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Looks like Falcon 9 went kersplat

 AARRRGH, blather, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  11 Responses »
Jan 172016
 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 was launched out of Vandenberg today, putting an ocean observation satellite into orbit. A secondary goal was to land the first stage on a barge out at sea… it appears that this was not successful. The rocket landed on the barge but didn’t stick the landing; it seems one of the legs may have collapsed due to hitting too hard. Ocean conditions were pretty rough, as can be seen in the video below… which cut off literally seconds before the landing at about 50:30.

So… from a limited dataset, the Falcon 9 is good at landing on pads that aren’t bobbing up and down, not so good at landing on pads that are in motion. Even if this issue isn’t resolved, it’s still useful on many missions to be able to land-recover the first stage.

So, presuming the booster was lost on landing, what we have here is a learning experience. If it was NASA… program shutdown, months of Congressional hearings. SpaceX: “don’t launch when it’s cold.” Or to be more specific, don’t expect to land when the seas are rough.

 Posted by at 12:59 pm

Welfare State Madness

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., politics, reshaping the world, ಠ_ಠ  6 Responses »
Jan 152016
 

If this is accurate, it indicates that the Swedish government is *insane:*

Sweden: “No Apartments, No Jobs, No Shopping Without A Gun”

Now, Swedes see the welfare system failing them. More and more senior citizens fall into the “indigent” category; close to 800,000 of Sweden’s 2.1 million retirees, despite having worked their whole lives, are forced to live on between 4,500 and 5,500 kronor ($545 – $665) a month. Meanwhile, seniors who immigrate to Sweden receive the so-called “elderly support subsidy” — usually a higher amount — even though they have never paid any taxes in Sweden.

Worse, in 2013 the government decided that people staying in the country illegally have a right to virtually free health and dental care. So while the destitute Swedish senior citizen must choose between paying 100,000 kronor ($12,000) to get new teeth or living toothless, a person who does not even have the right to stay in Sweden can get his teeth fixed for 50 kronor ($6).

Neat. So… who wants a Scandinavian-style welfare state here in the US?

 Posted by at 7:42 pm

Space Madness

 Hmm..., news, science  9 Responses »
Jan 152016
 

Remember KIC 8462852, the star that had such a weird light curve that serious people suggested that, just maybe, it was surrounded by a partial Dyson Sphere? Other serious people attacked the mystery in two ways:

  1. Examine the system for evidence of radio and other emissions that might indicate intelligence
  2. examine the data to see the the light curve is being produced by something natural but weird, like a massive cloud of comets

Sadly unsurprisingly, the first group came up negative: no data indicating aliens. But it turns out the second group came up with bupkis. Apparently, what the astronomers have found is an F3 main sequence star that is just… flickering. It has day-long dips in output of up to 20%, and has substantially dimmed over the last century. In order to explain this via comets, 648,000 giant comets (nuclei 200 km in diameter) would be needed. The total mass of this hypothetical cloud of comets would be 40% of the mass of the Earth. This seems highly unlikely, so for the moment is appears that this star is just… acting kinda funny.

KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989

I have my own ideas on what might be messing with the star.

 

 Posted by at 7:32 pm

So you didn’t win the Lotto…

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., Meh., ಠ_ಠ  6 Responses »
Jan 152016
 

Even though the odds of winning were one in 292 million… somehow, you didn’t win. You spent all your money, and you got cheated out of $1.5 billion. Outrage! So, what do you do? Do you take this as an important lesson about the important of understanding basic mathematics and how that relates to a household budget? No, that’s for suckers. Instead, clearly the right approach is to ask other people to give you *their* money:

A Powerball Reimbursement Go Fund Me Page Has Been Created

A woman named “Cinnamon Nicole” (the article doesn’t say, but with a name like that I’m assuming she’s a nuclear physicist) claimed to have blown all her families money on Lotto tickets, “expecting” to win $1.5Billion. Now they’re broke, and she’s asking *you* to pay her. The Go Fund Me page seems to have been taken down since the article was published, but somehow she’d managed to garner at least $800 before the end.

 Posted by at 11:46 am

Lorals F-19

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm...  7 Responses »
Jan 132016
 

A single painting created (by noted illustrator Attila Hejja) in 1981 led to a whole lot of speculation about an “F-19.” Even in the era before the internet allowed BS and rampant unfounded speculation to spread easily around the world, this illustration quickly led to a belief that this was a serious design… probably by Lockheed, and probably to be the F-19. It is indeed a spiffy looking aircraft, but it is much more science fiction than aerospace engineering. It appeared in magazines, books, toys and model kits, modified to greater or lesser degrees.

The painting is usually attributed to Loral, which is rather obvious given that it was prominently used by Loral in the ad below. But it appears that it was created for the Dod and is, in fact, in the public domain.

1984-01-23-54

To download the full-rez version from the Aviation Week archive, click here:

http://archive.aviationweek.com/image/spread/19840123/54/1/zoom

And a reasonable-rez version of the painting is available here:

https://research.archives.gov/id/6343685

 Posted by at 12:09 am
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