They were really close to going with only one vendor, and that vendor being Boeing. Boeing worked out what NASA's budget was likely to be, and they put in a bid for almost all of it, to try to force NASA to go with them alone. Thankfully, SpaceX put up a fairly low bid, and NASA was able to negotiate for more money, so SpaceX got the chance.

If Boeing had been the sole source, they probably would have got there by now, but only after soaking Congress and NASA for more money - and in the meantime, RosCosmos would have also been putting the squeeze on NASA.

SpaceX did have the crew dragon before they designed, built and flew the quite different Crew vessel. But the experience in building the cargo craft really helped them.

Crew dragon flew one automatic flight with no crew, then one flight with two crew members, before beginning normal operations. These flights were not completely problem-free, but they still went remarkably smoothly.

Because that algorithm involves information that two competitors would not have - everyone's individual costs, occupancy rates, all the rents they are charging, what offers they are making.

And a pricing algorithm of "I'll charge the same amount you are charging" is strictly illegal. And although the software was more complex than that, it boils down to the same thing - using computers to ensure that landlords are not competing, so that rents can be as high as possible. That's anti-competitive.

last ice age, there was heaps of ice around the poles, and that ice has mass. Over time, gravity pulled that mass down, which caused the ice free equator to bulge up. Then the ice age ended and the ice went away, and ever since then the planet has been adjusting - the equator pulling down and the poles raising up. Like the spinning ice skater pulling her arms in, the equator pulling in speeds the planet's spin up.

But if this was the case, why hasn't this been a steady speed up over the last hundred years? Why the steady slow down, then sudden speed up? Global warming comes to mind, as it does in everything, but the mass of glacial ice lost is too small and too recent to be having this effect, surely?

Everyone's pretty confident that this anomalous speed up will end soon, and we'll return to the expected steady deceleration.

Because we know the Earth to be slowing in the long term, so an increase is speed has to be a short-term glitch. How short term? I don't see it stretching beyond a second , unlikely to stretch to tens of seconds, and a UTC/UT1 difference of even 10 seconds is unlikely to be problematic.

On the other hand, we've only had clocks accurate enough to measure this for under 100 years, so saying that we understand Earth's rotation might be a stretch.

These things are in the first stage of being investigated, and we are still in the stage of asking, "Is this a good thing to do?". This research comes down on the 'possibly not' side, with a solid 'But more research' caveat.

We know what we should do, and that's to stop burning stuff. That isn't happening because burning stuff earns people money and makes people's lives more convenient.

For a more practical take, try https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwhat-if.xkcd.com%2F162.

If the second crash hadn't happened, Boeing could have got away with it. If the Ethiopian pilots had the good luck not to have been at a high throttle level when MCAS triggered, or had recognized it as a trim system failure abnormally quickly, Boeing could have created and pushed out a software update a few months later and saved their shareholders a heap of money.

This would have allowed them to continue on as they had before, which is preferable in this journalist's eyes.

... and do the corrective action straight away. It only took a few seconds delay for the situation to develop beyond what the simple remedy covered.

What I conclude happened - the stuck sensor caused a sudden stick shaker and stall warning, masking the sound of the trim actuating. The airplane felt out of trim, so the pilot applied trim manually, setting the badly programmed system up to push the plane way out of trim.

MCAS was programmed to only apply a little downward trim, but that reset if the pilot applied manual trim. So MCAS trimmed 3 down, pilot applies a bit of up trim, then pauses to see if he has done enough. MCAS puts in another 3 (really fast), the pilot trims up again, maybe 1. MCAS puts in another 3, etc. Soon you are way out of trim.

So all of this leads to a delay in identifying a trim system failure, and so a delay in applying the cut out switches, while the plane speed gets out of hand (Note, you are hoping they'll pull the throttles back while they are still hearing a stall warning!). Pilots overworked until the situation is beyond their training, and then you are relying their skills as test pilots.

..if this proves to be the case.

If the switch popping out of its mount is something that happens with any regularity, then its a design issue. If not, then it is something that needs to have been caught by maintenance, or reported by the pilots. That would make this a case of a minor issue that no one saw as a problem, until it bit them.

The hypothesis is that the switch under the cover had popped out, and so if the cover was pushed down it would press on the switch. This has been demonstrated in a video.

An additional hypothesis is that the pilot in that seat may have been eating his meal on a tray. That tray is what may have pushed against the yoke. Similar to the case where a pilot's DSLR camera got caught between the seat and an airbus's sidestick.

Remember, these rockets are coming down over the deep ocean. If they break up high in the atmosphere, the debris will be scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Searching that much ocean floor just isn't worth it.

They could make a device that is released from the craft in some manner and floats, sending out a tracking signal, but that's probably more difficult than it is worth. Stream the data live via TDRIS and Starlink.

And they won't be launching Starlinks soon. For that they need to go fully orbital, and for that they need to be 100% sure the rocket will be able to do a disposal burn. This one failed to do that burn, so more work will be required.

Which would explain his 'inactivity'.

..if that is what you are asking.

It didn't maintain attitude control, and so when it entered it was rolling and tumbling. So both the unprotected top side of starship, and at one point, its engine bay, was pointed in the direction it was going. While we don't know what failed, it wasn't going to make it like that. And it was too high up and the atmosphere too thin for the flaps to exert enough force to correct the spin and tumble. Probably enough to maintain control, but not enough to recover control.

More stuff learned to guide them in the next flight. B11 and ship 29 are close to being ready.