Quotulatiousness

May 1, 2014

SpaceX and the successful re-entry experiment

Filed under: Space, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:58

Amanda Wills talks about the most recent SpaceX achievement:

When SpaceX launched its Dragon supply mission to the International Space Station on April 18, it tried something revolutionary after the spacecraft was safely in orbit.

Behind the scenes, CEO Elon Musk and his team had been testing the reusability of this rocket. On that Friday, the team returned part of it to Earth for the first time in history. Once Dragon was in space, the first stage separated and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. As the helium-filled rocket slowed, it extended four 25-foot-long landing legs and used its thrusters to briefly hover over the Atlantic Ocean before plopping down ever so gently onto its surface.

Musk and his team pulled it off — a huge feat considering that the chance of success was only around 30% to 40%. The SpaceX team recovered the raw video from the camera that was on board Falcon 9, and software engineers have spent the last week trying to repair the footage, which was taken just before splashdown.

[…]

The team was able to bring back the first stage. The rocket was clearly vertical — an important detail in testing reusable rockets — and the soft landing was successful. However, the weather wasn’t cooperative that day and the stage was destroyed by rough waves. Fortunately, Musk said his team was able to recover bits of the rocket.

Rethinking Canadian broadcast regulation

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:27

On Google+, Michael Geist posted a few thoughts on hitting the reset button in Canadian broadcast regulation:

The Broadcasting Act is a complex statute that lists more than twenty broadcasting policy goals. Yet for decades, Canadian policy has largely boiled down to a single objective: Maximizing the benefits from the broadcasting system for creators, broadcasters, and broadcast distributors such as cable and satellite companies.

Consumers were nowhere to be found in that objective and it showed. Creators benefited from Canadian content requirements and financial contributions that guaranteed the creation of Canadian broadcast content. Broadcasters flourished in a market that permitted simultaneous substitution (thereby enabling big profits from licensing U.S. content) and that kept U.S. giants such as HBO, ESPN, and MTV out of the market for years in favour of Canadian alternatives. Cable and satellite companies became dominant media companies by requiring consumers to purchase large packages filled with channels they did not want in order to access the few they did.

As I mentioned in a conversation last night, the Canadian market for broadcast, telecommunications, and internet providers has been carefully managed by the government to minimize the whole messy “competition” thing and ensure quasi-monopoly conditions in various regions across the country. The regulators prefer a small number of players in the market: it makes it easier to do the “regulation” thing when you can fit all the regulated players around a small table, and it also provides post-civil service career opportunities for former regulators. Having a larger number of competing organizations makes the regulation game much more difficult and reduces the revolving door opportunities for former regulators.

Stephen Harper moves to 9th on the longest-serving PM list

Filed under: Cancon, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:42

It hasn’t been a banner year so far for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. David Akin notes that it’s Harper’s birthday today and that he’s now our 9th longest-serving PM:

Today is Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 55th birthday. It is also is his 3,005th day in office. (The Library of Parliament counts his first day as Feb. 6, 2006, the day he and his first cabinet were sworn in.)

At 3,005 days in office, the country’s 22nd prime minister is its 9th longest-serving prime minister.

Here’s the top 14 as of today:

  1. William Lyon Mackenzie King: 7,824 days in office
  2. John A. Macdonald: 6,934 days
  3. Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 5,620 days
  4. Wilfrid Laurier: 5,565 days
  5. Jean Chrétien: 3,689 days
  6. Brian Mulroney: 3,202 days
  7. Robert Borden: 3,195 days
  8. Louis St. Laurent: 3,139 days
  9. Stephen Harper: 3,005 days
  10. John Diefenbaker: 2,130 days
  11. R.B. Bennett: 1,902 days
  12. Lester Pearson: 1,824 days
  13. Alexander Mackenzie: 1,796 days
  14. Paul Martin: 786 days

QotD: Leadership

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:01

I’m a little slow on the uptake from time to time. Occasionally people mistake this form of aphasia for things right in front of my face as a kind of aplomb — it isn’t. To coin an aphorism by butchering Kipling quotes: If you seem to be keeping your head because you’re a little dimwitted, while everyone else is smart enough to be losing theirs, they’ll often put you in charge of that pack of panicking headless men, for all the wrong reasons, and then you’ll be a man in a world of trouble, my son.

Sippican Cottage, “Real Estate, Red In Tooth And Claw “, Sippican Cottage, 2013-11-12

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