor of Georgia yesterday signed into law a spaceport liability law that will make that state competitive with other states.
I’m not sure yet how realistic Georgia’s hopes are for a viable spaceport. Vector’s next test suborbital flight is scheduled to occur there, but will other companies shift their business there? I am not sure. Nonetheless, this raises the level of competition, which can never be bad.
SpaceX to launch Bulgarian satellite in June with used first stage
Capitalism in space: SpaceX will fly its second used first stage in June when it launches a Bulgarian communications satellite.
In a statement, BulgariaSat said its BulgariaSat-1 spacecraft is scheduled to launch in mid-June on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first stage of that Falcon 9 will be the same one that launched 10 Iridium Next satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in January. Maxim Zayakov, chief executive of BulgariaSat, said the use of a reused first stage lowers the launch price and “makes it possible for smaller countries and companies to launch their own satellites.”
The company did not disclose the price it is paying for the launch, including what discount it is receiving for using a “flight-proven” first stage.
Previously SpaceX had said it would charge about $40 million for a launch using a previously flown first stage, so I would suspect the discount is somewhere around that.
Bezos sells about $1 billion of his Amazon shares
Capitalism in space: This past week Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos raised about $1 billion in cash by selling 1 million shares of his stock in Amazon.
Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos sold about $1 billion in company stock as part of a planned divestiture, a month after the world’s third-richest man said he spends about that amount annually on his space exploration company Blue Origin LLC.
Bezos sold 1 million shares from Tuesday to Thursday ranging in price from about $935 to $950 per share, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday. He still owns 79.9 million shares, or about 17 percent of the company, down from 83 million shares at the end of 2015.
What this means for Blue Origin is that Bezos has very deep pockets, and will likely be able to finance the development of its very big New Glenn rocket without outside help. That the company will likely also win contracts along the way for the company’s BE-4 rocket engine will also not hurt Bezos’ financial position.
New poll suggests majority of Americans support free speech
A new poll has found that while a large minority of registered voters approve of banning offensive speakers from college campuses, a majority still support the idea of a free and open society.
Below the fold is the entire poll [pdf] for this particular question, with the poll results broken down across a wide selection of demographic groups. Except for only a handful of such groups, which I have highlighted, Americans across the board continue to support the idea of free speech, though the large minorities are certainly worrisome. Then again, I have seen polls like this for most of my life, and the news story routinely focuses in on the large minorities that favor restricting free speech, as does the story at the link above. Such minorities have always existed, however, and sometimes there are even circumstances where they are right!
The question isn’t whether they are there. The questions should be: What are the trends? And are those who are hostile to free speech concentrated in any single demographic group that holds power?
So, what are those handful of demographic groups where a plurality favors banning speakers? Not surprisingly, those groups are Democrats, Democratic women, African-Americans, homemakers, those who do not have an identifiable job, and those who consider Medicare and Social Security to be the #1 issue facing the nation. Essentially, these groups form the heart and soul of the modern Democratic Party, which appears increasingly to also be the home of people who are hostile to freedom and wish to restrict it. This fact helps explain why the Democrats in the last Congress actually proposed an amend to the Constitution that would have partially repealed the first amendment, allowing Congress to restrict speech.
If you are Democrat and support free speech, you should be aware of this, either to change your party, or to consider leaving it. I tried the first when I lived in New York, failed, and thus was forced to chose the second. I have never looked back.
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Vector completes first suborbital test flight
Capitalism in space: Vector today successfully completed the first suborbital test flight of an engineering test prototype of its orbital rocket.
The rocket that flew is the same one I photographed during my March 30th tour with Vector CEO Jim Cantrell of Vector’s Tucson factory.
NASA looks to private companies for lunar missions
Capitalism in space: NASA has issued a request for information on possible private commercial missions capable of carrying NASA payloads to the Moon.
From the announcement:
NASA has identified a variety of exploration, science, and technology demonstration objectives that could be addressed by sending instruments, experiments, or other payloads to the lunar surface. To address these objectives as cost-effectively as possible, NASA may procure payloads and related commercial payload delivery services to the Moon
In other words, NASA has money to spend on lunar science missions, and rather than plan those missions itself, as it has done since the 1960s, it is now offering to buy and launch proposals from private companies.
Company that analyzes satellite data raises $50 million
Capitalism in space: Orbital Insight, a company that uses computers to analyze satellite imagery of the Earth, has raised $50 million in new investment capital.
The fresh capital will be used to expand its partnerships, increase its analytics products, and build bigger international sales operations in Europe and Asia, Orbital said. The Mountain View, California-based company founded by former NASA scientist and Google engineer James Crawford also will step up recruiting in engineering, data science and design.
Falling satellite launch costs are helping make geospatial imagery a bigger and better source for economists and investors tracking everything from China’s manufacturing to the number of cars parked outside Wal-Mart stores. Venture capital investment in space companies jumped to a record nearly $1.4 billion last year, bringing the total since 2000 to $13.3 billion, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a report last month. [emphasis mine]
Nor are the lower launch costs hurting the launch industry. Instead, the industry is booming, as it now has a lot more customers available to buy their launch services.
Elton John – Rocket Man
An evening pause: Hat tip Sayomara. This pause is slightly different, and is really two-for-one. The background music is Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” but the visuals are of SpaceX’s future spaceport site at Boca Chica beach near Brownsville, Texas. Apparently someone used a drone to fly over the site and videotaped it. As Sayomara noted, this “shows how far away this site is from being usable.”