I have not heard about a west coast launch pad, but I was wondering how they planned to actually accomplish the landing. We (almost) always launch west-to-east, to take advantage of the roughly 400m/s you gain from the Earth's rotation. It wouldn't make sense to launch from the east coast and then have the boost fly back to get to land.
Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California. The first Falcon 9 v1.1 launch, for CASSIOPE, was from Vandenberg.
Here is a sign that SpaceX has at Vandenberg, implying that they intend to both launch from and land at Vandenberg: http://i.imgur.com/YW4tmkR.jpg
Vandenberg is really only useful for polar orbits, and perhaps retrograde orbits, due to it's high inclination and it's geographical relationship to the ocean.
Huh, somehow I always though the first stage would orbit the earth once and then land. I never considered that it doesn't have enought speed or fuel to do so even if forced.
If the 1st stage could make orbit, it would constitute an SSTO craft. You have to have higher ISP than kerosene and higher fuel mass fraction than aluminum can provide to do that.
Not strictly true. The Saturn V first stage could have been used as an SSTO, and it used kerosene and aluminum. The payload would be extremely small, though, so it's not worth it.
Are you familiar with Apollo 13's pogo oscillation? Money quote:
"The engine shutdown was determined to be caused by severe pogo oscillations measured at a strength of 68 g and a frequency of 16 hertz, flexing the thrust frame by 3 inches (76 mm)."
It was this close to ripping the whole rocket apart, but it managed to withstand some incredible shaking until the engine shut down.
Are you familiar with Apollo 13's pogo oscillation?
One of my friends in Houston was dealing with pogo in rockets specifically. So yes, I am familiar with pogo in general, and I had heard of it during the Apollo program.
Neat. Apollo 13's is one of my favorite little-known facts, so I thought I would mention it. They came so close to being famous for a completely different (and equally, perhaps more, catastrophic) reason.
There are many launches from Vandenberg AFB, but most of these launches will travel south over the Pacific. It is generally used for placing payloads in Polar orbits. They never launch over land for fear or casualties if something goes wrong.
> They never launch over land for fear or casualties if something goes wrong.
Yes, that's true now, but at the height of the Shuttle program, Vandenberg AFB had begun to build, and planned to use, a Shuttle launch facility. So that's a policy change, because there was a time when they were more than willing to launch something very heavy over land to their east.
That's all Vandenberg is ever used for aside from missile tests which go west[1], and there would be no reason to use it for launches to the east when you can accomplish those just as easily from Florida without the safety concerns.
[1] http://www.spacearchive.info/vafbview.htm "With the exception of the Pegasus XL, all Vandenberg AFB launches take place from the base. Minuteman III missiles climb rather steeply and head due west. Delta, Taurus, and other satellite launch vehicles fly towards the south and climb more slowly."
It would absolutely make sense to launch from the east coast and have the booster fly back to land. You still gain all the benefit of the extra speed from the Earth's rotation to help you get to orbit. The fact that you fly the first stage back home doesn't affect that at all.
From what I've heard, this is because many Asian countries have a culture of information flashbang. The Yahoo homepage is extremely cluttered and busy, which fits in with what they expect.
The Google homepage, in contrast, is just an empty abyss they can't get anything from. Here in the States we seem to value minimalism, which might be one of the reasons people go to Google (aside from it being a great search engine).
Why are you comparing homepages when the discussion is about email?
This is completely wrong. Most of it is just history. Gmail doesnt value-add anything to people who are content with folders for their email. In fact the labels, conversations etc confuses them. Yahoo mail in other words has less clutter, not more. (And I'm not talking of the look of the page here, but the actual email functionality).
in my opinion, gmail became big when it was a kind of status symbol to have a gmail address. I doubt that ever reached asia. but at one point, there were people with gmail addresses, and people with yahoo and hotmail addresses. and if you had a gmail address and you met another person with a gmail address, you knew that person was "in the know." At that point in time, switching email addresses was seamless -- you'd just switch email addresses. nowadays, you're using email for important things. even just a little bit of inertia would probably keep many people from switching.
Can you clarify what you mean? Maybe not 20, but 15 years ago my dad was mucking around in the guts of our family computer, performing his own upgrades. By the time we got rid of that thing the only original component was the case. And nowadays you can order any piece of hardware you want off the internet and slap it in.
Once this is out, you are paying a premium to not deal with modules by not getting one. It's a $50 phone you can swap components in and out of as upgrades become available. To me, that's infinitely better than buying a new $300 smartphone every other year.
But there's also a second appeal. Right now, phones are impenetrable black-boxes. You get what the manufacturer thinks you want. The reason I think a modular phone will become very popular is the same reason the AR-15 is the most popular gun in America: because you can play with it. You can swap parts in and out depending on what you need.
"Oh, I'm going hiking today? Better stick my extra-big battery and wide-field camera into my phone."
"Apple's putting a new zillion-byte SSD in the iPhone 9Q? Well good thing I can just buy the zillion-byte module for my modular phone instead of having to buy a whole new one."
You wanted to jump out of planes, you were good at it, and you got selected to be one of the elites. Your talent for this and other things drove you towards your success. However, other people see jump school as the key to success, rather than a door to something they enjoy that having talent opens.
The same thing can apply to YC. There are a bunch of people with good ideas and talent who want to be successful, but they hate jumping out of planes. They think that if they can just get into YC and deal with not really enjoying it that much, then they'll be putting themselves on the inside track and it'll be smooth sailing from there. I don't think that's really a great outlook on life.
When he says that the employer is sponsoring learning in that company's particular area, he is right. Learning is not just sitting down with a textbook and taking notes. In most jobs, especially computer science, you're learning every day. You're adapting new solutions to problems, and taking that experience with you. That knowledge can then be applied to future problems.
His company is paying him to solve problems in a particular space. Once he solves them, he knows how to solve them in the future. When working on an OSS project in the same space, he can apply the techniques he learned at his job to that project.
My sister dated a cop for a while, and he offered to give her a PBA Card (Police Benevolence Association, what everyone calls the "Get out of jail free" card). She declined, not because she was particularly honorable or had an aversion to corruption, but because she said she would feel too awkward using it.
"What do I do? When they ask me for my license do I just...hold it out and say 'let me go please'?"
Competition is great. It will help both of these companies refine their product and that's awesome for the users. That's the point of this article, but all I can think is:
But damn does the Uber CEO look like a cunt.
There's absolutely no reason to treat your competitors like that in order to feed your tough-guy ego.
