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[20200530_203823 UTC: UPDATE: Launch was successful, all systems nominal, first stage successfully landed on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You", and Ben and Doug are on their 19-hour flight to the ISS (International Space Station). Live coverage continues all the way through docking.]
Today's the day— weather permitting, America is returning to space:
During Wednesday's technically smooth countdown, NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken came within 17 minutes of launching before a scrub due to poor weather. Now the crew will suit up and try again on Saturday despite still iffy weather.
SpaceX is working toward an instantaneous launch at 3:22pm ET (19:22 UTC). The big concern again today is the development of thunderstorms near the launch site this afternoon, which could violate a number of weather criteria, including not just precipitation, but also residual electric energy from lighting in the atmosphere. Overall, the chance of acceptable weather at launch time is about 50 percent, forecasters estimate. They are also watching for down-range conditions in case an emergency abort is required during the rocket's ascent to space.
This is nothing new for NASA or U.S. human spaceflight. As the commander, Hurley, noted on Twitter Friday that his first space mission in 2009 scrubbed five times for weather or technical issues before it finally lifted off. "All launch commit criteria is developed way ahead of any attempt," Hurley said. "This makes the correct scrub or launch decision easier in the heat of the moment."
It has been such a long, long road for NASA and SpaceX to reach this moment—thousands of engineers and technicians have labored to design, develop, test, and fly hardware for the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket over the last decade. But now the hardware and crew are ready, and at just the right time, to go fly.
[...] A combined NASA and SpaceX webcast will begin today at 11am ET (15:00 UTC).
Launch is scheduled for exactly 2 hours from the time this story goes live.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:25AM (1 child)
I was just thinking how unfortunate the timing was, the more things change ....the more they stay the same
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/gil-scott-herons-poem-whitey-on-the-moon/239622/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:35PM
Looking at things from a different perspective there's also the saying, 'When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.' That statement was made by a man who lived about 2,500 years ago.
If we spent our time since then trying to solve all of these petty problems instead of just moving society forward, it's likely that society and technology today would look pretty much as it did 2,500 years ago. Some guy acted like idiot, the police killed him. I do care about this issue because I think police brutality is not really helping anybody, but among the list of priorities for society it ranks nowhere meaningful. It'd be one thing if police were randomly assaulting people, but they're not - they are attacking people who actively and intentionally provoke them. That doesn't justify their behavior, but it minimizes the negative consequences of it. Don't act like an idiot to police and they won't act like idiots towards you - regardless of race, religion, or creed.
Beyond this, what do you want to do? People chimping out over another dead idiot is not only going to fail to achieve anything productive whatsoever, but will likely end up doing the exact opposite of what the rioters ostensibly think they want. After the LA riots the LA police didn't suddenly go 'Oh dang, we should be a bit more careful about beating the shit out of people in the future.' They instead decided 'We need to be able to crush these sort of riots more effectively in the future.' and became even more militarized and relentless. The riots end up creating the very cause the police will use to become even more militarized which trends towards greater brutality. This whole thing is an endless circle of people, on all sides, responding to stupidity with even more stupidity.
By contrast it's not out of the question that America could be colonizing other planets within 10-20 years. And that would completely reshape not only our society but our entire species. Imagine something akin to manifest destiny except without the nastiness involved when that destiny already is claimed by somebody else, and one that basically never ends. *That* is one potential future for humanity - a time of literally endless fruits for any who seek them. And today we just got a whole lot closer to achieving this future.