SpaceX static test?

SpaceX was expected to do its static fire by yesterday. I don't see any
update about it on their web site yet, though. Anybody have any
information about it to share?

Thanks,
- Joe

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:45:26 -0700, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

SpaceX was expected to do its static fire by yesterday. I don't see any
update about it on their web site yet, though. Anybody have any
information about it to share?

I haven't heard anything, but I'd guess that they might have changed
their mind about doing it, since they're not launching as soon as they
thought, and are waiting until closer to launch time.

On Jan 24, 10:54 am, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:45:26 -0700, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

SpaceX was expected to do its static fire by yesterday. I don't see any
update about it on their web site yet, though. Anybody have any
information about it to share?


I haven't heard anything, but I'd guess that they might have changed
their mind about doing it, since they're not launching as soon as they
thought, and are waiting until closer to launch time.

That begs the question of when before a launch does a static firing
typically occur?

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:54:42 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:45:26 -0700, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

SpaceX was expected to do its static fire by yesterday. I don't see any
update about it on their web site yet, though. Anybody have any
information about it to share?

I haven't heard anything, but I'd guess that they might have changed
their mind about doing it, since they're not launching as soon as they
thought, and are waiting until closer to launch time.

As I suspected...

http://spacex.com/index.html?section...om/updates.php

"In an excess of caution, we decided not to proceed with the static
fire this month. The vehicle is now back in the hangar, where the
stages are being demated for careful inspection."

A curious phrasing. An "excess" of caution? If he thinks he's being
overcautious, then why did he do it?

Once bitten, twice shy, I guess. But that's not the way to get
responsive spacelift, which is needed more than ever, with the recent
Chinese ASAT demo.

In article ,
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

"In an excess of caution, we decided not to proceed with the static
fire this month. The vehicle is now back in the hangar, where the
stages are being demated for careful inspection."

A curious phrasing. An "excess" of caution? If he thinks he's being
overcautious, then why did he do it?

He's an engineer, not an English major. I'm just impressed his grammar,
spelling, and punctuation are correct!

Once bitten, twice shy, I guess. But that's not the way to get
responsive spacelift, which is needed more than ever, with the recent
Chinese ASAT demo.

Yes, in an ideal world I suppose he would have set up a production line
to build and (attempt to) launch these things once a month, with the
expectation that half the first dozen launches would fail, but that
lessons learned from each failure would be applied immediately to
subsequent attempts.

But it sounds like he can't afford that -- and even if he could, his
potential customers might not see why blowing up 6 of 12 launches in a
year is better than blowing up (say) 1 of 3 launches over the course of
two years or more. They might be simply counting failures to estimate a
reliability rate, not considering that the 12th iteration is
significantly different from the first.

So he's being cautious, and doing everything he can to make sure the
very next launch is a success. This doesn't necessarily mean that
Falcon won't be responsive once it's up and going. It appears that many
of the safety checks recently added are automated, and whatever other
manual checks they're now doing could probably be automated or
streamlined as well when launch rates ramp up.

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:30:33 -0700, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article ,
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

"In an excess of caution, we decided not to proceed with the static
fire this month. The vehicle is now back in the hangar, where the
stages are being demated for careful inspection."

A curious phrasing. An "excess" of caution? If he thinks he's being
overcautious, then why did he do it?

He's an engineer, not an English major. I'm just impressed his grammar,
spelling, and punctuation are correct!

Well, I'm an engineer, too. But I know the meaning of words...

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Joe Strout wrote:
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

"In an excess of caution, we decided not to proceed with the static
fire this month. The vehicle is now back in the hangar, where the
stages are being demated for careful inspection."

A curious phrasing. An "excess" of caution? If he thinks he's being
overcautious, then why did he do it?

He's an engineer, not an English major. I'm just impressed his grammar,
spelling, and punctuation are correct!

Sigh, modern neobrat students need to take a course in
written and spoken English as a first language.

In article m,
William Elliot wrote:
He's an engineer, not an English major. I'm just impressed his grammar,
spelling, and punctuation are correct!

Sigh, modern neobrat students need to take a course in
written and spoken English as a first language.

Which should be given by someone competent to teach English as a
communications tool, i.e. probably not from an English department.
(E.g., to teach effective technical writing, you want somebody who
has made money as a technical writer, not somebody who did a PhD on
analyzing the sexual subcontext of Shakespeare's tragedies.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Which should be given by someone competent to teach English as a
communications tool, i.e. probably not from an English department.
(E.g., to teach effective technical writing, you want somebody who
has made money as a technical writer, not somebody who did a PhD on
analyzing the sexual subcontext of Shakespeare's tragedies.)

Among my first paid writing jobs ~35 years ago was periodic work for a
medical research foundation. When a batch of grants was awarded, I'd
read the applications (in purest biomedicalese) and produce 300-word
press releases for use by the grantees' institutions, home-town
newspapers, etc: "Dr. Spencer's work may lead to better therapy
for..."

One day I said to my supervisor, the foundation's senior staff writer,
"You know, these doctors are going to have to communicate to lay
people often enough during their careers. The foundation really ought
to make a summary like this part of the grant application." He smiled,
put his finger to his lips and said "ssssssssssssshhh."

Your argument cuts both ways. There are good writers as well as
practitioners of pomodeconstructive jargon among English department
PhDs, and good writers as well as practitioners of other forms of
jargon among technical writers. Either way, some learn to (or care to)
communicate beyond a narrow circle of peers; some don't. "Making money
at it" prods some (but by no means all) from the former to the latter.

Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com

On Jan 26, 12:27 am, William Elliot wrote:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Joe Strout wrote:
(Rand Simberg) wrote:

"In an excess of caution, we decided not to proceed with the static
fire this month. The vehicle is now back in the hangar, where the
stages are being demated for careful inspection."

A curious phrasing. An "excess" of caution? If he thinks he's being
overcautious, then why did he do it?

He's an engineer, not an English major. I'm just impressed his grammar,
spelling, and punctuation are correct!

Sigh, modern neobrat students need to take a course in
written and spoken English as a first language.

Yes, everyone must speak proper English and we must not let language
evolve.

That whole evolution thing is anti-American.