SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage (B1093) completed its 15th flight (25 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
95 SpaceX
52 China
11 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 95 to 88.
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

More worries being ginned up
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-uk-observatory-nervously-space-junk.html
They’re worried about space junk? On the 12th they’re telling us we’re going to see 50 to 100 meteors per hour.
And a solar eclipse, perfect conditions during a new moon if you don’t have clouds.
If you want space junk, China and Russia have openly discussed and demonstrated the ability to destroy “perceived enemy satellites” with the infrastructure for Elon musk associated industries being mentioned.
Now Iran is making threats.
https://cryptobriefing.com/iran-starlink-military-target-musk/
All the more reason to finish Iran then help the Ukrainians finish Russia. After that we can turn our hands to speeding up the PRC’s already inevitable collapse. The world is getting a bit too big and close-knit to allow megalomaniacal psychopaths to run countries anymore.