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You are here: Home / Open Threads / SpaceX Launch

SpaceX Launch

by Cheryl Rofer|  May 27, 20203:53 pm| 106 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Space

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Coming up at 4:33 pm Eastern. You may also discuss Elon Musk in this thread, which is open.

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Previous Post: « Never Help, Always Divide
Next Post: The Universe is Just Fucking With Us Now »

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    May 27, 2020 at 3:57 pm

    Elon Musk would be much better off if someone, anyone, changed the password on his Twitter account and didn’t tell him what the new one was.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    May 27, 2020 at 4:00 pm

    They’ve started loading the propellant, so weather conditions are still in the “acceptable” band.

  3. 3.

    leeleeFL

    May 27, 2020 at 4:01 pm

    @dmsilev: What did the Twit tweet?

  4. 4.

    Cermet

    May 27, 2020 at 4:03 pm

    Musk is an idoit but apparently, knows enough to let people that really understand technical stuff do their thing. Guess that makes him a genius compared to the orange fart cloud.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    May 27, 2020 at 4:05 pm

    @leeleeFL: It’s a general statement. For instance, there was the time, during that kids-trapped-in-cave crisis, that he called one of the rescue people “pedo guy”. And that’s just one of many examples.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    May 27, 2020 at 4:06 pm

    @Cermet: He hired Gwynn Shotwell to actually run SpaceX. Besides having the perfect last name for the job, she’s also really really good at it.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:09 pm

    This is exciting.  What are you guys watching, as a feed?

  8. 8.

    Mike in NC

    May 27, 2020 at 4:10 pm

    @Cermet:

    Musk is an idoit but apparently, knows enough to let people that really understand technical stuff do their thing. Guess that makes him a genius compared to the orange fart cloud.

    Funny how Fat Bastard’s insane musings on drinking bleach or injecting Lysol into your veins went pretty much unreported on by the media. Had Obama said such outrageous things it would have been the subject of endless analysis for several weeks.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:11 pm

    @Elizabelle: NASA’s YouTube channel.

  10. 10.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:13 pm

    @Baud:   Great idea.  Checking that out now.  Was on the SpaceX youtube that dmsilev suggested.

    WaPost also has a video feed on its website.

  11. 11.

    geg6

    May 27, 2020 at 4:13 pm

    A former space geek during my childhood, I am doing all I can to pay no attention to this.  I was not a fan of the Space Shuttle program, though I do value the research done on the ISS.  But the Shuttle program just kind of sealed, for me, the decline of American ambition.  It was a symbol of that to me.  So I quit seeking out information about the U.S. space program.  I find Space X to be an even more ominous symbol.  I absolutely refuse to pay attention to it.  It’s not an American space program.  It’s Elon Musk’s space program.  And I try to boycott anything oligarchic, monomanic assholes like Musk do.

    Enjoy if you like but I’m out.  Unless you want to spend the whole thread bashing Musk.  That I’d stick around for.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:14 pm

    I’m a bad person, but I wouldn’t mind a one-day weather delay so Trump won’t be there.

    ETA: I didn’t realize my power.

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:15 pm

    Oh.  Weather delay coming?

  14. 14.

    LuciaMia

    May 27, 2020 at 4:15 pm

    Those are very cool looking spacesuits. Nice design.

  15. 15.

    Benw

    May 27, 2020 at 4:15 pm

    Sounds like they might be calling it off soon

  16. 16.

    geg6

    May 27, 2020 at 4:16 pm

    @Baud:

    Oh lord, I forgot that Orange Mussolini is there.  One more reason to pay no attention.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    May 27, 2020 at 4:16 pm

    @Elizabelle: NASA live stream on YouTube. It’s sunny with some clouds on the left side of Florida. We probably won’t be able to see the rocket if it launches (except on YouTube like everyone else).

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    @Baud:   I feel the same. Although he can just run down the coast to Mar a Lago.  Is 143 miles from the Space Center.

    Not like Trump’s presence is required in DC.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    May 27, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    Scrubbed. Try again on Saturday.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    May 27, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    Launch scrubbed.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    No launch.

  22. 22.

    GregMulka

    May 27, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    Weather scrub.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    @LuciaMia:   And the capsule too.  Looks Hollywood and Matt Damon-esque.

    It’s been so long since human flight.  (ETA:  As in the space shuttles.  Clearly, we’ve got astronauts up and back to the Space Station.  I am not up on space, much, as you can tell.)

    And scrubbed.

  24. 24.

    HumboldtBlue

    May 27, 2020 at 4:18 pm

    Aaaaaaannnnnddd it’s gone. Launch scrubbed due to weather.

  25. 25.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:18 pm

    Safety first.

    For NASA.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    May 27, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    @Cermet:

    Musk is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is, but that shouldn’t make you think he’s an idiot.  He has been successful in several different business ventures in very different areas, and that suggests he has some actual business acumen.  My impression is that he has some engineering skill too.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    The short time I was on the NASA channel, they did not feel the need to show Trump. 👍

  28. 28.

    Benw

    May 27, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    Bummer!

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    We will meet here again Saturday, right?

    Same bat time, same bat channel.  Not.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 4:20 pm

    “Dammit, Jared, you were supposed to handle the weather.”

    //

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    May 27, 2020 at 4:20 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s been so long since human flight.

    ¿Que?

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    May 27, 2020 at 4:22 pm

    Wish some of that rain would land in our river. If it gets any lower, the cows from the ranch on the other side might decide to stampede through my yard.

  33. 33.

    Martin

    May 27, 2020 at 4:22 pm

    So, i work around a lot of really smart in their discipline people, and as a general rule, the smarter someone is at one particular thing, the less energy and brainpower they dedicate to everything else in their life. There are plenty of exceptions of course, but if you start with the idea that ‘this guy is the best in the world at <insert unbearably obscure thing>, therefore they probably have trouble finding their way home’ and work up from there, you avoid a lot of frustration and disappointment.

    I think of Trump as sort of a molester savant and it does help a bit to come at it from that angle.

    Musk is very good at R&D, that drops off rapidly to production, and falls into a black hole at appropriate social interaction and naming your child.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:22 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:   Was correcting that even as you asked.  Completely forgot about the Space Station.

    @Baud:  All the more reason to watch NASA.

    How strange.  To live in a time of rockets to space, and our idiot in chief won’t even adopt a 17th century solution (a mask) to a pandemic.  Fucker.

  35. 35.

    LuciaMia

    May 27, 2020 at 4:22 pm

    Aaah, bummer.

  36. 36.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:24 pm

    @Martin:

    the smarter someone is at one particular thing, the less energy and brainpower they dedicate to everything else in their life.

    True. I’m very smart when it comes to drafting blog comments.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    May 27, 2020 at 4:24 pm

    @dmsilev:

    Scrubbed. Try again on Saturday.

    So trump will have to cancel his tee time if he wants this photo op?

  38. 38.

    Cacti

    May 27, 2020 at 4:24 pm

    Don’t love the new space suits.

    And Elon Musk should volunteer for the first manned visit to the sun.

  39. 39.

    Cheryl Rofer

    May 27, 2020 at 4:25 pm

    "Trump is bad luck"

    — SpaceX employee to me

    — Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) May 27, 2020

  40. 40.

    Benw

    May 27, 2020 at 4:26 pm

    Wait if masks make us wimpy unmanly men, then astronauts are the wimpiest of the weenies with their “helmets” and “spacesuits” and “life support systems”, those libtards

  41. 41.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:27 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    And he wasn’t even talking about the scrubbed launch.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:29 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:   I love that tweet, and that the source is anonymous.  LOL.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 4:29 pm

    Dolt 45 will now fire the heads of the National Weather Service and NOAA.

  44. 44.

    Martin

    May 27, 2020 at 4:30 pm

    @Roger Moore: He has really solid engineering design chops. But he fell flat on his face when it came time to move up from building one Tesla to a million.

    And yes, he’s even better at finding market opportunities and having the courage to go all-in after them.

    Steve Jobs was similar in terms of seeing the market opportunity and in his case later in life, having the discipline to steer a failing company toward them. But the guy got pancreatic cancer and tried to cure it with carrot juice, which, well, didn’t work despite the worlds best doctors around him telling him it wouldn’t work.

    It speaks to my often used Venn diagram of assholes and extremely successful people. A large circle of assholes  and  within that a tiny circle of extremely successful people (yes, I know Venn diagrams aren’t to scale, but most people don’t). If you have the kind of drive to reach the top of your field, you  are almost certainly sacrificing all sorts of things and people along the way. I think there are extremely few  counterexamples to this (Obama).

  45. 45.

    PaulWartenberg

    May 27, 2020 at 4:31 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

     

    Yup. trump jinxed the launch.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 4:35 pm

    @Benw:

    I assume they’re packing heat at least.  Otherwise, how are they any different from pajama boy.

  47. 47.

    trollhattan

    May 27, 2020 at 4:35 pm

    @NotMax:

    He will Sharpie that fucking rocket right into orbit, post haste!

  48. 48.

    MomSense

    May 27, 2020 at 4:38 pm

    Sometime last week, next month, five years ago I think I saw a snippet about the State if California rejecting the name he and Grimes gave to their child.  Did I dream that?

     

    These launches make me think of Alain.  😞

    I’m going to check on my sourdough starter in his honor.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    May 27, 2020 at 4:39 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: LOLOL what did they expect?

    The guy ain’t called “Shit Midas” for no reason!  =)

  50. 50.

    cope

    May 27, 2020 at 4:40 pm

    Glad they scrubbed because, 1) Trump was there and, B) in the back of my mind was a worry of launch being pushed for political expediency as per Challenger.  Also, too, it’s raining on me (sorry, Betty) and I would not have been able to see or photograph the launch.  Back to “Grant”…

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    May 27, 2020 at 4:40 pm

    @MomSense:

    My kid reports little Puzzle Musk is now named Glen.

  52. 52.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:40 pm

    For something that WILL launch this afternoon:

    Elizabeth Warren is doing an online town hall about Demand Safe Voting at 5:00 Eastern today.

    http://www.ElizabethWarren.com

    Elizabeth will be joined by Indivisible Co-Executive Directors Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, and Voces de la Frontera. They’ll tell us how we can take action in every state to demand safe voting during the pandemic.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 4:43 pm

    @trollhattan

    “Now we’ve got time to paint MAGA in big letters on the side of that sucker. See to it.”

  54. 54.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:44 pm

    @trollhattan:   That’s merciful.  Maybe after Glenn Curtis or Glenn Martin, both aviation design pioneers?

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    May 27, 2020 at 4:47 pm

    @trollhattan:

    Hmmm, well that seems like a very conventional choice.

  56. 56.

    trollhattan

    May 27, 2020 at 4:47 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    Confess my thoughts had wandered to a cologne fragrance: “Glen Musk, like a swarthy meadow.”

  57. 57.

    Ken

    May 27, 2020 at 4:47 pm

    @geg6: But the Shuttle program just kind of sealed, for me, the decline of American ambition.

    Technical ambition, yes. But you must admit that it was a triumph of realpolitik. IIRC components were manufactured in all 50 states and over 300 congressional districts.

  58. 58.

    Sab

    May 27, 2020 at 4:49 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Damn. In Ohio everything is flood stage. I should open up my rain barrels, because regardless of flooding, I expect two weeks from now we will start our new annual summer drought season.

  59. 59.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 4:54 pm

    @trollhattan:   Oh gawd, you’re right.  Glen Musk.  Ewwwww….  sounds like Dollar Store Axe.

    This is Elon’s 6th son.  He had five sons with his first wife (twins, and then triplets), divorce, and then married his second wife twice.

    And now the kid with the unpronounceable or just mysterious  name.

  60. 60.

    Sab

    May 27, 2020 at 4:55 pm

    We have a weird couple in our neighborhood with dozens of rain barrels and also lots of chicckens (urban here.) We didn’t know if they were extreme environmentalists  or normal survivalists until a black ATT salesman came through the neighborhood. They met him at the door with AR15s. I guess that answers that question. Survivalists.

  61. 61.

    trollhattan

    May 27, 2020 at 4:57 pm

    @Sab:

    Ho lee shit. Don’t get caught in the crossfire!

  62. 62.

    Roger Moore

    May 27, 2020 at 4:59 pm

    @Martin:

    I think the idea that most successful people are assholes is one of the great misconceptions.  Monomania can be helpful to success, and it’s certainly possible to get ahead by stepping on the people around you.  But it’s very rare for someone to be extremely successful by themselves.  They get ahead through teamwork, and being nice, or at least tolerable, to the people around you is an important part of fostering teamwork.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 5:00 pm

    OK.  Looks like Elon’s sons are named Kai, Damian, Griffin, Xavier, and Saxon.  The last one is kinda heading into Palin Baby Name Generator territory.

    His first son, who died in infancy, was named Nevada Alexander.

  64. 64.

    egorelick

    May 27, 2020 at 5:00 pm

    I suspected it would be cancelled as soon as I found out:

    1. There was a chance it could be.

    2. Trump and Pence were there.

    Like so many things, it’s just a nudge here or slight bump there that determines the outcome. Enough people fear/hate Trump that launching in his presence was enough to push the decision that way once there was a plausible reason.

  65. 65.

    Benw

    May 27, 2020 at 5:03 pm

    @Baud: good point. Real men have blasters slung low like Han Solo. Take that, dweebs!

  66. 66.

    Roger Moore

    May 27, 2020 at 5:04 pm

    @MomSense:

    Sometime last week, next month, five years ago I think I saw a snippet about the State if California rejecting the name he and Grimes gave to their child. Did I dream that?

    You did not dream it.  The State of California requires all baby names be spelled only with the 26 letters of the standard English alphabet.  They had to change the number in the baby’s name to Roman numerals.

  67. 67.

    Quaker in a Basement

    May 27, 2020 at 5:05 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    And now the kid with the unpronounceable or just mysterious  name.

    It’s pronounced, “Kyle.”

  68. 68.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 5:07 pm

    @Roger Moore

    Although apparently different rules apply to surnames.

    Cartoonist Scott Shaw! legally had the ! made a part of his name.

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    May 27, 2020 at 5:09 pm

    @NotMax:

    California being California, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were different rules for names for newborns and those for people who legally change their name later in life.

  70. 70.

    Martin

    May 27, 2020 at 5:11 pm

    @Roger Moore: I agree with that, but even there, you’ll favor colleagues over friends and family and life balance. And I don’t see many of the more successful individual pulling their colleagues up behind them. Somewhat, but someone has to be on top, get the photo op, do the interview, win the prize, etc. There are no relationships in my personal life as bitter as what I see among former colleagues where one career took off at the expense of others.

  71. 71.

    Raven Onthill

    May 27, 2020 at 5:13 pm

    Do we have to?

  72. 72.

    Uncle Cosmo

    May 27, 2020 at 5:16 pm

    Thread no doubt dead (technically, in suspended animation til Saturday) but I want to ask the dissembled multitude here – or at least that fraction who appreciate science fiction:

    When was the last time you read Robert A. Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold The Moon?

    If you haven’t ever read it, or haven’t for boocoo years, you supposedly can get a PDF here (free registration required – I haven’t tried this so don’t come screaming to me if it don’t work).

    Delos D. Harriman is the man in the title, an immensely successful tycoon, whose primary character flaw is his singular passion: in a world where no one has dared fly beyond low Earth orbit, he wants to go to the Moon.

    Harriman is as much like Musk as any character in a novel written 70 years ago has any right to be. He’s more of a businessman, less of a tech guy, but again, animated by a spacefaring passion.

    Heinlein presents D.D. sympathetically, compared with the pennypinching bottom-lined opposition inside his company and without – given the genre and the author, one would expect no less – but anyone older than, say, 18 reading about the old guy going through his machinations might suspect that – like Musk – there may be some, mmm, less than savory stuff afoot behind the scenes. That can happen when inconvenient reality gets in the way of a visionary. Other than that egregious unforced error re the “Pee Dough Guy”, and his push to keep the Tesla plants open, I don’t see much there. I certainly don’t see any drive to oppress, subjugate or immiserate  large swaths of humanity in the pursuit of EVs or Starships.

    And another thing: Let us dispel with the notion that more than a handful of our “captains of industry” deserved promotion above private first class. IIRC there was a study done comparing corporate performance with CEO compensation which found a strong negative correlation – a corp had an especially good year, the success was credited to its CEO who was richly rewarded for it, and next year it reverted to the mean, because the previous year’s outstanding performance had nothing to do with management & everything to do with dumb luck. Which is what most senior management traffics in – everyone wants to be the one holding the bottle when the lightning ambles by & begs to be caught. Most of them are dumb as a box of rocks.

    (Anyhow, put me down as someone who hopes Musk, flaws & all, gets the Starships flying & the Teslas on solid footing & the storage walls working. YMMV)

  73. 73.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 5:17 pm

    @Roger Moore

    Know for a fact he had the name changed before his son was born, so presumably the kid’s birth certificate includes the exclamation point.

  74. 74.

    Barbara

    May 27, 2020 at 5:19 pm

    @trollhattan: Baby name exhibitionism is not an attractive trait in anyone.  Glen might also hearken to John Glenn — an early astronaut and apparently an altogether wonderful human being.

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    May 27, 2020 at 5:19 pm

    @Elizabelle: 

    Is he a Prince fan? He could do that unpronounceable glyph for his next kid’s name. That would redeem him ever-so-slightly as a human being.

  76. 76.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 5:19 pm

    @egorelick:

    “The radar is clear, but my joints ache like it’s going to rain….Scrub it, boys.”

  77. 77.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    May 27, 2020 at 5:22 pm

    everything Dump touches dies

  78. 78.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 5:24 pm

    @Barbara

    Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraimsdotter Longstocking.

    ;)

  79. 79.

    laura

    May 27, 2020 at 5:29 pm

    Unless you want to spend the whole thread bashing Musk.  That I’d stick around for.

    Waves hand🖐 ooh, ooh, call on me! I’m still pretty confident that the new baby with the ×(**@>V£■ name will eventually seek some form of teenage retribution that will be splashed accross all the papers and end up a ripped from the headlines episode of Homicide SVU or SUV. It may also involve space.

  80. 80.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 5:29 pm

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Hopefully, in this case, the rule will be, everything Trump touches gets delayed.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    May 27, 2020 at 5:31 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Obligatory:

    JOSEPH TARTARO NEVER meant to cause this much trouble. Especially for himself.

    In late 2016, Tartaro decided to get a vanity license plate. A security researcher by trade, he ticked down possibilities that related to his work: SEGFAULT, maybe, or something to do with vulnerabilities. Sifting through his options, he started typing “null pointer,” but caught himself after the first word: NULL. Funny. “The idea was I’d get VOID for my wife’s car, so our driveway would be NULL and VOID,” Tartaro says.

    The joke had layers, though. As Tartaro well knew, and as he explained in a recent talk at the Defcon hacker conference, “null” is also a text string that in many programming languages signifies a value that is empty or undefined. To many computers, null is the void.

    […]

    Sometimes it’s better not to try to be clever…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    Sab

    May 27, 2020 at 5:33 pm

    @NotMax: I like mackerel, to eat, not as baby names.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    May 27, 2020 at 5:36 pm

    re: some of the above

    35 Outlawed Baby Names From Around the World

    Out Amir’s way:

    Parents will not be able to call their babies after animals, insects, fruit, vegetables or colours.

    Numbers are also not allowed, so little James Bonds cannot flaunt their 007 status on their ID cards.

    Other restrictions stop parents giving children royal or honorary titles as names or calling their little ones after Japanese cars. Source

  84. 84.

    Sab

    May 27, 2020 at 5:37 pm

    @Barbara: Yes, but he kept flying too late. Why do we let geriatric people fly way past their car licenses getting yanked. Look up James Imhoff, OK

  85. 85.

    Cheryl Rofer

    May 27, 2020 at 5:43 pm

    Launch abort due to bad weather and giant kitty roaming the pad… https://t.co/3thwAPJwej

    — Tim Robinson (@RAeSTimR) May 27, 2020

  86. 86.

    Miss Bianca

    May 27, 2020 at 5:51 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: Oh, are Giant Military Cats back? That was one Twitter thread I enjoyed!

  87. 87.

    jeffreyw

    May 27, 2020 at 5:54 pm

    @Another Scott:  We called him Little Bobby Tables

  88. 88.

    Yutsano

    May 27, 2020 at 5:56 pm

    Since the thread is open: that fat fuck Pompeo just completely fucked over Hong Kong.

  89. 89.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 5:57 pm

    @Yutsano:   Yeah, I saw that.  Fucker.

    Would not ever happen with a Democratic president.  As the majority of Americans voted for.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 5:59 pm

    @Yutsano: In this case, I don’t know that he’s wrong, although I also am confident his certification has an ulterior purpose unrelated to the truth.

  91. 91.

    trollhattan

    May 27, 2020 at 6:00 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Giant kitteh in area, plus you can’t just fire a rocket into a looming chemtrail. Everybody knows that!

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 6:02 pm

    @NotMax:   No little Mazda Miata Jones?  That’s harsh.

    I remember a baby in Washington, DC.  Name of Porsche Mercedes. Because she was murdered by her dad.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    May 27, 2020 at 6:02 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: I recall Heinlein approvingly depicts Harriman’s willingness to get other people killed in pursuit of his dream (and lots of space fans today like to grouse about how we don’t hold human life cheaply enough–I keep thinking of that whenever I see the anti-maskers around, and notice that Musk got into the “REOPEN AMERICA” nonsense too).

    There’s also the moment when Harriman realizes he’s going to have to launch over inhabited terrain and his solution is “Clear out Kansas.” I’m not sure this kind of audacity is really a good thing, though Heinlein clearly admires it.

    From a technical perspective, the most interesting thing about the story is the constraints Heinlein gave himself. In his Future History timeline, he’d already established that there are amazing nuclear “X-fuels” that would make a Moon rocket relatively easy to build (more or less what he imagined using in the Destination Moon script). But he seems to have wanted to play without a net and depict something more realistic, so at the outset of the story he has the plant (space station?) that produces the X-fuels blow up so that D. D. Harriman is forced to use chemical rockets. What he describes is pretty close to some designs von Braun and others were throwing around at the time, pretty technically plausible for the era and the genre. It’s one of the few stories about the first Moon flight that even comes close to accurately depicting how gigantic an endeavor it would be.

  94. 94.

    Baud

    May 27, 2020 at 6:06 pm

    @NotMax:

    Man, Malaysia really hated Joe Isuzu.

  95. 95.

    TheOtherHank

    May 27, 2020 at 6:13 pm

    So I went and read Elon’s wikipedia page (which I assume is under 24 hour monitoring by Musk-ovites (?), Elon-ophiles(?), something) to make sure that no untoward edits happen), here’s my tl;dr of it.

    Musk grew up rich in in South Africa (family gold (or maybe emerald) mine). He came to N America for college and graduated with a physics degree. During the 90s dotcom boom he started a company that made what-to-do-when-your-here web pages for newspapers in various cities. This company got bought by Compaq (remember them?) for $300M. Elon took his his share and invested on one of the early online banks. That bank merged with another online bank that had already purchased PayPal. The merged banks basically became PayPal. eBay bought PayPal for $4B. Elon took his share and took over Tesla. After that he took over SpaceX.

    So the only thing he actually did was write some webpage software in the mid to late 90s and cash out at the right time. Everything else is using his money to buy cools toys and then make up things to put on his resume (automotive engineer, rocket scientist, etc).

  96. 96.

    Math in PA

    May 27, 2020 at 6:17 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo:  I’m afraid that he’s basically a corporate egomaniac like many others. There’ve been repeated safety violations on his plants because he doesn’t like yellow, for example. He’s a fairly evil man, willing to prize his particular likes and dislikes above the safety of his fellow human beings, and that doesn’t even get into his tendency to try to shove actual experts out of the way in crisis situations.

  97. 97.

    Yutsano

    May 27, 2020 at 6:18 pm

    @Baud: Right now the Chinese Communist Party has passed the law. Hong Kong is protesting mightily against it. But Hong Kong isn’t quite dead yet. I’m certain it has to do with pleasing President Toadface in some capacity.

  98. 98.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    May 27, 2020 at 6:18 pm

    The launch of SpaceX was foiled by my deceased mother, Bertha, as her namesake, Tropical Storm Bertha caused the weather delay.  She was a fervent Democrat.

  99. 99.

    trollhattan

    May 27, 2020 at 6:26 pm

    @Baud:

    Great ad campaign, or greatest ad campaign?

  100. 100.

    Sab

    May 27, 2020 at 6:35 pm

    @Cheryl from Maryland: That is very cool, or “neat” as we say in the Midwest. I miss my mother a lot, but her name just comes up when they or we say ” all of them , Katie.”

  101. 101.

    Cheryl Rofer

    May 27, 2020 at 6:52 pm

    POTUS will be back Saturday after #LaunchAmerica scrubbed today due to weather.

    But the weather didn’t keep crowds away from popular viewing spots.📸@ShorttTimothy

    Story by @EmreKelly w/ me frantically feeding quotes from the press pool. https://t.co/MdTIcjfbwy https://t.co/OezKxUixAu pic.twitter.com/nnBKX10mM1

    — Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon (@alemzs) May 27, 2020

  102. 102.

    Mary G

    May 27, 2020 at 7:01 pm

    @Cheryl Rofer: And the MAGAts will complain that the picture makes them look too close together.

  103. 103.

    Uncle Cosmo

    May 27, 2020 at 7:47 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: Just FTR, Destination Moon (with RAH as one of the script’s 3 co-authors) is IMO a good deal closer to Rocket Ship Galileo, Heinlein’s first juvenile, from 1947. (I have a library hardback copy on my shelf, otherwise pristine – it was the first novel of his I read, at age 10, & made me a fan for life.) The Galileo was a long-distance chemical “mail rocket” converted to atomic propulsion (fission reactor boiling zinc which was then expelled through the nozzle for thrust).

  104. 104.

    The Lodger

    May 27, 2020 at 7:59 pm

    @Elizabelle: Is his middle name Fiddich or Morangie?

  105. 105.

    Elizabelle

    May 27, 2020 at 8:01 pm

    @The Lodger:   That would redeem the name.  Somewhat.

  106. 106.

    glc

    May 27, 2020 at 10:52 pm

    @Cosmo

    Around 1960, I’d say – just the once. Enjoyed it at the time, but I don’t feel a need to reread it.

    Just read Emma Newman’s Planetfall series, going through the current crop of Hugo nominees.

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