Archive for 2020
February 7, 2020
BOEING: Starliner faced ‘catastrophic’ failure before software bug found. “If it had gone uncorrected it would have led to erroneous thruster firing.”
“While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone uncorrected it would have led to erroneous thruster firing and uncontrolled motion during SM separation for deorbit, with the potential for catastrophic spacecraft failure,” Hill said during the meeting.
Starliner’s December test flight had to be cut short due to a well-publicized timing error that delayed the spacecraft’s service module from performing an orbital insertion burn. This caused the thrusters on board the service module, which provides power to Starliner during most of its mission, to fire longer than expected. As a result, the spacecraft did not have enough fuel to complete a rendezvous with the International Space Station, a key component of the test flight in advance of crewed missions.
At Thursday’s meeting, Hill revealed the second issue related to software and thruster performance publicly for the first time.
However, as part of reporting on a story about Starliner software and thruster issues three weeks ago, a source told Ars about this particular problem. According to the source, Boeing patched a software code error just two hours before the vehicle reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Had the error not been caught, the source said, proper thrusters would not open during the reentry process, and the vehicle would have been lost.
What a mess.
WHY IS THE ACADEMY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM AND HATE? (CONT’D): At ‘Undoing Racism’ workshop, participants told ‘all white people are racist.’ I suppose no one gave the proper response of “Well, fuck off, then.”
President Trump is politically stronger today than at anytime since entering politics. The Democrat Party-press and their Democrat comrades have failed miserably in their relentless and depraved coup efforts. No wonder they look manically depressed and sound insanely unhinged. They’re a force for darkness and despair, dystopia and chaos. Meanwhile, however, through it all, the president is racking up major accomplishment after major accomplishment, a steady stream of unprecedented successes. And due to his leadership, the nation is truly thriving. Americans are proud and overwhelmingly happy with their personal lives. Patriotism is back. Respect for America overseas is back. And I am sure if President Reagan were with us, he’d tip his hat to President Trump and with a smile tell him — terrific job my friend. Keep it up. It’s morning in America again.
Stay tuned. And don’t get cocky, kids.
PRIVACY: This tool reveals which of your favorite apps are sharing way too much data. “Seudo found that the McDonald’s app was collecting all sorts of data about the characteristics of my phone, and the King James Bible app kept pinging Facebook.”
WHY IS THE ACADEMY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM AND HATE? Rutgers prof: Iowa caucuses are a ‘sickening display’ of ‘whiteness.’
DEEP BACKGROUND ON CHINA’S CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC: StrategyPage’s StrategyTalk podcast China Battles the Democracy Virus (bumped). Though recorded January 31, the podcast has the history and context for understanding the origin, spread and political implications of the epidemic. If you like it subscribe.
RELATED: My review of Chinese Communist Espionage. Since the column was written (February 4) Dr. Li has died after he contracted the virus. I’ve asked the webmaster to add an update sometime today.
This paragraph remains accurate, for he was indeed a political victim of the dictatorship:
Li was a victim of China’s Ministry of Public Security and its Social Credit Rating system. The system accumulates data on individuals using cellphones, video, internet and travel activity, and gossip. Security clerks cull the data for niggling signs of anti-government behavior.
Li’s anti-government behavior was using a private internet chat group to tell a handful of doctors and medical students that he was seeing signs of a viral epidemic.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: It’s Starting to Feel Like AOC Is a Republican Plant. “One of the more bizarre aspects of AOC’s ongoing struggle with verbal diarrhea is that the media insists on celebrating everything she says actually having intellectual heft. Sure, it’s not unusual for the mainstream media to fawn over their own creations — Beto O’Rourke comes to mind — but the treatment of AOC stands out because she is truly a remarkably stupid woman.”
WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A HIVE OF ANTISEMITISM: Elizabeth Warren slanders AIPAC, and by extension, the American Jewish Community.
STILL NOT TIRED OF WINNING: January adds a much stronger than expected 225,000 jobs.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump Should Build to Last.
Will the government finally stop giving the concrete finger to popular taste by erecting ugly, expensive and unsustainable buildings with taxpayers’ money instead of fostering a civic architecture that speaks the language of American democracy?
The leaking of a draft directive that calls for a return to ‘Classical and traditional styles’ in major public buildings in Washington DC has occasioned outrage and contempt from the expected quarters: architects who know best and journalists to whom the exterior of a public building is an obstacle to be surmounted on the way into the corridors of power. But the traffic circus known as Dupont Circle is not about to become a Roman circus, with lions of the Senate fighting each other with net, trident and rolled-up order papers. Washington DC’s terrible traffic problems are, regrettably, not about to be eased by the designation of a lane for chariots only. And Donald Trump is not about to declare himself an immortal emperor, give the thumbs down to Pelosi, the Etruscan slave who leads the Blue faction so popular in the empire’s capital, and exile her to the distant and barbarous province whence she came.
Building to last? It’s an idea so crazy, it just might work — especially in a town where they celebrate soul-crushing modernist concrete “brutalist” like this, simply to dunk on Trump:
QED, this mad 2018 Slate article headlined, “Of Course Trump Hates Brutalism —Buildings like the FBI headquarters are everything Trump is not.”
HUNTING VIPERS: Two USMC AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters maneuver towards a target at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California. Photo taken Dec. 18, 2019.
WHY IS HE COMPLAINING? ALL THEY DID WAS REDISTRIBUTE HIS VOTES TO WHERE THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE THOUGHT THEY WERE NEEDED: Iowa debacle deepens division between Sanders, national party.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Trump predicts Xi ‘will be successful’ at stopping coronavirus outbreak.
China investigating death of doctor who sounded coronavirus alarm.
Li Wenliang: Coronavirus death of Wuhan doctor sparks anger.
WHO warns of global shortage of coronavirus protective equipment.
Coronavirus: U.S. flights leave China with 300 set for quarantine.
Coronavirus cases worldwide are ‘going up very steeply,’ says NIH Director Francis Collins.
Copper Prices Hit an Almost Three-Year Low Because of Coronavirus. The Worst Is Yet to Come.
Coronavirus brings China’s surveillance state out of the shadows.
How global health rules are being challenged by coronavirus.
WHICH CIRCLE OF HELL IS IT THAT’S RESERVED FOR THOSE WHO BETRAY THEIR BENEFACTORS? The chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence ripped Sen. Mitt Romney as an ungrateful politician who repeatedly begged for the president’s support then turned on him.
SEE ALSO SEATTLE, SAN FRANCISCO, L.A., CHICAGO, BALTIMORE: Crime Is on the Rise in New York City. The left’s apparent desire to turn every city it controls into a cesspit of crime and human waste is evidence of some sort of deep psychological failings.
BIDEN HAS COMPANY: Bloomberg Plagiarized Parts of At Least Eight of His Plans.
WHERE WOULD MIKE BLOOMBERG FIT IN ON THIS LIST? The shortest men in Hollywood, and their heights.
THEY WERE WARNED, BUT FORGED AHEAD TO DESTROY THEIR REPUTATIONS, AND THE DEMOCRATS’ POSITION: Key witness told Team Mueller that Russia collusion evidence found in Ukraine was fabricated.
AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, Marino’s Men Genuine Leather Dress Belt with Single Prong Buckle.
COLORADO: Party power brokers may regret anointing John Hickenlooper.
Hickenlooper famously declared during his vanity run for president that he was not cut out to be a senator because senators really don’t do anything. Disparaging an office where so many prominent and respected Coloradans of both parties have previously served–such as Gary Hart, Bill Armstrong, Tim Wirth, Hank Brown, Ben Campbell, Wayne Allard, Mark Udall and Ken Salazar–is insulting to their service and their records of accomplishment for Colorado and the nation.
Meanwhile, Hickenlooper has been mired in an ethics investigation that the national Democratic Party did not anticipate. Being investigated for violating Colorado’s ethics laws is one thing, but the way Hickenlooper is handling the controversy must be terribly embarrassing to Schumer and the DSCC.
The charges against Hickenlooper are substantive. He blew off ethics disclosure requirements and failed to accurately report travel expenses paid for by what he calls “friends” but that are really “special interest parties” while he was governor. In one case, he issued an executive order that directly benefited a wealthy supporter after being treated to a private flight to the wedding of the brother of that wealthy donor. Adding some special color to this episode is that Hickenlooper officiated at the wedding.
After these ethical lapses were exposed, the governor is entitled to state legal representation to answer the charges. But rather than using an assistant state attorney general costing the state $112 per hour, he insisted on the state paying one of Colorado’s most prominent and partisan private election law attorneys at $525 an hour.
The money to pay Hickenlooper’s legal expenses comes from a special fund of $146 million set up in 2003 by the federal government to help states in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy and the 2001 recession to cover essential government services or to cover the costs of certain unfunded federal mandates. Hickenlooper’s legal fees are “essential government services”?
It’s good to be the nomenklatura.
