Yesterday morning, SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket and accompanying Dragon capsule into orbit, and safely brought Dragon back home. This was COTS Demonstration I, which means they are proving to NASA that they are capable of launching and maneuvering cargo (and eventually astronauts) into orbit and to the International Space Station.
This mission is paramount because the Space Shuttle program is being decommissioned and we’re going to have to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets to get astronauts and cargo to the ISS. America needs to act fast, and SpaceX is stepping up to the plate and has recently hit three home runs.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 Takes Off
SpaceX performed this feat with just a FRACTION of the budget and number of failures that other government entities and larger companies have had. They are showing that privatizing works when done right. Put a bunch of geniuses in a room with a solid vision, a fiscal goal to achieve, and an inspirational leader, and this is what you get.
I am very close to many people at SpaceX, as they were one of my primary customers in my old sales job. I am still friends with many of the employees, as they are a great group of guys. I am honest when I tell you that every time I stepped into that building, I was the dumbest person in the room. I can’t say enough good things about them, the missions they’ve accomplished, and how they do so much with so little.
SpaceX is founded by Elon Musk, who was the co-founder of PayPal and also runs Tesla Motors.
What the SpaceX Launch Means to Me… and America
Note: This is the way I see things. I follow space, but not so closely that this is how it all went down
Over the past decade, we have had two American government administrations that have done nothing but balloon the size of the government with basically zero productive results. There has been nothing but bureaucratic waste, failure, and endless “wars”.
Our Space Shuttle program has been ailing, as was evident by the 2003 Columbia disaster. Our shuttles are no longer certifiably safe, and they need to be put to noble rest. So Congress commissioned NASA to create the Constellation program, a new human space transport program. Sounds cool, we can keep up with Russia and China, right?
Wrong.
As many expected, NASA shit the bed with Constellation. They were so covered in shit that they were unable to even provide a reasonable estimation for how much the program would even cost!! Talk about flying blind! (Original 2004 NASA estimates were that it’d cost $230 Billion to get to the moon)
So much win.
So I have to credit President Obama for doing his homework and canceling the program. Instead, he decided that it was time to take a “bold new approach to human space flight that embraces commercial industry”, as Constellation was “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation.”
So he created the COTS program, designating $6 Billion to fund commercial technology companies to get it done. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences won the bids, with behemoths Lockheed Martin and Boeing left licking their wounds.
What you see in the video above is somewhere south of $600 million worth of investment. That is less than the amount of “cost threats” NASA calculated as being risky endeavors for the Constellation program. While this bloated program was busy making mistakes (yet keepin’ them cushy jobs!), SpaceX got busy flying rockets – and making profit.
I know that it’s not so clear cut, and SpaceX still needed a LOT of NASA help to communicate out there, but let me continue.
Okay… But why should I care about any of this?
Dragon Capsule Comes Home
Good question. This country is on a downward spiral, so why are we worried about sending expensive rockets into space?
The first part of the answer is that if the shit hits the fan, we may need manned missions that we can operate. Even with SpaceX, the US still has a gap where we cannot fly manned missions ourselves after Atlantis is decommissioned. We will have no safe shuttle!!!! SpaceX doesn’t think it can officially bring an astronaut to space for 3 more years, which probably means 4.
Sure, we have companies like Lockheed, Boeing, and SpaceX that can bring your satellite into space. But if we need to do spacewalks to fix things, do we really want to rely on the Russians and Chinese? It’s not a good situation if relations go downhill, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I for one don’t completely trust anyone but Americans with my precious cargo and communications systems.
The second part of the answer is this: While NASA is less than 1% of our budget, it’s a microcosm for everything that is going wrong with this country.
You can spend billions upon billions of good peoples’ money by pushing paper around, or you can let a bunch of smart people attack the problem with the incentive of that forsaken word, PROFIT.
So my question back to you is, if a company of 1200 employees can accomplish at a fraction of a price what a huge government organization of 18,000+ people cannot do… where else can this country save money and put power back into the hands of the people?
It’s not rocket science, people. Well, except it is, and privatization STILL worked. Why not try it in places where it’s a bit easier than building space ships?
So congrats once again to SpaceX and all of my friends and past associates.
Yesterday was a great day for America and our founding principles.
Elon is 39, and today I turned 29. I have exactly ten years to be as fucking cool as that guy.
Love this article and love SpaceX – “Put a bunch of geniuses in a room with a solid vision, a fiscal goal to achieve, and an inspirational leader, and this is what you get… a wheel of cheese in space!!!”
Today I’m pleased to congratulate my good friends at Appartisan (formerly known as Attigo) in launching Pay4Bugs.com.
Pay4Bugs is a site with two personalities and was designed for two different kinds of people: 1. Software engineers, program managers, and web/application developers who want low-cost, high-quality, on-demand beta testing and bug-finding; and 2. Self-motivated people who want to play with new technologies and get paid for spotting problems.
Pay4Bugs allows software developers to post projects and assignments for other people to test. They can put money into the account (which can be refunded!) and choose the price that their bugs are worth. Pay4Bugs’ software testing pricing scheme even allows developers to try to get their applications tested for free with a $0.00 bug-finding assignment. I love this because as more and more developers join the site, there will be worldwide competition, and bug-testing prices will reach a market equilibrium — capitalism at its finest! — something this country no longer seems to understand.
On the other end, people can make money from home by testing software. As there are more testers out there, software developers will get to lower their bug-testing prices and the competition will get their testing done faster and more thoroughly!
I have both a developer and a tester account on Pay4Bugs and they’re both very well-designed, clean, and easy to use. In fact, if you already have a Google, AIM, Yahoo, or OpenID account, you can already sign in using OpenID! I’ll be posting some side-projects and have people look for typos on this website as well, so see you over at Pay4Bugs.com!
Edit – April 29, 2011 – This is no longer working for me in Ubuntu 10.04 with everything updated. If you can figure it out, please drop a comment!
This took me a bit too long to figure out. Using Ubuntu 8.10 on a server, I wanted to use phpmyadmin to graphically manage my MySQL databases, but disallow root logins for security reasons.
There are two things you must do in the phpmyadmin config file – typically found at /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php:
Change the ‘auth_type’ to ‘cookie’. This will be under the /* Authentication type */ comment. The line should read as
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = ‘cookie’;
Make sure it is uncommented by removing the “//” before it, and then change the parameter to ‘cookie’ if that’s not already set.
Add a new line below this, that says
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowRoot'] = FALSE;
That’s it! Very easy but was tough to find in the forums.
Remove root from the entire system? Hah… I kind of need that guy. Unless you mean to use sudo and not have root. A good idea to explore, but not going to test it on a production server.
One of my biggest complaints about the Internet has been the disturbing lack of quality images of the cover of Hammers of Misfortune‘s album, The August Engine. The August Engine claw is by far one of my favorite logos, and is probably my favorite t-shirt too.
To see what this eclectic, bizarro metal band is all about, go to the Hammers of Misfortune Myspace Page and listen to the second track, A Room and a Riddle, which is off of the August Engine album.
If this band sounds familiar, it’s because their latest album, The Locust Years, scored #6 on my Top 15 Albums of 2006. I like The August Engine even better.
Hammers of Misfortune will always hold a sweet spot in my heart. During my Ohio State college days, I drove up to Cleveland to meet up with Brian and see them play at the Grog Shop in 2004. To our dismay, only 7 people were in attendance (this type of thing happens when a west coast metal band plays in a punk venue and there is absolutely no promotion). And you know what happened? They played their asses off in what was one of the best concerts I’ve seen to this day. I love this band and can’t wait for the new album.
ANYWAY, I decided to solve this problem today. Right here, right now.
The best bet I had was to take a picture of my t-shirt and clean it up a bit. The pic at the top is a JPG of my shirt after it’s been cleaned up. You can see the white part of the claw is whiter than the words. Go ahead and clean those up if you want.
To the left is a vectorized PNG image of the claw with a nice circle around it. Since it’s vectorized, it’s not based off of a geometric formula and can be stretched to your desire. I also have EPS, SVG, and PDFs of it if you like – just contact me.
After over a year of being dissatisfied with my previous web host, I have moved mikeroberto.com to Lunarpages.com. It has only been a week, but I am very impressed with them so far.
Finding a good web host is a very difficult thing, even for experienced webmasters. Googling for the best web hosts is like throwing yourselves to the wolves while wearing steak underpants. All of those “Top 10″ lists are simply paid-for lists, and all are equally shady.
The best way to find a good host is to first know what you want, and then go and look at the lists that allow the users to rate everything. The best site I found for this is www.webhostingjury.com. There are many user reviews and ratings. Currently, Lunarpages is #4.
I then went through the top hosts, and determined that Lunarpages gave me the most bang for my needs, which include multiple domains, unlimited databases, 350GB space (which I’ll never use), a good upgrade path for when my sites get popular, and some other stuff. I also did some research on www.myipneighbors.com to ensure that I’m not sharing a server with 650 other sites (like my last host, which is one reason why bertopics.com is so painfully slow).
Soon bertopics.com will be migrated, but that migration is going to be a pain.
Now that I have a host I can trust, I’ve also changed my official e-mail address. It is now [myfirstname]@mikeroberto.com — where [myfirstname] is mike. Still powered by gmail, but now with a better domain!
So if you need a web host, click on my new sidebar link or the image above, and check out Lunarpages. If you order, please use me as a referral!
. The August Engine claw is by far one of my favorite logos, and is probably my favorite t-shirt too.
Larry Salbira said,
12.11.10 at 9:06 am
Well said Mike. 10 years. Let’s do it.
Alison Lowndes said,
12.12.10 at 12:15 pm
Love this article and love SpaceX – “Put a bunch of geniuses in a room with a solid vision, a fiscal goal to achieve, and an inspirational leader, and this is what you get… a wheel of cheese in space!!!”
Chad Vordemesche said,
02.07.11 at 6:23 pm
Great article Mike. I didn’t know you were a great writer too!