Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 10
May 30, 2014
Here Be Dragons
SpaceX finally unveiled DragonRider last night, otherwise known as Dragon V.2: Love the fins (though I’ve no idea what they’re for) and that the solar panels wrap around the trunk. And being a bizjet guy, I particularly like the Gulfstream-style oval windows. There’s lots of them, too, which seems entirely appropriate for a 21st century […]
April 7, 2014
Ode to Spring
The Sun shines The birds sing Heralding Earth, stirring from its slumber But all is despair For The Walking Dead is over And I am sad.
April 3, 2014
After Midnight
If your blood pressure’s not high enough today, then head on over to American Spectator to read about the “Two Midnight Rule.” This is precisely the kind of NHS-style bureaucratic nightmare we all worried about, and it came to pass even sooner than anyone imagined: a family’s beloved father is dead because of a turn […]
March 10, 2014
Strangling the Baby
Why are the Feds so afraid to let humanity out of its crib? http://www.nationalreview.com/article... http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/02/0... The above links are not entirely unrelated. While the flight crew experience minimums came down from on high (or wherever it is Congress resides), the sudden reversal on regulating spaceflight perfectly illustrates how our government looks at us lately. The […]
January 24, 2014
I Told Orville and I Told Wilbur…
“…that thing will never fly.” Behold the Sky Whale: I’m not sure how this thing found its way onto a “serious” news organization’s website, but apparently CNN is easily fooled. Which we already knew. Just remember this is an artistic concept that would be a better fit for Deviant Art instead of a major news […]
January 19, 2014
I Am So Smart, S-M-R-T…
So I’m chilling in the family room the other day while the house is uncommonly quiet. The writer in me screams “get to work!” while the slacker in me argues “but ‘Idiocracy’ is on Comedy Central!” Which brings us to the first blog post of the new year (“But it’s the middle of January,” you […]
December 25, 2013
December 15, 2013
How the West was Hosed
Pictures being worth a thousand words, I give you the American President and British Prime Minister through history. Let’s start with 1945: 1985 (ish): And then there’s last week: OK, so FDR and Reagan weren’t being tempted by hot Danish blondes. But something tells me that wouldn’t have mattered. Time to Jarhead Up (Ranger, Frogman…whatever […]
December 9, 2013
Out of the Blue
Infamously close-mouthed Blue Origin (the Jeff Bezos company that’s not named Amazon) announced a successful full-mission-profile test of their BE3 rocket engine: Blue Origin, the commercial space company bankrolled by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, plans to begin unmanned orbital flight tests of its biconic-shape human capsule in 2018. Ultimately, the company will use an orbital […]
December 4, 2013
Stuff Rich People Do
In sharp (and welcome) contrast to my last post, witness the power of this fully armed and operational free market: Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully completed its first geostationary transfer mission, delivering the SES-8 satellite to its targeted 295 x 80,000 km orbit. Falcon 9 executed a picture-perfect flight, meeting 100% of mission objectives. […]
