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.
My wife has gently explained to me that this was not a successful test.
I have had it explained to me that my first attempt to call this a backdoor way to get to an ‘assault shuttle‘ was, at absolute best, horribly optimistic. So be it. Still cool:
The U.S. military command that oversees logistics operations has signed an agreement with SpaceX and XArc to study the use of space launch vehicles to transport supplies in an emergency.
Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, announced the agreement Oct. 7 at a National Defense Transportation Association virtual conference.
“Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” Lyons said. The C-17 is a very large military cargo plane capable of transporting a 70-ton main battle tank.
Why, yes. Yes, I have thought about the potentialities. …Which are going to remain potentialities, at least until they figure out how to launch missions where it doesn’t take months to plan everything out. Damn you, objective reality. Damn you.
Via Instapundit.
Slowly but surely, we build the Solar Patrol. But I say too much! Ignore me.
Sometimes, the 21st Century has its moments.
Oops, did I type out that in the title? I meant ‘space tourist vessel.’ Silly me:
Continue reading SpaceX continues on with space corvette tests.SpaceX just fired the engine of its latest Starship prototype, paving the way for a test flight in the near future.
The company conducted a “static fire” test of Starship SN5 today (July 30), letting its single Raptor engine blaze while the vehicle remained tethered to the ground at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, near the village of Boca Chica.
Dear Lord: don’t let them [expletive] up.
I think that Shepard’s Prayer is appropriate at this moment:
NASA gave the green light on Friday to next week’s launch of two astronauts aboard a SpaceX vessel—the first crewed space flight from US soil in nine years and a crucial step towards ending American dependence on Russian rockets.
Top officials at the US space agency and Elon Musk’s company had been meeting since Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final checks of the Crew Dragon space capsule ahead of its maiden May 27 crewed mission.
I kind of need this to work. I don’t think I have to explain why, right? I need it to work, and I really want a private company doing the work, too. Here’s praying that it does.
Nice:
SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said Thursday that the company’s recovery fleet in the Atlantic Ocean recovered the two halves of the Falcon Heavy’s payload shroud after the heavy-lifter’s second launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Musk said the company plans to reuse the fairing for the first time later this year.
As Fark Geek noted: recovering the rockets themselves for reuse? Whatever, man. That’s old news at this point. But retrieving and reusing a component that makes up 10% of the launch cost? Yeah, that’s noteworthy. As was the originally rocket recovery, of course, but one gets jaded so quickly, these days.
