The booster is supposed to tumble after separation, that is its design. Look at its closest twin, the Shuttle SRBs, and you will notice that they tumble immediately after they are separated.

That is by design. On the shuttle, ,illiseconds after SRB separation, 16 solid-fueled separation motors, four in the forward section of each SRB and four in the aft skirt of each SRB, are fired for just over one second to help carry the SRB's away from the rest of the Shuttle. Each of the separation motors can produce a thrust of about 22,000 pounds.

The SRB's continue to ascend in a slow, tumbling motion for about 75 seconds after SRB separation, to a maximum altitude of about 220,000 feet. The SRB's then begin to quickly fall toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The Ares SRB derivative uses a very similar system. That in mind, 1st stage tumbling is okay.

As for second stage tumbling, that was almost certainly due to being an unpowered can, for all intents and purposes. While the mockup used in today's flight has the same mass and aerodynamic shape as the real thing, it does not have thrust.

There may also have been some contact, and it is there that something could well be learned. Could be that a stronger retro motor is needed on the second stage coupled with a stronger sep motor on the 2nd. That will come out in the reports that will be filed later.

This was a test, after all, and a good one: it proved that Ares can fly. It flew quite well for some time, and it looked smoother than we may have expected. No obvious pogo-ing, for example.

This will not go over well in Huntsville. In fact, it already hasn't.

"Republican Senator Richard Shelby launched a preemptive strike on President Barack Obama's blue ribbon space panel ther day before its due to release its final report, calling the committee's findings "worthless." Shelby, a staunch defender of NASA's Marshal Space Flight Center In Huntsville, Alabama, said in a Senate floor speech that the committee failed to consider safety when it ranked various rocket options for the White House to consider. "Without an honest and thorough examination of the safety and reliability aspects of the various designs and options for manned space flight, the findings of this report are worthless," said Shelby."

Senator Shelby, obviously a noted rocket expert, contradicts former Shuttle astronauts Sally Ride and Leroy Chiao. Undoubtedly he astronaut safety at every step of the process with little regard to politics while they as former astronauts were completely unconcerned with it.

Speaking of unconcerned, apparently President Obama is exactly that in regards to NASA. New NASA Administrator Charles Bolden hopes to meet with Obama before end of year on agency future.

On top of all of that, it seems that Altair, the lunar lander from the Constellation project has been defunded.

"First, BSA's members have always offered their products for sale to the public, through any channel that wants to sell them"

Try to buy an obsoleted version of a program to run on an old platform. Got an old IBM-XT? Where are you going to purchase a legit copy of Lotus 1-2-3 not to mention DOS? But you *can* be sued for pirating them, at least technically.

"Second, BSA's members are consumer-oriented; they try to develop products that respond to consumers' needs, and not, the reverse: focusing on what they want to sell to consumers."

Did someone at Microsoft write this?

"Third, because consumers can easily purchase BSA's members products, those who copy without paying are simply scofflaws."

See the first reply, but "easily" is in the eye of the beholder. A typical recent college grad who wants to freelance graphics design work might say "easily"purchasing Adobe's Creative Suite is all but impossible for their finances. Yes, I know there are FOSS alternatives, but the truth is that the ad/graphics/printing world runs on Adobe. For example.

None of that makes stealing software or music content right, but the rationale for BSA being less unpopular is not the reasons cited above. It may be far more simple: BSA doesn't typically sue consumers, it seems that they typically go after businesses.

Originally invented in 1956, four-track was ignored due to marketing concerns but was briefly resurrected in the late 1960s as "the next big thing." When I was a little younger than this kid, I received a "Hipster" Four-Track tape player -- same thing as an eight track, but with a cassette-sized tape in a smaller form factor. I got one tape with it -- The Gentrys. I've long since lost that tape deck and the single tape it had, but I suppose it would be worth a wee bit of money were it in working condition.

This is mere speculation and is not all that different than when the Columbia accident happening folks in the press asking repeatedly if terrorists could have caused the orbiter to break up during re-entry.

Sure, the odds look good on paper, but at the same time, how many aircraft have been damaged by or downed by meteors over land, and conclusive proof shown that being struck by something of extraterrestrial origin was the culprit?

In short, there is a huge difference between "could have" and "that's what happened." In between you will find all sorts of people with axes to grind and/or crackpots. The truth is probably fare more mundane though no less tragic for those involved.

You're missing the point.

We are not asking for anything free. We're not asking for anything nearly free.

We are asking for a reasonable market rate. Like UPI, which we got a much better deal from.

If the AP doesn't want to do business, fine, we can operate without them and do so effectively. We are not aggregators or regurgitators, nor plagiarists. In other words, AP material is a convenience and not a necessity for us.

Interestingly, reporters employed by AP newspapers have used us for sources, have quoted us, have interviewed us, have had us on their radio programs and have used (with our permission) our materials.

You are making some incredible assumptions and those assumptions are erroneous.

We do in fact cover a great deal of the same stories with original material of our own. And in fact have won awards for precisely that.

Further, it doesn't cost five figures to produce 65 articles a year, and if it does, then I need to go into journalism as a career, because apparently that's an easy path to riches. That's especially true when these same articles are already used in local and wire stories and that our audience is a fraction of that.

The price was indeed exorbitant, and what remains a fact is that if AP wants to price customers out of the market, then they will not gain any revenue whatsoever.

I work on a popular sports blog and also another up and coming blog, and both feature commentary on relevant news (college sports and golf.)

We would love to use AP content for our blogs, with proper uasge, citations, trackbacks and the like. So we try to contact AP for licensing information and cannot reach a human and get no call back for weeks.

When they do return our inquiries, they gave us a price so ridiculous that it was impossible to fit it into any workable revenue model. It's not that we are cheap or expected something for nothing, it's just that they wanted a fee so high that it just couldn't be done.

We came away with a definite impression that AP didn't *want* to work with us and that their numbers were just go-away-leave-us-alone figures that they knew they had little chance of getting a sale from.

Now we avoid their material like the plague.

They have another "qualification:" the need to show off how smart they are, irregardless of whether they actually know of what they are talking about.

Reading through the article, it seems that other than AMD's Puma, most of these failures have one thing in common: they are not backward compatible with the chips they replace.

People are loathe to buy a new computer and all-new versions of software to run on it. Look at the 64-bit Windows architectures. How many folks are running 32-bit software on those?

Bottom line is that the software IS the computer and the chips ultimately are sexy only to EE's and gearheads.