Meanwhile in Russia...

[clublights]

And as far as NASA goes, they're too busy trying to confirm global warming and other bullshit leftist agendas. The NASA from my childhood in the 60s isn't the same NASA of today. NASA was once an organization to hold in awe. Now it's just another government agency. It's really sad.

60's NASA was run by Engineers, with a goal.... not bureaucrats with the only goal being getting promoted....

[theGinsue]

And just to increase people's understanding of just how screwed we are these days, the Atlas 5 that we use for most launches these days uses Russian RD 180 motors.

Speaking of which....

Last Friday, SpaceX (the company founder & CEO is Elon Musk of Paypal & Tesla Motors fame) performed a test launch/flight with a Falcon9 from a test range over Texas. Shortly after TO, the F9R systems sensed something wasn't right and executed an "Auto-termination explosion" during the test flight [See video embedded below]. There was supposed to be a launch this evening of another SpaceX Falcon9 rocket but it's been delayed 24 hours due to the failed test launch last Friday. If no one gets figgitty between now & then, it'l launch tomorrow night (SpaceX is notorious for repeatedly delaying their launches & executing/attempting to execute them on holidays - see Falcon9 SES8 launch attempt last Thanksgiving).



ETA: Corrected my text.

[sniper7]

The company my FIL works for has had 1 failed orbit of one of their satellites and the last one blew up. Insured for $1 billion each luckily. Supposed to launch another soon.

they can see the expiration numbers on your license plates.

[zteknik]

[HoneyBadger]

The company my FIL works for has...

they can see the expiration numbers on your license plates.

I seriously doubt this, mostly because of the physical properties of light gathering instrumentation. I did the math a while back and to be able to read the big numbers in your license plate, the focal length of the telescope had to be several times larger than the Hubble (BuffCyclist should be able to support me here if I'm not mistaken). Nevermind the optical abnormalities of 400+km of atmosphere, lighting angles, shadows, humidity, clouds, relative motion, etc. I'm sure your FIL is a great guy, but I would recommend taking this with a few grains of salt. The big issue for me is that if we (US Gov) had this kind of resolution, I would be using it for my job fairly regularly.

[KevDen2005]

In russia, metric system hates you!

YES!!!

[BushMasterBoy]

The Russians are a little less secretive about whats out there in space. And they got to orbit before the US too. This was supposedly released by the KGB.

[Irving]

Good video.

[Circuits]

SpaceX does not use the RD180 engine, it uses a homegrown series of Merlin rocket engines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_%28rocket_engine%29

Only has about 1/5 the thrust of the RD180, but they're made here, in 'murka!

[Aloha_Shooter]

Space Command wants to replace the RD-180s: http://defensesystems.com/articles/2...px?s=ds_250814. I know Gen Shelton expressed dissatisfaction with being dependent on the Russians at the last National Space Symposium.