SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
64 SpaceX
30 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 64 to 54.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Off-topic comment on BO pad explosion: I note that the immense fireball exhibits what is to me a startling symmetry! If you look at the replay, the expansion of the fireball and thus the overall shape of it shows an almost artificial lateral symmetry.
Is this others’ impression? If so, does this have any implications for the source, location, or other characteristics of the explosion?
I’m just noting the appearance – it may be of no consequence or even naturally inevitable, but its appearance struck me as perhaps significant.
Bob, wouldn’t it be easier on you to ost on day s they don’t launch 29 sats?