Starship ITF5 from the Roof of HDI Resort SPI
https://youtu.be/2F9shFyQhJ0?t=405

Although the Apollo Lunar Lander didn’t have to light up engines after an atmospheric reentry, they did have to land it in an area that was tilted less than 10°. The trick they used was to land where the Sun was 10° above the horizon and aim for the shadow side of a small crater, but land where there was no shadow. Where there was a shadow, it could be greater than 10°.
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I was laughing so hard at SpaceX actually doing it on the first attempt that I had tears in my eyes, too. It was a bit like Miyagi watching that kid, Daniel, catch the fly with his chopsticks, except without the annoyance of all those years of trying it himself.

Did anyone else notice that Miyagi kept trying to catch the fly with the end of his chopsticks but Daniel caught it much farther in, just as SpaceX did?
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I, too, had been expecting to hear of such a feat in the news, but alas, Democrat enemy #2 must never attain glory in the American press. The news was all too eager to announce other SpaceX and Tesla achievements, but that was the before times, before the Democrats went so far left, much farther than Marxism, that the Republican Party looks good to many former Democrats.

I’m pretty sure that Marx himself would be shocked and repulsed at the horrific policies of the Democrats. It is one thing to use government against one’s enemies, a common practice with Marxists, but it is something altogether different to encourage boys to ogle girls in the girls’ locker room or in the girls’ shower.

It looked like it from the Space X video.

I was also a little worried that the first stage might just explode after landing because of the burning fuel leak shooting out of the side.
They could or even should install a fire extinguisher system(water spray) for the landing. Just in case.

Either way this was a great flight.

Musk’s folks are astounding. I was yelling at the monitor as the booster came home. Literal goosebumps. Seeing history changing. The cost of orbit just dropped by 90+% from Falcon 9, which was already 90+% down from the Shuttle, for a 99% reduction total.
99%.
That’s a cost per kilo to orbit lower than a Concorde flight from London to NYC.

yes, getting harder to argue against critics of the NY Times. It must be preparing a full analysis set of stories ;) Simply in geo political terms, what SpaceX demonstrated on Sunday was really super significant. Xi and the Chinese military now know, not only how capable space hardware can be, but that engineers can produce it. Couple with the 10/10 Tesla unveil of its Optimus robots ( kind of chilling to see them all marching in the way they did ) and we seriously are witnessing the dawn of great power rivalry and race for dominance.

Fireball Xl5
intro & closing
https://youtu.be/6ifS2nP53Zs
2:29

Steve Richter: This is why it has been pointless to depend on these news sources since the early 1980s. At that time they decided to become operatives of the Democratic Party instead of journalists reporting the big news of the day.

And I included the Wall Street Journal. Though its editorial pages have tended to be conservative, the editorial tilt of its news sections has increasingly been only a little less left of the New York Times.

MDN: Yes, it does. I posted this early in the morning and was not quite awake (I am a night person, and the launch was extremely early for me). I forgot to include in the totals, kept thinking I needed to do it later in the day, and kept forgetting. Thank you for the reminder. I will add it now.

Doesn’t this count as a successful launch for the 2024 tally? Yeah, it was suborbital, but only as a safety precaution. And I believe you counted IFT4, so this one should count too.

Starship recovery is always going to be more challenging.

I am actually more impressed by standard Falcon hoverslams with the near-empty core reaching zero velocity at zero altitude with zero fuel—or thereabouts.

SuperHeavy took its time in comparison.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1845633730154545465?s=46

Same. I was 12, and my father bought our first color TV the day before just to watch it!
Heh.

Many More, SpaceX Team !

I too am concerned about bad actors getting their hands on one of the Starships or Superheavy that soft landed on water.

That has got to piss off the Chinese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNhk_-v0SMs&t=40s

It was Nariyoshi Miyagi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMjGfn3iXhs

It *looked* like what happened was that the engines cut out, it tipped over, and when it smacked the water, it exploded. No doubt because it was not designed to tip over and hit something without experiencing rapid unscheduled disassembly. Or (less likely) SpaceX deliberately had it programmed to blow up by detonating the FTS once it had finished the job, so as to prevent any recovery and inspection by naughty sorts of folks prowling the Indian Ocean.

We’ll no doubt see more info and splicing of the buoy videos, and different angles, to suss this out in the coming days.