…Look, test rockets blow up on the pad all the damn time. Even Elon Musk himself isn’t going to commit to it working on the first try. This is why they had to have FAA approval.
So adjust your expectations. The important thing will be, What do we learn from any oopsies? Failure is just another data point.
But let me translate Elon Musk, here:
It was announced earlier this month that Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX, will make an effort to launch his company’s futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship into orbit in January, but he is not optimistic about the outcome of that maiden test flight.
(Via Instapundit) Translation: that sumbitch gonna blow up. Which is why there’s not going to be a single thing on that prototype that won’t be a sensor to help engineers better understand why it blew up. Fortunately for Musk, by now it’s understood that SpaceX routinely incinerates a few rockets on its way to the next step. That has proven to be quite valuable to his long-term plans…
Oh, look. It was just another successful private space mission. This one happened to be manned, fully automated, and involved multiple orbits. Oh, yes, and there were the usual reusable booster and all the rest of the things SpaceX does, sure, sure.
How… prosaic.
…Damn, but I love living in the future sometimes.
Continue reading Civilian orbital space mission going fine.The crew of the first all-private orbital space mission has spent Thursday, the first full day of the mission, circling the Earth every 90 minutes at over 17,000 mph.
SpaceX reported the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule with four civilians inside was traveling 363 miles high over Asia as of mid-morning, quickly moving over the massive continent. The altitude is a full hundred miles higher than the International Space Station.
Excuse me: ‘Starships.’
“The Department of the Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to develop the largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AF cargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity,” the document states.
Continue reading USAF officially interested in SpaceX’s upcoming line of suborbital strategic transport shuttles.SN15th time’s the charm:
Via @IMAO_. I’ve always felt Elon Musk’s operating philosophy draws much from the below. Note, by the way, that I say that respectfully. The philosophy below works:
Or early tomorrow morning? It’s complicated.
SpaceX’s first long-duration astronaut mission is coming to an end, with a Crew Dragon capsule undocking from the International Space Station and headed for a splashdown off the coast of Florida early Sunday (May 2).
Strapped inside the Dragon capsule, called Resilience, are four astronauts who will make the first U.S. night water landing in more than 50 years. The crew, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, is wrapping up a six-month mission to the station.
Good luck and Godspeed, folks.
It’s about NASA lunar lander contract: “The protest focuses on the decision to award only one company, SpaceX, the lunar lander contract from a three-way competition. Alabama-based Dynetics also had developed a lunar lander for the contest.” (Via Instapundit) …Look, I like Amazon just fine. Amazon Prime, affiliate revenue, it’s my publisher.
But… Blue Origins is a privately funded spaceflight research organization that brings payloads along for the ride, and SpaceX is an unmanned and manned orbital transport enterprise. I have no doubt (and some hopes) that Jeff Bezos will eventually have an extremely profitable company and a fleet of silver rocketships; it’s just that, in the meantime, we’re trying to get back to the moon before I die of old age. Well, that’s maybe not NASA’s specific rationale – but it absolutely should be. I’d have given SpaceX the contract, too: they’ve got direct experience at this point. That includes, again, manned missions.
Moe Lane
Mostly involving variants of Who else here thinks SpaceX will be ready for the Moon shot before NASA is? Hell, if SpaceX can get Starship into orbit, somebody might end up saying Why wait? But never mind me: I’m cranky when I haven’t had my dinner. This is cool news.
Via @IMAO_.
They launched Falcon 9 to put another sixty satellites in orbit for SpaceX’s full-coverage internet Starlink project. Fun fact: there’s a thousand up there by now (out of a projected forty thousand). Another fun fact: that’s the ninth time the company used that booster.
I may be happier about this than the ongoing work on a no-fooling rocketship. The tests of their heavy rockets are genuinely exciting and fascinating, yes. No argument there. But this stuff with the Falcons is what’s going to end up making space a hell of a lot cheaper to exploit. And I’m very happy that somebody’s doing the tedious work involved.
