As a repeat of the events of last night, tonight's attempted launch of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission has been scrubbed due to problems with the launchpad/ground infrastructure.
“To allow more time to perform ground system checkouts, standing down from today’s launch of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission,” SpaceX said in a social media post. “A new target launch date will be shared once confirmed.”
FAA flight restrictions indicate the launch had slipped to at least Tuesday evening. The originally planned Saturday night liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4E was scrubbed due to a hydraulic problem with the launch pad’s hold-down clamps.
I see in looking at the previous stories that I haven't mentioned that this is Falcon 9 booster tail number 1081 flying on her 21st flight. Previous missions included Crew-7, PACE and TRACERS, all for NASA. B1081 will Return To Launch Site, to land at LZ-4 (Landing Zone 4). If successful, this will be the 31st landing at Vandenberg's landing zone, and the 554th Falcon booster landing so far.
Another thing going on in life that has been a bit of a distraction or complication (or some combination of those words) is in our church life. I've told that story a couple of times in my Easter post but in the months since last April, our story has gotten more complicated. We left our old church because of the way they treated our pastor. To borrow a paragraph from my Easter post:
I went forward for Baptism in an evangelical church and an important part of that change was because the pastor had a similar background to mine, at least in the biochemistry/microbiology portion. He was a pharmacist and the director of the pharmacy department in one of the local hospitals. He quickly became one of our closest friends in the worst time of our lives - Mrs. Graybeard's cancer in 1997. It's a long story, but in the last couple of years the church's elders dumped him. As the story about how they treated him in private came out, we found a new church - a nearby Southern Baptist church. Our pastor who had been kicked out of his position (and practically founded our church) also started going to another Baptist church, but closer to his home. He passed away a little before Easter last year.
The complication is that a few months ago, our new pastor announced his retirement. The process this church used was much, much better than the evangelical church (a Calvary Chapel) and a new pastor has been elected. Our senior pastor will be leaving the church early in January and the elders used a much better approach to choosing and finding people to run for the position, then an election where people who are members of the church voted to choose the new pastor.
This has led to some feelings of instability. The new guy, who has been an associate pastor as long as we've been going to this church, hasn't really come across well in his teachings, but the fact that the church handled the succession so well makes me feel like we should give him a chance to get used to the changes he's going through while we see how his style grows. Today ranks as the best lesson I can recall him teaching.
There's no rush in needing to get into another church fast enough, so we'll go until the current senior (lead?) pastor retires and watch how the new guy progresses. Give him a chance to grow.
EDIT Dec 29, '25 to add: As of Monday afternoon, the next scheduled launch time for this mission is Wednesday, Dec 31, at 9:09 ET, as it has been for all days with launch attempts. Since that's 0209 UTC, that makes it January 1, 2026 and not the last launch of 2025.
Much like a good manager can make or break a company, a good pastor makes a church a home. I was never much of a follower until a new friend introduced me to a great pastor, in a great church almost an hour away. In one statement, the first time I attended (at the Christmas show no less, and I am NOT a fan of the holiday and at the time, churches in general), his delivery of the first sentence of the Lord's Prayer changed 56yrs of 'nawh, not for me' into "I'll be back next week". His comparison of 'true Biblical Christianity' and 'religion' hooked me, and showed me why I was never much of a follower. I couldn't make it being who I am, but he showed me that it wasn't about me. That changed something instantly, and that was all it took.
ReplyDeleteI've been going 4yrs now, and have missed less days than the pastor himself. There are several others that deliver the message while he's on his trips abroad. And while they are well versed and capable in their delivery, they are not the same guy. The guy who got me in the front door has been gone over a year now. But I know I'll get to thank him again when I get there. Knowing I'll see him again, because I can't believe anything else, or none of it means anything.
Excellent story and very meaningful to me. In my case, having the similarity of a big part of our backgrounds with the first pastor to reach me meant a lot. The current pastor that's retiring has the commonality of being an engineer and having worked in radio design, which is unusual. But mostly he thinks like an engineer.
DeleteThere's a saying that says it takes more faith to believe "the science" of how we got here than to believe Genesis. I attribute that to an observation I made back in my first year or two of college. The people who majored in biology instead of biochemistry weren't as good at math. All of the talk about evolution seems to depend on having nearly infinite mutations always being sorted out over time to produce complex life. The probabilities of independent events multiply and when you cascade a bunch of independent events, they get absurdly small very, very fast.
There are still things I miss about the church we left, primarily knowing a lot of the people. It was more like a half hour away than this one that's 10 minutes away and that's only because of traffic lights. There are exactly two lights between home and church and I'd swear we've never made both of them.
I'm not going to get into an argument about evolution, but that "mathematics" that's usually applied to argue against it is improperly used. What is not taken into account are the strong feed-forward loops that result is massive, fast change. Another aspect that isn't appreciated is the length of time for selection to work: in advanced lifeforms, it is reproductive age which can be quite long. Simpler lifeforms evolve at a much faster rate, sometime measured in hours. And as far as evolving meaningful chemicals out of "soup", the selection interval is as short as milleseconds. The simplistic "too complex to create a chain" is simply incorrect. It's not about random probability.
DeleteI rarely talk about that because it's about the most divisive thing. I mean, nobody talks about "Thou shalt not kill" the same way because (I think) the 10 commandments are pretty much what developed western civilization. You see it in Europe but not where other religions dominate.
DeleteI find it ironic that the first paragraph in the first book of the Bible get more attention than the next thousand pages about how to live.
The "Evolution" theory is dead and anyone willing to crunch the numbers and accept the math would have shot that down decades ago. There just hasn't been time enough on this planet to make it work. We're missing billions of years of the timeline well beyond the current thought of 4ish billion years history of the planet? There'll be a book coming out in the next few months titled 'Probability Zero' that should put the final nail in the whole 'evolution' BS. It's under peer review at this time.
DeleteThe chance of evolution being the deciding factor of human life on earth is something in the area of 1 in 10 to the 6X+th, literally zero. That survival of the fittest evolution dog no longer hunts. There just hasn't been enough time to do it.
Not saying we weren't 'seeded' on this planet (that might 'fit' with the biblical version if you need to believe something other than the bible), but we did not evolve, from slime, ooze or the primate family. Anyone who still believes that really needs to do some 21st century reading.
SiG, I appreciate your issues with a particular church. For reasons, my wife and I elected to attend the United Methodist Church here in Bandera, Texas when we moved here in 2017. The Pastor of the UMC church had arrived about 4 months before our move here. We really liked the parish and the Pastor. He actually stayed on past the normal tenure (3 years) for a UMC pastor because of a building project. He moved on in 2023.
ReplyDeleteBecause of what has happened in the UMC denomination with its move to non-Biblical beliefs, the church was exploring leaving the UMC in 2023 because of a deadline by the end of the year to retain our parish property and we were therefore assigned a temporary pastor. Late in the year we voted to leave the UMC. My wife and I voted to leave the UMC and to join the Global Methodists who retain conservative Biblical beliefs. My wife and I were in the minority and the church became an independent Methodist Church.
That is when things became interesting. Each Methodist Church has an established group to help call Pastors and hire assistants and staff. The people of the church had been told that the selection of a new pastor would be a very transparent process with us having a say in who was called. That however did not happen. They hired a new pastor and just announced it to the congregation. When he arrived, my wife and I were very unhappy with the choice. He was an essentially independent pastor who had a varied background including establishing at least one (or more) non-denominational churches. He had never been associated with any part of the Methodist or Wesleyan movement but had rather come from a Nazarene background. And his character was "flakey". After a couple of months my wife and I left. Two or three months later Bandera Methodist discharged him as their pastor.
As a side note, the Bandera area has 7 denominational churches and a few non-denominational churches. With little choice and that we had been attending Anglican churches before we moved here, we ended up at the local Episcopal parish. Before we started to attend, I interviewed the pastor of the parish and found that they were a conservative group stuck in the mire of the rest of the Episcopal Church. If that changes we are gone. I have heard that the new pastor at the Methodist Church is good and we might end up back there.
My knowledge of UMC and really most denominations is virtually zero, but I have read about some of things you talk about. The one we go to now is considered a "southern Baptist" church but in terms of what gets taught there versus the "evangelical/non denominational" church we left, I just don't see much difference. I suppose the fact that my favorite pastor ever moved to a bigger southern Baptist church closer to where he lived reflects that similarity.
DeleteJust curious - just how does where and how one worships determine one's salvation? Or is this discussion how one fits in a particular club and not at all about salvation?
ReplyDeleteIt's not at all about "where and how one worships" affecting salvation at all. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's my understanding. And I didn't mean to imply that if I did.
DeleteSome people think so, Anon@3:44. As to this discussion, no. It is about the part of the Christian community that draws us closer to Christ.
DeleteAs has been said, If you want a better Pastor, pray for the one you have.
ReplyDeleteanon@3:44
You mention an aspect of church life I think important. Important because the who and how can very well become a stumbling block in one's maturing in the faith. This because they put too much stock in the man.
The who shall always only be Christ Jesus. I have watched entire families up and leave as they follow a Pastor to a new church. Well, no wonder their walk remains static.
The answer to your question is an expositor can speak in such a manner that it 'clicks' in the mind of the listener. The speaker doesn't save anyone; that is to Christ alone. But a Pastor may make it all come together, to make sense to that certain hearer of truth. The Holy Spirit is at work.
That's a good point, Rick. The difference between the really good pastor and the majority is how well they teach; how well they communicate. Which seems to be a good indicator of how the Holy Spirit communicates with them. Different people are reached best with different ways of teaching: different words or phrasings, different approaches to a topic or different methods of teaching. A simple change of a word while teaching can reach that one person who needs it.
DeleteExample: our favorite pastor whose dismissal led to this church taught by going through the Bible book by book, word by word. He would talk about examples of what it was teaching from daily news or familiar examples. (Book by book doesn't mean he went in order, cover to cover. He'd bounce around from OT to NT, just once he'd start a book, he'd go line by line until he finished it). This church and the many we visited before we settled on this one tend to pick the things they want to teach about and then do a lesson or two pulling things out of different books of the Bible.
We have a friend who is retired Air Force and says he and his wife have been to churches all over the US, parts of Canada and other countries on deployments. The pastor I speak highly of led this friend to say he was the best teacher he had heard in any church anywhere.