ShivaX
3430
I read 3 billion light years someplace.
Still… yeah.
I think there are two recent repeating FRB sources
The source of the new repeating FRB, known as 180916.J0158+65, was observed by the global effort of eight ground-based telescopes, which pinpointed the location in a galaxy half a billion light-years from Earth. While that sounds incredibly distant, it’s seven times closer than the other repeating radio burst
Tman
3432
This is super cool…Milky Way stabilized showing how earth is spinning
I have mixed feeling about this. I really want to stop seeing US astronauts going up on Russia (It would be so bad if it was European or even Chinese rockets), on the other hand if something goes wrong that’s even worse.
Something other than “that”, obviously.
Who’s on first, What’s on second, I don’t know’s on third!
RichVR
3438
If you have a table full of odds and ends and you remove all but one, is it an odd or an end?
it’s the end of the odds.
Geez it is not my fault you all couldn’t read the super secret link I posted from the Washington Post NASA dilemma.
I talked to Jeff B and he told me I could share it on QT3 and wouldn’t have to kill you afterwards.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/09/after-mishap-with-boeing-spacecraft-nasa-faces-dilemma/
the TL:DR for those of you who can’t get beyond the paywall.
As it probes why Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft suffered a serious setback during a flight test last month that forced the cancellation of its planned docking with the International Space Station, NASA faces a high-stakes dilemma: Should the space agency require the company to repeat the uncrewed test flight or allow the next flight to proceed, as originally planned, with astronauts aboard?
The answer could have significant ramifications for the agency — and put astronauts’ lives on the line — at a time when NASA is struggling to resume human spaceflight from the United States, years after the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.
Forcing Boeing to redo the test flight without anyone aboard would be costly, possibly requiring the embattled company, already struggling from the consequences of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max airplane, to spend tens of millions of dollars to demonstrate that its new spacecraft is capable of meeting the space station in orbit.
The alternative being that we all just cross our fingers?
Just like Challenger! wHaT CoUlD pOsIbLy Go WrOnG?
Romalar
3444
On top of this, NASA and Boeing just got caught recently having subverted at least the spirit of the commercial crew program. This was when NASA caved to some supposed threats from Boeing to pull out of the program unless they got more funding, which NASA provided as special extra ‘schedule gap covering’ tasks totaling $287M which the oversight boards thought was unnecessary. Boeing might well make such threats again if an extra test flight was required, and they have lots of political support.
I say ‘subverted’ because the original idea was that if one of the selected 2 contractors failed to meet the fixed-price contract, the other one would cover it all temporarily and the big contract would move to the next best contractor in line (Sierra Nevada Corp. in this case.) That was the point of two contractors to a large degree. Boeing’s just too big to fail.
Yet more fodder for the guillotine.
fire
3447
Family Days at JPL today, where we are saying “hello” and “good bye” to Mars 2020.
jpinard
3448
Well if they took all that money back from their fired CEO they’d actually be ahead in costs.
Anybody who is an early riser can watch SpaceX destroy a rocket on purpose. The Crew Dragon inflight abort test window starts at 8AM est tomorrow.
