We have Space X and we have NASA. This was NASA yesterday.
"NASA said today in a conference call with reporters that it would not ever be flying its experimental electric aircraft, the X-57, citing safety concerns that are insurmountable with the time and budget they have for the project. The X-57 program will wind down without the aircraft ever going up into the sky."
NASA said that the reason behind permanently scrubbing the flight is safety and time. “Unfortunately, we recently discovered a potential failure mode in the propulsion system that we determined to pose an unacceptable risk to the pilot’s safety, and the safety of personnel on the ground, during ground tests,” Bradley Flick, the director of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, said in the call. “Mitigation of that failure would take the project well beyond its planned end at the end of this fiscal year, so NASA has decided to end the project on time without taking the vehicle to flight.”
Do go and read the article and then set a minute aside to laugh. NASA was once the agency that sparked an American on the Moon after various test phases in short order. It could no more do that today then it could select an all white male flight crew. It's way worse than broken.
6 comments:
Not the sightest bit of ringing in the ears tonight. If I stepped into the cure there will be hell to pay. It's the wrong cure. But really, the sllence is quite golden. You don't know it until it goes away and then you really miss the silence and the bird calls early in the morning. I know I do.
Quiet!!!!!! with a bird singing outside the window. God I missed that a lot.
The comment above was mine. I use the medium at my fingers to document the things worth writing down.
"The battery functional test was conducted by using a power supply that was able to produce specific amounts of current, each representing different conditions during various stages of a flight, including taxiing, climb, cruise-climb, go around and landing. "
The way I read this sentence from the NASA report, it comes across as weasel-wording for the fact that NASA didn't employ an actual battery for the test, instead using a (AC derived) power supply that replicated the battery under the conditions they were testing. I also obtained the impression that certain (unreported) conditions arose that didn't give the testers full confidence that the battery they were testing would provide full service under typical flight conditions.
Maybe it's just the yellow streak running through NASA these days: perhaps not!
I actually met Bolden but back when he was CG of the MEU we had in support. He came ashore to deal with a negligent discharge. I was not impressed. He wanted us to clear our of our CP so he could loadshed on his company commander and I had to point out that this was our CP and we were the waterside security for Madeline and the entire gaggle of thousands of diplomats there in Doha for the MENA. The general allowe us to keep our CP fully manned while chewing out the major for an ND that actually missed me by about 30 feet.
I didn't like anything at all about charley bolden but NASA was fully broke long before he took the wheel.
There's no reason, save for experience, to have an all-male flight crew on a space ship. The best crew would be 3 women with no legs. Women because they're smaller and lighter than men, and legless because they're not needed in space.
If you haven't read Bujold I recommend her to you.
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