This is supposed to happen tomorrow (CHT Reed Richter):
It looks a tad tricky.
If it succeeds, we can go into Randian rhapsodies about the triumph of human reason.
If it fails, we can go into Hayekian jeremiads about the fatal conceit of top-down planning.
So it’s all good.
From Christian News Wire. (CHT Bruce Majors; be sure to read the whole thing.)
A Cross made from the Cross carried Around the World on foot by Arthur Blessitt (319 nations, island groups and territories almost 40,000 miles) Is ‘Now Orbiting The Earth’! The Cross went up on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Dragon Spacecraft. Celestis was the launch company.
The Celestis canister with the Cross was carried as a secondary payload on the Falcon 9’s second stage & is not on the Dragon. The cross in space is expected to remain in orbit for a year or more.
In other words, it was discarded and left to fall to earth in flames?
The Cross was carried Around the Earth on foot and Now the is Cross Flying Around this Earth over Washington DC, Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Asia, Australia etc.
I’m having trouble picturing the shape of this orbit. I think Isaac Newton might be puzzled too.
The cross is passing over you where ever you are.
Okay, that doesn’t help with the orbit thing.
The private space exploration company SpaceX has just launched an (unmanned) space capsule, headed for a rendezvous with the international space station.
SpaceX is under contract to NASA, so this isn’t true privatisation yet; but at least it introduces a bit of independence.
This seems an appropriate occasion to post once again a link to “How the West Wasn’t Won,” an excellent parable on the incoherence of NASA.
Monash undergraduate Amelia Fraser-McKelvie found the universe’s missing mass during hers.
Perhaps a new answer to the question “Where is everybody?” (CHT LRC.)
And still worse news: shouting huckster and semi-liberventionist Wayne A. Root is the running mate.
In better news, the Phoenix has landed.