Discussion for article #229437
I believe that picture is supposed to accompany this article:
Sarah Palin: Despite The ‘Haters’ I May Run For Office Again
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At least no one was hurt. More than you can say about people playing with guns.
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What a waste of money.
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“This is the first disaster in that effort.”
Better a rocket than a rocket and people.
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Doubt the truth of this. That is obviously Pat Robertson reacting to the two guys next door getting married.
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Saw it live. Wow. One of the old MX rockets which is why they can’t launch it from a more southern lattitude-treaties and all.
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See? More proof that the government can’t be trusted to do anything right! Except, of course, that this was a rocket built by the private sector.
Of course, Republicans want it both ways. They complain about how we’re spending too much money and then they complained when President Obama cut NASA funding.
Funny thing, that.
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Sounds like SpaceX just got a new contract…
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July 4th fireworks in October! Yee-Haw!
Honey get me another beer, K?
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Being old enough to remember watching The Challenger accident live on TV all I can say is thank god it was unmanned.
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Thanks, Obama.
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Ain’t it wonderful how things work out when the government outsources critical jobs? You know like education, and social security, and corrections. Yessir, saves money and everything.
IKR? He took time away from his golf game and plotting to spread Ebola among all Americans in furtherance of his imminent coup just to travel to Virginia to blow up a single lousy rocket? What’s up with that?
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Or, you know, maybe its just a thing that happened that doesn’t actually prove that your personal ideological beliefs were right all along. Because it turns out, launching giant tubes of explosives into space without them blowing up is still hard.
Sheesh, can’t we leave the politicization of all fact to the Republicans? I mean, the reality is that the private guys have been moving a helluva lot faster and cheaper and, in some ways, better on the station resupply and ride to LEO front than NASA has on its thirty year quest to get something designed, built and manned into space that wasn’t built in the 1970s.
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The private sector doing a better job than gubmint…yeah right.
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Recently retired launchers (USA):
Space Shuttle: 135 launch, 2 failures. Cost per launch at $1.5 billon over the life of the program.
Titan 34D: 15 launches, 3 failures
Titan IV: 39 launch, 4 failures. Cost per launch $432 million.
Delta 3: 3 launches, 3 failures.
Current launchers (USA):
Atlas 5: 49 launches, 1 failure. Cost per launch at about $200 million. Uses Russian engines.
Delta 4: 27 launches , 1 failure. Cost per launch at $140 - $170 million.
Commercially developed launchers (USA):
Orbital Sciences Corporations Antares: 5 launches, 1 failure. Undisclosed cost per launch. Antares first stage work was contracted to the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye SDO, designers of the Zenit series. The core provided by Yuzhnoye includes propellant tanks, pressurization tanks, valves, sensors, feed lines, tubing, wiring and other associated hardware.
SpaceX Falcon 9, 13 launches, 1 partial failure. Cost per launch $61 million. 100% American designed and manufactured. Cost per launch will dramatically drop from the current industry-leading price with the soon to be introduced Falcon 9R, a reusable first stage. Even without a reusable first stages, Falcon Heavy (do to launch next year) will reduce the cost per pound by half of what the Falcon 9 can deliver.
Just because it’s a 100% government funded program doesn’t make it safer, and it will NEVER make it less expensive to launch. I will agree that using Russian designed and Ukrainian build systems is a bad idea though.
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ANOTher OhBummer #fail. Where IS OHbummer’s POlicy on EBOLA? ISIS? EcONOMy? Where IS HIS POLIcy on exPLODIng ROCKets? WORse PResident Ever!1!!!one!!!1!!!
This is the launch that was just scrubbed a day ago because a sailboat wandered into the area directly beneath the flight path. At the time, I thought, “Man, how anal can they be? Just fire the rockets and let the wanderer assume the risks.”
Today, of course, I have a different opinion. I do wonder if the failure had anything to do with the scrub.
Also wonder what this says about our MX missile reliability. Glad that was 5000lbs of supplies and not a set of nuclear warheads that went kerplooey on launch!