SpaceX launches 27 Starlink satellitesSpaceX today successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
38 SpaceX
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 38 to 31.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"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
SpaceX today successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
38 SpaceX
18 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 38 to 31.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"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
At approximately T+2:45 to 3:15 as the fairing sep was being announced, I saw a repeated picture of some kind of membrane flexing, instead of a picture of a fairing separation as expected.
Ray Van Dune: I noticed that also, and am as puzzled. I don’t think that membrane is the fairing, still attached, but what is going on is not clear.
As puzzling as the nature of the membrane, is the further question of what forces were making it oscillate? Liquid-fueled rocket engines like Merlin are as a rule fairly smooth in their operation. What was going on here?!
This is a new “packaging” of Starlink satellites, so I can only speculate that some kind of flexible membrane is used to hold the seats in a stack until deployment, in the same ways as earlier arrays were held by a long pole.
Presumably, the membrane is lighter than the pole was, but the obvious question is how to avoid getting tangled in the membrane?!