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After Weeks of Delay, SpaceX Falcon Launches Communications Satellite Payload
After several weeks of delay, SpaceX has successfully launched from Cape Canaveral AsiaSat's communications satellite, AsiaSat 6. This launch was originally intended to occur on August 27. However, due to a failure of an experimental SpaceX rocket during a test flight, the launch was delayed. The experimental rocket apparently malfunctioned because of a sensor error. The company stated that the same error wasn’t likely to occur in its regular Falcon 9 rocket, but wanted to "triple-check" its systems to be certain.
SpaceFlightInsider has a play-by-play on the launch process and more details on the communications satellites aboard. They note:
[This] marked the fifth flight of the Falcon 9 in 2014. Since the company began using the booster, it had only been able to carry out about two launches annually of the rocket – until now. With the United States Air Force considering the rocket for use under the lucrative Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program and NASA already utilizing it to deliver cargo (and potentially crew) to the International Space Station, the rocket has become a popular player in terms of launch services. The next mission that SpaceX should use the propulsive descent landing system on, is the launch of one of the firm’s Dragon spacecraft carrying out NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 4 (SpX-4) mission – currently scheduled to take place on Sept. 19.
Some days, I honestly think the MBA must have been a Soviet plot to destroy the West.
Amen. I have been thinking something like that for years. MBA programs are like pernicious cults. So many failures and yet MBA's just keep on hiring clones of themselves.
The idea that a company can be run by someone who knows nothing about what the company does is a prime example of MBA delusion. I know of a food manufacturing plant who hired an MBA whose previous experience was in running a train assembly plant. All he could do was to sit upstairs and stair at graphs. Meanwhile the plant function decayed and profitability disappeared. The person he replaced had started his career from the plant floor, and had run the plant profitably for many years. Bring in an MBA and within two years, the damage was done. He was fired.
The other obvious examples: Apple - started by Steve Jobs (not an MBA). Makes Schully (an MBA) CEO. Almost goes bankrupt. Rehires Steve Jobs and becomes one of the world's most successful companies.
Space X, Solar City, Tesla, Paypal started by Elon Musk (not an MBA). All four are remarkably successful and disruptive businesses.
The lesson: People who actually understand the nuts and bolts of the businesses they run make far better leaders than those who don't have a clue what their businesses do. Surprise, surprise.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Apollo 13 should count, but not for what most people know about.
The second stage center engine shut down early due to a thrust chamber sensor reading low pressure. While this did not impact the orbital insertion (the remaining 4 engines fired for an additional 4 minutes to make up for it), the sensor reading that shutdown the engine may have been in error, and is still not understood. However, if this shutdown had not occurred, the vehicle would likely have been lost in just moments after when the shutdown occurred. The center engine was experiencing severe pogo osculations, resulting in the engine flexing the thrust frame up and down by 3 inches, 16 times each second—this motion would have resulted in disintegration of the rocket in short order. The thrust chamber sensor should have been unaffected by the pogo, so that is unlikely to be the cause of the reading that led to the shutdown. So it is possible that while one failure during launch almost destroyed Apollo 13, a second failure actually (temporarily at least) saved the mission.
See this article for more information.
"Suspicion Breeds Confidence"