Month: October 2020

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches the Starlink-13 mission on October 18. (credit: SpaceX)

A Falcon 9 rocket ascended into the blue skies above Florida on Sunday morning, and much of the space world barely took notice.

Sure, it was fairly early on a Sunday, and many Americans were not even yet out of bed. But there's a deeper reality here: SpaceX has made launching rockets almost seem routine. The company's vice president of reliability, Hans Koenigsmann, once told me that one of his goals was to take the "magic" out of rocket launches. And the company seems to be succeeding.

SpaceX is also succeeding at reuse. Sunday morning's launch used a Falcon 9 first stage that has already flown into space five times. This is the second time SpaceX has used a first stage a total of six times, and next year it is likely to reach ten uses of its rocket. And then there is the payload fairing. For the first time, SpaceX was able use each of these fairing halves for a third time.

Enlarge / Artist's impression of how little your cat cares about your video call. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

The Friday "beer-thirty" Zoom conferences began for me not too long into the lockdown. A co-worker scheduled them as a form of stress release and socialization as we all prepared for what we already knew was going to be at least a year of not seeing each other in person—and for someone who had just started with the company a few weeks prior, I needed it.

Working from home has always been isolating, but it has become even more so in 2020. And for those of us who've worked from home full-time in the past—well, at least for those of us who have done that and have loud families and kids with no concept of personal space—it has also become a lot harder to maintain a division between home life and work life. Our spouses and kids (and in some cases, adult kids) are all home at the same time, working or studying or playing or just breathing too loudly in the same space as us.

Meow mix

For those of you who've never enjoyed the solitude of a home office when everyone else is out of the house, trust me: what we have right now is not what working at home has been like for the past 25 years for me. To adjust to this, organizations must figure out how to keep teams cohesive in the absence of regular social contact. They also must find a balance between being communicative and being intrusive into the home life of employees, all while still keeping some kind of coherent work environment going so people can talk to each other and get work done.

Enlarge / Augmented reality is a standard feature on the new Cadillac Escalade SUV. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

I will admit it; when Cadillac asked if we wanted to spend a day with the new 2021 Escalade, I was in two minds about saying yes. A 6,000lb body-on-frame SUV is about as far from my automotive comfort zone as it's possible to get with a regular driver's license. And while there is a choice of gasoline V8 or turbodiesel inline-six, there's not a sniff of a hybrid option—not even the 48V mild kind, which feels inexcusable in the year 2020.

On the other hand, Cadillac has turned up the technology dial in an effort to regain its crown as the King of Bling. From the driver's seat you can see 38 inches of OLED screen wrapping around you. The highlight is an augmented reality mode that's cool enough to tempt you away from navigating by CarPlay or Android Auto and worthy of Ars' attention on its own.

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  This might be the Escalade's best angle. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

The body-on-frame light truck is an American speciality. It's where the domestic automakers make their money, and the new Escalade is built on General Motor's latest and greatest body-on-frame platform. And I do mean greatest. Our test vehicle was a $105,995 Escalade ESV 4WD Platinum, which stretches out across 226.9 inches (5,766mm), with a 134.1-inch (3.407mm) wheelbase. More than one neighbor remarked on how large it was as it jutted out of my parking space, which luckily is slightly wider than the Escalade's 81.1 inches (2,059mm). At 76.4 inches (1,942mm) tall, I was grateful for the retractable running boards that emerge when you open a door; if you're shorter than average, it is a $1,750 option you might want.