Friday night the Dropkick Murphys put on a hell of a live show in an empty Fenway Park. Though it was sad to see the old stadium still sans baseball and sans fans for the concert, it was good to see the boys out on the field, playing their hearts out for two plus hours.
They had drones with cameras flitting about and overall, the folks who put this concert on did a bang-up job. High praise all around. Especially when you consider that the City of Boston said no more than 35 people could be inside the stadium for the event. Usually it takes something like a hundred folks to put this kind of thing on. The 35 included the band!
From the overhead shots I could see where The WSO and I sat for a Foo Fighters concert a couple of years ago. Brought back memories it did.
By my count, something like 60,000 people were watching online, Fenway only seats 37,731 (so the Internet tells me). So quite a good turnout for charity.
Even Bruce Springsteen made an appearance over the net from his place in New Jersey. It was a lot of fun.
On to Saturday afternoon where I watched the launch of SpaceX and, unlike Wednesday, the weather cooperated nicely.
It was an awe inspiring sight. We're back in space with an American vehicle after nine years.
'Bout time.
Yup, the boys are back.*
* Yes, the girls are back as well, I didn't write the song...
May be us girls never left??
ReplyDeleteThat's why it's always the boys that are coming back?
Just a random thought on a beautiful day...
Heh, good point Suz!
DeleteHistorically that is the case. Men went out and did men things and women stayed behind and did women things. Men - hunt, war, search and find. Women - agriculture, family, home technology.
DeleteIt was a good pairing for a very long time.
That's how I feel when I go on my weekly supply run. Leave home, hunt, seek, find things, come home and Mrs. Andrew is there! Yay! Or... shower then Yay!
And... as one of the Norman Rules of Acquisition states: Never peeve off your wife, she runs the castle. (that would be the Normans from Normandy, not Norman Bates because that would be never peeve off your dead mother as she is always watching from her room...)
Heh.
DeleteNever met Norman Bates. He was no relation to my ex. Whose mom, although she died one month after we were married, was a lovely lady, whom I had the pleasure of knowing for 2 years before we got married. It has been almost 30 years now that she has been gone, and I still miss her.
DeleteAnd yes, any gal who can run a castle while the hubs is off doing man stuff, is certainly no one ya would want to annoy for sure!! Since that involved not only managing the "staff" who cooked and cleaned, but also the men-at-arms who were left behind to protect the castle. Also dispensing minor justice until the Lord of the Castle came back home. If he had wandered off to Crusade, she could be running the place for years!!! Plus sending him money, new clothes, armor, and so on. A woman's work is never done indeed!!!
I watched the Dragon launch yesterday with my Nephew. When they reached orbit I told him "That was so smooth, it was boring. When it comes to this, I like boring." Last launch I saw in person was Challenger in 86.
ReplyDeleteIt did seem very routine, which is good. Shows all the hard work and preparation which went into the launch paid off.
DeleteYes, boring is very good. You don't want exciting when that much fuel and oxidizer is under you. Really don't.
DeleteAnd the last manned launch I watched on tv - via our 4 meter dish - was on NASA tv feed and we got to watch stuff from Challenger fall for half an hour after before they finally cut the feed. So, needless to say I was a tad trepidatious over watching Demo 2.
There is that.
DeleteGlad to see us able to launch people into space again. Lived thru the original space race, Gagarian v. Shepard, and all the rest of the programs funded by tax dollars. Interesting that private industries have become so prosperous that they are the ones leading the way. Just shows how much of our national treasure is used for non-essential items. But I guess exploration has a history of that arrangement, doesn't it? The joint stock companies that helped settle the English colonies would be one example, set up when the Queen didn't want to invest national monies in an investment that had a good chance of failure.
ReplyDeleteIt is good, also that's a great point about the financing of the Age of Exploration.
DeleteTwo things came to mind watching the launch.
ReplyDeleteListening to the commentators beforehand was a lot like watching the lead-in to the Indy 500.
I, too, was reminded of the Challenger.
It was hard not to be reminded of Challenger.
DeleteI got the whole Apollo vibe from it, though worries of Challenger were definitely there.
DeleteNext time I'm not watching the tv, I'll just go to the live feed from SpaceX directly.
I had the feed from SpaceX and the feed from NASA going simultaneously. Until I noticed that the feed from NASA was 30 seconds in the past. ???
DeleteSo SpaceX from then on.
(Don McCollor)...besides Columbia, there was the reentry of old Challenger. Later, NASA released a powerpoint of the reentry detailing pretty much every scrap of information they had minute by minute for the technically minded (including a couple pages of acronym explanations). Like watching (reading rather) a disaster (or horror) movie in slow motion...
DeleteYes, that was a horror show.
Delete(Don McCollor)...there was a minor miracle. "The flight data recorder that fell from the sky" (never intended to be like an aircraft "black box"). Being the first shuttle, Columbia had been fitted with a data recorder and many extra sensors than on the telemetry downlink. Because it was there, they kept using it. Someone found it in the mud afterwards, and they recovered flight data from it (including [according to Wiki] when the ice hit the left wing on launch)..
DeleteWhat was sad was NASA knew Columbia was dead within 12 hours of launch. But because of budget cuts and failure to forward think, there was no 2nd shuttle in backup mode, no rescue mini-shuttle, no tile repair kit, no inflatable ablative shield (yes, an inflatable ablative shield you lay on the backside of and fall, includes parachute and raft, basically a one-man capsule without, well, the capsule, and, dangit, it worked in testing.)
DeleteNo way to rescue anyone. No backup. No fixes before the incident because the ice-strikes were a known threat that had already damaged several previous shuttles/launches.
In other words, feckless NASA bureaucrats and evil congresscritters doomed Columbia way before the launch, years before the launch. If it wasn't Columbia at that launch, it would have been another launch, maybe Columbia, maybe another shuttle.
Good going there, NASA (cries loudly, shakes fist at the world) you didn't do your damned jobs. Nobody did their damned jobs. (runs ranting into the desert...)
(Don McCollor)...I think the individual ablative shield was called MOOSE (Man out of space easiest). Afterwards, NASA had a "Tiger Team" evaluate options of steel tools and water (turning to ice) inside the breach. Would not have worked. So poignant was Columbia's guidance computers firing their thrusters harder and harder trying to keep her on course. She had no way of knowing something was bad wrong...
DeleteI was glad it was someone other than Boiing that got us there. I used to have the utmost respect for them, but every decision they make now seems to be bottom line, is it in the black. The shoe clerks and bean counters have ruined a great company.
ReplyDeleteI was thrilled to see SpaceX stick the landing of the first stage. Man, that, by itself, shows a different mentality is behind this. That rotating checklist on the bottom really rocks, too. They have worked hard to be in this position. I have a lot of respect for the way they have gotten here.
I don't quite know what to make of Musk, but he is visionary. His company is impressive. I read an article detailing how they needed a valve, and went to an established 'space-rated' supplier. They wanted 18 months and X dollars to start. The reply was, we need it by summer for way less than that. And they did it. That is really good old American ingenuity. I'm glad it wasn't all sold to foreign devils...
Given enough time the shoe clerks and bean counters will ruin everything. They are supported by spineless, risk-averse "management," ya know, people who think they're leaders but are just a highly paid shoe clerk.
DeleteMr. Musk gets stuff done. I like that.
They usually know, after a failure, pretty much almost immediately what went wrong, generally. After 24 hours they've narrowed it down to the exact part. And in 48 hours they've redesigned the part(s) and now have the next gen already being made if not already made and testing will take a day and then a production will go out and in two weeks all systems that use the previously failed part will be retrofitted with the new part.
DeleteThat is unheard of in any business that deals with aviation these days. Considering the FAA will stall and consider a change to a castle nut on a Lycoming engine, like found in a Cessna, for months before non-experimental use is approved (yes, the FAA has held up production or repairs of engines over a supplier not having 'in-spec' parts because the original supplier went TU...) the ability to fix, test, test to failure, fix the fix, test, test to failure, approve internally and then produce the snot out of the fix is incredible.
They are using CNC, 3D printing, additive manufacturing and advanced casting techniques like no other company dealing with aviation has, except for that company that is printing smaller rockets.
'Space Rated' suppliers are used to dealing with Boeing and LockMart and NASA where everything must be talked and talked and talked to death before they even decide to talk about making something. The joke about NASA is give them a problem and they'll take 5 years to finish the study that outlines the problem. Then another 5 years to create a solution. By that time (10 years) whatever needed fixing is no longer in service...
Sounds about right. What's the point of having all those "managers" if they can't go to endless meetings and make absolutely no decisions?
DeleteDAMHIK
OK, when I read the Dropkick Murphy's portion, I wondered how the Boston Powers that be, heretoafter referred to as "Brainiacs", came up with the 35 people limit? According to Google, Fenway Park is 99,000 sq ft. Divide that by 36 sq ft, the official "Safe" F'n "Distancing" rule, that should have allowed 2,750 people. If the brainiacs think that 35 people would be a better safe distancing, then we need 30' 4" all around us us in order to be "Safe".
ReplyDeleteYo, Cardholding members of the World Wide Order of Brainiacs, stop being arbitrary in making your rules. For instance, if being on a lake in your motor boat is bad, shouldn't it be also bad for a sail boat, or is Wuhan Flu being spread by gasoline fumes, Huh Gretch? Also, Gretch, there's that little matter of the Governor's husband asking to put his boat in the lake, what's up with that? If it's for our safety, then shouldn't your husband have complied with your rule?
Hmmmm?
If it's ok to gather in large crowds to protest (also known as looting and pillaging), why is it not ok to gather in crowds to pray? Does the fire from burning buildings sanitize the area?
One further question, Oh Brainiac in Boston who made this decree, do you suppose the band rehearsed that far apart, and therefore is virus free? Or is this just more political theater?
I could go on for hours with further examples, as, I suspect, can the readers here, so I'll end with a quote from my favorite movie "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin (Whitmer, Cuomo, Deblazio, Walz, Newsom...), the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
If you think no one is noticing, you would be very, very wrong.
/rant Sorry if I violated the rant rule. Feel much better now, really. And I'm really glad the launch went well.
I'm the Old AF Sarge, and I approve this message.
DeleteKabuki theater, when drunk, in the dark, done by illiterate Cossacks, makes more sense than the Covidiocratic decrees.
DeleteIf'n you can go to Walmart, the pot shop, the booze shop, have 45 people standing (without masks) behind the governor or the mayor or the Pelosi, then you can go to the danged voting booth.
Grrrr....
Kabuki theater, when drunk, in the dark, done by illiterate Cossacks...
DeleteNice turn of phrase. (And oh so true.)
Right there with ya, juvat! I endorse this rant ... oh, and NOW the WHO and others say that masks don't really do anything to prevent you getting the virus if you are healthy, just prevent you from passing it along if you are already sick. And if you wear a mask too long every day, it can cause respiratory problems on its own from you not getting enough oxygenation as well as rebreathing your own bacteria. Pandemic theater! (unless you are sick)
DeleteTom, they (WHO, CDC, NIH, USAMRIID and others) have been saying that for over two months, about the time all the 'must mask' regulations came into effect.
DeleteSo it is a matter of mind and mass control rather than viral control.
Yes, masks are great, if one is filtering large particles or one needs one due to really being sick or susceptible, but mostly? Nope. Especially the way most people are wearing them (complete sterile technique, don't touch your face, don't yada yada yada...
Things we missed re: Demo 2.
ReplyDeleteAt around 6pmish, the astronauts were scheduled to manually take control over Dragon. They succeeded.
At around 10amish, the astronauts docked to the ISS. Would have been friggin cool if the TV had broadcast that. So, instead, time to go chase down the official SpaceX feed.
Hey, TV people, notice that SpaceX is doing a better job of informing the world than you are? And now Elon has a constellation of small satellites perfect for broadcasting both wireless and tv signals? And you (the media) has treated Elon like carp for a long time? And have you (media) noticed that anything he touches he does very well, or at least better than anyone else in the field? Hmmmmm....
And now the astronauts are going to be staying for at least 110 days (as they had supplies in the Dragon capsule and more will be freighted up.
So much winning.
Still not tired.
Ditto.
DeleteWinning.
If the media praises Elon, or heaven forbid Trump, then it might make Trump look good...he might win re-election, cant have that!!!!! Obama shut down NASA...so it must stay shut down cause "Legacy"...
DeleteAm so very glad everything went smoothly. And hope it continues to do so until after the capsule splashes down where-ever.
Cause it is enjoyable to see some good news on the TV...which is why everything had been Covid, Covid, Covid, and is now all about the riots. Gotta always have bad news on TV...rule by fear!!!
Getting off rant box now...
Rant on sister!
DeleteIn regards to winning...
ReplyDeleteAnd most of this winning? Allowed under the renewed National Space Council's auspices. You know, the one that got renewed around February 2017, has the Vice President as the head. So much positive has happened, seriously, so much positive has happened in the last three years as regulations and decrees have been cut and modified in order to allow space industries to achieve. Yay.
This is the most space-friendly governmental environment since the early days of the space program. Me loving it!
Same here.
DeleteFour more years!
Dont forget the achievement of adding the Space Force to our military - loving that as well!
DeleteAnd, soon, after all the Covidiocracy dies down, Patrick AFB and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station will be officially renamed Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
DeleteAnd probably Vandenberg will be renamed a Space Force Base in the coming years.
Interesting to see a band playing with social distancing. I guess that's the way it goes now. Until now I'd only seen them on Zoom in their own homes. Elsewhere in the country, I worry for all those rioters who aren't socially distancing! (Heavy /SARC/)
ReplyDeleteI hate the term "social distancing," it's tailor made for the nanny state. I don't know what to think anymore as the media bombards us with lies.
DeleteMakes me sick.
Love the Dropkick Murphys.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's absurd that the lockdown is still in place. Massachusetts is killing itself, and good riddance.
Insanity rules.
DeleteSad innit?
What it is doing is forcing productive people to leave locked-down states for Free America.
DeleteOr, well, speeding up the leaving of productive people to Free America.
Strange, awful, and wondrous times.
ReplyDeleteWell documented in a great post.
Thanks Sarge!
That first sentence sums up 2020 nicely.
Delete(Don McCollor)...If only 35 people can safely be inside an entire outdoor baseball stadium, we're all hosed...
DeleteBoston hasn't been well run since, well, let's just say 19th Century and leave it at that.
DeleteI disagree. Back when you could take the afternoon off and go see a game for basically the cost of a movie ticket was the heyday of Baseball. When you could get a drink and food for a minimal fee. Sit outside and watch the game.
Delete