I didn't find information on when they'd be ready again, but blaming a delay on Falcon Heavy's static fire test on the Government Shutdown is only half the truth.
The point is that with the government shut down they cannot continue to make those incremental steps anymore. It's a shame because today could have been the last of those little steps. We'll find out when the elected officials stop acting like children I suppose.
[1] http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/spacex-progress-...
They're doing soil surcharging, so that's intentional. Don't want the castle sinking into the swamp (it's on 300+ feet of silt[1]).
The steps for soil surcharging are:
1. Pile extra dirt on top of your fill.
2. Wait a sufficient amount of time (usually months/years; it's important to wait long enough[2]) as the dirt compresses and squeezes out water.
3. Remove the extra dirt (also important[2]), and build your heavy structure on top. Now the pre-loaded ground underneath won't settle, because it already did that.
[1] https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/countdown-to-liftoff/
[2] http://www.straits-engineers.com/publications_pdf/publicatio...
edit: pictures of the site https://imgur.com/a/0OXkB
"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Son, the strongest castle in all of England."
This has been going on in South Florida for sometime. A dirt lot is filled with soil sometimes 20-30ft high. And then just as mysteriously, a few years later, it disappears.
I just assumed this was temporary storage of backfill for a construction project elsewhere.
There has been upgrades in automation for the ranges last year which allow a higher frequency of launches. Plus they started launching again from their second Cape Canaveral pad.
I read that even with their own facility they would still be affected by a shutdown.
In what way?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/01/21/space-star...
I don't think anyone's opinion on whether it's reasonable or not really matters for this article. The fact is that they have no budget from which to pay people who operate all the things at the space centre, so they aren't working. I don't think it's any more complicated than that is it? What more could they say?
Exempted: Usually a result of the way it's funded. Some government work is funded by the budget, directly. Others essentially pay for themselves (the government workers acting in essence as contractors or a business, they receive payments from others besides the Congress to do work). Most of those have funding that would last 2-6 weeks. They get to stay open.
None of these people were going to get paid during the shutdown, but they were still expected to work. Their paychecks after the shutdown would pay them. Essentially they're guaranteed the pay, but the pay date would slip.
Although now it's a moot point as it looks like the shutdown is ending.
Well, my buddy in the weather service isn't getting paid, but he is required to go into work.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/furlough...
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/furlough...
Sorry, I know it's not that detailed.
Say, as a company I had a deal where I rent an office, and the owner of the office decides for 2+ days I have no access to my office, because one-sided reasons, I can claim lost revenue from the owner, right?
For those unaware: KSP = Kerbal Space Program, a video game about space exploration
However, the water tower is there, as you can see here: https://twitter.com/wsm1/status/953099809803485184.
That this seems entirely feasible is a testament to how far SpaceX has moved the industry forward (and signifies that they are going to have a huge lead over any competitors).
Baikal would not only need wings and other aerodynamic surfaces, but also was supposed to contain a jet engine. However, perhaps more importantly, it would need to have structural rigidity to bending to be able to fly back horizontally. The result would be a significant mass penalty.
Falcon 9 only needs some landing legs, a little extra heat shielding around the engines, some grid fins, and some extra fuel. As it comes back in tail first, it only needs to be strong in the same direction it needed to be strong when launching. And they can use exactly the same rocket (minus legs and grid fins) in expendible mode where they burn all the fuel to reach orbit rather than saving some for the reentry and landing burns, for payloads that are too heavy to recover the booster.
One thing SpaceX discovered when they first started working on reusability was that high-altitude reentry itself was hard, not just the landing. After booster burnout at about 70km altitude, the first stage is travelling upwards fast enough that it reaches 125km. Their first attempts broke up on reentry, before the parachutes they planned to use were any use. Only by doing a reentry burn could they slow enough to survive to even consider how to land.
If I understood correctly, after booster separation the russian proposal was to fly in an upside down arc starting at 75km using the wing to burn off upwards velocity, so they're not reentering from nearly so high. Would be interesting to see that work - I'm sure they must have done the calculations, but still seems like it must be a pretty hairy reentry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)
And if you're talking about just an idea, sci-fi writers were way ahead of USSR.
It is however relatively new that someone is doing it repeatedly, successfully and is now also reusing the rockets that have returned.
https://latechnews.org/spacex-launches-bulgariasat-1-recycle...
How does Congress stay in session during a shutdown? Where does electricity in federal buildings come from if the Federal govt can't pay for it?
However, the military is entirely part of the federal government, as are many other organizations. In the case of not having a budget, the government is required to shut down all functions that are not essential for safety and security. So things like the military, the TSA, and so on can continue to function, but office workers doing jobs like allocating the funding for highway construction are furloughed, put on temporary unpaid leave from their jobs.
This is, of course, terrible for the efficient functioning of government; when the impasse is over, they will have to come back to their jobs and try to catch up. Oh, and in the time leading up to the shutdown, many of them would have been busy preparing for the shutdown, documenting which functions would be considered essential and thus able to continue during the shutdown; because the deadline was no surprise, and there had been many temporary funding bills leading up to this point, there was always a pretty high chance that this shutdown would happen.
Of course, this inefficiency plays well into the politics of one of the parties, who hold a religious belief that private enterprise is always more efficient than government, and so playing games like this that increase its inefficiency help to sell their case and get government functions sold off to private enterprise, who just so happen, in so many cases, to be some of the largest donors to campaigns of this particular party.
Which is beyond ironic to anyone who's worked in the corporate world, but I guess that's for another thread.
This idea they have that private enterprise naturally evolves toward the most efficient system is laughable.
One party believes 92% of this and the other party believes 83% of this statement, for any non-American reading this.
Also, more on point, many government entities have "carry-forward" funds which are available during a shutdown. In 2013 the Executive Branch (Democrat president) discouraged the use of these funds. The current admin is encouraging their use to ensure as little disruption as possible.
It is a contrived emergency so the political parties can try to increase pressure to get pork through that they would not have otherwise in order to get the votes high enough to end the BS.
IMHO, the federal government should be entirely dissolved and the states should have a more loose confederation like the EU has. Federal law and over spending have gone too far. By overspending, I mean how the DoD decided to spend billions that it was not given by Congress. I don't mean any liberal vs conservative notion of how government should spend.
I know this is a pipe dream, but one way it could happen is through a "shutdown" that never stops.
The shoreline of San Francisco is a national park (donated when the military base here closed). There's a restaurant on the shore called Cliff House, whose landlord is the US government.
During the shutdown, the government forced the restaurant, a private establishment, to close. The owners and the kitchen staff were not allowed to make a living. And because they aren't government employees, they don't get any restitution when the government is funded again.
If a mall shuts down, the stores don’t get to stay open. If a restaurant closes early, the waitstaff doesn’t get paid for missed hours. If budget gets tied up in other projects, competing projects get cancelled or deferred. If customer payments are late, new work & paychecks can’t be released to employees.
Edit: Also important to list the high percentage of startups that fail and layoff employees, often employees who worked under market value in exchange for equity.
I'm sincerely curious if the executive branch this time is pulling the same sort of shenanigans.
(The fact that the dysfunction alone of US government needs a whole dictionary is amusing: gerrymander, filibuster, furlough, ....)
If US is owner and they shut down the restaurant place, don't they loose money by not making rent?! How is that making sense?
Here is a decent article explaining what is still up and running: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/19/578985305/open-or-closed-here...
Essential workers, such as military, are still required to turn up to work, they just don't get paid. It's not the US Government would stop wars just because they can't pay their bills.
Congress, funnily enough, is actually except from the shutdown and members of congress still get paid, which is a bit perverse in my eyes.
As for things like electricity, I assume they just put it all on credit, it's not like the government isn't going to pay the power companies when they finally approve the budget. I usually have a month after my power bill comes in to pay it.
But that's irrelevant to the launch; they cannot launch from the ASDS.
Turns out this delay was shorter than average anyway.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-zuma-satellite-l...
are you saying they conspired to announce a false failure to hide the spy satellite?
2. In the search box at the top, type in “autoplay”
3. Look for “Autoplay policy” and pull down the submenu, then choose “Document user activation is required”
4. Relaunch Chrome for the setting to take effect
It does work all that well, but it is something...
1. Go to "about:config" in the URL bar and hit Return/Enter
2. In the search box at the top, type in “autoplay”
You'll find two variables to modify. `media.autoplay.enabled` and `media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground`. They do exactly what they say they do. Turn them off/on as you wish by double-clicking, changing true to false and vice-versa.
They have in the past.
https://latechnews.org/spacex-launches-bulgariasat-1-recycle...
Government is normally getting in the way or at least slowing down the process of innovation. Hopefully that doesn't happen here at to much a cost to SpaceX and the U.S. tax payers.
The side cores for this flight are reused Falcon 9 first stages, while the center core is new. Falcon Heavy center cores are structurally reinforced, and hence are different enough from Falcon 9 that you can't reuse one as the other; whereas converting between Falcon 9 first stage and Falcon Heavy side booster just involves moving around some external hardware.
The government has done good work on this issue - it's bootstrapped a market for launches using its purchasing power in military launches and ISS resupply contracts, while actively working to preserve a competitive environment and avoid monopolies. It also provides essential services like range safety and airspace management; what's getting in SpaceX's way is the lack of government.
Citation needed, especially as I'll just note we're using a website, many innovative technical elements of which were government funded.
Here's an opinion piece from WaPo this morning on the subject: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-buy-the-spin-go...
tl;dr: Shutting down the government gives credence to those who base part of their political programme on "government is evil lol", when really they just want less regulation on behalf of wealthy donors -- a fundamentally corrupt bargain.
If SpaceX had built their own launch facilities instead of using the government’s, they wouldn’t be beholden to the shutdown like this.
