The chopstick fly-catch maneuver was very impressive. Saw post from Elon this morning that the targeted turnaround time from capture to ready to relaunch when fully implemented is about an hour.
An hour.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
In a few short years we’ll have Humans on Mars. I never expected that in my lifetime and eagerly await the day.

This tech is awesome, but that is still a monumental leap. There are about a bazillion things about space travel that far that are conspiring to kill you. Let alone allow for a round trip.

Here is a link to an X thread with video clips of the California Coastal Commission members and others testifying about the requested increase in launches of SpaceX rockets from Vandenberg Space(!) Force Base. It shows them to be just as incompetent, biased, ignorant and disgusting as you would expect.

Link

I just showed all these to my wife, and she is now ranting about how those people need to suffer to understand human nature. They are sitting there protected by the very people they are trying to prevent from carrying out their role of protecting them and the rest of us. If they had their way there would be no DoD, no Air Force or Space Force, no SpaceX.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sjtill,

SpaceX used Vandenberg Space Force Base to loft an NRO satellite about 20 minutes ago.

The video has the whole thing, but I set the playback to start with the part most care about - watching the landing.



Perfection, as always.

It was the 100th flight of a Falcon 9, and the 21st flight for this specific first stage.

I'd say the age of reusable spacecraft is here.

Congratulations to the SpaceX team.

I’m a huge Elon fan so don’t take this the wrong my way. I don’t understand his fascination with Mars. Why would anyone want to leave the most perfect planet for one where you have to live in a bubble because it’s so uninhabitable. The only thing I can think of is if we HAD to due to a cataclysmic event on earth.

^^^^ Do you buy insurance before or after your house burns down?

Because if we have the tech to go to Mars, we can go pretty much anywhere in the System. This will allow us to get to the asteroid belt for materials there, and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for the same. This allows us to avoid the "Earth First, we'll mine the other planets later" fallacy since it would be great if we could keep Earth nice.

Today I watched a Falcon rocket carrying an NRO satellite after it was launched from Vandenberg. I had forgotten that the video stream is delayed; so the loooong vapor trail high in the stratosphere was the SpaceX rocket. Not as spectacular as watching at night thogh; after sunset is best.

Preparing to loft 22 Starlinks from the other coast.



And the crowd goes wild with another landing.

here is a view of the capture of the Starship booster as seen from the launch tower

pretty impressive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7qTfc_XuTI

^^^^^^
I’d guess that the Russians and Chinese are impressed too.

the Chinese had a launch of their latest rocket not long ago...failed a few seconds after launch and impacted the ground with a huge fireball

apparently they can save some weight by eliminating a destruct mechanism

they didn't talk much about it did they...things not all they rosy in China's space program

Chinese astronauts are called taikonaut. Is the n silent? China expects to have Chinese taikonaut on the moon by 2030. The food will be out of this world.