I assume it went hey can you guys spend 50 million to launch a target up for us to blow up and they were like yeah no we don't have the money. Military then went hey this old piece of **** in polar orbit above iss orbit is passing over our air space we can close soon. What could possibly go wrong?

Love this picture from the last starlink launch.

Just released by NASA:

Here's a video of the Perseverance rover videoing the helicopter Ingenuity flying it's leg. It starts on the left side of the screen. Mars baby!

That's actually Mars there? And we were able to shoot a rover and a robot helicopter up there, pretty amazing.

wow that mars video is ****ing incredible. and im not being sarcastic lol

love it, just the perfect amount of graininess to please both admirers and conspiracy theorists alike

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/elon...ankruptcy.html

Oops

I would imagine that Elon could float SpaceX with Tesla stock before that happens.

Nice complication of the launch from the Inspiration 4 flight:

They left out the quotes about there being a very small chance of actually going bankrupt in this version. It definitely lessens the impact of the clickbait.

Looking up at the bottom of the current Super Heavy Booster. The next generation will have 13 gimballing and 20 static engines.

Which he also clarified as there is a chance but he doesn't think it will happen. I figure if u put a giant chunk of your net worth in to something then he at least believes in it..



I think his biggest flaw, which I very much might be creating out of thin air off a vague memory is he has no desire to mine asteroids.

Not spacex but James Webb Space Telescope is going up in 10 minutes. Pretty big moment. https://www.twitch.tv/ej_sa

It's 4:15am local time right now but no way was I going to miss this!

Gogogogogo!

Wow, I got a little choked up. Nice speech by Bill Nelson.

Fly James Webb!

The shots of it leaving the final booster were super cool.

are we five by five on the JWST?

When's the next milestone for jwst?

Two weeks of unfolding.

Has that part started?

I'm not an expert but this is what I know:

Solar cells have been deployed. Power systems are in the process of being configured. Cooling systems initialized.

They have the telescope in a proper orientation in relation to the sun.

Things that have to happen besides all the unfolding, is it needs to finesse itself into a correct L2 orbit. Too much thrust and it going into an orbit around the Sun and out of Earth communications, too little and it ends up in an eccentric orbit around the earth.

I don't have a timeline other than "two weeks".

Here's a schedule of events. A pretty cool site.

https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLa...tExplorer.html

wow this is pretty cool(genuine)

I have a noob rocket question. Did a search and didn't find anything concise.

What is the main difference that allows any billionaire to build rockets that fly perfectly, while in the past NASA had several disasters. What separates them?

Generally it is the opposite that is true. NASA/government programs build 1-2 of something but test, test, test and go slow. Where SpaceX will build a dozen of something, start launching things, watch things go boom and incrementally learn from the flights.

It's a difference in philosophy. The SpaceX method is hardware and capital intensive but progress and schedules are shortened.

A few years ago, it took a half dozen tries to land a Falcon 9 on a barge. boom boom boom. But SpaceX learned after every flight. For 2021, SpaceX launched 31 Falcon 9 rockets. 31 out of 31 successfully deployed their payloads and 30 of them successfully landed.

The Starship is following the same learning path. First simple take-offs and hover landing. Then high altitude freefalls and flip and burns. In a couple months they will launch their 1st orbital Starship.

And us SpaceX fans get to witness all the crashes, booms and finally beautiful landings. 2022 is going to be mind blowing.