Pic: https://x.com/asherbphotos/sta...

Word is a second booster at the site in the horizontal integration facility was also destroyed.

Impacts go beyond the rocket and pad. This was development for lunar landers to be launched this year, Leo internet satellites to be launched in the coming days, Blue Moon lunar landers for the Artemis lunar program, and on and on. An engine may have been the cause of the mishap and that casts shade on the Vulcan Centaur that also uses the same engine.

It's likely not bought with tax money. The company has various means.

The US government has a few people who do some things that require large quantities of gold bars of blind provenance, indicators of affluence and no accountability. They go to places that don't take US government checks or credit cards. When you have an administrative turnover at war with everything predecessor, some of these people get cashed out.

For some government agencies the ability to get away with fabricated backgrounds is a mandatory qualification. Somebody knew and decided they were cool with this.

No. Blue Origin blew up their only launch pad last night static firing the rocket that detonated. Jeff is likely grounded for a year and this stuff isn't going to happen.

The IPO is timely for many reasons. One is that falling birds have not yet become a nightly firework display. At 60 going up per week, at some point 60 are coming down per week. Some people are going to really not like that.

Correct, as anyone can see by looking at who they rounded up.

"Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist "

But in the next state over, the next company will also treat you as badly as they can get away with.

The natural model for a programmer's union is the Screen Actor's Guild. That's another field with a wide range of talent. SAG members can get the best pay their agents can negotiate, lots for stars. But everyone is protected from exploitation.

JPL has been run by CalTech for 90 years because it's the CalTech rocketry club founded in 1936. Its services are some of the most productive investments of the US federal government.

You're looking at this as basic MIC M&A. If they wanted to cut the budget or be more efficient they could just rewrite the contract as they always do at renewal. This is a theft of expertise.

Did we not watch Tron? Why not WOPR?

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124.4 meters (408.1 feet) tall, 9 meters wide, 5,500 metric tons at launch with a TWR of 1.6. Should leap off the pad and hit max Q in 45 seconds. These engines are grossly overpowered for the launch mass, which implies another stretch. And they're a work of art.

I have to go see one of these launches one day.

And they're not done. Raptor 4 is in the works. They really are going to Mars. The long dry spell of "boldly go" is coming to an end.

This is about getting wholesalers to pay them to take the data about where they source their stuff and who they sell it to at what rates so Amazon can replace their step in the chain as well.

Indeed. The critical thinkers did better.

The people who rely on copying what everyone else does, what the authorities say, what the consensus view is, didn't do as well as the people who started using critical thinking systematically, i.e. western enlightenment for example, and other places where that was used. The fact that now we can have an AI in the role of authority or group think isn't surprising when you realise it, because so often we do just rely on common patterns, authorities, and copying.