Enfeebling the Indian space programme
There's no denying that there currently prevails a public culture in India that equates criticism, even well-reasoned, with pooh-poohing. It's especially pronounced in certain geographies wher…
SpaceX
15 posts
Four years
Engineering as a methodology … contains a fundamentally materialist kernel, even if its present incarnation as a bourgeois science drives engineers to think and behave otherwise. — Nick Chavez, Engin…
On the US FAA's response to Falcon 9 debris
On February 1, SpaceX launched its Starlink 11-4 mission onboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket's reusable first stage returned safely to the ground and the second stage remained in orbit after dep…
Solve all our problems
This is xkcd #1232. When it came out I remember it was to rebut a particular line of argument against NASA’s lunar and interplanetary missions — that the agency was spending large sums of money that w…
Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore are not in danger
NASA said earlier this week it will postpone the return of Boeing’s crew capsule Starliner back to ground from the International Space Station (ISS), thus leaving astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita W…
Disappointing persons of the year 2021
I’m starting to think that in this day and age, you will but err when you pick individuals for traditionally ‘prestigious’ awards, prizes, recognitions, etc., probably because the sort of people who c…
Why we need *some* borders between us
Borders are often a bad thing because they create separation that is unconducive for what are generally considered to be socially desirable outcomes. And they're often instituted to maximise polit…
Starlink and astronomy
SpaceX's Starlink constellation is currently a network of 120+ satellites and which, in the next decade, will expand to 10,000+ to provide low-cost internet from space around the world. Astronomer…
Playing the devil's advocate on Starlink
After SpaceX began to launch its Starlink satellite constellation to facilitate global internet coverage, astronomers began complaining that the satellites are likely to interfere with stargazing sche…
Finding trash in the dumpster
Just as there's no merit in writing a piece that is confused and incomplete, there's no merit in digging through a dumpster and complaining that there's trash. However, that doesn't me…
ISRO v. SpaceX doesn't make sense
Though I've never met the guy, I don't hold Pallava Bagla in very high regard because his stories – particularly of the Indian space programme – for NDTV have often reeked of simplistic concer…
Is it so blasphemous to think ISRO ought not to be compared to other space agencies?
Is it so hard to consider the possibility that we might get a better sense of ISRO's activities if we did not keep comparing it to those of other space agencies?…