At the risk of becoming a space blogger — really it’s just a healthy interest — I wanted to link to this as a good example of clarity and corporate communication. No matter what spin SpaceX put on the launch from the other week, the media focused on the rocket’s failure. Inevitably so, perhaps. In the news, nothing succeeds like failure.

I’m no pollyanna, but I’m cheering for SpaceX.  Just on principle, if anything.

Still, you have to hand it to Musk for writing up (or at least having written in his name) this report and posting it so quickly. The launch was only just a few days ago, yet they’re willing make public their preliminary findings. Maybe it is from desperation, but it also seems like good communications strategy.

Musk writes in friendly, open tones. There are lot of technical details, but they are explained well and he uses some reasonably good analogies.

Take, for example, the discussion of why the rocket’s second stage failed — after a few minutes, when the amount of liquid oxygen fuel started to get low, the fuel sloshed around too much for the fuel pump to capture. The momentum from the sloshing, as near as I can tell (IANRS*), caused the second stage to start wobbling like an unbalanced washing machine. Duh, why am I telling you this, here’s the quote:

n a nutshell, the data shows that the increasing oscillation of the second stage was likely due to the slosh frequency in the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank coupling with the thrust vector control (engine steering) system. This started out as a pitch-yaw movement and then transitioned into a corkscrewing motion. For those that aren’t engineers, imagine holding a bowl of soup and moving it from side to side with small movements, until the entire soup mass is shifting dramatically. Our simulations prior to flight had led us to believe that the control system would be able to damp out slosh, however we had not accounted for the perturbations of a contact on the stage during separation, followed by a hard slew to get back on track.

The solution, it appears, is to design better “slosh baffles” to prevent the fuel from bouncing about. I hope it works.

In the second portion, he gets a bit defensive, but perhaps rightfully so given the press he’s received regarding the launch.

Here, he gets a bit close to protesting too much, but saves it just short of whining:

This is not “spin” or some clever marketing trick, nor is this distinction an invention of SpaceX — it has existed for decades. The US Air Force made the same distinction a few years ago with the demonstration flight of the Delta IV Heavy, which also carried no primary satellite. Although the Delta IV Heavy fell materially short of its target velocity and released its secondary satellites into an abnormally low altitude, causing reentry in less than one orbit, it was still correctly regarded by Boeing and the Air Force as a successful test launch, because sufficient data was obtained to transition to an operational phase.

Lastly, while I like the images, it would have been nice to have a little more context. What’s the significance, for example, of having the nozzle high above the horizon? If there is none, why mention it?

Anyway, next Falcon 1 launch is at the end of the summer. This time, they plan an actual operational mission, so we’ll see how it goes.

*I Am No Rocket Scientist

I had a dream last night that Monika was involved in a production of Dark Side of the Moon.

Now, the show was billed as Pink Floyd, but it was like one of those tours of the The Platters or The Temptations, where none of the big names of the group were there. Roger Waters wasn’t there and neither was David Gilmour, in fact, I don’t think any of the actual band members were there at all. I had the distinct impression that they were all performers who helped the band out on previous tours or in the studio.

It was in a dingy auditorium where the staff was strangely absent. It turns out they forgot the snow machine, so they had to bring in huge dirty mounds of the stuff to place between the audience and the performers. (I flashed to staff members stomping about in the woods outside, looking for some slush.) The idea was that the ice would melt slowly over time, gradually revealing the band. It didn’t work out that way, as the snow was mostly dirty and slow to melt.

My wife and I were pleased that the show opened with Monika, but she wasn’t singing a Floyd song. As far as I can tell, it was Guns N’ Roses’s “Paradise City,” but with lyrics about how Monie slept with a girl who slept with a girl who slept with Roger Waters. That was apparently her connection to the band.

For some reason, the entire audience had copies of the lyrics and we all flipped through it as she sang. I clearly remember feeling annoyed with the noise from the shuffling papers.

The show was gawdawful and we were torn between leaving and staying to support Monika, who was actually quite good, by the way. (Her “Paradise City” was thoughtful and nostalgic, with a hint of tragedy. When I woke this morning, it made me think of Jerry Orbach singing “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks.)

Worse, they never turned the lights down, perhaps in the hope that the lights would melt the snow. I felt trapped, although Aly managed to escape by faking a phone call. I remember having to defend her seat against some scrawny, dirty-faced kid in a wife beater. I don’t know what I said to him, but I feel bad about it.

If they ever got to any Floyd songs, I don’t know. They were in the middle of some elaborate GWAR-like set piece when Julia woke me up.

Poor kid had a temperature.

Apparently fever dreams are catchy.

UPDATE:  No, I don’t intend to dreamblog every day. I usually do not have memorable dreams, but I thought this one was worth sharing.

Oddly enough, this morning, my coffee lady told me that Roger Waters is going to be in town this weekend performing, shit you not, Dark Side of the Moon. I swear I had not heard of this. No ads, no reviews, no references from snarky DJs.  Spooky.

Letterman’s old clueless old man — as opposed to his current clueless old man, Paul — has passed on. Larry “Bud” Melman is dead.  

It wasn’t you’re real name, but that’s how I’ll remember you.  I didn’t know you were still alive, but I’ll miss you know that you’re gone. R.I.P., funny dead guy.

A BBC documentarian was mauled a bit by a rabid cheetah. He’s fine, thanks to medical care, but I can’t quite help but thinking of the possibility of a slow painful death administered by the world’s fastest land mammal. Neat.

Add rabid cheetahs to the nightmare file.

From the article:

“It was desperately sad that such a beautiful animal should succumb to such a deadly virus,” said King.

Well. Gosh. I think rabid opossums are cute in their own frothy, rat-faced way.

Then again, I’ve never been on the receiving end of a faceful of rabid cheetah love, so I guess I’m not in a position to judge their inherent beauty.

I wonder if Tarzan ever had to worry about rabid Cheetah.