jon_miner - Slashdot User

SpaceX's Falcon Launches... Sort Of 164

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @08:29AM from the i-think-i-can-i-think-i-can dept.

JHarrison writes "Spaceflight Now is running a story on the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch yesterday. Those of you watching the stream will have no doubt noticed the telemetry failure at 04:50, and turns out that was more than them turning the webcast off.. "A year after its maiden flight met a disastrous end, the SpaceX booster lifted off at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 GMT Wednesday) from a remote launch pad on Omelek Island, part of a U.S. Army base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Controllers lost contact with the Falcon during the burn of the second stage that would have placed the rocket into orbit around Earth. "We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly," Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said in a post-launch call with reporters. Live video from cameras mounted aboard the rocket's second stage showed increasing oscillations about five minutes after liftoff, just before the public webcast was cut off. The rolling prevented the necessary speed to achieve a safe orbit, instead sending the stage on a suborbital trajectory back into the atmosphere.""

Comment Re:Long history of rebellion (Score 3, Insightful) 203

by jon_miner on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @01:40PM (#18417553) Attached to: University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA

The only place where someone can bomb a University building, killing a postdoc getting ready to go on vacation with his wife and three children, and then come back to the city to open a popular deli in the heart of the city, blocks away from his murder, and be welcomed back with good reviews and a healthy patronage. The Radical Rye, as it was called, was displaced by the $200M Overture Center for the Arts, but he still has a juice cart called Loose Juice that you can patronize. A this 4-out-of-5 reviewer notes, even though he "bombed the Physics building called Sterling Hall, killing a young graduate student who was unfortunately doing research in the building" it's apparently okay because it was to "protest against military research done at the school". Oh, the postdoc wasn't involved with military research? "Oops!" Hey, this guy even had a beer with him! As this reviewer notes, "you should go by and have a smoothie at Carl's stand." One of the other bombers, still at large, was a writer for the campus paper.

Because people who commit a crime and serve their time should not be allowed to be successful after they have returned to society? They should not be allowed to operate as a normal human, and forced to live in slums and operate outside of normal society?

Karl served his time, and instead of becoming a hardened criminal, studied while in prison, and when released opened a series of successful businesses. He's a model of what people who make the worst mistakes in life should do -- he overcame the guilt of accidentally killing someone and the stigma of being incarcerated to become a productive, tax paying, business owner. (He was even in to day trading back in the late 90's and early 2000's, which I find funny for a former revolutionary...)

He does have the best smoothie stand around.

jon (Who's had quite a few beers with Karl.)

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