We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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SpaceX has just test fired nine engines at full thrust in the full Falcon 9 configuration, a test I was not expecting to see until this fall at the earliest. According to their press release:
Major milestone achieved towards demonstrating U.S. transport to the International Space Station following retirement of the Space Shuttle
McGregor TX – August 1, 2008 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early.
At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force – four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines.Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States.
“This was the most difficult milestone in development of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and it also constitutes a significant achievement in US space vehicle development. Not since the final flight of the Saturn 1B rocket in 1975, has a rocket had the ability to lose any engine or motor and still successfully complete its mission,” said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. “Much like a commercial airliner, our multi-engine design has the potential to provide significantly higher reliability than single engine
“We made a major advancement from the previous five engine test by adding four new Merlin engines at once,” said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. “All phases of integration went smoothly and we were elated to see all nine engines working perfectly in concert.”
I will admit to being caught totally flat footed by this announcement. Given that the Falcon 1 launch at Kwajalein is due any time now I felt certain the company’s full attention would be focused there.
I guess Elon and his crew are better multi-taskers than I gave them credit for.
Falcon 9 first stage on test stand: nine Merlin 1C engines at full thrust.
Photo: courtesy SpaceX
I have just received some photos from one of our XCOR readers who has had the good fortune to actually fly in one these beauties.
Getting ready for takeoff.
Photo: With thanks to Mike Massee/XCOR/Rocket Racing League
Rolling down the runway with a tail of fire.
Photo: With thanks to Mike Massee/XCOR/Rocket Racing League
It must have been really loud where the photographer was standing!
Photo: With thanks to Mike Massee/XCOR/Rocket Racing League
You can also see some flight video and an interview with the test pilot here .
I ran across an interesting quote by linguist Steven Pinker in the july 5th issue of New Scientist:
“My next book will be on the decline of violence and its implications. Rates of murder, warfare, genocide, torture and deadly riots are lower now than at any moment in human history. Assuming that we have’t changed biologically, then what has changed in our psychology and soceity to make that possible?”
The interview went on to suggest several reasonable possibilities, including the spread of the concept of a fair and impartial judiciary but left out two which I think may be very important: wealth and freedom.
“We all know that politics is a con some of the time. It has begun to feel like politics is a con almost all of the time.”
– Camilla Cavendish.
Well, some of us have never thought much of politics in the first place, certainly not politics as a professional job.
I used to visit the South of France as a kid and one day, walking down the beach in St Tropez, yours truly, then a pretty wet-behind-the-ears lad from Suffolk, espied a whole row of lovely French women lying on the beach with nary a stitch on. Mon dieu! After my silly childish embarrassment wore off, I thought nothing of it after a while.
It appears that for health and fashion reason, though, that the lovelies of Europe are covering up. One of the main factors may be a concern about skin cancer. Also, I notice that in France, a lot of the men and women’s skin gets very lined and aged if they sit out a lot in the sun, so for reasons of vanity or beauty – depending on your point of view – it makes sense to cover up. I have to watch it in the sun as I am pretty fair-skinned.
I did sort of half wonder whether any of this story from France has something to do with the large Muslim immigrant population in the South of France that takes a dim view of baring any female flesh at all. It does make one wonder. I hope not.
and they is US!
US Marine MV-22 Osprey’s landing in Jordan.
Photo: courtesy of US DOD
This is not the first time I have seen images of this bird in flight, but it is the first public venue at which a Rocket Racer has flown and the second rocket powered aircraft ever to fly at the Oshkosh AirVenture. The first was a few years back (four? five?) and was also an XCOR powered craft, the EZ-Rocket, trailered from Mojave to Oshkosh by that company.
The XCOR engined Rocket Racer is a larger Lox/Kerosene rocket plane with at about 10 minutes airborne endurance if the burn times are well utilized. The pilot, Astronaut Richard Searfoss, certainly knows his burns and knows the engine inside out as he was test pilot for XCOR during engine development.
A second Rocket Racer is also on display at AirVenture, with an Armadillo Aerospace alcohol/LOX engine. It has not yet received FAA certification but they hope that will occur before the Reno Races when the Rocket Racing League hopes to have both craft in the air together.
For now though, a hearty congratulations to our readers at XCOR who made it possible.
XCOR engined Rocket Racer in flight at Oshkosh. This was the only reasonable photo I could find: the email address of the press contact for RRL given on their site bounces!
Photo: Rocket Racing League
The first WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft was rolled out of its hanger in the Mojave desert on Monday. The second stage vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, has been held back due to the ongoing investigations into the test stand accident of one year ago. Although that accident was little more than a plumbing and pressure test, there is as yet no full understanding of exactly what happened. Because of this uncertainty, Burt has delayed much development of SpaceShipTwo so as to avoid building things he might later have to rip out. This is the reason why the target date for passenger service has slipped into the 2010 time frame.
Still, the roll out of WK2 is a major milestone. As you can see in the photo, it is not a small aircraft! You gain an even better impression of that size from the raw press release video clip. (if you do not have a quick time plug-in, you may need to download first)
Monday July 28, 2008. Roll out of WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft ‘VMS Eve’ at Mojave Spaceport.
Photo: courtesy of Virgin Galactic
The excellent “swearblogger” at Devil’s Kitchen, recently suffered a nasty car accident. He’s okay, although his car was damaged. I could not help notice in the associated comments that some character called Neil Harding chose to make a cheap political crack about how this proved that we “individualists” who like cars should take the train instead. It was not a friendly word of sympathy for someone involved in a potentially fatal accident.
Maybe I am in a grumpy mood today, but please, would these car-haters, these collectivist train fans, please, please just go off to North Korea. Not everyone can rely on public transport, Mr Harding.
The Times (of London) has a sobering editorial today about the level of crime in the Caribbean, following the recent murder involving a married couple on their honeymoon in Antigua. Jamaica has already developed a fearesome reputation for violence – Kingston is a particularly unpleasant place – and the problem is spreading. In its history, the area has been touched by violence, stretching back before the dark stain of Western-imposed slavery, of course. The pirate gangs who raped and pillaged their way across the area were not lovable rogues with parrots on their shoulders but brutes.
Of course, when it comes to recent times, experiences vary. I went to Barbados with friends several years ago and had a wonderful time and was struck by how friendly people were. Barbados is a great place, although I am rather saddened that the youngsters are not as keen on cricket as they used to be, but perhaps that is inevitable as sporting fashions change.
The Times argues that some folk have blamed the problems on tourism as something that has widened the gap between rich and poor. This seems a bit of a strange argument. Surely, without tourism, the region – assuming there was no other source of wealth – would be even poorer, making for an ever more desperate situation that there is now. More pertinently, the editorial argues that a major cause of violence are drug gangs. The Caribbean is a crossing point for the drugs that are exported by gangs out of South America, such as Columbia, and then on to the US and elsewhere. At no point does the Times address the issue of whether the illegality of drugs might be fuelling the criminal gangster culture that is allied to it.
And there is something else to consider. Since Britain joined the-then EEC, now European Union, the old British connections to the trading interests of the UK’s former colonies have been weakened. Imports of sugar and other produce were placed at a competitive disadvantage because of Britain’s membership of the absurd Common Agricultural Policy.
Finally, one of the latest issues to rear its head is the ongoing attempt by Western governments, such as the US, to crack down on tax havens such as The Cayman Islands. If a left-leaning, high-taxing Democrat administration gets into power with Mr Obama in the White House, life for such havens could get much tougher, with attendant impact on their business activities.
You may remember I reported earlier this month that the launch window for the 3rd flight of the Falcon 1 opened around July 30 or thereabouts. We are now into that period and it looks like we might get a launch before the five day window closes: Falcon 1 is on the pad at Kwajalein.
There has been very little information floating around on the launch schedule this time so I will have to keep watching closely to make sure I do not miss a last minute announcement.
I will keep you informed.
I came across this statistic here, stating that there will be 22,000 journalists at the Beijing Olympics next week.
The local bars will be doing a roaring trade, one hopes.
Jesus.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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