I liked Bush 41…he was pro-space

https://nypost.com/2026/01/29/business/elon-musks-spacex-in-merger-talks-with-xai-ahead-of-potential-blockbuster-ipo-report/

Richard M: I have been reviewing the FAA EIS summary and plan to post about it later today.

https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship_ksc/SpaceX-SSH-LC-39A-Final-EIS_Executive-Summary.pdf

Today the FAA has advanced approval for up to 44 Starship launches from LC-39A at KSC.

NSF is the only one with a story up so far on this, so far as I can make out, for what it is worth: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/01/faa-advances-approval-44-starship-launches-39a/

I have to agree that an “out of the blue” (pun definitely intended) reference to Orbital Reef after, literally, years of silence on the topic is a bit startling. Weirdly encouraging too – but startling.

mkent,

Thanks for the Varda update. One hopes Winnebago-5 represents the comprehensive chasing down and squishing of whatever bugs there were in Winnebago-4. Always good to see more use cases for commercial activity in LEO emerging. Once Varda gets to the point where it has a Winnebago riding on every Transporter mission – and maybe the Bandwagons too – the next logical step up is either bigger “motor homes” or, as a number of LEO satellite constellation operators have been doing for some time, putting two or more Winnebagos on each such rideshare. Kooniba may have to get used to being peppered on a regular basis.

Jeff Wright,

In a very literal sense, I hope we never do see another space station like the ISS. It has always been a sort of camel whose creators were trying for a horse, but missed. ISS isn’t scalable, designed for either easy or EVA-free repair and maintenance and requires highly-trained astronauts to spend far to much of their time being weightless janitors, handymen, stevedores and warehousemen. And it has no laundry facilities – which makes its default odor that of, say, a vintage gym like the one Rocky worked out in.

No one not given to pathological nostalgia is going to miss that thing a bit when it’s finally gone.

I still look for Bezos to abandon his vaporware reef.

Other than one or two beehive plus sized private modules, humanity may never see the likes of ISS again

That appears to leave Winnebago-4 still in orbit. I’ve heard rumors that Varda has had multiple problems with it, even that it was lost, though I’m not sure that that’s the case. W-4 was Varda’s first in-house spacecraft. Previous spacecraft buses were built by Rocket Lab and combined with the Varda re-entry capsule.

Rocket Lab delivered a fourth spacecraft bus to Varda. Does anyone know whether W-5 had the fourth Rocket Lab bus or the second Varda bus? I’m guessing that since Rocket Lab didn’t make an announcement of imminent re-entry as they had with Winnebagos 1-3 that it had Varda bus #2. Does anyone know for sure?