Tag Archives: Failure

Zuma Fail: Why Space Is No Place For Private Business

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Business, Communication, Crisis Management, Ethics, Government, History, Management Practices, Public Image, Public Relations, Science, Space, Taxes, Technology, US History

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SpaceX Zuma Launch: What went up, but what came down?

On Sunday SpaceX launched Zuma, a super secret, we-can-tell-you-but-then-we-have-to-kill-you military satellite built by Northrop Grumman. It was the most important, most expensive military satellite that we know nothing about…except that it may, or may not have made it into orbit, it may or may not have separated from the second stage booster, it may or may not have burned up as it came back down into the atmosphere, and it may or may not have come down in the Indian Ocean.

Like two boys standing in the backyard after a window has been broken, SpaceX yelled, “We didn’t do it!,” and Northrop Grumman is looking down, kicking the dirt and saying, “We’re not gonna say anything.” It feels like the 1960’s and the Soviets are running our space program. 

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

This is why private business has no place in space. Private business is incapable of telling the truth to the public and they are hiding behind the skirt of the military hoping no one will notice that there is no state secret about whether a satellite made it into orbit or not.

The United States Government has to be an adult. If they send a rocket up and it fails, they have to tell us what happened. Private business, like the 1960 Soviet space program, believes that the public only needs to know about how great they are, and anything negative is to be a secret.

In the absence of the truth we can only assume that both SpaceX and Northrop Grumman are at fault and no more taxpayer money should be spent until they both can act like adults.

(SEE:  CBS article with full SpaceX Zuma launch video)

(SEE: Independent YouTube video of SpaceX Zuma launch)

The Zuma Fairing Mystery?

During the Zuma launch, the SpaceX announcer pauses his commentary for ninety seconds after saying the fairing would deploy (eject) “…any second now..” He then came back on and switched topics, then finally confirmed the fairing deployment. Why the long pause?

  • T+0:50 seconds (50 seconds after liftoff) – A SpaceX announcer begins a live and nearly continuous commentary regarding upcoming events with the Falcon 9 rocket, pausing only for those events to be confirmed by SpaceX control.
  • T+2:03 – SpaceX announcer pauses as four events related to second stage separation are about to begin.
  • T+3:06 – SpaceX announcer resumes commentary and confirms a successful second stage separation, and explains at T+3:15 that fairing separation “…should occur any second now” (ejection of protective nose shell around satellite.) He continues on to say that he will confirm the fairing separation after it occurs.
  • T+3:26 – SpaceX announcer begins a pause that lasts for one minute and thirty seconds.
  • T+4:57 – SpaceX announcer says, “Alright, so we’ll address the fairing deployment in a second once we have more information, but for now we’re going to shift our transition back to our secondary mission…”
  • T+5:17 – SpaceX announcer says, “…ah, quick sidebar here that we did get confirmation that the fairings did deploy.”

 

Paul Ryan: A Loser’s Legacy

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Ethics, Government, Politics, Public Image, Religion, Taxes

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Paul Ryan can now add Speaker of the House of Representatives to the list of failures. His new position is a trap with no exit and in six to eight months he will realize the mistake he has made, but it will be too late.

Paul Ryan, helped Mitt Romney lose in 2012

Going with a loser for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan

Representative Ryan has a history of association with failure:

  • He joined Senator Bob Kasten staff as a legislative aide in 1992. A few months later Senator Kasten failed to be reelected.
  • He was the speech writer for Jack Kemp, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 1996. The Bob Dole/Jack Kemp ticket lost.
  • In 2012, Ryan was selected to be the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for Mitt Romney. He was noted to be the farthest from center of any Vice Presidential candidate, conservative or liberal, since at least 1900. The Romney/Ryan ticket lost.
  • Ryan has been a Representative for Wisconsin since 1998. In that time he as sponsored over 70 bills of which only two have been enacted into law. He was successful in having a Post Office in his District renamed and he was able to have the excise tax reduced on arrow shafts.

Ryan has enjoyed comfortable wins in all of his election wins since 1998, although in 2012, corporations built him a $5.4 million campaign chest, (as of July 25, 2012,) the largest of any congressional candidate, and though he won with 55% of the vote in the district, he only garnered 44% of the vote in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. His district is 90% Caucasian, and has elected the Republican candidate for the last twenty years.

Ryan is also a disciple of Ayn Rand, a writer, philosopher, and playwright that was born and raised in Russia to a aristocratic family that fell from privileged life after the Russian Revolution. Her philosophy of Objectivism assumes that only the people who are currently successful should enjoy the spoils of life and everyone else should not have access to the opportunities of the privileged. This concept is eagerly accepted by the wealthy conservatives who fund campaigns of candidates that seek to substitute our nation’s founders concept of ‘All Being Equal’ with Ayn Rand’s philosophy of a society ruled by privilege.

“They (Native Americans) didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.”

Ayn Rand, 1974

There is no doubt that Ryan will continue to be loyal to the extreme right. He is immune to his record of failures in carrying the flag of conservative ideology. 

That makes Ryan the wrong person to put in charge of the House of Representatives. Former Speaker John Boehner was pushed into a corner by the House Freedom Caucus that has paralyzed the House. The Freedom Caucus is a anti-United States band of Representatives from rural districts of Caucasian majority, anti-education, ultra-religious, government-hating voters. The caucus has less than forty Representatives pushing an agenda that is sometimes racist, often disgusting, and always wrong.

Speaker Boehner failed to put this collection of misfits in their place and that led to his resignation. By not accepting the reality that Republicans are in the minority, and that by adding the House Freedom Caucus to gain a majority, Speaker Boehner allowed a third-party of Representatives to pull down the GOP to the level of political masturbation.

Enter Paul Ryan. Speaker Ryan will cater to the House Freedom Caucus which will continue to be a drag on the support of the Republican party. Eventually, Republicans will have to decide whether they can afford to be associated a party that creates a public image of clowns and buffoons. As the 2016 election approaches Speaker Ryan will likely be the leader of an angry mob of Republicans who will be fed up with the shenanigans of a handful of Representatives that he has allowed to ruin the party.

Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House 2015 to 2016.