ASFalcon13

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• Commented on NASA Hands Out Hand Sterilizers at an Education Conference.

  Spending so much time worried about a couple of crates of hand sanitizer is like cutting NASA's budget to try to solve the national deficit. Yup, someone had to go there, might as well be me....

• Commented on NASA Mars Science Laboratory Launch Delayed

  Well, let's think about a possible error scenario, something like a guidance system failure. Either you blow up the rocket before it exits the launch corridor and sink all the radioactive bits into the ocean, or you leave off the...

• Commented on Senate Hearing on Human Spaceflight

  Ok, I'll happily expand it out for you then. Delta IV exists now. By using Delta IV, there will not be any delays to the test due to development issues. If Falcon were to experience some sort of hiccup in...

• Commented on Senate Hearing on Human Spaceflight

  "I guess they have a good reason for not selecting the 100 million Falcon Heavy." Delta IV Heavy exists. Falcon Heavy doesn't. The decision seems pretty obvious to me....

• Commented on Double Standard: Using NASA Twitter Accounts After You Leave (Update)

  "Official NASA Twitter account"? Huh. I was under the impression that the account was the property of Twitter Inc. I was totally unaware that NASA could issue Twitter accounts too. Who knew?...

• Commented on NASA's New Strategy: Close Its Reference Libraries

  On one hand, not having a physical library takes away from the ability to wander the shelves and browse. On the other hand, I've never been unable to pull up a document in an online library because someone else had...

• Commented on It's up to you Mr. Martin. Say something.

  Uh oh, look out folks, Keith's getting tough on teh intartoobs! "To underscore that point, NASA Watch will lie dormant until Friday." Holy cow, dormant! Take that Paul Martin! Of course, if I had to put my own money on...

• Commented on NASA IG Refuses To Comment on Official Abuse of Elderly Woman

  "Not to do so borders on abject cowardice on Martin's part." Or, it might him doing his job correctly. For example, nobody involved in an NTSB airplane crash investigation is supposed to comment at all until the investigation is complete....

• Commented on NASA Evacuates NEEMO - JSC Deliberately Withholds Information

  In the same vein as Hobart's comment... "If something similar happened on a shuttle mission or on the ISS, you know that NASA PAO would have been all over this - and not releasing that information would cause a firestorm...

• Commented on Dayton Uses New White House Online Petition Process To Get A Shuttle

  Ok, so here's my idea of the day. It's clear that New York isn't at as prepared to accept a shuttle as they claimed they were. Instead of sending Enterprise to New York, send it to... ...nope, not Dayton. Not...

• Commented on GAO Report on DoD EELV Acquisition (Update)

  "Spacex actually can deliver a Falcon launch at the price they claim. If they are allowed to compete fair and square for contracts, they would win hands down." They can? Holy crap, where do I sign up for these low,...

• Commented on Jose Hernandez, Social Media, and Politics

  "Once again it is clear that a lot of his followers on Twitter were attracted as a result of a NASA-funded activity." And a lot of people were attracted to John McCain's bid for the presidency in 2008 because of...

• Commented on SLS, Saturn V, And Ares V Color Schemes (Update)

  Ok, let me see if I've got this right. We had NASA's recent announcement about their partnership with ATK to build the Ares 1 (oops, I mean the Liberty rocket), we have Orion in the works for deep space missions...

• Commented on Does SMD Have a Bias Against Venus?

  Why blame SMD for having a bias against Venus? As Marc N. Barrett pointed out, with its 460 degree surface temperature and 90 atm carbon dioxide atmosphere, isn't it just as fair to say that Venus has a bias against...

• Commented on More Sour Grapes From Mike Griffin

  I've got to agree with Brian Bernhard here...how is it sour grapes if he's right? NASA's supposedly an executive branch agency, but where the hell is the chief executive? We haven't heard a lick from Obama about NASA since April...

• Commented on Progress Failure Prompts Call To Increase Commercial Space Spending

  I think that the fun has only just begun. Now the Russians will perform their accident investigation, and we'll have no choice but to take their word as for what they announce as their conclusions. If the last call of...

• Commented on Choir Practice With Bullhorns at NASA

  I agree with you Bob. If you want to even have a hope of grabbing attention, there's got to be some sort of human aspect to the story. And I'm not just talking about the engineers here...Phoenix got a lot...

• Commented on Choir Practice With Bullhorns at NASA

  Thirty seconds. That's how long it took me to Google "Mars NASA" on my smartphone, find the official JPL Mars Exploration site (conveniently, the first link listed), then follow the "Images" link under the "Multimedia" tab. No specific project knowledge...

• Commented on Choir Practice With Bullhorns at NASA

  JonathanN, I'm going to repeat a position that I posted here a couple of weeks ago (see http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/08/nasa-releases-v.html#comments). The events you mentioned are a big deal to us hardcore spaceflight enthusiasts, but to the public in general, it's still just...

• Commented on NASA's IT Summit Is Underway

  "Why can't NASA civil servants and contractors use Facebook (or Google+) or both? And please don't throw "firewall" or "ITAR" nonsense back at me in the comments section...surely they can figure out how to offer employees the same tools that...

• Commented on One Last Photo Op

  I read an interesting article in Texas Monthly a few years ago about a front-line surgical team in Iraq. Their job was simply to stabilize patients just enough to get them onto a helicopter and airlift them to advanced care...

• Commented on SpaceX - Becoming a Market Leader?

  "Spacex doesn't have the yoke of tradition dragging it down like the big boyz. They don't do things the old way, they won't expand the old way either." They don't have the experience of the "big boyz" either. Once upon...

• Commented on WATCH LIVE: Bolden Speaks at NASA Future Forum

  "We're months away, not years, from an American capability to deliver cargo to the International Space Station." Well, that's cool, I guess. I'm glad he can find some pride in saying that, after we've just retired the most advanced and...

• Commented on A Sad Photo Essay on Human Space Flight (Optimistic Update)

  I agree with bassplayinben here. Seems to me like the photographer was trying to be "controversial" or "edgy", but the whole shoot just came off as rather juvenile to me, on about the same intellectual level as a Beavis and...

• Commented on NASA Releases Vesta Images

  Sorry, but I'm with JoeCooper on this one. This sort of thing is exciting to folks like us (and believe me, I work with NASA space probes, this is exciting to me), but will barely get noticed outside of the...

• Commented on Pete Olson Can't Make Up His Mind

  This just in! Washington DC politician gives somewhat contradicting statements to different audiences! Film at 11....

• Commented on NASA and ULA Form Commercial Partnership

  With all due respect Tinker, in my line of work, faith is an unaffordable luxury. Decisions require evidence and data, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Math and physics on their own are tools used by engineers, but are not,...

• Commented on NASA and ULA Form Commercial Partnership

  "Redundant avionics? Ha! Elon Musk designed PayPal , dude." ...you heard it here first, folks! Elon came up with a successful internet business concept this one time, which obviously makes him uniquely qualified to design two-fault-tolerant flight-certified hardware. Clearly. I...

• Commented on President Obama Announces "Capture the Flag" in Space

  Bringing back the STS-1 flag from ISS? That's the best space-based game of Capture the Flag they could think of? Weak. Well, screw that. I'm issuing my own challenge: At 17:54 UTC on July 21, 1969, the exhaust of Eagle's...

• Commented on NASA Seeks STEM Education Input

  Perhaps it's because I'm a pilot, and having to study the FARs has given me some fluency in legalese...but I don't see how this is unclear in any way. Sigh...ok, I guess I'll translate. Basically, due to and working with...