Drone names in homage to Iain M. Banks Culture novels....

Good point.

All good now though.

Good update on the Starship programme after the ISS mission report.

Damage to Starship 8 during the engine test was due to spalling from a ceramic heat shield on pipes the ground below which couldn’t take the thrust. Now replaced with steel sheathing instead. Build on Starships 9-14 continuing - and first parts for Starship 15 have arrived...

Long March 5 launched the Chang'e moon lander. Object is to return samples from the moon to China.

Booster landing on Saturday after successful launch of NASA ocean surveillance satellite Sentinel 6....

Twitter

Starship static fire of the replacement engine. Tweet from Elon Musk claiming all now ready for a 15KM 'hop' next week. :eek:

That didn't look like much of a static fire to me, more of a static burp. I seem to remember the space shuttle static firings on the launch pad where significantly longer. Or is my memory getting fuzzy?

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/11/2...lcon-9-flight/

SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites on 100th Falcon 9 flight

The 100th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket delivered 60 satellites to orbit for SpaceX’s Starlink network Tuesday night, adding another building block to a planned fleet of thousands of solar-powered space-based relay stations to beam broadband connectivity around the world.

The successful mission late Tuesday also set a new record for SpaceX’s rocket reuse program — one that could be broken again within months if SpaceX maintains its feverish launch cadence. For the first time, a reusable Falcon 9 booster completed its seventh trip to space and back on Tuesday night’s flight.

The Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines and roared off pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air force Station at 9:13:12 p.m. EST Tuesday (0213:12 GMT Wednesday). The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher darted through a broken cloud layer over the pad and rocketed toward the northeast from Cape Canaveral to line up with the mission’s targeted orbital plane within the Starlink network.

The rocket’s 15-story first stage booster dropped away from the Falcon 9 upper stage about two-and-a-half after liftoff, setting a course for a controlled touchdown on SpaceX’s drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” positioned several hundred miles northeast of Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean,

The booster — designated B1049 in SpaceX’s rocket inventory — reignited its center engine for a braking maneuver just before touchdown, then extended a landing gear before settling onto the deck of the drone ship. The apparently flawless landing punctuated the seventh mission of the B1049 vehicle, making it SpaceX’s “fleet leader.”

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has said the newest version of the Falcon 9 booster could fly 10 times without any major refurbishment, and perhaps 100 times with periodic overhauls......

Launch is about 30 minutes in to video below and booster landing at about 40m.

You Tube

As it would..... :)

Yeah, same style we see for jury presentations, political ads and news about a crash or other stuff

"routine training mission"
"the troubled new fighter"
"drastic budget cuts"
"unprecedented cost overruns"
"costliest ( insert whatever) in history"

Only problem I see is many folks who just voted in the U.S. and other places/times do not read newsprint and even less read multiple news sources on the 'net. Oh well....
=============
Grandkids here for our holiday got to see the two Space X launches and landings. A great lesson for them about what an entrepreneur can do without the majority of the cost paid by we proles. Not that Elon doesn't get some subsidies, but nowadays, he is getting paid by the customer and not launching a one-time rocket for a big government program. Besides, at 50 to 60 million $$$$ per lurch, nobody on Earth can come close. Hell, they are even offering "ride share" launches for small stuff at a coupla million $$. Takeoff two Starlinks and put the customer's doofers up front.

They were testing the instalation of a new engine as the previous one was damaged during the last static fire after the pad area below the rocket broke up and FOD was ejected up into the emgine bay.
All seems to be ok and the 15KM 'hop' has been scheduled for 30th November from 1300UTC. Back up dates on the 1st and 2nd December . Should be spectaculer one way or another.

Aw, the little dogs! Sonic booms are a bitch right? :ok:

The boom will surprise you if you are not expecting it, and the onlookers were quite a way from the touchdown. Guess nobody briefed the dogs, heh heh.

My grand daughters got to see one of the return to the Cape landings and the boom was well ahead of the landing. Anyone near Cocoa Beach should drive up to the Port Canaveral viewing site by the "Love Boat" docks and the new parking area. It can't be more than a mile from the landing zone that Falcon uses. There's also a park and several eateries on the canal, but they are usually packed solid.

Next Saturday will be first lurch of the new cargo Dragon, and will be coverred by NASA and the normal stuff on "spaceflightnow.com" around 1100 and on EST in the U.S. Normal trajectory is to northeast, so all the way to Jacksonville should get a glimpse.

Musk vs the Natterjack Toad...
 

https://thehill.com/opinion/technolo...ks-spacex-down

Will the Biden administration slow Elon Musk's SpaceX down?

SpaceX has certainly been on a roll recently. The company’s Falcon 9 has been very busy, launching a probe to measure the rise of the Earth’s oceans, another batch of the Starlink constellation, and a planned cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) in less than two weeks. SpaceX became the first private company to launch people into space in 2020, most recently four new crewmembers to the ISS.

SpaceX is creating a great deal of excitement with its development and testing of the Starship rocket in Boca Chica, Texas. A prototype of the Starship, the SN8, has been scheduled for a test flight of 15 kilometers. The test of the vehicle, a stainless-steel tower with fins and a nose cone that brings to mind more Buck Rogers than Neil Armstrong, may have already happened by the time this article goes live. Elon Musk suggested one in three odds that the SN8 would land intact.

However, according to space journalist Robert Zimmerman, not everyone is excited about the prospect of a private company launching giant rocket ships from south Texas. Government regulators both in Texas and on the federal level may want to start slowing SpaceX down.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) originally granted environmental impact approvals for the Boca Chica space port when SpaceX was still planning to launch Falcon 9s and Falcon Heavies from the Texas Gulf Coast. However, since then, SpaceX has turned Boca Chica into a test facility for the Starship/Super Heavy spacecraft. Environmental regulators have raised concerns about how launches and landings of the new SpaceX rocket ship could affect wildlife and nearby ecosystems.

Thus far the FAA, the regulatory agency responsible for overseeing commercial space launches, has suggested that current tests of the Starship have or will meet “all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval.” Apparently, this is not the case for full suborbital and orbital flights with the Starship/Super Heavy system.

The Starship, a reusable rocket that would be capable of taking 100 tons of people and cargo to the moon and Mars, would be launched by the also reusable Super Heavy first stage. The combined flight vehicle would be the largest, most powerful rocket ever built.

The FAA is working with SpaceX to draft an environmental review of its plans to make Boca Chica a space port for the Starship. The FAA has declared that, “The proposed update to Starship/Super Heavy operations falls outside of the scope of the existing final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Record of Decision for the launch site and requires additional environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).”

President Donald Trump has a decidedly business-friendly approach to government regulations. He was, after all, a builder in a previous life. He has long experience in dealing with government bureaucrats to get permission to construct his hotels and golf clubs. Furthermore, the Trump administration has a keen awareness about what sort of a national asset the SpaceX Starship could be.

The incoming Biden administration is likely to have a more traditional view of government regulation. It will regard regulation as a necessary function to keep private business in line, to make sure that it doesn’t take advantage of the environment in pursuit of profit. As a result, under President-elect Joe Biden, the alliance that the government has with SpaceX is likely to end. Government will assume its accustomed role as an adversary to the commercial sector. SpaceX will likely be required to go through the environmental impact process all over again. The process, as Zimmerman suggests, could take years.

Absent government red tape, Musk hopes to have his Starship operational in a few years. A version of SpaceX’s rocket ship is a candidate for NASA’s Artemis Human Landing System competition for a return to the moon. Musk expects to start shipping cargo and eventually people to Mars in the current decade, a boast that many people find incredible. NASA plans to have astronauts on the Red Planet by the 2030s at the earliest.

Musk could finance this operation by selling services from the Starlink constellation, a satellite system that promises to bring the Internet to every part of the planet. In effect, SpaceX would become a space power independent of NASA or any other government customer. These heady dreams may go crashing to Earth if the incoming Biden administration inflicts the heavy hand of government on SpaceX’s operations. The development would be a tragedy but also the consequences of an election that was perhaps decided unwisely.

Salute!

Well, folks, Space X will conduct first "real" launch of the Starship 8 December after 0800 Central time from the Boca Chica facility. Sucker should get up to 45 or 50K feet and then try to come back for a "soft" landing. Elon is on site as of Sunday night, so guess things are serious.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky5l...ature=youtu.be
or try the LabPadre sites
or : https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-sta...slips-tuesday/

Glad Elon doing conmmercial business, and has a backlog of customers. Has a Serius XM sat launch Thursday, and so on. So lack of taxpayer $$$ that will soon go to "refugees" and social programs should not be a problem for "X".

Gums sends..

So close! Abort about T minus 1 second. One raptor engine failed to do as its told. Hopefully try again tomorrow.

Nice to see a Nasa Martin WB57 Canberra on station at 41000ft to observe.

A beautiful test flight - all seemed nominal until the Starship touched down hard and exploded. It will be interesting to see the cause of the last instant failure.

- Ed

Calling SN 9 - make your way to the launch pad please!